What exactly does privacy mean nowadays?
If the launch of Apple Pay on September 9 has proved one thing, it’s that the company is prepared to attack Google, the company it clearly considers its biggest rival. Tim Cook left no doubts about this when he said: “Our business isn’t based on having information about you. You are not our product.”
Cook has today published a letter underscoring this message and differentiating Apple from its competitors. Apple defines itself as a company with a model based on selling products, not obtaining profiles of users to sell to advertisers or making money out the information that users provide. It does have a small advertising business, iAd, but maintains the same privacy policy: it isn’t based on information that the client deposits in Apple’s services, and it allows for an opt-out.
The company is trying to set itself apart as one that believes in and defends privacy, that has made its disapproval of the spying activities of the US government clear, and that has vowed that it will not give the administration access to its data, and that iMessage content is encrypted and the company doesn’t have the code.
In the opposite camp, according to Apple, is Google. A company whose business model is based on offering free products so as to build detailed profiles of how you use them, and to offer businesses the possibility of placing their advertisements on the pages you call up when searching for something. What should be pointed out here is that Google DOESN’T allow advertisers to access users’ data. Google keeps all information about its users, it doesn’t sell it on to advertisers, and this information is part of an agreement between the company and the user: give me free products and in return sell segmented advertising directed at me. What’s more, the more accurate your sniper, the better my experience as a client will be.
Google’s position regarding government requests for information about its users is clear: if the authorities request this, it will be handed over after consideration or when the object of a court order. Similarly, if Google discovers that its services are being used for certain criminal activities such as child pornography, then it will contact the police.
In other words, this isn’t as simple as Apple is trying to make out. Apple’s model is a traditional one: I make things, I sell them to you, and I try to convince you to buy more based on their quality, price, marketing, etc. The second model didn’t exist until technology made it possible, but is perfectly legitimate as long as everybody knows what they are getting into. If the user understands and accepts the conditions, and these are not against the law, and as long as the company doesn’t break the terms of service, there shouldn’t be any problem.
Within the continuum that Apple is attempting to establish, with itself and Google at either extreme, there are any number of other companies, many of them are using similar methods to analyze data, and not all are as transparent in the way they operate as Google. Apple says that it doesn’t consider them its competition because they do not intend to enter the social networking arena.
The frontline in this battle is shifting all the time. Edward Snowden’s revelations, which included spying on Google and other companies, along with the climate of suspicion that the NSA’s activities created, led many of us to believe that people would become hyper-sensitive about privacy. Instead, the situation in the Middle East, and particularly the perceived threat from radical Islam seems to have frightened many of us: in this post-Snowden era, growing numbers of US citizens are calling for better protection from jihadists than those who argue that our civil liberties are being trammeled.
The thing is that fear clouds our reasoning, and tends to make us forget that spying on the population as a whole does nothing to reduce terrorist threats, and creates others that are more menacing. Sadly, this kind of simplistic thinking is contributing to the creation of a new societal model.
Apple and Google’s privacy battle hides a more disturbing reality, that more than a decade on, most of us have no idea how the data business works. Comparing the two companies is as simplistic as it is self-serving: Apple might not want to develop this kind of business model; but that doesn’t mean that others, like Google, shouldn’t, or that that they are somehow engaged in spying.
Many people believe that trading products for information is not necessarily a bad thing, as long as the terms and conditions are clearly understood by all parties. The best thing that could come out of this dispute is for society to engage in a wider debate about what privacy really means nowadays, and just what it is that we are selling when we accept certain conditions, and to what extent what is really important to us is transparency and clarity.
(En español, aquí)
