TikTok; Google; Your Data | 60 Minutes Full Episodes

the Trump Administration was set to banTick-Tock the wildly popularchinese-owned mobile phone applicationuntil Friday when the short form videoservice was granted a two-week reprieveby the U.S government to find anAmerican buyerthat means Tick Tock will keep runningon 100 million American devices andthat's been the administration's worryclaiming that Tick Tock quoteautomatically captures vast swaths ofinformation from its users potentiallyallowing China to track the locations offederal employees conduct corporateEspionage or even blackmailpresident-elect Biden has called thechinese-owned app a matter of genuineconcernTick Tock says that's all unfounded thatit's a platform for creativity and freeexpression so we wanted to know ifTick-Tock is merely a pawn in the greatpower rivalry between the U.S and Chinaor a genuine threat[Music]it builds itself as the last Sunnycorner on the internet50 million Americans spend nearly anhour each day scrolling through anever-ending parade of short videos madeby other users they may be lip syncingpopular songsor performing them themselves[Music]Tick Tock is a stage for preeningand dancingbut like Instagram YouTube and Facebooktick tock's real business is keeping youengaged as long as possible in order tocollect your data they're not providinga platform for music videos out of thegoodness of their heart right they'remaking money by providing really deepinsights into their user base Khankitchens spent 15 years working for theU.S intelligence Community including theCIA and now is director of Technologypolicy at the conservative HeritageFoundation what makes Tick Tockparticularly concerning is itsrelationship with the Chinese Communistparty in Beijing the government of Chinathe Chinese have fused their governmentand their industry together so that theycooperate to achieve the ends of thestate and Tick Tock is a factor in thatyeah so when you but when you look at itseems dance video fun and innocuousimagine you woke up tomorrow morning andyou saw a news report that China haddistributed a hundred million sensorsaround the United Statesand that anytime an American walked pastone of these sensors this sensorautomatically collected off of yourphoneyour name your home address yourpersonal Network who you're friends withyour online viewing habits and a wholehost of other pieces of information wellthat's precisely what Tick Tock is ithas a hundred million U.S users itcollects all of that information andmore like many U.S social mediacompanies Tick Tock asks users foraccess to their cameras microphonesphotos videos and contacts more obscuredata like keystroke patterns arecollected from everyone using the appkeystrokes what does that tell them thepatterns and The rhythms of the way thatyou strike the keyboard it can basicallysay this device belongs to this user andyou can do a lot with that if you are aforeign government it's very veryinvasive Cara Frederick knows the powerof big Tech she helps set up Facebook'scounter-terrorism program after spendingsix years at the Pentagon the NationalSecurity Agency and as a targeter forSpecial Operations in Afghanistan gen Zlives on this gen Z is gonna grow upsomeday do we want all of thatinformation sort of hanging out therefor nation-state adversaries to scoop upto integrate with other data sets but isit is it different from what other appscollect so a lot of applications do uhcollect um these you know fulsomecomprehensive digital profiles theycollect your digital behavior howeverTick Tock is owned by a Beijing basedcompany called bite dance bite dance isa 140 billion dollar Chinese companyfounded by this man 37 year old Zhangyaming known as an AI or artificialintelligence Savant Jean created TheCutting Edge AI driven algorithm thatfuels all of bite dances platforms likedoien the Chinese version of tick tockwith 600 million daily users both appsuse the same logo and similar algorithmswhich analyze exactly how long userswatch a videoexperiment with new offerings finetuning until it seems to be readingusers Minds Tick Tock is the firstforum-based application social mediaapplication that has taken off in theUnited States nobody else has been ableto do that why because they'reartificial intelligence their algorithmis so good Tick Tock at 40 RepublicanJosh Hawley is the youngest member ofthe U.S Senate and a former AttorneyGeneral of Missouri a staunch supporterof President Trump he's earnedbipartisan support for exposing theexcesses of big Tech Google Facebook andapple have all been in his sights nowit's tick tock so we'll start off thenwith I'll kind of frame it and thenwe'll go into the tick tock questions wewere with him last March as he preparedto chair a subcommittee hearing that hecalled Dangerous Partners big Tech andBeijing but Tick Tock and apple were noshows Executives from Tick Tock theywill never come and take the oath andtestify in public that I think isunusual and I think it begs the questionwhat is it they have to hide Tick Tockwill tell you that it's a platform forfree expression and they sort of Marketthemselves as the sunniest place on theinternet here's the problem with TickTock as it exists now it is owned by aChinese parent company that has directties to the Chinese Communist party andwe also know that under Chinese law TickTock by dance the parent is required toshare data with the Chinese CommunistParty required required to under Chineselaw that's not a matter of speculationthat's in the law American users parentsteenagers that have no way of knowingabout any of this China is alsonotorious for using its big techcompanies to track and predict thebehavior of its own citizens as seen inthis 60 Minutes report from last yearChina's stated goal is to become theworld leader in artificial intelligenceby 2030.manager Hawley fears China is doing thesame thing here just last February theDepartment of Justice charged fourChinese military hackers with stealingrecords from the credit reporting agencyEquifax affecting 145 million Americansalmost half the countryChina has been caught hacking the secondlargest American Health insurer theagency that stores information about allgovernment employees even records fromthe Marriott Hotel chain Hawley saysTick Tock is just the friendly face ofChinese data harvesting so what wouldthe Chinese Communist Party do with allthis information Bill Bill dossiersbuild files on every American who theycan get their hands on we could ask thesame question about the Equifax breachwhy would the Chinese government beinterested in in the financial historyof hundreds of millions of Americanswhat are they going to do with that wellclearly they thought it was very veryuseful Holly says Tick Tock shouldn't beallowed to operate in the U.S unless itseparates completely from its Chineseparent bite dance a deal to sell a pieceof tick tock to Walmart and the U.Ssoftware giant Oracle is in limbobecause China is blocking the export oftick tock's proprietary algorithmBloomberg news likened that to sellingKFC without the Colonel's secret 11herbs and spices I want to see theactual terms of the deal the platformthe app platform has got to be rebuiltbecause right now it's been built byChinese Engineers they have control andaccess to how the platform Works to howthe algorithm Works otherwise you'rejust changing the labeldespite all the suspicion tick tock'spopularity is booming worldwide it'sbeen downloaded two and a half billiontimes in more than 150 countries here inthe U.S it's become a go-to platform forcreators of all stripesincluding celebrities influencersand more and more older users[Music]the one thing that connects all of thesevideos outside of them all being lessthan a minute in length is really thisidea of authenticityVanessa Papas is interim CEO of ticktock a former YouTube executive sheinherited the top job in August just intime to face all those thorny questionsabout Chinashe spoke to us from tick tock's newoffice in Los Angeles what is yourunderstanding of why the president wantsto ban Tick-Tock so when the executiveorder was deliveredwe very much came out and said that wedisagree with the characterization whichit was done without due process and wasnot based on facts your parent companybite dance is a Chinese company yeah soflight dance is founded by our Chineseentrepreneur eming Zhang and at the sametime though bite dance is a privatelyheld company do you report directly tohim yes I report to him is it fair tosay that bite dance and Engineerscreated The Tick-Tock recommendationalgorithm that they helped to update itand maintain it so we have Engineersaround the world Tick Tock actually haspeople in 48 countries around the worldcertainly we have engine used in Chinaas well tell me about by dance it's amassive social media company in Chinabut it's also billed as an artificialintelligence company yes they use AI topower a number of their products butagain I don't know how much else I couldshare about that since my day-to-day isreally focused on on Tick Tock papa saysher focus is on tick tock's content notthe technology behind it and like manybig Tech Executives she downplays theamount and usefulness of data theplatform collects if you were trying tofind information on somebody Tick Tockwould not be the first place it wouldn'tbe the 100th place and it wouldn't bethe thousandth place your criticsthey point out that under China's 2017cyber security lawchinese-based companies are required toprovide the Chinese government withaccess to their data Tick Tock does notoperate in Chinathe U.S data is stored here in the U.Sand with backup in Singapore and we havestrict data access controls if agovernment were to request data we willput that in our transparency report andtell you and certainly the Chinesegovernment has not requested data and ifthey did it would be an emphatic noformer CIA officer clown kitchen says inChina no big technology company isindependent of the Chinese Communistparty or CCP the National Security andcyber security laws of China requirethem to operate and build their networksin such a fashion as to where thegovernment has unfettered access totheir data and so no the CCP doesn't askthem for information they don't need tothey have access to the information itseems to be a great disconnect I meanthe American people at least the kidswho are on Tick Tock have no concernabout what we're talking about herethat's right they just think it's funand for them it is they want to make adance video with with their friendI don't begrudge them that but you knowthey're ignorance of the threat doesnothing to diminish itthis past week the Federal TradeCommission was asked to investigate thedata collected by Google on its Androidoperating system which Powers most ofthe world's smartphones it was a tinyblip in the news cycle but another signof Washington's and Europe's growingconcerns about the enormous largelyunchecked power accumulated by Techgiants like Facebook Amazon and Googleover the last two decades of the threeGoogle which is part of a holdingcompany called alphabet is the mostpowerful intriguing and omnipresent inour lives this is how it came to bemost people love Google it's changed ourworld insinuated itself in our livesmade itself indispensableyou probably don't even have to typegoogle.com into your computer it's oftenthe default setting a competitiveAdvantage Google paid billions ofdollars forno worry Google is worth more than threequarters of a trillion dollars right nowand you don't get that big by accidentsince going public in 2004 Google hasacquired more than 200 companiesexpanding its reach across the internetit bought YouTube the biggest videoplatform it bought Android the operatingsystem that runs 80 percent of theworld's smartphones and it boughtdoubleclick which distributes much ofthe world's digital advertising all ofthis barely raising an eyebrow withRegulators in Washington were any ofthose Acquisitions questioned by theantitrust division of the justicedepartmentsome were investigated but onlysuperficially the government just reallyisn't enforcing our antitrust laws andthat's what's happened none of theseAcquisitions have been challengedGeary Reebok is one of the mostprominent Anti-Trust lawyers in thecountry widely credited with persuadingthe justice department to sue Microsoftback in the 90s the last majorAnti-Trust case against big Technow he's battling Google you thinkGoogle's a monopoly oh yes of courseGoogle's a monopoly in fact there areMonopoly in several markets they are amonopoly in search they're a monopoly insearch advertising those Technologiesare less than 25 years old it may seemsmall compared to the industrialmonopolies like railroads and standardoil a century agobut Reebok says there's nothing smallabout Google Google makes the internetworkthe internet would not be accessible tous without a search engine and theycontrol it they control access to itthat's the important part Google is thegatekeeper for for the world wide webfor the internet as we know it it'severy bit as important today aspetroleum was when John D Rockefellerwas monopolizing thatlast year Google conducted 90 percent ofthe world's internet searches whenbillions of people ask trillions ofquestions it was Google that providedthe answers using computer algorithmsknown only to Google they have thisphrase they use competition is just aclick away they have no competitionbeing their competition has two percentof the marketthey have 90 percentJonathan taplin is a digital mediaexpert and director emeritus of theAnnenberg Innovation Lab at theUniversity of Southern Californiahe says Google's expertise may betechnology but its business isadvertising and its most valuablecommodity is highly specializedinformation about usit's help Google control roughly 60percent of worldwide advertising revenueon the internet taplin says traditionalcompanies can't compete because theydon't have the data They Know Who YouArewhere you are what you just bought whatyou might want to buy and so if I'm anAdvertiser and I say I want 24 year oldwomen in Nashville Tennessee who drivetrucks and drink bourbon I can do thaton Google people tell their searchengines things they wouldn't even telltheir wives I mean it's a very powerfuland yet very intimate technology andthat gives the company that controls ita mind-boggling degree of control overour entire Society Google is so dominantin search and search advertising thatanalysts and Venture capitalists inSilicon Valley say it's extremelydifficult for startups to get funding iftheir business model requires them tocompete with Google for ad RevenueJeremy stoppelman co-founded Yelp morethan a decade ago a website thatcollects local reviews on everythingfrom auto mechanics to restaurantsNationwide and makes money selling adsthe initial promise of Google was toorganize the world's information andultimately that manifested itself in youexpecting that the top links the thingsthat it shows at the top of that pageare the best from around the web thebest that the world has to offer and Ican tell you that is not the case thatis not the case anymoreinstead of doing what's best forconsumers stoppelman says Google isdoing what's best for Google if I werestarting out today I would have no shotof building ill that opportunity hasbeen closed off by Google and theirapproach in what way because if youprovide great content in one of thesecategories that is lucrative to Googleand seen as potentially threateningthey will snuff you out what do you meanstuff you out they will make youdisappear they will bury youYelp and countless other sites depend onGoogle to bring them web trafficeyeballs for their advertisersbut now stoppelman says their biggestcompetitor in the most lucrative marketsis Google he says it's collecting andbundling its own information on thingslike shopping and travel and putting itat the very top of the search resultsregardless of whether it belongs thereon Merit so let's start off with sushihe showed us how it worked by GooglingSushi San Franciscoall the prime real estate is here thisis where the consumer their eye focusesand that's by Design Google wants you topay attention to their content all ofthe information here is owned by Googlefrom the maps to the reviewsstoppelman says if you click on any ofthese Links at the top of the page youmay think you've gone to another websitebut in fact you will still be on Googleseeing what it wants you to see while itcollects your personal information andmaybe exposes you to Google advertisingif you click anything inside this boxyou stay on Google and they make moremoney that's right Google told us itdoesn't have anything to do with moneyit's about improving its product bymaking searches quicker and easier forits customers by eliminating the need toclick through lots of other sites youstoppelman says it's about stiflingcompetition pushing it down the pagewhere it's less likely to be seen theadvantage he says is even more strikingif you look at the search results on asmartphone this is exactly what yourphone would look like in the palm ofyour hand this is all of Google's ownproperty right here it takes up theentire screen how important is thatfirst page it's not even just the firstpage it's the first few links on thepage is the vast majority of where userattention goes and where the trafficflows so if you're not at the top of thepage or the bottom of the first page oron the second page that's going toaffect your business yeah if you're onthe second page forget it you're not areal businessYelp Microsoft Amazon eBay Expedia andYahoo all complained about Google'sdominance and what they call thisanti-competitive Behavior to the FederalTrade Commission which in 2011 conductedan investigationaccording to This Confidential memoparts of which were inadvertently givento the Wall Street Journal years laterthe ftc's Bureau of competition hadrecommended that an Anti-Trust lawsuitbe filed against Google for some of itsbusiness practices it said Google is inthe unique position of being able tomake or break any web-based business andhas strengthened its monopolies oversearch and search advertising throughanti-competitive means and for stalledcompetitors and would-be competitorsability to challenge those monopoliesit's specifically cited Google forstealing competitors content andimposing restrictions on advertisers andother websites that limited theirability to utilize other search enginesbut the recommendations were rejected itflatly says that Google's conduct wasanti-competitive it flatly says thatGoogle's conduct hurt consumers I meanwhat else would you need to know to voteout a complaint there it is written byyour own staff and yet nothing happenedthey closed the case they closed thecasecorrectthe ftc's Commissioners decided thatGoogle's conduct could be addressed withvoluntary improvements to some of itsbusiness practices and that Google'sdecision to move its own products to thetop of the search page could possibly bea benefit to Consumersbut Reebok and others who were directlyinvolved in the investigation have longsuspected that the outcome had somethingto do with Google's political muscle inWashington and its close relationshipwith the Obama AdministrationGoogle spend more money on lobbying lastyear than any other Corporationemploying 25 different firms and helpingfund 300 trade associations think tanksand other groups many of which influencepolicy they have a seat at the tablein every discussion that that implicatesthis issue at all they know aboutdevelopments that we never even hearaboutso their influence uh from myperspective is very very difficult tochallengeright now the only one taking aggressiveaction against Google and the power ofbig Tech is Margaret vestiger thecompetition commissioner for theEuropean Unionduring her four years in office vestigerhas become a thorn in the side ofSilicon Valley finding Facebook 122million dollars for a merger violationin ordering Ireland to recover 15billion dollars in taxes owed by AppleLast Summer She levied a record 2.7billion dollar fine against Google fordepriving certain competitors of achance to compete with them just as wellas I admire some of the Innovation byGoogle over the last decade well I wanttheir illegal Behavior to stop andthat's what you feel has gone on notonly do we feel that we we mean that wecan prove itin researching the case vestiger saysher staff went through 1.7 billionGoogle search queries and found thatGoogle was manipulating its secretsearch formulas or algorithms to promoteits own products and services andsending its competitors into Oblivionit's very difficult to find the rivalsbecause on average you'd find them onlyon page four in your search results andwhy so far down well because then youdon't find themI don't know anyone who goes to pagefour on the search results are youjoking you could say that this is whereyou should keep your secrets because noone ever comes there do you think thishas been deliberate on Google's part yeswe think that this is done on purposehow do they do it I mean I thinkeverybody has this idea that theirGoogle has this algorithm and they putthe best searches right at the top wellit is exactly the algorithm that does itboth the promotion of Google themselvesand the demotion of others so they'rerigging the gameand it is illegalGoogle is paid its 2.7 billion dollarfine and is aggressively appealing thedecision but for now stoppelman sayseveryone is still playing by Google'srules if you're in business you have tobe on Google yeah Google wields enormouspower across the industry and they setthe rules the question is who's watchingGoogleGoogle declined our request for aninterview with one of its Executives forthis story but in a written response toour questions the company denied it wasa monopoly in search or searchadvertising citing many competitorsincluding Amazon and Facebook it says itdoes not make changes to its algorithmto disadvantage competitors and thatquote our responsibility is to deliverthe best results possible to our usersnot specific placements for sites withinour results we understand that thosesites whose ranking Falls will beunhappy and may complain publiclythis has not been a great year for bigTech on Wall Street or in Washingtonfor decades companies like GoogleFacebook and Amazon have made vast sumsmonetizing the personal information oftheir users with almost no oversight orregulationthey're still making vast sums of moneybut public attitudes about their sizeand power and their ability orwillingness to police themselves arebeing called into questiona consensus is developing that somethinghas to change and once again the impetusis coming from Europe which is becomingthe world's leader in Internet privacyand data protectionwith a 31 year old lawyer as theCatalyst the European Parliament isenacted a tough new law that has SiliconValley scrambling to comply andpressuring lawmakers here to dosomething about protecting your dataseven times this year big Tech has beencalled on the carpet to answer for databreaches fake news political meddling onthe internet and the endless amounts ofpersonal information being gathered onAmericans I don't want to vote to haveto regulate Facebookbut my God I will the era of the WildWest in social media is coming to an endthe question is no longer whether weneed a federal law to protect consumersprivacy the question is what shape willthat law takein Europe they already have a law inplace after levying multi-billion dollarfines against Google foranti-competitive Behavior the EuropeanUnion enacted the world's most ambitiousinternet Privacy Law good morning evenwinning support from the CEO of thebiggest tech company in America Apple'sTim Cook this is surveillanceand these stockpiles of personal dataserve only to enrich the companies thatcollect them speaking in Brussels cookdid not say which companies he wastalking about but Apple wasn't one ofthem its business model is making andselling phones in computers notmarketing personal information foradvertising like Google and Facebook ourown information from the everyday to thedeeply personal is being weaponizedagainst us with military efficiency itis time for the rest of the worldincluding my home countryto follow your leadmost people would agree that the pointman in Europe has been a spiky-haired 31year old Viennese lawyer named Maxschrempswho's been inflicting misery in SiliconValley for the past seven yearshe not only brought Internationalattention to the issue of data privacyhe brought big Tech lawyers into courtsurveillance laws in the information agehe says data is the most importantcommodity the question is who does itbelong to who owns your data thelegislation here says it's you that yourdata belongs to you should have controlyou should have control over thathowever in an environment where there isno such law basically Whoever factuallyhas to power over it which is usuallythe big tech companyum owns it in that senseMax schrems was a major force indrafting the general data protectionregulation or gdpr it became law in Mayafter a long battle with big Tech andevery company that does business inEurope including the most powerful onesin America must complyit was designed specifically to ensurethat consumers not tech companies havecontrol over the collection and use oftheir own personal information what kindof new rights does this law giveEuropean citizens that people in theUnited States might not have the defaultunder the European system is you're notallowed to use someone else's dataunless you have a justification and theresult of that is that you have rightslike a right that you walk up to companyand say delete everything you have aboutme you have a right to access so you cansay I want to have a copy of everythingyou have about me and all of theselittle elements in the law overall aremeant to give you that power over yourdata that in an Information Society weshould probably have and right now inthe United States you have none of thoselegal rights Americans have no controltoday about the information that'scollected about them every second oftheir lives Jeff Chester is theexecutive director of the center fordigital democracy he's been a majorvoice on digital privacy for two decadesage and says the only Americansguaranteed privacy on the internet arechildren under 13. he says there aresome limitations on some specificmedical and financial information butthe internet has rendered them obsoletethere are no rules there's not agovernment agency really protecting themany the companies can do whatever theywant in terms of gathering ourinformation and using it in any way theysee fit how did the big tech companiescome to collect all this informationno one ever told them they couldn'tcollect it all there'd been no limits atall ever established and that's what'sgoing along with gdpr somebody's sayingyou can't that's exactly right gdpr saysyou can't collect it without permissionthe big tech companies have alwaysargued that consumers have given thempermission to take their personal datain exchange for using the product it'sburied in the fine print on those longimpenetrable online privacy agreementsthat you have to click on Max schremmsays it's not free choice butconstitutes coercion under the newEuropean lawon the day it was enacted srem'snon-profit group none of your businesstook action against Facebook and Googlefor allegedly violating European privacylaws it's this take you to leave itapproach you know it whenever you openthe nap it says agree or don't use theapp and your choice is basically notexistent because either you go offlineor you have to agree shrimp cited theexample of Google's Android operatingsystem the software which runs up to 80percent of the world's smartphones butto use one you must first activate itand give Google consent to collect yourpersonal data on all of its products youpaid a thousand bucks right now andyou're not allowed to use your 1000bucks phone unless you agree that allthe data goes to someone else and thatis basically first consent the techcompanies say lookyou the user you gave us permission totake this information to use it the waywe wanted to you agreed to it and itsigned on you made the deal theindividual doesn't have to power thetime the legal expertise to understandany of that and then you're sitting athome at your desk and have the option toonly say yes this is not what anyreasonable person would consider a fairdealshrooms has been waging this battlesince 2011 would he spent a semester inCalifornia at Santa Clara UniversitySchool of Lawa lawyer from Facebook told his classthat big Tech didn't pay any attentionto European privacy laws because theywere rarely enforced and that the fineswere very small it was obviously thecase that ignoring European privacy lawswas the much cheaper option the maximumpenalty for example in Austria was 20000 Euros so just a lawyer telling youhow to comply with the law was moreexpensive than breaking it at the timemost people had no idea how muchpersonal information was being collectedon them so when the 23 year old sremsreturned to Austria he decided to askFacebook if he could see what they'dcollected on him if you go into a coupleof details by mistake or Miracle someoneat Facebook sent him this stack ofinformation lifting the veil on theextent of the company's interest in himand after a while it got a PDF file with1 200 Pages after using Facebook forthree years and I'm not a heavy user oranything like that Facebook had createda dossier of Max's life that includedhis location history events he attendedall of his contact information in hisprivate Facebook messages even the oneshe thought he had deleted so these werepersonal conversations you had that youthought were between yourself and theother person yeah and they're all herethey're all here and they're basicallyundeletable and it created a huge stirat the time but it's nothing compared towhat's being now today Facebook collectsinformation on people who don't evenhave an accountGoogle's Android software knows whetherthe user is walking running or riding ina carand Amazon is patented algorithms thatcould be used on its Echo smart speakerto listen in on continuous conversationsand even read the mood of people in theroom the reality is that this industryis so fast moving right now even if youhave perfect enforcement mechanismsusually they will get away with itunless there is a serious penaltytoday if one of the big tech companieschooses to ignore Europe's new dataProtection Law it could cost them fourpercent of their Global revenues whichfor the biggest companies would meanbillions of dollarsthose decisions will likely be made herein Dublin the busiest of Europe's 28data protection centers and the placewhere most American tech companies havetheir European headquartersthey flocked here years ago because ofIreland's low corporate taxes in itsreputation for relaxed regulationIreland's data protection commissionerHelen Dixon says it's not going to bebusiness as usual U.S internet companieshave no doubt that this law is seriousit has serious bite and all of them areeager to avoid any engagement with thathow would you describe your relationshipwith these companies right now is therelationship Cooperative or contentiousit's all of those things in any one weeknice to meet you Dixon says techcompanies are spending tens of millionsof dollars hiring lawyers complianceofficers and Engineers to make surethey're operating within the lawthe data protection authorities haveonly a few thousand employees in Europeto police some of the most powerfulcompanies in the world but they havesubpoena power can conduct raids andeven shut down operations do you thinkthe big tech companies the people inSilicon Valley are taking this seriouslyI think they have to the finals OwenO'Dell is a law professor at TrinityCollege in Dublin and a leading experton European Privacy Law he says Europehas now established an internationalstandard for internet privacy andcompanies like Facebook Google andAmazon are not about to retreat from a17 trillion dollar market we have safetystandards in cars but that hasn'tstopped us driving cars we have emissionstandards for uh for the gas and thecars but that hasn't stopped us usingthe gas of the cars the data companiesare going to comply in the same way asthe car companies have complied to stayin business to stay in businesssince the European privacy law waspassed at least 10 other countries haveadopted similar rulesso is the state of Californiaperhaps sensing the inevitable FacebookTwitter Google and Amazon are now sayingthey could support a U.S Privacy Law ifthey were given considerable input theinternet Association which lobbies forbig Tech and its President MichaelBeckerman say they would support givingAmericans reasonable access to theirinformation in some privacy rights nowenjoyed by the Europeans from your pointof view who owns the data that'scollected I think individuals shouldhave complete control over theirinformation you should have access to itboth how are you giving in the onlineworld and offline World in fulltransparency on who has the informationand what you're getting for but who ownsitpeople should have control over it Idon't view it as an ownership you knowthe way the way you're asking that but Ithink the individuals do the Europeanssays it's a it's a right you own yourinformation we have a right to go to thecompanies and say I want thisinformationunder the law that we're pushing and therules that we're pushing and what ourcompanies already do people can downloadthe information their personalinformation that they've shared with thesites and delete it if they want andcancel their accountsprivacy Advocate Jeff Chester says theindustry wants people to believe thatit's cooperating and open to change butthat it won't do anything until it'sforced to by law this is simply a baitand switch in terms of protectingprivacy in America today the companieshave no intention of supporting aprivacy law that actually would stopthem from collecting our information andgive Americans the same rights theEuropeans now have