When it comes to American views on privacy and security, Silicon Valley got a wake-up call Wednesday with new evidence that most people distrust companies with their personal information. Here’s hoping the tech industry heeds it.
A study released by the Pew Research Center indicates that Americans are very concerned with keeping their personal information private and don’t have confidence that corporations or the government will keep that information confidential or secure. The study flies in the face of the notion that’s been promoted by tech executives such as Mark Zuckerberg and Eric Schmidt that consumers, particularly younger ones, don’t really care about privacy any more. And it raises a red flag for companies such as Google and Facebook that are building their business around harvesting consumer data and companies whose devices will be generating lots of new data, such as those in the emerging Internet of Things.
All those new devices like smartwatches and connected door locks will generate gobs of often extremely personal data about consumers, such as how often they exercise, how fast they drive and when they’re home. Consumer concerns about privacy and security may limit the growth of that industry — or they may trigger a big backlash against it whenever the first wide-scale breach of Internet of Things data inevitably occurs.
“It’s a report card for Silicon Valley that says they get an ‘F.’ They have created something that is deeply disturbing to Americans,” Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, a privacy rights advocacy group, said.
On question after question in the survey, Americans indicated that privacy is important to them — in many cases, exceedingly so. And despite the conventional wisdom about youths being more open, the study indicated that privacy was important to consumers regardless of their age.
For years, Silicon Valley executives have minimized the importance of privacy. Way back in 1999, Scott McNealy, then the CEO of computer maker Sun Microsystems, said consumers have “zero privacy” and should just “get over it.” More recently, Schmidt advised people that “if you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.” And Zuckerberg has pushed the notion that consumer attitudes about privacy are changing as they share more and more information online.
But it’s not just in the realm of privacy that Silicon Valley seems out of step with their customers’ concerns. The Pew survey indicated that Americans are also supremely worried about the security of their personal data and don’t trust corporations to keep it secure.
It’s not hard to understand the public’s skepticism. On the privacy front, many consumers probably intuit — if not fully understand — that the business models of many Silicon Valley companies are built around exploiting, not protecting, users’ personal data, whether by selling that information to marketers or by using it themselves to target advertisements to them.
Meanwhile on the security front, it’s hard to have faith in the ability of any company to protect personal data. Large corporations such as Target, JPMorgan Chase and Anthem Blue Cross have been hacked, exposing millions of customer records. And documents released by former security analyst Edward Snowden revealed that tech companies have had their customers’ personal data intercepted by the National Security Agency when they weren’t voluntarily handing over such data.
To be sure, some Silicon Valley companies have been trying to get ahead of this sentiment. In the wake of the Snowden revelations, Apple and Google moved to encrypt more of the data moving through their servers and passing through their apps. And at President Barack Obama’s recent cybersecurity summit at Stanford, Apple CEO Tim Cook argued the case for protecting private data, particularly against government surveillance.
But it’s time for Silicon Valley to do more. Companies should be more transparent about what data they’re collecting and limit the amounts of data they’re sucking up and the length of time they keep it. They also should be focusing on how they’re going to secure consumer data — and giving citizens better tools to protect themselves.
Because despite what Silicon Valley leaders may say, consumers really do care about this stuff.
Contact Troy Wolverton at 408-840-4285 or twolverton@mercurynews.com. Follow him at www.mercurynews.com/troy-wolverton or Twitter.com/troywolv.
A QUESTION OF TRUST
Pew Research Center
