Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple CEO Tim Cook: 'Privacy Is a Fundamental Human Right'

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 186 posts

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook: 'Privacy Is a Fundamental Human Right'

#41

Post by guelo »

staunch wrote: post #7

> If you buy something from the App Store, we do know what you bought from the App Store, obviously. We think customers are fine with that. Users should also be able to install apps on their iPhones without Apple knowing what they're doing. Personal computing devices shouldn't have artificial walled gardens. But I agree with him on everything else and think he's a hero for what he's doing.

Right. I haven't used an iPhone in years but I remember being forced to enter credit card details to install or upgrade even a free app.

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook: 'Privacy Is a Fundamental Human Right'

#42

Post by sigmar »

drew-y wrote: post #26
sigmar wrote: post #9

Apple's comments on privacy over the past year have seemed very opportunistic. >But what they don't want to do, they don't want your email to be read, and then to pick up on keywords in your email and then to use that information to then market you things on a different application that you're using. ... They don't have the technology/infrastructure to perform machine learning techniques that google employs. So they…

Apple actually has a solid argument when they say "Our users are not our products". Very little of Apple's revenue comes from ads so they really have no need for the infrastructure. However, considering they are one of the largest companies in the world with hundreds of billions in the bank, I seriously doubt it would be very hard for them to setup that sort of infrastructure.

I'm not saying it isn't a solid argument. Their PR people clearly thing it is the way to go, judging by how often it has come up.

You're right, it wouldn't be hard, but they aren't doing it. Why? Maybe because they wouldn't be able to use this talking point or maybe they plan to be a hardware/OS company forever and never expand their services? IDK

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook: 'Privacy Is a Fundamental Human Right'

#43

Post by mozumder »

pbreit wrote: post #2

Amen. Who the heck wants their own government spying on them? I'd rather be "less safe" whatever that even means. The government works for us, not the other way around.

You mean the "spying" program that was revealed to have filters to filter out their own citizens communications?

Seriously, why do people conveniently ignore this little fact? Why would these filters exist, as revealed in CLASSIFIED documents, if the government were interested in spying on its own citizens?

If the government were interested in spying on you, they would just do it. They wouldn't need to build machines to protect your privacy rights.

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook: 'Privacy Is a Fundamental Human Right'

#44

Post by fpgeek »

nnutter wrote: post #28
larrywright wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that what Apple has done here is an acceptable tradeoff. The app store trades a small amount of privacy for a lot more security. Looking at Android's perpetual issues with this makes me think that Apple made the right choice.

Apple might just be better at covering it up. I would rather see it implemented like GateKeeper on OS X is. Safe store with the user having the power to decide if they leave the store or not.

While I applaud the spirit, I don't think actually implementing it like GateKeeper is a good idea:

http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/09/drop-dead-simple-exp...

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook: 'Privacy Is a Fundamental Human Right'

#45

Post by kawera »

sigmar wrote: post #42
drew-y wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple actually has a solid argument when they say "Our users are not our products". Very little of Apple's revenue comes from ads so they really have no need for the infrastructure. However, considering they are one of the largest companies in the world with hundreds of billions in the bank, I seriously doubt it would be very hard for them to setup that sort of infrastructure.

I'm not saying it isn't a solid argument. Their PR people clearly thing it is the way to go, judging by how often it has come up. You're right, it wouldn't be hard, but they aren't doing it. Why? Maybe because they wouldn't be able to use this talking point or maybe they plan to be a hardware/OS company forever and never expand their services? IDK

I would guess that Siri requires some beefy machine learning techniques.

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook: 'Privacy Is a Fundamental Human Right'

#48

Post by codeka »

api wrote: post #15
staunch wrote: post #7

> If you buy something from the App Store, we do know what you bought from the App Store, obviously. We think customers are fine with that. Users should also be able to install apps on their iPhones without Apple knowing what they're doing. Personal computing devices shouldn't have artificial walled gardens. But I agree with him on everything else and think he's a hero for what he's doing.

Unfortunately if you remove the walls from the garden you get a malware, crapware, and (ironically given the topic) spyware explosion -- a tragedy of the commons more or less. Mobile devices are used by over a billion people, most of whom don't know much about computers. From the perspective of sleazy marketers and black hat hackers that's a lot of fresh meat. They're better than PCs since they're studded with sensor…

> If you don't know what you're doing and install apps from the app store without examining them closely

That's completely orthogonal though, because Play Store is Google's walled garden. What Google allow you to do, in addition to downloading things from their walled garden, is also side-load apps completely separately from the walled garden.

There's no evidence that the ability to side-load causes an increase in malware/crapware.

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook: 'Privacy Is a Fundamental Human Right'

#49

Post by martingordon »

aianus wrote: post #35
martingordon wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And where is that? Like he said, any back door for the good guys is a back door for the bad guys as well.

My Galaxy S3 let me flash whatever I wanted on it. Just had to reboot in a special mode and click a button agreeing to void my warranty. No back door required. Why can't iPhones do the same (from a security perspective, I understand the business reasons)?

I'm saying that the flashing/side-loading is the back door. A malicious actor with physical access to your phone (think screen repair shop, TSA agent, etc) could flash a compromised OS or install malware on your device.

Also, there a lot of not-savvy people who will follow instructions in a well-crafted email or pop up and allow themselves to succumb to spyware and malware.

Post reply on HN