Fun fact: I emailed Tim Cook in August after reading this story in the NYT, asking him to publicly oppose a weak federal privacy bill in the US [1]. I thought

Fun fact: I emailed Tim Cook in August after reading this story in the NYT, asking him to publicly oppose a weak federal privacy bill in the US [1]. I thought they might do it when Bud Tribble, Apple's privacy czar, testified in Congress at the hearing about privacy [2]. He was mostly non-committal until about the time when someone asked if California's law should be preempted, and he answered 'yes' but only if the law is strong enough, so I kind of had a feeling that Apple would at least advocate for it in a minor way. Now it makes sense why he was so non-committal, they were saving it for Tim Cook. This is a full-on endorsement of GDPR in the best possible forum for this, a keynote speech at a conference for data privacy regulators. This is more than I could have hoped for. Crucially, this removes any possibility of a united front as the ad-tech lobbying machine kicks into gear. I don't know if this was already planned or if it was my email, but I'm ecstatic either way. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/26/technology/tech-industry-federal-privacy-law.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/26/technology/tech-industry-... [2] https://www.c-span.org/video/?451963-1/google-apple-amazon-tech-companies-testify-data-privacy https://www.c-span.org/video/?451963-1/google-apple-amazon-t...