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

Apple Letter on iPhone Security Draws Muted Tech Industry Response

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 204 posts

Re: Apple Letter on iPhone Security Draws Muted Tech Industry Response

#131

Post by epistasis »

ignoramous wrote: post #37
gtrubetskoy wrote: post #3

What sets Apple apart from Googles and Facebooks is that it's the only company that stores the data in way that Apple itself cannot read it. This is why the others have little to say on the subject - there is no issue of a "backdoor", because there is no wall to begin with when it comes to Google or FB, their business model depends on reading and analyzing your emails and posts.

This just made me realise that Apple is a true "do no evil" company and not Google, for all its technology powress and fancy marketing. A sad realisation as I have been using Google products for almost everything-- they pitch up everything under the F/OSS banner and it's so tempting. I think I should consider moving to iOS pretty seriously. I had been dismissing it for being over-priced and not being OSS. But the tru…

>they pitch up everything under the F/OSS banner

Do they really pitch anything under the F/OSS banner? I don't understand why Google has this reputation. Android is OSS, but that's a fairly recent addition, and it's not really played up very much.

Re: Apple Letter on iPhone Security Draws Muted Tech Industry Response

#132

Post by dragonwriter »

eridius wrote: post #91
mordocai wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They may be "do no evil" on privacy, but apple heavily pushes vendor lock in and basically does everything they can to keep you from being able to easily switch to a different vendor. Google seems easier to switch from, they seem less concerned with vendor lock in (don't get me wrong though, they still have some vendor lock in. Just less than apple IMO). I think in this case it is "choose your evil" and for a lot of…

Google makes more money from iOS than they do from Android. Of course Google doesn't mind if you switch hardware vendors, just so long as you keep using Google products. Also, I disagree with the notion that Apple "heavily pushes vendor lock in". They certainly don't go out of their way to make it easy to switch, but I can't come up with any examples off the top of my head where they're deliberately making it harder…

> Google makes more money from iOS than they do from Android.

I think that statement's based on an old stat that, at that time, Google's revenue from licensing (Apple was paying for Maps) and advertising (including web and search advertising, and at the time Google was the default search provider on iOS and this was also before Siri was around to displace some web search) to iOS users was greater than its revenue from Android.

The facts on which all that was based (market share, basis of iOS revenue streams, etc.) have changed substantially since then.

Re: Apple Letter on iPhone Security Draws Muted Tech Industry Response

#133

Post by eridius »

Oletros wrote: post #128
eridius wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google makes more money from iOS than they do from Android. Of course Google doesn't mind if you switch hardware vendors, just so long as you keep using Google products. Also, I disagree with the notion that Apple "heavily pushes vendor lock in". They certainly don't go out of their way to make it easy to switch, but I can't come up with any examples off the top of my head where they're deliberately making it harder…

> Google makes more money from iOS than they do from Android. Source?

It's been stated in numerous articles over the years. I don't have any source offhand, though a quick DDG search gives me a story from 2012: http://www.idownloadblog.com/2012/03/29/iphone-4x-revenue-an...

Re: Apple Letter on iPhone Security Draws Muted Tech Industry Response

#134

Post by dragonwriter »

epistasis wrote: post #131
ignoramous wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This just made me realise that Apple is a true "do no evil" company and not Google, for all its technology powress and fancy marketing. A sad realisation as I have been using Google products for almost everything-- they pitch up everything under the F/OSS banner and it's so tempting. I think I should consider moving to iOS pretty seriously. I had been dismissing it for being over-priced and not being OSS. But the tru…

>they pitch up everything under the F/OSS banner Do they really pitch anything under the F/OSS banner? I don't understand why Google has this reputation. Android is OSS, but that's a fairly recent addition, and it's not really played up very much.

> I don't understand why Google has this reputation. Android is OSS, but that's a fairly recent addition, and it's not really played up very much.

In addition to AOSP, Chromium (and Chromium OS) are open source; while App Engine isn't, the App Engine SDK is, and Google has supported an open-source reimplementation of App Engine. Dart is open source, as is Go. And a lot of other stuff.

Re: Apple Letter on iPhone Security Draws Muted Tech Industry Response

#135

Post by mintplant »

grillvogel wrote: post #113
mintplant wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would wager that the FBI and CIA are technically capable of breaking the security on this phone. This is likely more about setting legal precedent via a case that is very much in the public eye.

using their magical AES breaking powers?

From Apple's letter [1]:

> Specifically, the FBI wants us to make a new version of the iPhone operating system, circumventing several important security features, and install it on an iPhone recovered during the investigation. In the wrong hands, this software — which does not exist today — would have the potential to unlock any iPhone in someone’s physical possession.

> The FBI may use different words to describe this tool, but make no mistake: Building a version of iOS that bypasses security in this way would undeniably create a backdoor.

So it's not a matter of technical impossibility.

[1] https://www.apple.com/customer-letter/

Re: Apple Letter on iPhone Security Draws Muted Tech Industry Response

#136

Post by Oletros »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #44
digi_owl wrote: post #36

Wonder what the NYT's headline would be if it was Google that has gone out strongly.

Google doesn't care. They're the "if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear, and you better not fear advertisers, because we just told them all about you" crowd. Few years back Cornell University adopted Gmail for their staff and faculty under the condition that the company wouldn't data-mine the emails. Google did anyway. Now we use Outlook.

> Google doesn't care. They're the "if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear, and you better not fear advertisers, because we just told them all about you" crowd.

Still with that out of context quote?

Re: Apple Letter on iPhone Security Draws Muted Tech Industry Response

#137

Post by grillvogel »

mintplant wrote: post #135
grillvogel wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

using their magical AES breaking powers?

From Apple's letter [1]: > Specifically, the FBI wants us to make a new version of the iPhone operating system, circumventing several important security features, and install it on an iPhone recovered during the investigation. In the wrong hands, this software — which does not exist today — would have the potential to unlock any iPhone in someone’s physical possession. > The FBI may use different words to describe th…

if the gov were capable of doing this themselves they would have done it already

Re: Apple Letter on iPhone Security Draws Muted Tech Industry Response

#138

Post by eridius »

dragonwriter wrote: post #132
eridius wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google makes more money from iOS than they do from Android. Of course Google doesn't mind if you switch hardware vendors, just so long as you keep using Google products. Also, I disagree with the notion that Apple "heavily pushes vendor lock in". They certainly don't go out of their way to make it easy to switch, but I can't come up with any examples off the top of my head where they're deliberately making it harder…

> Google makes more money from iOS than they do from Android. I think that statement's based on an old stat that, at that time, Google's revenue from licensing (Apple was paying for Maps) and advertising (including web and search advertising, and at the time Google was the default search provider on iOS and this was also before Siri was around to displace some web search) to iOS users was greater than its revenue fro…

Fair enough, it's certainly possible that the stat is no longer true. Unless they've talked about it recently, it's hard to know for sure. Here's an article from May of 2015 that says that 75% of Google's mobile search revenue comes from iOS, which probably hasn't changed too dramatically since then, but it may no longer be accurate: http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/05/27/apples-ios-drives-...

Re: Apple Letter on iPhone Security Draws Muted Tech Industry Response

#139

Post by grillvogel »

jsprogrammer wrote: post #120
snowwrestler wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that is incredibly risky; it would be easy to make a mistake, and if they do, the information is gone forever, which is the worst case scenario for them. I absolutely believe that the FBI thinks this is the only way to get this data. Yes, they might like to get a strong precedent in favor of this, but what if the precedent goes against them? You never know what you're going to get in court. This would be appealed…

It seems like many people don't get the concept of evidence preservation. Apple put in a feature, which they may circumvent, that will effectively brick the device if it is tampered in certain ways. The lowest risk option for retrieving the data is to get the people who designed the device to implement their circumvention method. That is exactly what the FBI asked for and what the judge agreed to. Why should the FBI…

>Why should the FBI have to waste resources reverse engineering Apple's product (and risk destruction of evidence) when Apple is wholly capable of helping out?

so now apple has to pay for engineers to design and implement this change to their product because the government said so? why is apple required to "help out"?

Re: Apple Letter on iPhone Security Draws Muted Tech Industry Response

#140

Post by Fr0styMatt88 »

mentat wrote: post #129
petra wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could it be possible that the government want to lose in this case(and in the media) - creating a strong illusion that the iPhone is 100% safe from spying ? How valuable such an illusion would be ?

Most people who think about this stuff often seem to think that TAO already has access and the only purpose is to create a precedent to use this legal process against anyone.

What is TAO?
Post reply on HN