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Apple’s Tim Cook Delivers Blistering Speech on Encryption, Privacy

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Re: Apple’s Tim Cook Delivers Blistering Speech on Encryption, Privacy

#31

Post by msabalau »

mkozlows wrote: post #6
icpmacdo wrote: post #3

“I’m speaking to you from Silicon Valley, where some of the most prominent and successful companies have built their businesses by lulling their customers into complacency about their personal information,” “They’re gobbling up everything they can learn about you and trying to monetize it. We think that’s wrong. And it’s not the kind of company that Apple wants to be.” This is a great strategy to win the hearts and m…

It's also, more cynically, trying to cast Apple's business model as a moral issue. I mean, to be fair, Google does this too -- their emphasis on openness with Android, or "the next billion" with the low-cost, low-margin devices they enable are casting their business model as more moral than Apple's -- but advocating for the moral superiority of spending high-end money, as Cook is here, always strikes me as kind of gr…

Cynically, and hypocritically. Just checked, the Facebook app is still in the store. Apple has been happy to take the search payments from Google from the first iPhone. Astonishing how Cook's "morality" has no practical implications that require his company to do anything.

Re: Apple’s Tim Cook Delivers Blistering Speech on Encryption, Privacy

#32

Post by mark_l_watson »

joelrunyon wrote: post #7

This, combined with a few reports from a couple months ago, sounds like Apple might be ramping up a search engine competitor that could be more privacy-focused.

I would like to see that happen.

In an ideal world, I believe, we would be able to pay for search, cloud storage, email, etc. with strong privacy and security guarantees.

Re: Apple’s Tim Cook Delivers Blistering Speech on Encryption, Privacy

#33

Post by MCRed »

threeseed wrote: post #22
msoad wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know people from Apple data-related teams and talk to them a lot. Trust me, they simply don't have what it takes to build good data-heavy software.

I know people from those teams as well. Pretty sure Siri, iTunes Match, iTunes Store, App Store, iMessages, iCloud etc use just a little bit of data so clearly they aren't idiots. And with the acquisition of the guys from FoundationDB pretty sure they will have at least some skill in high end database engineering.

Especially given that Google has yet to catch up with most of these, including the "beleaguered" Maps App.

Re: Apple’s Tim Cook Delivers Blistering Speech on Encryption, Privacy

#34

Post by alaskamiller »

Caveat being how Apple looks at privacy isn't necessary how Facebook or Google views privacy because Apple is a store while Google and Facebook are clubs.

It's in a store's best interest to keep their customer records private.

A club's best interest is to broadcast how much fun it is to join them. That's not to say a club doesn't and wouldn't want to keep their member records private as well.

In fact, clubs work hard to do so, just ask how Meerkat is doing, or any other third parties looking to build on top of a platform they don't own.

Additionally a club like Google or Facebook doesn't sell sell your information. They do the same song and dance as all mass communication companies in the past do, they merely sell hints of it.

To compare a store's motive with a club's motive is interesting, it's almost like comparing apples and oranges. It might also speak to why the core DNA of Apple isn't in creating web services, why Google's core DNA isn't in creating physical products, and why I much prefer speaking to Google Now on my iPhone.

They both see the world differently.

--

The real interesting question is this.

Apple's service agreement states they store and encrypt iMessages. There have been 300 billion messages thus far. Apple has a centralized system for managing those messages while others use a decentralized peer-to-peer system.

So a positive is that the government can't hack into it.

The negative being that if the government justifies in asking for it instead Apple has no recourse but to give it up.

When push comes to shove, will Apple, the largest company in the world, step up to the plate and spend money to fight the United States in court?

Otherwise this is just a sales pitch that Don Draper pulled when he told a fictional cigarette company to start claiming their tobacco is sun-dried so that every other cigarette company looks weaker in comparison.

Re: Apple’s Tim Cook Delivers Blistering Speech on Encryption, Privacy

#35

Post by afarrell »

damon_c wrote: post #18
mkozlows wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also, more cynically, trying to cast Apple's business model as a moral issue. I mean, to be fair, Google does this too -- their emphasis on openness with Android, or "the next billion" with the low-cost, low-margin devices they enable are casting their business model as more moral than Apple's -- but advocating for the moral superiority of spending high-end money, as Cook is here, always strikes me as kind of gr…

I agree with what you said here but I think that when Google, in the pursuit of their primary revenue stream, sells an ad targeted at you, they can only do that because of what they know about you and your search history. That is very close to the same thing as selling your data is it not?

I actually really wish there was a way for me to more directly tell google what targeted advertising to send me.

Re: Apple’s Tim Cook Delivers Blistering Speech on Encryption, Privacy

#36

Post by MCRed »

joelrunyon wrote: post #7

This, combined with a few reports from a couple months ago, sounds like Apple might be ramping up a search engine competitor that could be more privacy-focused.

I think that's possibly the case, but what I wonder is why they don't just buy DuckDuckGo.

I've built a search engine, from scratch (Eg: before Lucene and Solr existed) it's not a trivial endeavor, and due to VC interference we lost to google... these days not only do you need the infrastructure technology (something that google, notably, is not open sourcing) but you need a decades worth of historical info from past crawls to train your systems.

EDIT: Ah, I see all of my comments are being downvoted, in a vindictive fashion.

I guess I should expect nothing less.

This site needs to reform itself. I'm signing off for awhile.

Re: Apple’s Tim Cook Delivers Blistering Speech on Encryption, Privacy

#37

Post by zak_mc_kracken »

icpmacdo wrote: post #3

“I’m speaking to you from Silicon Valley, where some of the most prominent and successful companies have built their businesses by lulling their customers into complacency about their personal information,” “They’re gobbling up everything they can learn about you and trying to monetize it. We think that’s wrong. And it’s not the kind of company that Apple wants to be.” This is a great strategy to win the hearts and m…

But it's still mostly bullshit, though, especially coming from a company using closed source software for most of its products. Nobody can really tell what they are collecting, what they do with it and how much of it they share with third parties (including governments).

If you google a bit, I bet you will find similar speeches from every single big company CEO these past years: "Privacy is our number one priority, blah blah blah".

If you think Apple is different just because Tim Cook has great speech writers, you're being naive.

All these companies are in it to win your private information, and we are all prepared to give them some of our private information if what we get in return is worth it. That's the game, simple.

Re: Apple’s Tim Cook Delivers Blistering Speech on Encryption, Privacy

#38

Post by MCRed »

zak_mc_kracken wrote: post #37
icpmacdo wrote: post #3

“I’m speaking to you from Silicon Valley, where some of the most prominent and successful companies have built their businesses by lulling their customers into complacency about their personal information,” “They’re gobbling up everything they can learn about you and trying to monetize it. We think that’s wrong. And it’s not the kind of company that Apple wants to be.” This is a great strategy to win the hearts and m…

But it's still mostly bullshit, though, especially coming from a company using closed source software for most of its products. Nobody can really tell what they are collecting, what they do with it and how much of it they share with third parties (including governments). If you google a bit, I bet you will find similar speeches from every single big company CEO these past years: "Privacy is our number one priority, b…

It's funny how Google advocates always "bash" apple for being "closed source" when this company ships the most popular Unix in the world... and all of their products, even the watch, are based on it. Yes, they do keep the Application/UI layer closed source, but so does google ("Google Apps").

Yet google has spend years propagandizing that they are "open" while Apple is "closed" and that plays right into the latent desire to hate Apple from those who got a PC instead of a Mac when they were a kid.

Apple is different because for nearly 40 years they have been honest and forthright and treating people different. Google says "don't be evil" and then goes out and does evil. Apple doesn't say it, they just don't do it.

The idea that all these companies want private info and thus are all going to be evil is cynical.

And it ignores the fundamental truth: Apple's product is really nice software sold in a hardware box. Google's product is your private info.

The business models couldn't be more different.

Re: Apple’s Tim Cook Delivers Blistering Speech on Encryption, Privacy

#39

Post by kbenson »

MCRed wrote: post #27
kbenson wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because the relationship is between Google and you. The advertiser doesn't know the criteria that leads Google to show the ad to you, they just pay Google to know what they are doing and deliver relevant leads.

I know exactly the criteria google uses to show the ad to someone, because that's what I buy when I buy keywords. That google found those keywords in some poor souls email, and I don't have access to the email, doesn't make it any less the case that google is selling that poor souls info to me. Edit: New policy. I won't respond to responses when my comment is negative. HN is rife with people who are just down voting…

That doesn't seem all that different than advertising in the yellow pages to me. You have to ask the customer how they heard about you, but if they mention the yellow pages, you're pretty sure you know what they were looking for, because you picked the section(s) you advertised in.

To my knowledge, Google doesn't tell you where the keyword was found, or even if it was an exact keyword match or something they deemed similar enough to show (but I'm by no means an expert in Adwords).

At some point you just have to accept that when you call a plumber, the plumber going to have a pretty good base to assume you need a plumber, and this is releasing some information to them. Without that, communication would be impossible.

Re: Apple’s Tim Cook Delivers Blistering Speech on Encryption, Privacy

#40

Post by MCRed »

msabalau wrote: post #31
mkozlows wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also, more cynically, trying to cast Apple's business model as a moral issue. I mean, to be fair, Google does this too -- their emphasis on openness with Android, or "the next billion" with the low-cost, low-margin devices they enable are casting their business model as more moral than Apple's -- but advocating for the moral superiority of spending high-end money, as Cook is here, always strikes me as kind of gr…

Cynically, and hypocritically. Just checked, the Facebook app is still in the store. Apple has been happy to take the search payments from Google from the first iPhone. Astonishing how Cook's "morality" has no practical implications that require his company to do anything.

If you're going to call someone a hypocrite, and immoral, you should put up evidence of such.

Apple may send traffic to google, but it has privacy protections in place, anonymizing the traffic from the browser.

I don't see how the Facebook app being in the store makes Apple immoral or hypocritical, especially compared to google.

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