While listening yesterday to Al Franken's Google/Apple privacy hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, I was struck by the utter lack of accountability on either company's part. Both Google and Apple, concerning separate instances, claim ignorance about what their technologies are doing. That seems improbable and a much more egregious failing on both companies’ parts than, say, an antenna failure.

I know Google's philosophy has long been "Do No Evil," but when billions of dollars in annual revenue are involved, evil often rears its ugly head no matter the best intentions. But let's set aside my doubts about either company's intent and ask whether it’s plausible that two of the most sophisticated, cutting-edge technology companies could have no idea what they're own inventions are doing.

Consider the most recent Google scandal, the great Spy-Fi debacle, wherein Google's ever-trolling Street View cars unwittingly captured personal data (email, calendar information, etc.) off private Wi-Fi networks. Google is the modern data repository, a privatized Library of Congress. Google makes the bulk of its money on search-based advertising. To put it bluntly, Google makes its money on knowing as much about consumers as is possible. Whether the gathering of any of that information is for sinister uses is beside the point.

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt would readily inform you of his own moral edict, wherein he espouses the abolition of privacy for its own sake. In an interview with CNBC, Schmidt told a reporter: “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.” There are so many subtleties involved in that statement that I won’t even begin to dissect it in this short piece of writing.

Forgive me if I'm skeptical that Google didn't know that its Street View cars were gathering people’s personal information.

Now let's consider Apple, which seems to be unable to admit that its product, namely the iPhone, has been recording and storing location data, regardless of the fact that the company’s User License Agreement explicitly states that customers are consenting to having their location information gathered when they hit the “I Agree” button.

At yesterday's hearing, Guy L. “Bud” Tribble, the company's vice president of software technology, said that the iPhone does not collect the user's location information but rather the location of nearby Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers. The phone then does the work of triangulating its location, sans the use of GPS, given these coordinates. In my book, that constitutes tracking one's location, especially given that such techniques can discern a user's location with a fair degree of accuracy (we're talking feet, not yards or miles).  

The above instances might at first glance seem to be nothing more than innocuous "bugs," as Apple claims the iPhone's appetite for location data was. And perhaps they are harmless, provided the caveat that this information remains in Apple's and Google's hands. Both companies claim top-notch security, but then I'm guessing Sony would have claimed the same before its latest breach.

Technology companies need to be held to the same standards set for other industries. Increasingly, the information that consumers are voluntarily, and in some cases, involuntarily, handing over to them is incredibly private and not always “anonymized.” If an auto manufacturer comes out and says that it had no idea its gas pedals were defective, it inevitably faces legal action. If a national restaurant chain comes out and says it had no idea that there was lead in its burgers, it will probably get sued. Are these extreme examples when compared to the storage of personal data? I’m guessing if you’re a victim of identity theft or stalking, you wouldn’t think there was such a huge difference.

I'm not advocating legal action against Apple or Google in the aforementioned cases, but I am saying that these were more than just "bugs" and should be treated as such. And even if they were technological snafus, if a technology company is going to ask consumers for their location and other private information, they should at least be able to assure us that they now how that information is collected, where it's being kept, how it's being protected and how long it's being stored on their servers. Consumers should also demand that they have access to that information, as well as the right to ensure that it is destroyed should they request such action be taken.

The average person spends a lot of hard-earned money on these companies’ products and they do not have to accept the cavalier attitudes and ideologies of wealthy CEOs who feel they know better than their customers when it comes to how personal information is used. True, there are a number of ways in which location-based technologies make our world better. There are equally numerous ways that our gadgets can be abused and used against an unsuspecting public, in the interest of profit.

We are indeed entering a brave new world, and I’m afraid consumers will have to suffer grave injustices before they demand reform. The wireless industry is part of a corporate culture that is hell bent on profit and infinite growth. Such is the nature of big business. Rarely is the truth profitable when you're talking multi-national corporations, thus it is rarely volunteered by large corporate entities and often has to be extracted with a good deal of prodding and pulling.

While hearings like Senator Franken’s are often decried as obstacles on the road to growth, perhaps they can at least be seen as pause to consider the implications of the incredibly powerful technology at our disposal. To be sure, companies like Apple, Google, Facebook and Twitter are some of the most innovative, society-shaping entities on the planet. But like any good thing, the people need to ensure that it exists to serve them, not take advantage of them.