Tim Cook Speech at the Brussels

International Data Privacy Day…

January 28th 2021

Good afternoon.
And John, thank you so much for that generous introduction and for hosting us today. It's a
privilege to join you and to learn from this knowledgeable panel on this fitting occasion of Data
Privacy Day. A little more than two years ago, joined by my good friend, the much-missed
Giovanni Bittarelli and data protection regulators from around the world, I spoke in Brussels
about the emergence of a data industrial complex.

At that gathering, we asked ourselves what kind of world do we want to live in?
Two years later, we should now take a hard look at how we've answered that question. The fact
is that an interconnected ecosystem of companies and data brokers, purveyors of fake news and
peddlers of division, of trackers and hucksters just looking to make a quick buck is more present
in our lives than it has ever been.

It has never been so clear how it degrades our fundamental right to privacy first and our social
fabric by consequence. As I've said before, if we accept as normal and unavoidable that
everything in our lives can be aggregated and sold, then we lose so much more than data.

We lose the freedom to be human. And yet this is a hopeful new season, a time of thoughtfulness
and reform, and the most concrete progress of all is thanks to many of you. Proving cynics and
doomsayers wrong, the GDPR has provided an important foundation for privacy rights around
the world and its implementation and enforcement must continue.

But we can't stop there.

We must do more.
We're already seeing hopeful steps forward worldwide, including a successful ballot initiative
strengthening consumer protections right here in California. Together, we must send a universal
humanistic response to those who claim a right to users' private information about what should
not and will not be tolerated.

As I said in Brussels two years ago, it is certainly time not only for a comprehensive privacy law
here in the United States but also for worldwide laws and new international agreements that
enshrine the principles of data minimization, user knowledge, user access, and data security
across the globe.

At Apple, spurred on by the leadership of many of you in the privacy community, these have been
two years of unceasing action. We have worked to not only deepen our own core privacy
principles but to create ripples of positive change across the industry as a whole. We've spoken
out time and again for strong encryption without backdoors, recognizing that security is the
foundation of privacy.

We've set new industry standards for data minimization, user control, and on-device processing
for everything from location data to your contacts and photos. At the same time that we've led
the way in features that keep you healthy and well, we've made sure that technologies like a
blood oxygen sensor and an ECG come with peace of mind that your health data stays yours. And
last, but not least, we are deploying powerful new requirements to advance user privacy
throughout the App Store ecosystem. The first is a simple but revolutionary idea that we call the
Privacy Nutrition Label. Every app, including our own, must share their data collection and privacy
practices, information that the App Store presents in a way every user can understand and act
on.

The second is called App Tracking Transparency. At its foundation,

ATT is about returning control to users about giving them a say over
how their data is handled. Users have asked for this feature for a
long time. We have worked closely with developers to give them the
time and resources to implement it. We are passionate about it
because we think it has great potential to make things better for
everybody because ATT responds to a very real issue. Earlier today,
we released a new paper called A Day in the Life of Your Data.

It tells the story of how apps that we use every day contain an average of six trackers. This code
often exists to surveil and identify users across apps, watching and recording their behavior. In
this case, what the user sees is not always what they get. Right now, users may not know whether
the apps they use to pass the time, to check in with their friends, or to find a place to eat may, in
fact, be passing on information about the photos they've taken, the people in their contact list,
or location data that reflects where they eat, sleep, or pray. As the paper shows, it seems no
piece of information is too private or personal to be surveilled, monetized, and aggregated into
a 360-degree view of your life.

The end result of all of this is that you are no longer the customer.
You are the product.
When ATT is in full effect, users will have a say over this kind of tracking. Some may well think
that sharing this degree of information is worth it for more targeted ads. Many others, I suspect,
will not. Just as most appreciated it when we built a similar functionality into Safari limiting web
trackers several years ago.

We see developing these kinds of privacy-centric features and innovations as a core responsibility
of our work.
We always have. We always will.
The fact is that the debate over ATT is a microcosm of a debate we've been having for a long
time, one where our point of view is very clear. Technology does not need vast troves of personal
data stitched together across dozens of websites and apps in order to succeed. Advertising
existed and thrived for decades without it. We are here today because the path of least resistance
is rarely the path of wisdom.
 If a business is built on misleading users on data
exploitation, on choices that are no choices at all,
then it does not deserve our praise. It deserves
reform.

We should not look away from the bigger picture.

At a moment of rampant disinformation and
conspiracy theories juiced by algorithms, we can no
longer turn a blind eye to a theory of technology
that says all engagement is good engagement. The
longer, the better.

And all with a goal of collecting as much data as possible.

Too many are still asking the question how much can we get away with when they need to be
asking what are the consequences. What are the consequences of prioritizing conspiracy theories
and violent incitement simply because of the high rates of engagement? What are the
consequences of not just tolerating but rewarding content that undermines public trust and
lifesaving vaccinations? What are the consequences of seeing thousands of users join extremist
groups and then perpetuating an algorithm that recommends even more? approach doesn't
come with a cost, a polarization, of lost trust, and, yes, of violence. a social catastrophe.

I think the past year, and certainly recent events, have brought home the risk of this for all of us
as a society and as individuals as much as anything else. Long hours spent cooped up at home,
the challenge of keeping kids learning when schools are closed, the worry and uncertainty about
what the future would hold, all of these things threw into sharp relief how technology can help
and how it can be used to harm.

Will the future belong to the innovations that make our lives better, more fulfilled, and more
human, or will it belong to those tools that pries our attention to the exclusion of everything else,
compounding our fears and aggregating extremism to serve ever-more invasively targeted ads
over all other ambitions?

At Apple, we made our choice a long time ago. We

believe that ethical technology is technology that
works for you. It's technology that helps you sleep,
not keeps you up, that tells you when you've had
enough, that gives you space to create or draw or
write or learn, not refresh just one more time. It's
technology that can fade into the background when
you're on a hike or going for a swim but is there to
warn you when your heart rate spikes or help you
when you've had a nasty fall.
And that all of this always puts privacy and security first because no one needs to trade away the
rights of their users to deliver a great product. Call us naive. But we still believe that technology
made by people, for people, and with people's wellbeing in mind is too valuable a tool to
abandon. We still believe that the best measure of technology is the lives it improves. We are not
perfect. We will make mistakes. That's what makes us human. But our commitment to you, now
and always, is that we will keep faith with the values that have inspired our products from the
very beginning because what we share with the world is nothing without the trust our users have
in it.

To all of you who have joined us today, please keep pushing us all forward, keep setting high
standards that put privacy first, and take new and necessary steps to reform what is broken.
We've made progress together and we must make more because the time is always right to be
bold and brave in service of a world where, as Giovanni Bittarelli put it, technology serves people
and not the other way around.

Thank you very much.