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Apple Tells Congress It Supports Federal Privacy Regulation

Apple Tells Congress It Supports Federal Privacy Regulation

(Bloomberg) -- Apple Inc. on Wednesday told Congress for the first time that it supports federal privacy legislation and suggested that the company’s own privacy concepts be incorporated into comprehensive privacy legislation.

Bud Tribble, an Apple vice president that leads Apple’s privacy software engineering team, said in remarks prepared for a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on Wednesday that privacy means allowing users to control how their information is used, if it is shared, who it is shared with, and why.

“When we do collect personal information, we are specific and transparent about how it will be used. We do not combine it into a single large customer profile across all of our services,” Tribble said. “We strive to give the user meaningful choice and control over what information is collected and used.”

Apple has been championing its privacy efforts for years as its devices become a larger part of society and as competing products are sometimes known to create user profiles and collect private data.

Earlier this year, Apple added messages to its core applications explaining how personal data would be used for specific functions. In March, Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook called for "well-crafted" privacy regulations in light of Facebook Inc.’s Cambridge Analytica scandal that set off an industry wide privacy conversation earlier this year.

Tribble, as Cook has said in the past, called privacy a "fundamental human right."

Besides Apple, representatives from Amazon.com Inc., Twitter Inc., and Alphabet Inc.’s Google are speaking to Congress on Wednesday.

To contact the reporter on this story: Mark Gurman in San Francisco at mgurman1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jon Morgan at jmorgan97@bloomberg.net, Molly Schuetz

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