Apple Struggles to Reassure Feds: Our iPhones Are Not Spying on People
Apple Struggles to Reassure Feds: Our iPhones Are Not
Spying on People
By PHIL BAKER AUGUST 22, 2018
The Energy and Commerce Committee in Congress sent
letters in July to Tim Cook, Apple's CEO, and Larry Page, CEO of Google's
parent company Alphabet, asking whether their smartphones listen to their users
and collect data. In its response, Apple said that they do not listen to what
users say and that third-party apps cannot access the audio data without
permission.
Timothy Powderly, Apple's director of federal government
affairs, claimed in a letter obtained by CNN, "The iPhone doesn't listen
to consumers except to recognize the clear, unambiguous audio trigger 'Hey
Siri.’ The customer is not our product, and our business model does not depend
on collecting vast amounts of personally identifiable information to enrich
targeted profiles marketed to advertisers."
"We believe privacy is a fundamental human right and
purposely design our products and services to minimize our collection of
customer data," Powderly added.
There’s been no word yet if Google has responded.
The questions were raised by lawmakers in response to
rumors that some companies, including Amazon, Facebook, and others collect data
from our conversations.
Apple explained that an iPhone will display a visual
alert when Siri is listening to a user’s request. Apple also requires
third-party apps to display an indicator when they're capturing data using the
microphone, and users must first grant access to the app to access the mic.
This ostensibly refers to apps that are used to make recordings and use voice
search.
This latest news comes on the heels of a new report that
accuses Google of tracking a user’s locations without permission. The
Associated Press discovered that Google captures and saves your location
history even if you’ve disabled location tracking on your phone.
What's becoming evident is that many high-tech companies,
particularly those dependent on advertising, have few ethical boundaries in their
efforts to capture more and more of our personal information. Consider that
these companies have thousands of engineers being paid to come up with new
ideas to make their companies' product more effective and to grow the revenue.
Imagine a Google engineer who has access to your location
and your microphone. He or she could decide to develop the capability to listen
to you every time you visit your doctor to learn about your health and sell it
to insurance companies. This is
hypothetical and there's no indication it's being done, but all the tools are
there right on your phone to do so.
What's really needed is a code of conduct that defines
their limits, whether it's something developed internally or by a government
agency. So far few companies have provided any signs of doing this on their
own. Apple may be the exception because their business model is built around
the profits from their hardware, not from advertising revenue.
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