Tim Cook says that tech companies are doing a poor job creating policies that protect user privacy. The CEO of Apple wants the US government to step in.
“I think we can all admit that when you’ve tried to do something and companies haven’t self policed, that it’s time to have rigorous regulation,” he told ABC News, “And I think we’ve passed that time.”
He then went on to make a point that Apple has said many times before: “We view privacy as a fundamental human right. And from our point of view, I’m personally very worried that in a world where nothing is private, then freedom of expression just evaporates.”
Apple regularly contrasts its business practices with those of Facebook and Google, companies that gather as much personal information about users they can and then sells it to advertisers.
“The time is now to have a federal privacy bill,” said Cook. This isn’t the first time he’s made this request.
Privacy outweighs monopoly
Congress is investigating Google, Amazon and Facebook as well as Apple for anti-competitive business practices. Cook wishes lawmakers would put more attention on privacy.
“I think there’s too much focus right now on fines and breakups and not enough on the data that the companies hold that users did not make an informed decision to give to,” said Apple’s chief executive to ABC News.
As he points out, if you divide a company up without considering g how much user data it’s amassed, “you haven’t done anything.”
