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Tim Cook’s Company-Wide Email on Hkmap.live Doesn’t Add Up

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Re: Tim Cook’s Company-Wide Email on Hkmap.live Doesn’t Add Up

#351

Post by simonh »

PeterStuer wrote: post #349
simonh wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The first priority is always profits or growth. When Apple split with Google, they did so over access to customer data. At the time wall street was salivating over the huge profits to be gained from mining customer data, and Google was dangling billions of dollars in front of Steve Jobs' face to get him to fold. He didn't, and also turned down lucrative deals offered by Facebook. That was all at a time when user pri…

Apple could never out-Google Google, and they knew it. Accepting Google's suit without their own alternatives by default would have relegated their platform to be just another Google app launcher for key functionalities. They instead opted to pursue a business model that played to their own strengths. You seem to believe that Apple's iMessage service is somehow exempt from Lawful Intercept requirements. Let me quote…

On iPhones running google services, either Apple is in it just for the money or they aren't. Apple maps cost them a fortune and makes them no money, that's just a fact. They could also have easily played Google, facebook and twitter against each other, instead they said no to them all.

Lawful Intercept has a fatal flaw. It doesn't require the service provider to have encryption keys for the traffic, and they can't provide what they don't have.

Re: Tim Cook’s Company-Wide Email on Hkmap.live Doesn’t Add Up

#352

Post by PeterStuer »

simonh wrote: post #351
PeterStuer wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple could never out-Google Google, and they knew it. Accepting Google's suit without their own alternatives by default would have relegated their platform to be just another Google app launcher for key functionalities. They instead opted to pursue a business model that played to their own strengths. You seem to believe that Apple's iMessage service is somehow exempt from Lawful Intercept requirements. Let me quote…

On iPhones running google services, either Apple is in it just for the money or they aren't. Apple maps cost them a fortune and makes them no money, that's just a fact. They could also have easily played Google, facebook and twitter against each other, instead they said no to them all. Lawful Intercept has a fatal flaw. It doesn't require the service provider to have encryption keys for the traffic, and they can't pr…

Lawful Intercept has no such flaw. It does not let you of the hook just because you think you are clever and say "Oopsy, I can't".

If your service can't comply with regulation when requested or inspected, then your service will be disallowed until you can.

Re: Tim Cook’s Company-Wide Email on Hkmap.live Doesn’t Add Up

#353

Post by jplayer01 »

scarface74 wrote: post #338
jplayer01 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly what authoritarian governments do. They muddy the truth and make official and important sounding institutions make official statements that paint a situation in exactly they need it to be to further their own goals. I don’t understand how anybody can trust any information that comes out of the Hong Kong Cybersecurity and Technology Crime Bureau when the whole issue is that the HK government is no long…

This is exactly what authoritarian governments do. They muddy the truth and make official and important sounding institutions make official statements that paint a situation in exactly they need it to be to further their own goals. And how is this different than the current American administration?

The difference is that there is media that is free enough to speak out about how the administration is lying. There are institutions that can resist, whoever little, and reveal the truth in some way. You have none of this in China. Companies, media, individuals, government institutions - all are beholden to the CCP in a way that prevents any kind of accountability, transparency and responsibility.

The US is currently a clusterfuck, yes. But if they were anything like China, the media would be in a blackout, thousands of political enemies would be sent to gulags and people across the board would be losing their jobs for speaking out.

To pretend that the US is in any way comparable is such an absurd distortion of reality, and really plays into China's narrative. Why criticize China if the US is just as bad ?

Re: Tim Cook’s Company-Wide Email on Hkmap.live Doesn’t Add Up

#354

Post by blaser-waffle »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #307
dannyr wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of Apple's image that earned it loyal customers is that they care more about their customers than most other companies. Apple doesn't sell your data, it protects your privacy, will fight government agencies asking for user's data, etc.

I wonder how much this "Apple is fighting for your privacy" image isn't even intentional PR, but just an accident. Watching HN threads over the years, as Google kept doubling down on surveillance capitalism, the usual "Apple vs. Google" / "Android vs. iPhone" threads started to point out that Apple is not doing what Google is doing. I have a feeling the opinion of Apple being pro-privacy has spiraled out from this.

Google is trying their hardest to data mine you. Apple is data mining you... but it's not their main push.

Thus Apple is more secure?

Re: Tim Cook’s Company-Wide Email on Hkmap.live Doesn’t Add Up

#355

Post by equalunique »

SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #343
equalunique wrote: post #148

Three take-aways for me: 1) Android users win this round. 2) Would be great to have some kind of whiz-bang P2P decentralized federated mesh-networked version of Hkmap.live. 3) My opinion on Apple has not improved.

> Android users win this round. There are no winners in this game, only losers. Google make similar concessions for the Chinese government. I say that as an Android user.

I hope something like F-Droid catches on over there.

Re: Tim Cook’s Company-Wide Email on Hkmap.live Doesn’t Add Up

#356

Post by ajscanlan »

wmeredith wrote: post #345
vineyardmike wrote: post #13

This reads like propaganda. I wonder if they have to do this to keep their supply-chain open. Now would be a good time to take that $200bn and invest in some new factories.

Cook has said repeatedly that they can't buy the labor they have available n China ta any price anywhere in the world. It's not a problem they can throw money at unfortunately.

Why couldn't they cut into their profit margins if he cared that much?

Re: Tim Cook’s Company-Wide Email on Hkmap.live Doesn’t Add Up

#357

Post by est31 »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #323
est31 wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why should users believe that (closed source) iMessage encryption is free from backdoors That's an easy one: the encryption happens client side and thus any backdoor has to sit on the clients and, if it exists, would be available to security researchers. There is no guarantee of it happening, but I believe some of those researchers reverse engineer whatever binary apple published and then check it for backdoors. Of…

Doctored binaries (that leak private keys) can be sent to only select devices of a people under surveillance. So reverse-engineering generally available app will show nothing. Apple REALLY must be coerced into allowing app sideloading (and accept push notifications not only through APNS)

The OS comes from apple, too. How does sideloading help when the OS is backdoored? How does installing your own OS help when there is a backdoor in the hardware?

Re: Tim Cook’s Company-Wide Email on Hkmap.live Doesn’t Add Up

#358

Post by ikeboy »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #256
ikeboy wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Complying with the data request would have given users who had their data obtained standing to sue Apple This is wrong. Complying with a court order doesn't open you up to any liability; furthermore, the users the FBI was after in this case were already dead.

> Complying with a court order doesn't open you up to any liability It does if you've told your customers that you can't. > the users the FBI was after in this case were already dead. The owner of the device you're talking about was the user's (singular, not plural) living employer, but I wasn't talking about that user in the sentence you quoted. After implementing the data extraction procedure the FBI described, App…

>It does if you've told your customers that you can't.

Not really. First of all, a suit is unlikely when the person who'd bring a lawsuit is someone that committed a crime with probable cause. Second, damages from having your illegal actions uncovered aren't recoverable when there's a valid warrant, it would be clearly against public policy.

They wouldn't be liable at all; if somehow there was a theory of liability it would be capped at the cost of the phone, which is negligible. It doesn't add up as a motivation for Apple.

Re: Tim Cook’s Company-Wide Email on Hkmap.live Doesn’t Add Up

#359

Post by taylodl »

SiVal wrote: post #88
derefr wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For one thing, pretty much every Android device made for the Chinese market has had its OS adulterated in some way, at OEM build time, at the behest of the Chinese government. Whereas, Chinese resellers can't really adulterate an iPhone's OS; there's just the one OS image (per model), signed and sealed by Apple, and if China wants to put a rootkit on it, they'd have to convince Apple to put it into that same base-ima…

No point in debating the details of which tech is more secure or what is encrypted or adulterated or whatever. Apple has made it clear that they will make sure the Chinese gov't gets what it wants. Even in a supposedly "autonomous" Hong Kong, China complains and Apple submits--flags, apps, speech, whatever. No need to even go to court, and certainly no point. So Apple has made it clear that if China wants something,…

"So Apple has made it clear that if China wants something, the tech details won't matter."

This is an interesting statement and has important implications here in the United States as well: who's the bigger entity? The Multinational Megacorporation or the Country? Who dictates terms to whom? If a company wishes to do business in a country shouldn't they be expected to follow their laws? We need to be very careful in how we answer this question because we're at risk of losing our own democracy to a corporatacracy.

Re: Tim Cook’s Company-Wide Email on Hkmap.live Doesn’t Add Up

#360

Post by [deleted] »

scarface74 wrote: post #344
equalunique wrote: post #148

Three take-aways for me: 1) Android users win this round. 2) Would be great to have some kind of whiz-bang P2P decentralized federated mesh-networked version of Hkmap.live. 3) My opinion on Apple has not improved.

Well seeing the app does nothing that the website can’t do, developing for the web instead of an app when it’s appropriate seems to win.

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