What about Google?
Firstly, the article suggests that Google and Apple should be the ones who control when this gets switched on or off. I disagree. Like it or not, decisions over this should be made by national governments (in my case, a democratically-elected national government), not private companies. The article appears to my eyes to suggest that corporations should take decisions over governments, and that has the potential to lead to a very dark future.
Secondly, the article notes that "cynical misuse of the data by a social network" is a risk, but fails to include cynical misuse of the data by the world's largest ad broker, who are also responsible for the software running on 80% of the world's smartphones. And have been known to still collect data even when the "pretty please, I don't want to" switches have been set in the maze of twisty little config settings.
Google are not some collective whose only concern is for the public good. They are a corporation whose only concern is maximising revenue. Any public statements of "Don't be evil" stopped long ago.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
