Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) is calling on Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Apple CEO Tim Cook to take personal liability for any potential privacy violations associated with their contact tracing project.
The computer giants are trying to help stem the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic by tracking population movements.
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In a letter to Pichai and Cook dated Tuesday (April 21), Hawley, who has been one of Congress' biggest Big Tech critics, said he is concerned about data collected for tracing the spread of the virus being anonymous and whether they could be trusted to stop the program when the pandemic ended. He wants the CEO's to have some skin in the game, as it were.
“If you seek to assure the public, make your stake in this project personal. Make a commitment that you and other executives will be personally liable if you stop protecting privacy, such as by granting advertising companies access to the interface once the pandemic is over,” he wrote.
One reason for his skepticism that the companies would protect privacy, he said, was Google's admission during a March Judiciary Committee hearing that it still tracks location data even after a user has "turned it off."
