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

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

#81

Post by mirimir »

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.

It's possible to use the App Store anonymously. For example, Apple allows users to create and use accounts via Tor. And it accepts gift cards, which one can purchase with thoroughly anonymized Bitcoin. Getting devices anonymously is the hardest part. Paying cash for used devices is probably the best option.

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

#82

Post by devit »

larrywright wrote: post #16
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.

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.

Security? What security?

Every single release with iOS has been totally broken security-wise, as can seen from the existence of jailbreaks.

Apple doesn't even require seeing the source code, and so there is no way they can stop malicious applications written to evade detection from getting to the App Store.

And thanks to their policy you must browse with Safari WebKit, which is a nice juicy ~40% browser share target.

Of course, both Android and Windows Phone are broken too, since they also expose oversized monolithic kernels written in C to random applications, but at least Android doesn't require you to give up freedom to get non-security.

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

#84

Post by gozo »

IBM wrote: post #63
gozo wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we have forgotten XcodeGhost already or the iCloud hacks?

XcodeGhost wouldn't have happened if developers weren't able to disable Gatekeeper and the iCloud hack was done with phishing for security question answers. http://gawker.com/feds-seized-chicago-mans-computers-in-cele...

The iCloud hack was enabled by the automatic backup feature that despite storing very sensitive information didn't provide adequate security for doing so. If there were actual precedent for Apple caring about their users privacy, there would be outrage over this rather than being trivially dismissed.

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

#85

Post by randyrand »

mozumder wrote: post #79
randyrand wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So they record/log every single phone communication in the US, only to filter out every single phone recording made in the US? That doesn't make sense. How can you tell who is talking on the phone anyway? And what if a US citizen was talking to a non-citizen? Regardless, the point is that backdoors - even if used 99% of the time correctly - opens up your phone and all its nitty gritty details of your life to adversar…

Anything can happen anytime in the future, but this is the discussion about what is actually happening. Maybe a giant seamonster comes up and swallows the earth whole? Who knows. But, right now, there exists filters to filter out US citizens comms from NSA spying, as revealed in CLASSIFIED documents. This is something Snowden's friends love to conveniently ignore, because it doesn't fit into their artificially constr…

Well it conflicts with what we've heard from multiple sources.

I thought I recalled Obama saying that all meta data was stored. Regardless...

How did they detect when a US citizen was using a phone abroad, or a terrorist using a landline phone in the USA? Identities are not tied to phones.

Furthermore, how secure is the system they used? Can adversaries tap in to the NSA database? Is the filtering "hard wired" or is it something that is programmable and how susceptible is it to bugs, viruses, or hacking? How trustworthy are the people that control this data? Is it possible that anyone that works at the NSA is not trustworthy and might defect? Such as Edward Snowden?

These are important questions. Even with 'filtering' there is a lot of questions to be asked. And I doubt all them have great answers. The point is, there is a system in place to problematically spy on any phone conversation at any time among other things. Even if they use it "for good," that should be very concerning for anyone that knows that programming secure systems is mostly an effort in futility. Especially for the government who can't even code up a CRUD healthcare website without issue - and that the system is completely closed source not allowing others to review it.

Which brings us to another issue - why was this secret? Isn't this the kind of thing that should be approved by USA citizens? And publically verified for safety and security? This alone is so concerning.

I'm happy you think "filtering" makes all of these questions a non-issue though.

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

#86

Post by vezzy-fnord »

javajosh wrote: post #78
vezzy-fnord wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The security benefits come mostly from curated package management in general, not limiting the device to one particular repository (the App Store).

I don't think the public is sophisticated enough to understand the decoupling of these two ideas. But I also think that one day, probably soon, it will be.

Technical users are members of the public, too.

If you want to treat users like infants, then you should hereby completely forfeit any and all rights to complain about "tech shortages" and technical illiteracy of end users.

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

#87

Post by nnd »

fukusa wrote: post #73
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.

With all due respect, he is not a hero. He is just the CEO of Apple. And Apple, even though it produces great products, profits from exploiting factory workers in countries where workers have less rights and where labour is cheap. If he was actively fighting this system of exploitation, that would probably make him a hero. Instead, he profits from it. That makes him not a hero but just another businessman. Furthermor…

It's not like we have a free worldwide labor market anyway. No one is enslaving those workers, they only choose to take that job.

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

#88

Post by gozo »

bottled_poe wrote: post #72
gozo wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we have forgotten XcodeGhost already or the iCloud hacks?

Wasn't XcodeGhost a direct result of bypassing Apple's security model?

As far as I know the users didn't. Which is to say that the App Store doesn't provide much more security than e.g. a black list. Androids problems are more than anything having a fragmented ecosystem.

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

#89

Post by EdwardDiego »

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.

> Very little of Apple's revenue comes from ads so they really have no need for the infrastructure

However, they wish to carefully control the advertising on iOS, if you want to uniquely identify a user for retargeting purposes, well, tracking cookies are evil, but iAd is good!

https://developer.apple.com/iad/my-audiences/iad-my-audience...

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

#90

Post by Steko »

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.

> Personal computing devices shouldn't have artificial walled gardens

To me this seems excessively moralistic, like "all closed source is bad". There are concrete advantages and disadvantages to a walled garden and whether a device has one or not should be up to the manufacturer. Customers then can weigh the tradeoffs when they make their decisions.

I also don't find privacy to be among the significant disadvantages of walled gardens. Lack of choice leading to lower quality experience, the chilling effect of disallowing specific content or entire categories and the potential for price gouging seem to be far and away the biggest issues.

Another issue is "walled gardens are bad" is a bit ignorant of real restrictions device makers have historically had to navigate such as carrier contracts saying no tethering apps.

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