Apple's Tim Cook: Data Privacy Situation is so dire well-crafted regulation is needed
Apple's Tim Cook Calls for More Regulations on Data
Privacy
Cook speaks at Beijing forum following Facebook
controversy
Situation is so dire well-crafted regulation is needed:
Cook
March 23, 2018, 9:08 PM PDT
Apple Inc. Chief Executive Tim Cook has called for
stronger privacy regulations that prevent the misuse of data in the light of
the controversial leak of Facebook user information.
Cook called for “well-crafted” regulations that prevent
the information of users being put together and applied in new ways without
their knowledge during a session on global inequality at the annual China
Development Forum in Beijing on Saturday.
His comments will ramp up pressure on Facebook Inc. and
other technology companies that rely on the huge reams of data gathered from
billions of people to power their products, services and sales. Facebook
co-founder Mark Zuckerberg belatedly apologized for failing to better control
its customers’ data following reports that it let Cambridge Analytica amass
information on 50 million users. The social network’s shares have tumbled 14
percent following the reports.
“I think that this certain situation is so dire and has
become so large that probably some well-crafted regulation is necessary,” Cook
said after being asked if the use of data should be restricted in light of the
Facebook incident. “The ability of anyone to know what you’ve been browsing
about for years, who your contacts are, who their contacts are, things you like
and dislike and every intimate detail of your life -- from my own point of view
it shouldn’t exist.”
Cook said his company had long worried that people around
the world were giving up information without knowing how it could be used.
“We’ve worried for a number of years that people in many
countries were giving up data probably without knowing fully what they were
doing and that these detailed profiles that were being built of them, that one
day something would occur and people would be incredibly offended by what had
been done without them being aware of it,” he said. “Unfortunately that
prediction has come true more than once.”
Industry Leaders
Top U.S. executives from Google chief Sundar Pichai to
IBM’s Ginny Rometty gathered in Beijing this weekend under the shadow of a
brewing trade war, as U.S. President Donald Trump prepares to slap tariffs on
Chinese goods, potentially affecting more than $50 billion worth of products.
Until the U.S. government formalizes the details of the tariffs, the impact on
American companies will be difficult to gauge.
Cook said that he held passionate views on the issue and
that he’d personally weighed into the debate.
“The countries that embrace openness do exceptional and
the countries that don’t, don’t,” he said. “It’s not a matter of carving things
up between sides. I’m going to encourage that calm heads prevail.”
— With assistance by David Ramli
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