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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'

#141

Post by johncolanduoni »

pdkl95 wrote: post #105
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.

Accepting the risk that other people might misbehave is price of freedom . Do you want a General Purpose Computer? Or do you want an appliance that is ultimately controlled by someone else, where you have to get permission[1] if you want to use it in any way that wasn't pre-aproved? What are the odds that the things you want to do will continue to be approved when you ask for permission next year? Or ten years from n…

What general purpose computers (even phones and tablets) do you see going this direction, other than Apple's iOS? My Mac will run anything I want, my Surface will do the same, and my Android tablet has both side-loading and an unlocked bootloader. Hell, even my router is unlocked, and it's from ASUS, not some small open-source oriented manufacturer.

You claim that if we even allow companies to put out products with locked firmware, it will lead to a dystopian future. So when is this slippery slope going to start? The iPhone was released in 2007, and pretty much nothing has become more restrictive since then (especially considering that pretty much all phones were already locked down). The threat of any computers being TPM locked by the manufacturer, let alone all of them died in its cradle. If anything, we're moving in the opposite direction, since Apple now allows sideloading on iOS devices[1].

And what about users who want a phone that is locked down for security purposes? Why shouldn't we be able to choose the phones we want, while those who want sideloading/flashing choose the many options that support that? If either laws or market collusion actually removes this as an option, I'll join the fight. But for right now, it looks like this war on general purpose computing isn't even brewing.

[1]: http://9to5mac.com/2015/06/10/xcode-7-allows-anyone-to-downl...

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

#142

Post by glhaynes »

johncolanduoni wrote: post #125
devit wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 engi…

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

What? You must mean something else because unlocked devices aren't (necessarily) compromised.

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

#143

Post by aianus »

mozumder wrote: post #136
aianus wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What difference does that make? Foreigners deserve privacy too.

OK then codify that into a law. But, right now, the NSA does what is legal, which is to spy on foreign nationals.

Legal is meaningless. What they're doing is wrong.

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

#144

Post by tadfisher »

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.

I'm not sure knowing what users purchase makes the App Store any more secure. I'm pretty sure limiting what users can install on their devices is a different sort of tradeoff -- one of freedom for security.

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

#146

Post by gozo »

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 definitely afford to be a lot more idealistic, but it's just not (no longer) in their culture and frankly that is what a lot of people (stockholders) like about them. Also that's a lot of fallacies for one comment.

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

#147

Post by gozo »

nnd wrote: post #87
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…

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.

Choice is a lot less relevant for this discussion than you think.

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

#148

Post by PhasmaFelis »

pdkl95 wrote: post #113
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple is essentially the only major US tech company that doesn't rely heavily on advertising income (and thus on online profiling to target ads effectively), and they've realized that this gives them a moral high horse from which to attack their competitors without actually having to change any of their own habits.

This popular talking point conveniently ignores that ads not the only way companies can benefit form spying. The HN crowd absolutely loves using "analytics" to try and divine ways to make their products more profitable. Microsoft even uses this as an excuse for Win10's "telemetry" spyware: they say it's to improve the product. Yet when Apple spies on its users, suddenly it's ok because Apple isn't an ad company. Appl…

Tracking crashes, interface pain points, etc. is, in itself, a perfectly legit thing for a developer to do. There's been all kinds of software, open-source and otherwise, that asks for permission to phone home with usage logs for roughly as long as there's been broad internet adoption. Win10 telemetry is hated mainly because they're so dishonest about it: you're encouraged to use default settings on installation, they're very secretive about what info is actually gathered and about what the settings do, and they straight-up lie about some of the things you can supposedly disable.

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

#149

Post by johncolanduoni »

glhaynes wrote: post #142
johncolanduoni wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 engi…

The jailbreaks for recent versions of iOS only allow jailbreaking unlocked devices, at which point security is already compromised. What? You must mean something else because unlocked devices aren't (necessarily) compromised.

> What? You must mean something else because unlocked devices aren't (necessarily) compromised.

I mean compromised in the sense that the malicious party now (for example) has access to the user's email, and would be able to reset a whole host of passwords for online services (assuming they don't use 2FA or something similar, which most users don't). If they wanted to install a keylogger, or get saved passwords, then yes they still have to jailbreak my device. This xkcd is relevant: https://xkcd.com/1200/

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

#150

Post by gozo »

muddi900 wrote: post #119
IBM wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not relevant at all to the iCloud "hack". It's a cloud service, the whole point is to store data online. Those accounts were breached because celebs were phished and not because of bruteforcing, as some people were speculating at the time, or some other vulnerability.

Everyone gets phished. Fraud happens. Secret Questions are especially susceptible to phishing attacks. This has been known for about a decade. Apple had not updated the security protocols for iTunes, and in turn App Store and iCloud, for that time. The hack was definitely Apple's fault. '"In total, the [500] unique iCloud accounts were accessed 3,263 times," the document states.' - http://www.businessinsider.com/fbi-…

Yes, how can one trust a company's claims about privacy when the seemingly lose no trust over even such a high-profile incident? Celebrities phones has been targeted since at least the T-Mobile Sidekick.
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