就在兩個月前，IBM的首席執行官羅睿蘭還在布魯塞爾的一場隱私會議上猛烈抨擊大型科技公司濫用用戶數據。她使用了“信任危機”這個詞，并將其歸咎為“少數面向用戶、占據統治地位的平臺不負責任地處置個人數據”。羅睿蘭沒有必要點名批評對象，人們就明白她的意思，Facebook毫無疑問名列其中。

而如今，IBM發現自己也陷入了令人難堪的抨擊之中。洛杉磯市檢察院辦公室對IBM的一家子公司提起了訴訟，按照訴訟書的說法，這家商業機構在數據隱私上的做法存在問題，涉嫌“欺詐用戶”。在此之前，《紐約時報》（New York Times）近日對The Weather Company的天氣預報應用The Weather Channel的消費者數據使用情況進行過一次調查。本次調查引發了公眾關注，而該公司在2015年已經被IBM以20億美元收購。（可能值得一提的是，前The Weather Company首席執行官大衛·肯尼后來擔任了IBM人工智能業務的主管，最近又成為了全球最大的市場調研公司尼爾森的首席執行官。）

爭論的核心在于：The Weather Channel要求用戶同意它獲取用戶位置，聲稱需要這一信息來提供“定制的當地天氣數據、通知和預報”。但該應用的自動彈出框沒有提到The Weather Company保留了向廣告商和對沖基金等其他第三方出售用戶定位數據來獲取利潤的權利。相反，這一信息隱藏在單獨的一份近1萬詞的隱私政策中，用戶必須仔細尋找才能發現。

IBM辯稱其子公司沒有做錯。IBM發言人薩斯瓦托·達斯在一封發給《財富》雜志的電子郵件聲明中對訴訟書進行了回應，表示“The Weather Company在使用位置數據的問題上一直保持透明。公司在數據披露上的做法完全合適，我們將積極為此辯護。”

這是一種觀點。另一種觀點認為The Weather Company辜負了人們的信任，其手段令人想起作為IBM對手的某些科技公司的做法，而這種做法是羅睿蘭本人曾經嚴正抨擊過的。

實際上，沒有誰的手是干凈的，雖然某些公司侵犯隱私的做法更加引人注目。Facebook的首席執行官馬克·扎克伯格于去年對美國國會表示，Facebook的用戶可以掌控自己的數據，只要愿意就能刪除它們，但他隨后對所謂的影子檔案問題卻含糊其辭，那些是公司保存的非Facebook用戶的數據。再想想蘋果公司（Apple）的首席執行官蒂姆·庫克。庫克對競爭者所謂“監督”的做法嗤之以鼻，而且他也在布魯塞爾進行了發言。在譴責廣告業務時，他就差直接點名谷歌（Google）和Facebook等公司了。然而沒關系，據說谷歌向蘋果支付了數十億美元，讓自己的同名搜索引擎成為蘋果網頁瀏覽器Safari的默認選擇。

還用懷疑世界正在經歷信任危機嗎？數據隱私政策的公布應該是完全透明的。個人的數據被如何使用，流向了何處，這本不該存在任何模糊。羅睿蘭在布魯塞爾講話時對聽眾說，消費者“在占據統治地位的互聯網平臺公司面前幾乎沒有什么權利”。在沒有知情同意權的情況下，她完全正確。（財富中文網）

本文另一版本最初登載于《財富》的科技時事通訊Data Sheet的周末版本Cyber Saturday。

譯者：嚴匡正

Just a couple months ago, IBM CEO Ginni Rometty inveighed against big tech companies abusing people’s data at a privacy conference in Brussels. She cited a “trust crisis,” ascribing its origins to “the irresponsible handling of personal data by a few dominant consumer-facing platforms.” Rometty did not have to identify the subjects of her criticism by name, Facebook no doubt among them, for people to understand her point.

Now IBM finds itself uncomfortably lumped in with the offenders. The office of the city attorney of Los Angeles has filed suit against an IBM subsidiary for allegedly “deceiving users” about the business unit’s questionable data privacy practices, as the lawsuit states. The city’s complaint follows a recent investigation by the New York Times which drew attention to consumer data exploitation by The Weather Channel app, a forecasting service owned by The Weather Company, whose assets IBM bought for a reported $2 billion in 2015. (It is perhaps worth noting that David Kenny, former CEO of The Weather Company and later head of IBM’s artificial intelligence business, recently became CEO of Nielsen, the world’s largest market research company.)

Here’s the heart of the controversy: When The Weather Channel app requests permission to access a user’s location, it says it requires the information to offer “personalized local weather data, alerts and forecasts.” The app’s automatic pop-up box fails to mention that The Weather Company reserves the right to sell people’s geolocation data to advertisers and other third parties, like hedge funds, for a profit. That information is instead tucked away in a separate, nearly 10,000-word privacy policy, which one must seek out.

IBM maintains that its subsidiary has done no wrong. In response to the lawsuit, Saswato Das, an IBM spokesperson, said in a statement emailed to Fortune that “The Weather Company has always been transparent with use of location data; the disclosures are fully appropriate, and we will defend them vigorously.”

That’s one view. Another view is that The Weather Company breached people’s trust in a way that recalls the transgressions of rival tech companies—transgressions Rometty herself criticized.

In truth, no one’s hands are entirely clean, even if some infractions are more glaring than others. When Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg last year told Congress that Facebook users are in control of their data and can delete them as they please, he subsequently dodged questions about so-called shadow profiles, the data his company maintains on people who are not users of Facebook services. Or consider Apple CEO Tim Cook, known to raise a stink about the “surveillance” practices of competitors, as he put it, while also speaking in Brussels. Cook stopped just short of naming the likes of Google and Facebook in his denunciation of advertising-based businesses; never mind that Google reportedly pays Apple billions of dollars to make its self-named search engine the default for Safari, Apple’s web browser.

Is it any wonder the world is undergoing a crisis of trust? Data privacy disclosures ought to be crystal clear. There should be no uncertainty about how one’s data are being used or where they’re flowing. During her talk in Brussels, Rometty told the audience that consumers “have very little power against the dominant internet platform companies.” In the absence of informed consent, she’s right.

A version of this article first appeared in Cyber Saturday, the weekend edition of Fortune’s tech newsletter Data Sheet.