Apple’s Tim Cook Delivers Blistering Speech on Encryption, Privacy • Hacker News Board

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

#41

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jun 03, 2015, 3:53 AM UTC

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…

[deleted]

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

#42

Post by madeofpalk » Wed, Jun 03, 2015, 3:53 AM UTC

mark_l_watson wrote: post #32

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.

Search engine and email is always going to be 'free'. The difference, what Apple claims, comes from who pays for that.

Google's free services are subsidised by advertisers.

Apple's free services are subsidised by hardware, the software costs are lumped in when your purchase an iPhone or a Mac.

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

#43

Post by jethro_tell » Wed, Jun 03, 2015, 3:54 AM UTC

mark_l_watson wrote: post #32

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.

Apple has shown they aren't really into your data, but they've also got a pretty atrocious security record (poor handling of data on phones and slow OS patching among others) making it seem like that's also not as much of a concern as it should be.

I don't trust google and I would love to pay for 'cloud' but I think trusting Apple is also misguided.

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

#44

Post by stephenr » Wed, Jun 03, 2015, 3:55 AM UTC

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…

> All these companies are in it to win your private information,

The companies he Tim Cook described, that offer "free" services and data-mine/aggregate/sell your personal information to fund the business? Yes.

Apple has a vested interest in not collecting, analysing, aggregating and using the vast amounts of private information other companies do: they're seen by many as a premium brand, where you pay a bit more and get a better product/experience. Part of that is not getting "maybe you'd like X" emails from the App Store, or "Hey do you need a new printer for that Mac you just bought on Apple.com" type shit.

> and we are all prepared to give them some of our private information if what we get in return is worth it.

You might be. "We" are not all prepared to hand over private information.

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

#45

Post by noondip » Wed, Jun 03, 2015, 3:55 AM UTC

afarrell wrote: post #35

damon_c wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

https://www.google.com/settings/u/0/ads

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

#46

Post by vacri » Wed, Jun 03, 2015, 3:57 AM UTC

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…

Perhaps a privacy advocate should be wondering about the 'sniff test' of the speech. What does “Like many of you, we at Apple reject the idea that our customers should have to make tradeoffs between privacy and security” mean? That there's a serious argument that less privacy is more security? Aren't they functionally the same thing in this context - 'security' here is about maintaining privacy.

It's also a bit rich that Cook is talking about other entities gobbling up your data for themselves, when Apple is the epitome of the 'walled garden'. Apparently being in control of your own information is only what Apple wants if it's concomitant with their control of your information.

Cook isn't being morally upstanding here. He's just reframing his company's position to make the other guy look bad. It's the traditional pattern of hide your weaknesses and expose those of your competition.

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

#47

Post by jacobolus » Wed, Jun 03, 2015, 3:57 AM UTC

mkozlows wrote: post #29

damon_c wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

No, it's very different. If I'm concerned about my privacy, I'm concerned about who knows stuff about me. Google knows a bunch of stuff about their customers inherently (because their customers have all their email on Google servers, do Google searches, etc.), so Google customers have already decided they trust Google with that information. If Google were selling it, they'd be passing it along to other organizations…

(1) Google also puts ads and other little tracking widgets (google analytics, G+ social buttons, etc.) all over the web, gathering massive amounts of information about people’s browsing habits unrelated to any direct customer relationship or informed consent.

(2) Use of Google search does not at all imply that a customer wants all of their searches to be associated with their identity, processed, stored indefinitely, used to build a comprehensive dossier to better target advertising on unrelated pages, or handed over to nation-state spooks who come asking. It’s not at all clear that most customers understand what information they’re handing over or what can be done with it when they use services like search.

[Yes, plenty of other ad networks, analytics companies, social media services, etc. do the same thing, and plenty of other types of companies (e.g. the banks you mention) and government agencies also build permanent profiles of people based on whatever scraps of data they can; this is not only a Google problem. It’s creepy when anyone does it, which is why there should be better regulatory oversight ensuring that customers know what data is collected and how it is used, restricting certain types of data aggregation and customer profiling, and placing limits on how long various types of data can be kept.]

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

#48

Post by magicalist » Wed, Jun 03, 2015, 3:57 AM UTC

[deleted] wrote: post #41

zak_mc_kracken wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[deleted]

As I never tire of pointing out, he was actually pointing out how to protect your privacy from the federal government before many cared at all:

> "People are treating Google like their most trusted friend. Should they be?"

> "I think judgment matters. If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place. But if you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines, including Google, do retain this information for some time. And it’s important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act. It is possible that information could be made available to the authorities."

But that never got play back then, so we get the incomplete quote everywhere. It took Edward Snowden to make the tech blogs finally change narrative.

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

#49

Post by pervycreeper » Wed, Jun 03, 2015, 3:59 AM UTC

[deleted] wrote: post #17

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…

[deleted]

>You're arguing over semantics. Selling a product (ads) that is a direct result of having that data is basically selling that data.

For some definition of "basically" that means "not whatsoever". Selling involves exchanging money for goods or services with another party (to paraphrase Homer Simpson).

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

#50

Post by vacri » Wed, Jun 03, 2015, 4:01 AM UTC

stephenr wrote: post #44

zak_mc_kracken wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> All these companies are in it to win your private information, The companies he Tim Cook described, that offer "free" services and data-mine/aggregate/sell your personal information to fund the business? Yes. Apple has a vested interest in not collecting, analysing, aggregating and using the vast amounts of private information other companies do: they're seen by many as a premium brand, where you pay a bit more and…

Part of that is not getting "maybe you'd like X" emails from the App Store

I use a fair variety of google products on a couple of different platforms and have for years. Google has never sent me a suggest-sell email. They don't hide the fact that they're in the advertising and marketing business, but they're not that unsubtle.

Perhaps other people get suggest-sell emails from Google, but it's not something I've seen (or heard people complain about).