Now Apple’s in trouble with German privacy law
It seems like everyone else is in hot water with the German authorities over privacy matters, so it had to be Apple’s turn. The company was asked yesterday to provide information on what it does with collected iPhone data.
German justice minister, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, asked Apple to tell officials in charge of consumer data protection exactly what sort of data the new iPhone is collecting on users, how it is being used, and how long it is being saved. Ms. Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said in the course of an interview, “Apple has the obligation to properly implement the transparency so often promised by Steve Jobs.â€
In reply, Apple said that iPhone 4 users in Germany have the option of denying the transfer of any personal information to Apple, including their geographic location, to Apple or to third parties apps which request it. Specifically mentioning the phone’s new operating system, the company said, “With iOS4, Apple has gone further to protect users’ privacy, particularly with respect to location, than anyone else has to date.â€
Several tech companies, including Google, Facebook and now Apple, have run afoul of German privacy regulations as they try to implement business models that rely in part on the use of private information, according to a New York Times story. Earlier this month, Ilse Aigner, the German consumer protection minister, threatened social networking giant Facebook with fines if it did not improve the protection of information provided by German users of their site. Ms. Aigner went so far as to say she planned to delete her own Facebook entry.
There is a fundamental disconnect between the desire of Internet companies to use our data to sell us things and the rights of individuals to keep that data private. That gap is wider in Germany than in most countries, setting up an interesting situation to keep watch over. The German government may have the best opportunity to establish a privacy beachhead in one small corner of our overly commercial world.
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June 29th, 2010
There is a huge, basic philosophical difference about privacy data between the US and most of Europe. In the US, an entity that gathers information about you owns that information and can use it as they see fit as long as laws aren’t broken (or they aren’t caught). Companies grudgingly give us opt-out ability but make it difficult to use and often times tie services to opting in on data sharing.
In the EU the person retains ownership of data about them regardless of who does the data acquisition & storage and the person has to explicitly allow organizations to use that data.