21–30 of 255 posts
With this much bad PR (and Apple hates bad PR), why is Apple pretty much holding its position?
Potentially something like a national security letter and they can’t reveal the real reason behind it. I agree this feature is off-brand for Apple and came out of the blue.
This article misses the point completely. It was never about what they were looking for, it was that they were looking at all. The quiet part is, once they get acceptance of the snooping using the bogeyman of the day, it will eventually encompass other behavior up to and including political dissent etc.
How does that stop a FISA subpoena with a gag order? The system exists that any secret government order can exploit.
A FISA subpoena or an NSL can only compel Apple to give certain types of information that Apple already has. They can’t compel Apple to gather information they don’t already have.
With this much bad PR (and Apple hates bad PR), why is Apple pretty much holding its position?
For example imagine creating a new tax for 1% of purchases. People would be outraged. Now imagine raising sales tax instead by 1% (ex 7% to 8%.) Sure some people would be upset, but it would be a smaller number than the "new" tax. The reason is because people are already used to paying a sales tax. What is "normal" is more easily accepted.
If Apple can get past the initial outrage (like when sales tax was implemented in many countries in history) they can increase the surveillance once scanning local files becomes the "new normal".
This problem is the capability, not what it's used for. Any such capability will be abused by new use cases be it terrorism, drug trafficking, human trafficking or whatever. Plus there will inevitably be unauthorized access.
The only way to prevent all this is for the system not to exist.
I don't buy into theories that Apple is being pressured or coerced on any of this. I believe it's far more likely this is just tone-deaf but well-intentioned incompetence. It's classic "why won't anyone think of the children?" and we've seen it time and time again with encryption backdoors and similar.
The big question for me is how and why Tim Cook and Apple's board signed off on a plan to do huge damage to Apple's reputation and user trust. If they didn't know, it's a problem. If they knew and didn't realize the inevitable backlash, well that's a different problem.
With this much bad PR (and Apple hates bad PR), why is Apple pretty much holding its position?
Their handlers have them on a tight leash.
The simplest explanation is usually the correct one. The simplest explanation would be some director in Apple wants to get promoted to VP so he or she started this project, pitched it, and very few people opposed it because who wouldn't to prevent harm of children?