CNN interview: Apple CEO Cook believes data collection by the likes of Google and Facebook has crossed the line

“Apple CEO Tim Cook wants governments around the world to restrict how much data companies can collect from their customers,” David Goldman reports for CNN Business. “In an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour at an Apple Store in Brussels, Cook pushed for comprehensive privacy legislation. He argued that big-pocketed corporations have created surveillance operations that promote profit over customers’ ability to control their own information. ‘You have more information in your devices than in your own home,’ he said. ‘All of this information that is out there is too much. It is just too much. It should not exist.'”
“Google, Apple’s archrival, has built virtually its entire business around collecting customer data then packaging and selling it to advertisers,” Goldman reports. “Cook said he has no issue with the kind of digital advertising championed by Google and Facebook. But he believes some data collection has crossed the line, particularly the formation of deep digital profiles that Cook claims know more about people than they know about themselves.”
“At the International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners in Brussels on Wednesday, Cook lauded the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, and he pushed for a comprehensive federal privacy law in the United States,” Goldman reports. “Cook said he doesn’t participate in politics because he ‘disdains’ it, but he enjoys advocating for good policy. For example, the Apple CEO, like most American CEOs, claims the US tax cuts were good for the economy — but he’s no fan of tariffs.”
Read more, and watch the interview, here.
MacDailyNews Take: Hopefully Cook can get the U.S. Congress to look at the General Data Protection Regulation and pass something that begins to end the Wild West of Data Mining that exists today by outfits like Google and Facebook.
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