Apple CEO Tim Cook talks about privacy in part two of his interview with Charlie Rose
Apple CEO Tim Cook’s interview with Charlie Rose on the journalist’s namesake show is set to continue airing with its second part tonight. And part two has just been teased by “Charlie Rose” with a three-minute clip of Cook talking about user and data privacy and security.
“We’ve taken a very different view of this than a lot of other companies have,” Cook says, alluding to the likes of Google and Amazon. “Our view is, when we design a new service, we try not to collect data. So, we’re not reading your email. We’re not reading your iMessage. If the government laid a subpoena on us to get your iMessages, we can’t provide it. It’s encrypted and we don’t have the key. And so, it’s sort of the door is closed.”
Cook adds that Apple’s business is based on selling the iPhone, the Apple Watch, the Mac, and so forth, and not based on having information about users. “You’re not our product,” he says.
Cook goes on to tout the security of its recently announced Apple Pay mobile payment platform. “From our point of view, you can see what we’re doing on the credit card thing,” he says. “We don’t want it. We’re not in that business. I’m offended by lots of it.”
The clip ends with Cook reiterating that contrary to rumors, no backdoors with access to Apple’s servers exist. “I think that for us, in the Snowden thing, just to go long on that for just a moment, is what we wanted, we wanted instantly to be totally transparent,” he says. “Because there were rumors and things being written in the press that people had backdoors to our servers. None of that is true. Zero. We would never allow that to happen. They would have to cart us out in a box before we would do that.”
Watch the clip below:
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Cook had talked about user and data privacy and security, particularly with regard to the so-called iCloud hack that led to the leak of nude celebrity photos, during the first part of his interview with Rose, which was aired last Friday. Click here to read our recap and watch the entirety of part one of the interview.
