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

Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

481–490 of 546 posts

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#481

Post by leonroy »

burtonator wrote: post #311
kodablah wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We're actually losing business to other companies that are performing highly unethical and probably illegal techniques. And you always will. Principles and money are often at odds. This is not an easily fixable problem as the well-intended solutions often cause more problems. Enforcement of existing statutes and accepting legal-yet-unethical practices is unfortunately the most rational approach. > We just can't com…

> Only in a situation where interminable growth is required in a race to the top. The key is that they choke you out... They have more engineers, more R&D and a better product because they have more revenue.

As an engineer who used to work for other firms I would work at a significant pay reduction to do fulfilling work. Companies who have shady business practises are a significant turn off and I doubt I’m the only one.

Now as a manager who has to hire I find it pretty straightforward finding passionate people to work with me simply because the work is compelling.

It’s a matter of getting your story out as the ethical data mining company, or something :) you’ll find like minded clients and employees do exist and that being ethical can be a competitive advantage too.

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#482

Post by izacus »

emsy wrote: post #200
izacus wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an interesting view, considering all the outrage on this site related to Google potentially entering the Chinese market under their law. It was deemed utterly immoral... and Apple gets a free pass although their own CEO it talking about human rights?

You are either utterly uniformed or intentionally misleading. Apple located the data center in China, as Chinese law requires while maintaining the same encryption standards they have for all of their customers. Google was collaborating with China in creating a censorial search engine behind the great firewall. Completely different things.

Please explain how are those two different things? Apple built a datacenter and gave keys to Chinese government to comply with law. Google is looking at (not even deploying!) a search engine that would comply with Chinese law and deploy it in China.

How do you think those things are different? Especially since Google did not deploy anything yet, while Apple gave up on the "human right" and handed over the keys?

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#483

Post by indigochill »

burtonator wrote: post #301
burtonator wrote: post #258

I'd like to think I'm one of the good guys here. I was one of the inventors of RSS and Atom and worked to push open content and social media. I started a social data search platform named Datastreamer ( http://www.datastreamer.io/ ) which is basically a petabyte-scale content indexing engine. We provide API feeds to search engines and social media analytics companies needing bulk data but don't want to have to build…

By other companies I mean companies like Cambridge Analytica. There are tons of other shady companies out there doing nefarious things with your data. We're going to need platforms that support group encryption and better security for apps.

>We're going to need platforms that support group encryption and better security for apps.

Definitely. Though I also feel we need to give a shock to public awareness of just how evil people can be with this data. My perception is that people are trending towards "vaguely uncomfortable" with the news of foreign interference with targeted ads, election hacking, and so on, but we've a ways to go yet before most will give up supremely-engineered convenience in exchange for security.

As long as the modern world is democratic and the voting populace is subjecting itself to targeted manipulation by data-armed bad actors, we have a problem of not just national security, but international security.

Thanks for being one of the good guys.

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#484

Post by a-dub »

He's right.

Apple's schtick has long been "technology without the bullshit"- and well, the behavioral data gold rush is basically bullshit for consumers, so sure, they're on the privacy bandwagon in the interests of their own company and it's market strategy.

Regardless, it does not make him any less right.

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#485

Post by lern_too_spel »

nneonneo wrote: post #476
lern_too_spel wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can only claim with a straight face that android wins on privacy if you completely ignore google. The only way you can say iOS wins on privacy is if you listen to marketing instead of what the OS actually does. 1. Aside from losing on location privacy, as I showed above, 2. iOS also loses on message privacy because you can't use a secure messaging system like Signal by default, 3. on tracker and advertising pri…

Nobody’s stopping you from installing those apps if you want - an offline Maps app, Signal, Firefox with uBlock. It might not be the system default app, but I’m not sure how that’s a fundamental loss of privacy. Sure, you need an Apple ID, but how hard is it to generate a throwaway account for that purpose? Nobody ever said you had to use one that was tied to your actual identity. Heck you can even use different IDs…

> Nobody’s stopping you from installing those apps if you want - an offline Maps app, Signal, Firefox with uBlock.

I never said otherwise. Again, you can't install a system-wide adblocker.

> It might not be the system default app, but I’m not sure how that’s a fundamental loss of privacy

Because if it's harder to use on every use, you won't use it.

> Sure, you need an Apple ID, but how hard is it to generate a throwaway account for that purpose?

In that respect, it's exactly like a Google account. I never claimed otherwise. The fact that it's tied to things you do like apps you download and where you search allows deanonymization, just like in the Google case.

> Nobody ever said you had to use one that was tied to your actual identity.

Except if you want to build apps for your own device that you don't want to reinstall weekly. On Android, nobody has to know anything about you, even if you want to develop for your own device, which should not result in loss of privacy on a platform that respects privacy.

> I don’t know where you read that Apple IDs can’t be deleted - on https://privacy.apple.com/ if you sign in there’s a nice big Delete your Account button.

Thanks for this link. Somebody created an Apple ID with my email address, and after I took over their account, I could not figure out how to delete it from the Apple ID Account page, and a search doesn't return that privacy page. It's way harder to find than Facebook's delete account page.

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#486

Post by kodablah »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #459

It would be interesting if there were a civil penalty accessible to individuals if their personal data was divulged by someone to collected it. Lets say that it was $1,000 to $10,000. And that individuals need only file a simple form with the appropriate agency naming the company, identifying themselves, and the information divulged and get paid. The amount would vary based on how detailed the information was, more d…

Can I waive the company's liability for my data? Regardless of the answer, herein lies the problem.

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#487

Post by s3r3nity »

paxys wrote: post #474
s3r3nity wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I struggle with Apple's China situation as well, but the more I turn it over in my head, the more I think it's that Tim is pulled between two parties: 1) His team + Apple Directors that I firmly believe, both in words AND in their action, are strong proponents of privacy of the user 2) The Apple Board + Sharedholders that would revolt if the privacy principles from (1) prevented access to a market of ~1.4 billion peo…

You can make this exact argument for Google or Facebook or anyone else. Simply bringing up "evil shareholders" doesn't absolve any company or individual from criticism.

I think you misunderstood my argument - apologies for not being clearer.

There is a difference between a company's _incentives_ to do something that is permitted by law - for which I would agree that said company is worthy of criticism to a reasonable extent - and that which a company is _compelled to do so by law._

My point was that Tim Cook's speech was largely to prevent scenarios that would lead to law-makers wanting to create laws like the latter. And Apple _should_ get credit that they have a bunch of incentives to collect user data at will, like many other tech companies, but explicitly avoid that as company policy.

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#488

Post by rhizome »

sangnoir wrote: post #424
blihp wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Despite your intentions, I don't think it's possible for you to be one of the good guys. The mass collection and aggregation of the data in the first place is the problem, not merely a few bad actors downstream.

It's very easy to assign blame in hindsight. "Web 2.0" (i.e. data aggregation) was a fantastic tool and most of us did not have the imagination to see how it would be abused (just as any tool can be abused).

You don't need an imagination, there is at least one negative example in living memory of putting data aggregation to work against a mass populace.

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#489

Post by rhizome »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #459

It would be interesting if there were a civil penalty accessible to individuals if their personal data was divulged by someone to collected it. Lets say that it was $1,000 to $10,000. And that individuals need only file a simple form with the appropriate agency naming the company, identifying themselves, and the information divulged and get paid. The amount would vary based on how detailed the information was, more d…

It would be interesting if there were a civil penalty accessible to individuals if their personal data was divulged by someone to collected it

If you think the business community dislikes taxes, just wait until a law is proposed that gives people a private right of action against companies that leak their data. I don't think the term "white hot" would suffice.

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#490

Post by Misdicorl »

blihp wrote: post #442
ken wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? The decision first comes from management, but engineers are the ones who implement it. I think things would change pretty quick if engineers responded to such requests with "I can't do that, because my professional association would remove me from their membership, which would revoke my license to write software in this country at all". That's how (AIUI) law, medicine, (real) engineering, etc., work today.

Unless you've got a legal/regulatory structure to enforce it, it can't work. And there is absolutely no will on the part of corporations or Congress to do such a thing as it runs contrary to their interests. Even if it were feasible, software development is one of the easiest things to jurisdiction shop since it can be done anywhere. So unless you further mandate where the development must be done, it still won't wor…

What about an organization which

1) Maintains a membership list 2) Maintains a list of software which is signed off on by members 3) Browser/OS/etc utilities which refuse and/or warn when trying to run software not in the registry 4) Member expulsion if registered software is found to be nefarious

This is basically the system Apple/Microsoft/Debian/etc/etc already use for official software distribution. We just need the organization to move out of their walled gardens.

The big leak here is users which have to use resources they don't control. I can imagine an IaaS company which won't run software unless its in the registry, and then companies can boast that your data is 'safe' (or at least not nefarious) because they run in this kind of environment.

Post reply on HN