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White House reportedly considers GDPR-like data protections
Online data privacy is a hot topic right now for a number of reasons. US residents and elected officials alike still have their eyes on Facebook as concerns continue to circulate over the policies that led to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Further, more recent reports have revealed that the company shared data with a number of mobile device makers, sparking unease over what that means for consumers as well as national security. On the other side of the issue, Europe has now instituted its General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the most rigorous set of privacy laws to date. Now, it looks like US officials are interested in exploring some regulations of their own.
Apple and Microsoft's advocacy group is against encryption backdoors
Following Tim Cook's lead, the advocacy group behind Apple, Google, Microsoft and plenty of other big tech firms has come out against calls to weaken encryption, which authorities argue would make it easier to track criminals. "Weakening encryption or creating backdoors to encrypted devices and data for use by the good guys would actually create vulnerabilities to be exploited by the bad guys," said Dean Garfield, the CEO of the Information Technology Industry Counsel (ITIC), who also represents Facebook, Twitter and AOL. It "would almost certainly cause serious physical and financial harm across our society and our economy," he added. The backlash against strong encryption is particularly heated today, following the recent Paris attacks. While secure communications are generally a good thing for consumers, governments (including the US and UK) have argued for backdoors that would allow them to intercept encrypted data. Naturally, that would make life easier for intelligence agencies, but it defeats the point of having encryption at all.
