In Memory of Steve Jobs and Personal Privacy
The late Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, warned Silicon Valley of the dangers of data-mining and data-sharing by social media; however, his warnings were entirely ignored by Mark Zuckerber, the founder of Facebook, and almost everyone who Barack Obama hired to lead law enforcement and national security. Steve Jobs was largely under-appreciated as a defender of personal privacy, but he belongs on Mount Rushmore as the modern champion of freedom and liberty.
In the opposite corner, I give you Zuckerberg and ex-CIA Director John Brennan. Zuckerberg has finally apologized in public for Facebook’s role in Cambridge Analytica’s illegal mining of personal data for political purposes. John Brennan has doubled down and accused a sitting American president of “venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption.” OK – let’s assume Trump is wicked: how did an ex-spook (fourteen months removed from office) get his hands on that information without chicanery? Mark and John will never be mistaken as their saintly namesakes.
Brennan gives me the heebie-jeebies because he just oozes hypocrisy and dishonesty. Under Bush Junior, he insisted the Bush-era counter-terrorism methodologies worked – until Obama became president and Brennan criticized the bad old days. In 2011, Brennan claimed the Obama drone program had not killed a single Pakastani civilian – except the record now shows 50 civilians were killed by US drones.
In 2014, Brennan denied the CIA had hacked US senate staff computers and was caught in a lie, for which he had to apologize to the Senate Intelligence Committee. In May 2017, he claimed to Congress under oath that he had no role and was unaware during the 2016 campaign of the Fusion GPS/ Steele dossier or that the FBI had used the dossier to get a FISA warrant to spy on Trump surrogates – except sources have now come forward to say Brennan knew about the dossier, urged the FBI to use it to surveil Trump, and leaked it to Senator Harry Reid (D-NV), who leaked it to the press. Whew!
Zuckerberg began his social media career in infamy: creating facemash.com that hacked into Harvard house online facebooks and posting ID photos that viewers could rate as “hot or not not.” He followed that by “not stealing” the Facebook idea from the Winklevoss twins, before paying the brothers $65 million to settle their claim that he did.
Facebook got into politics in a big way in 2012 by allowing the Obama campaign to collect data from Facebook users. Current Obama spokespersons claim they collected data with their own campaign app and kept the data secure, but Facebook records show that, after Facebook users willingly logged onto the Obama app, the campaign was also able to collect data on unsuspecting Facebook friends. On March 18, Carol Davidsen, former media director for Obama for America, tweeted: “Facebook employees came to the campaign and offered to allow us to do things they wouldn’t have allowed someone else to do because they were on our side.”
Today’s Facebook is in trouble because of Cambridge Analytica, which persuaded 270,000 Facebook users to agree to have their data collected and used for research – only to secretly collect data from 49,730,000 unsuspecting friends (and friends of friends). This data was then used to target political ads to allegedly sway the Brexit vote and 2016 US presidential election. I visited Facebook during the 2016 election and remember hundreds of suspicious “fake news” articles that suggested Clinton foul play. With friends like Facebook, who needs Russia?
In contrast to Zuckerberg and Brennan, I give you Steve Jobs, whose business model was heavily informed by the core values of the sixties: communal, creative, and anti-establishment. Jobs wanted to make personal computing and the internet about something more than making money. He was the guiding force behind two great Apple constructs that respect the individual: the curated app store and iTunes.
It is absurd that so-called champions of personal privacy criticize Apple for forcing me to buy from their app store, because the Apple apps don’t come embedded with spyware that sells your behavioral habits to marketers (who share it with God knows whom). Apple’s curated apps avoid these problems by identifying what an app does on screen – and behind the screen.
Jobs also appreciated the freedom and independence that was the nexus of free file-sharing music apps like Napster (which was breaking copyright laws left and right). Those early music apps – music sources and music players – were free and attracted kids like moths to a flame (and the embedded spyware that tracked their surfing habits for commercial purposes). By launching iTunes, Jobs gave kids a la carte song purchases (rather than more costly album purchases), paid artists a royalty, and got rid of the spyware and malware.
In closing, just remember it was Apple that stood up to the FBI: refusing to provide the privacy algorithm to break into every American’s iPhone – even when it meant the FBI had to work harder to get forensic evidence after the San Bernardino terrorist attacks. You tell me: between Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and John Brennan, with whom would you entrust your privacy?