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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'

#121

Post by Mikeb85 »

It's certainly an interesting angle with which to attack Google.

A few pertinent details:

> The government comes to us from time to time, and if they ask in a way that is correct, and has been through the courts as is required, then to the degree that we have information, we give that information.

Pretty standard stuff. They'll basically give up your info if any court orders them to.

> There have been different conversations with the FBI, I think, over time.

> I don't support a back door for any government, ever.

He doesn't support back-doors. Notice he didn't say there isn't a back-door.

As far as I can tell, Apple will 'give up' your information more or less to the same degree Google will.

Google also runs some algorithms over your data to match an ad to you. Not sure why this is so bad, no data has been given to a 3rd source.

This just strikes me as fluff to attack Google.

BTW, both companies' transparency reports (or at least part):

http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests/co...

http://www.apple.com/ca/privacy/government-information-reque...

BTW - if you compare requests to number of total users of each platform, Apple gives up more data. Not that it matters too much, both seem to comply with applicable laws, although Google's transparency report does seem more extensive.

Either way, not sure I can see the practical difference here.

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

#122

Post by muddi900 »

kbenson wrote: post #64
martingordon wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, it's a good thing we have Apple's track-record to show us it's impossible to break out of these walled gardens, otherwise we'd really be in trouble if someone got physical access to our phones. https://www.theiphonewiki.com/wiki/Jailbreak

While I hate the economic stifling of tech innovation that is the App Store culture, I would like to point out that Jailbroken iphone were used by the Chinese government to target protesters in Hong Kong quite recently.

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

#123

Post by millstone »

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…

> They don't have the technology/infrastructure to perform machine learning techniques that google employs. So they will say 'we think it's a feature that none of our services interoperate.'

You mean the machine learning techniques Google developed to better market people things?

This is like saying, Sweden doesn't have nuclear capability so it's opportunistic for them to claim they are peaceful. Only states that pour resources into building nuclear weapons can have a legitimate claim to being peaceful.

Look at Apple's approach to privacy for Maps, which uses randomized identifiers and trip segmentation so that Apple cannot reconstruct your trip. Or iMessage, which uses full end-to-end encryption. That's not Apple failing to catch up, that's Apple going out of their way to protect your privacy.

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

#124

Post by aianus »

mozumder wrote: post #43
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…

What difference does that make? Foreigners deserve privacy too.

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

#125

Post by johncolanduoni »

devit wrote: post #82
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.

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.…

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

The jailbreaks for recent versions of iOS only allow jailbreaking unlocked devices, at which point security is already compromised.

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

In iOS 8 they allowed other apps to use the same JIT engine Safari does[1]. This makes me inclined to take them on their word when they say it was previously disallowed for security reasons (some early jailbreaks could be done just by visiting a web page, using security holes in Safari's javascript JIT).

[1]: http://9to5mac.com/2014/06/03/ios-8-webkit-changes-finally-a...

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

#127

Post by mirimir »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #121

It's certainly an interesting angle with which to attack Google. A few pertinent details: > The government comes to us from time to time, and if they ask in a way that is correct, and has been through the courts as is required, then to the degree that we have information, we give that information. Pretty standard stuff. They'll basically give up your info if any court orders them to. > There have been different conve…

True. But data on devices is encrypted locally. And Apple supposedly doesn't know the keys/passwords.

However, there was the issue that cloud backups weren't encrypted with users' local keys/passwords. Has that been fixed? If not, he's blowing smoke.

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

#128

Post by lern_too_spel »

IBM wrote: post #92
djhn wrote: post #12

"Here is what we do on our platform. Here is what an unnamed search engine company does, or might in theory do, on their platform. You will probably agree: what we do is better in multiple, obvious ways. To be even less subtle, I am indeed trying to cast our competitor in very bad light." If they're willing to walk the walk, I don't even mind how transparent this "privacy as a competitive advantage" strategy is.

They have been for years and people wondered why they didn't talk about it because of how it differentiates them from the competition. Now they're talking about it and a common comment here is "they're only doing it because Google makes their money from advertising", well yes that's the point. Kind of funny but predictable. Having a business incentive that's aligned with privacy is the absolute best thing you could a…

As long as they have your data and don't give it to anybody else, there is no meaningful difference in privacy based on how they process the data. Why is processing words in emails for search indexing and spam filtering less of a problem for privacy than matching ads to words that appear in emails or figuring out helpful suggestions from them? It isn't, but Apple is happy to pretend it is to the rubes who will pay to use an inferior product.

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

#129

Post by wrongc0ntinent »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #121

It's certainly an interesting angle with which to attack Google. A few pertinent details: > The government comes to us from time to time, and if they ask in a way that is correct, and has been through the courts as is required, then to the degree that we have information, we give that information. Pretty standard stuff. They'll basically give up your info if any court orders them to. > There have been different conve…

The practical difference is that heavily marketing in this area can be a good thing for privacy. The more it becomes a "core value", the bigger the backlash from having failed at it publicly. It's a start. Edit: To clarify, I agree with you that at present there are no practical differences.

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

#130

Post by reagency »

b6 wrote: post #111
fukusa wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> profits from exploiting factory workers in countries where workers have less rights and where labour is cheap At least in China, the "exploited" workers you speak of have chosen to work at factories rather than do the kind of farm labor their parents did. Do you think they would be better off if they were not able to make such a choice? If they were paid the same wages a factory worker in Norway might receive, do y…

Apple could pay a lot more to Chinese workers and still pay less than Norway wages. Tim Cook collects $hundreds of millions by exploiting a power imbalance in the labor market.
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