Apple CEO Tim Cook was guest speaker at the 40th edition of the International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners (ICDPPC) in Brussels and talked about why the United States ought to have a data protection legislation that is just as rigid as the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which was enacted in May 2018.
Cook mentioned in his keynote address that he made an effort to distance Apple from Silicon Valley firms because they urged trade ins of digital data producing a “data industrial complex.” Bringing this course of action to the extreme creates an entire digital profile that enables companies to learn more about you than what you actually know yourself. A profile represents a set of algorithms that provide steadily extreme content that could lead to harm. We must not sugarcoat the final results. This is monitoring.
Other countries should do the same as the EU in enacting the GDPR laws. Thanks to the GDPR, non-compliant firms that do not protect client data are fined an amount as much as €20 million or 4% of annual global revenue, whichever amount of money is higher.
Cook tweeted four concerns that he thinks the US legislation should address:
1. Companies should de-identify client data or they shouldn’t gather data in the first place.
2. Users have to know when their information is being obtained from them and why it is collected. This allows users to understand which is a valid collection and which isn’t. In any other case, it is a fraud.
3. Companies need to know that the data belong to users. The process for collecting a copy of people’s personal data should be simple, including the process of correction and removal. Everyone has the right to data security.
4. Using Artificial Intelligence (AI) for collecting personal information is not a matter of efficiency, but laziness. Privacy and human values should be respected by companies. Disregard this and there will be big problems.
Although technology is helpful in getting to know about people, organizations are responsible for attaining excellent privacy standards and artificial intelligence. In the research of AI, the humanity, ingenuity and creativity of people must not be taken for granted.
Mr. Cook gave his keynote speech after the news about popular GDPR investigations were out beginning with the business operations of big companies like Facebook, which potentially compromised the personal data of approximately 50 million users and Google, which experienced an alleged breach of its Google+ users. Perhaps it’s time that U.S. companies take seriously the need to adequately secure the personal data of consumers.