There is a high-level departure from Apple’s usually fairly constant boardroom. Jane Horvath, who was responsible for data protection as Chief Privacy Officer, is leaving the company, according to the US financial news service Bloomberg. She is moving to a law firm that represented Apple in the legal dispute with Epic, among other things.
Nothing further is known about the reasons for the departure. According to the Bloomberg report, Horvath announced her departure in an internal memo to employees. After eleven years at Apple, she joins the law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP. Apple itself has not yet commented on the departure. A successor has not yet been determined, writes Bloomberg.
Data protection is becoming increasingly important
Privacy has become an increasingly important issue for Apple in recent years. The company is trying to differentiate itself from its competitors such as Google, where the acquisition of user data due to the advertising business plays a much larger role than at Apple. With the action against the NSO Group and its spyware software Pegasus as well as measures such as the new lockdown mode, Apple hit the stakes in terms of data protection. It is also part of the declared business policy that as much data as possible is processed on the device instead of uploading it to the cloud.
Horvath is also said to have played a key role in negotiations with trade groups and US politicians and in adapting business policy to the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Dispute with the FBI
Horvath was also involved when Apple had a dispute with US FBI prosecutors in 2016. They wanted Apple to unlock an assassin’s iPhone, which the company refused to avoid opening a backdoor that could permanently compromise the iPhone’s security. Apple also defied a court order. The US authorities later used a different method.
Horvath’s experience from previous positions, for example at the US Department of Justice, where she was involved in negotiations on common data protection rules with the European Union, was certainly useful in her work. Further professional stations were AOL and Google. She moved from the latter group to Apple in 2011.
