Google, Apple & The Changing Privacy Landscape

How many global tech corporations does it take to screw in a light bulb? None, they’re way too busy screwing their own customers. And they’re nothing if not thorough, methodically going about collecting each and every scrap of your information someone will pay for, whether you know about it or not.

By now it’s common knowledge, as well as the fact that they’re also selling that information. It’s just become a fact of life at one point, like traffic jams.

But the lengths they have to go to just to shock us anymore should be shocking in and of themselves, especially in light of recent developments.

Nothing illustrates the fact that Apple, Google and the lot have taken the old adage that asking for forgiveness is a lot simpler than asking for permission to heart better than the recent revelation that they’d programmed their respective OS’s to track their users’ each and every move.

“By passively logging your location without your permission, Apple have made it possible for anyone from a jealous spouse to a private investigator to get a detailed picture of your movements,” according to the researchers who found the iPhone tracking file.

To be fair, Google does have a vague provision about collecting user location data squirreled away in their T&C’s somewhere and an opt-out feature as well. Apple doesn’t, but soon will. Not only that, Apple has already released a new patch to “fix” the location tracking issue. That’s how they referred to it, “fixing” the issue. As if something was broken, because huge corporation routinely develop, test and implement a fully functional feature in their technology by mistake.

While companies that have their networks hacked and plundered of your personal info certainly aren’t on the same moral footing as ones that intentionally track and record your every move, it’s hard to talk about the privacy paradigm without at least a passing reference to the recent Sony debacle.

Especially since said attack might even have been perpetrated by a frustrated subset of Sony’s own customers, or the self-appointed moral guardians of same.

Even the small fries are getting in on the act and that wouldn’t be half as worrisome if there weren’t such a huge number of them. But ultimately, this is par for the course for any industry, since corporations need to push the limits in pursuit of profits as that’s pretty much how capitalism works.

But I put it to you we’ve become so inured to the staggeringly escalating orders of magnitude by which tech companies breach any semblance of privacy we have left as to almost ignore them altogether.

Apple and Google have, of course, been promptly sued over the location tracking issue. Sony as well, over inappropriately safeguarding its customer’s data. It’s also currently being called to Congressional hearings over the issue. Even Pandora wasn’t beneath notice when it was time for the litigation to start flying. But it’s by no means time to let things lie.

If anything, the battle for control over your personal information is just beginning.

(Image courtesy of Flickr user rotron)