On the day that US legislators took the judicial clippers to policies that enabled mass surveillance of their own citizens, Apple boss Tim Cook has reiterated his often repeated message that his firm has your back when it comes to online privacy, and you’d better watch out for more invasive companies who hoover up your data like, oh, Google and Facebook.

“They’re gobbling up everything they can learn about you and trying to monetize it. We think that’s wrong. And it’s not the kind of company that Apple wants to be.”said Cook in a speech during a Champion’s of Freedom Event where he was honoured for ‘corporate leadership’.

TechCrunch reports that Cook told his audience that the company that he leads believes that customers should not be making a trade off between privacy and security. Cook has long told held that Apple “is not interested in your data”, and taken the moral high ground against companies that give away services in order to mine the data collected. He reportedly took a sidewise swipe at Google’s new Photos service, unveiled at the I/O conference last week.

“You might like these so-called free services, but we don’t think they’re worth having your email, your search history and now even your family photos data-mined and sold off for god knows what advertising purpose,” Cook said.

Cook also warned against the effort by US policy makers to gain greater access to customers personal information through limitations on data encryption, which he says Apple is currently fighting. South Africans would not be unfamiliar with attempts to control internet content as the Film and Publication Board pushes ahead with its Online Draft Regulation Policy available for download here.

[Source: TechCrunch, Image – CC Peter O’Connor]