Apple Boss Delivers Strongest Attack Yet on Facebook and Google Over Privacy

By Stuart Dredge, Guardian UK

03 June 15

Web rivals’ business models undermine users’ privacy, says Tim Cook, who also warns governments on pursuing ‘dangerous’ encryption policies

pple chief executive Tim Cook has delivered his sharpest attack yet on rivals Google and Facebook, with a speech criticising their advertising-supported business models for their disregard for users’ privacy.

Cook also used his speech to the EPIC Champions of Freedom event in Washington to fire a broadside at governments pushing for backdoors to encryption systems used by Apple and other technology companies on national-security grounds, describing the prospect as “incredibly dangerous”.

The speech, as reported by TechCrunch, did not pull any of its punches. “I’m speaking to you from Silicon Valley, where some of the most prominent and successful companies have built their businesses by lulling their customers into complacency about their personal information,” said Cook.

“They’re gobbling up everything they can learn about you and trying to monetise it. We think that’s wrong. And it’s not the kind of company that Apple wants to be.”

While Cook did not name companies specifically, he made a clear reference to Google’s recently-launched Google Photos service, to hammer home the intended targets of his comments.

“We believe the customer should be in control of their own information. You might like these so-called free services, but we don’t think they’re worth having your email, your search history and now even your family photos data-mined and sold off for god knows what advertising purpose,” he said. “And we think some day, customers will see this for what it is.”

Apple is not immune from scrutiny on these grounds: its App Store distributes the apps of these companies to the iOS devices bought by its customers – Google Photos launched for iOS last week – so the company is providing one of the key distribution networks for these “so-called free services”.

Apple has also faced other kinds of questions about privacy: for example in November 2014, when security researcher Jeffrey Paul discovered that several of his personal files had been automatically uploaded to Apple’s iCloud storage service without his permission.

Cook has attacked Google and Facebook before. In September 2014, he published an open letter to customers about privacy, in which he stressed Apple’s lack of interest in building “a profile based on your email content or web browsing habits to sell to advertisers” or trying to “read your email or your messages to get information to market to you”.

Portraying rivals as building their business models on privacy intrusion – Google and its Android platform in particular – has a clear commercial benefit for Apple, as it tries to sell more of its iOS devices.

There are other areas in which Apple’s civil-liberties beliefs are more aligned with those rivals though: especially when it comes to governments’ desire to weaken the encryption technology used by these companies.

“Some in Washington are hoping to undermine the ability of ordinary citizens to encrypt their data. We think this is incredibly dangerous,” said Cook, talking up Apple’s use of encryption in its iMessage and FaceTime services for messaging and video-calling.

“If you put a key under the mat for the cops, a burglar can find it, too. Criminals are using every technology tool at their disposal to hack into people’s accounts. If they know there’s a key hidden somewhere, they won’t stop until they find it,” said Cook.

“Removing encryption tools from our products altogether, as some in Washington would like us to do, would only hurt law-abiding citizens who rely on us to protect their data. The bad guys will still encrypt; it’s easy to do and readily available.”

This is not the first time Cook has spoken out about encryption in this way. In February, Apple’s chief executive gave an impassioned speech at a White House-organised cybersecurity summit.

“If those of us in positions of responsibility fail to do everything in our power to protect the right of privacy, we risk something far more valuable than money. We risk our way of life,” he said then.