Customers flood the Apple Store in Hong Kong. Photo by Robert Pastryk via Pixabay, labeled for reuse.
Today Ranking Digital Rights sent a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook from eight civil society organizations expressing dismay at the company’s decision to delay the implementation of critical privacy protections for iOS 14 until early 2021.
In June, Apple announced plans to roll out a suite of anti-tracking measures for iOS 14, including a requirement that all apps in the App Store ask for users’ permission before tracking them. But soon thereafter, app developers and major companies—Facebook among them—began complaining that the changes would put a dent in their advertising revenues. In September, Apple decided to postpone this privacy protective change until 2021.
Alongside Ranking Digital Rights, signatories to the joint letter include Access Now, Amnesty International, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Human Rights Watch, the National Hispanic Media Coalition, New America’s Open Technology Institute, and Open MIC (Open Media and Information Companies Initiative).
Collecting people’s data across the internet without their explicit consent violates the human right to privacy and enables discrimination based on user demographics and behavior, including in ways that are illegal. Apps routinely track people’s activities when they use their smartphones, and this often happens without users’ knowledge, much less their consent. To help solve this problem, mobile ecosystem companies—chiefly Apple and Google—should require app developers to be fully transparent about their data collection practices and ensure that users consent to these practices before any of their data is collected.
Apple’s decision to delay these protections validates corporate business models that funnel advertising revenue into companies’ coffers using tracking systems that are on by default, and that users may not be able to opt out of. These data collection practices fuel the surveillance-based influence machine that spreads misleading ads, propaganda, and misinformation across the internet and social media. One month ahead of the U.S. elections and in the midst of an ongoing global pandemic, this will only increase uncertainty for users who are already struggling to find accurate information online.
The delay also runs counter to Apple’s recently announced human rights policy, which pledges an ‘uncompromising commitment to security and user privacy.’ While the delay is a boon for exploitative companies, it is at odds with Apple’s record of pushing the industry to embrace stronger privacy standards, as we reported in the 2019 Ranking Digital Rights Index.
Apple has the opportunity to reinforce its position as an industry leader on protecting the privacy of its users by empowering them to control who can track their online behavior. At the same time, this change can and should enable the company to become more transparent about how it enforces its terms against apps that violate its policies. By delaying the introduction of crucial privacy measures, the company is slowing the momentum it created.
Our letter calls on Apple to make good on the promises embedded in its human rights policy and implement the protections it already announced—not in early 2021, but as soon as possible.
