Apple CEO backs privacy laws, warns data being ‘weaponized’
BRUSSELS — The head of Apple on Wednesday endorsed tough privacy laws for both Europe and the U.S. and renewed the technology giant’s commitment to protecting personal data, which he warned was being “weaponized” against users.
Speaking at an international conference on data privacy, Apple CEO Tim Cook applauded European Union authorities for bringing in a strict new data privacy law in May and said the iPhone maker supports a U.S. federal privacy law .
Cook’s speech, along with video comments from Google and Facebook top bosses, in the European Union’s home base in Brussels, underscores how the U.S. tech giants are jostling to curry favour in the region as regulators tighten their scrutiny.
Data protection has become a major political issue worldwide, and European regulators have led the charge in setting new rules for the big internet companies. The EU’s new General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, requires companies to change the way they do business in the region, and a number of headline-grabbing data breaches have raised public awareness of the issue.