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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

#71

Post by endgame »

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…

I was shocked at the amount of registration info a new mac asks for. Haven't bought one since.

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

#72

Post by pen2l »

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…

> “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,”

That is just really, really, REALLY RICH, coming from the company who's behind this kind of shit: http://i.imgur.com/1lGp7ps.jpg

Yep, to turn off ad-tracking, you have to go to... Settings... then 'General'... and then... About. Wait, "About"? Yes, "About", then "Advertising" ... and then do "Limit Ad Tracking". "Limit Ad Tracking", what a wonderfully clear label huh!

Of course that's coming to you form the individual who likes to give lofty speeches about how he and Steve Jobs led in 'advancing humanity through the equality of all its employees' [1]. Because let's please just forget about how Apple had its part in collusion over hiring policies [2].

[1]: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/15/technology/tim-cook-making...

[2]: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/04/23...

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

#73

Post by jlarocco »

MCRed wrote: post #38
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…

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 de…

> 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.

Google and Apple behave similarly, as far as I can tell. TBH, I wouldn't call either company "evil," but they're both equally unfriendly to users, IMO. I'm curious why you think Apple is less "evil"?

> 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.

That's not a fundamental truth, and it's a false dichotomy. Apple's products are both software/hardware AND private info.

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

#74

Post by hackuser »

Apple's statements about privacy, combined poor end-user control and openness (transparency), are an interesting dichotomy. Usually I associate privacy with the latter two. What does it mean without them?

1) To what degree can you trust the systems without openness? Maybe what Cook thinks is valuable data, adequate confidentiality, or acceptable risk, is not what you think. On the other hand, few people actually review the security of FOSS systems.

2) To what degree can you have confidentiality without controlling the system and data? Maybe tomorrow an update will expose your data because you're doing something Apple didn't anticipate or approve. On the other hand, from a system administrator's perspective, it's much easier to secure systems that the sysadmin manages and controls than systems controlled by the users.

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

#75

Post by magicalist »

> Cook went on to state, as he has before when talking about products like Apple Pay, that Apple ‘doesn’t want your data.’

I was actually somewhat disappointed by the Apple Pay approach (and that Android Pay is going to follow suit). I'd actually much rather have Apple or Google as an intermediary and give the credit card issuer no information about my transaction. It may seem nice to say that your phone OS sees no data about it, but of course the tradeoff is that the issuer does, and they are notorious sellers to data brokers.

I'd much rather have one time tokens for both the seller and the bank, and only my phone knows what actually happened in between.

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

#76

Post by duskwuff »

MCRed wrote: post #25
threeseed wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you talking about ? Apple is far more invested in software than ever before and have acquired a lot of software companies over the last couple of years for which we not seen the output of: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisition... And Apple does have software that does the recommendations for iTunes Store, Apple Store and App Store but I am guessing the billions of money to be made by o…

Also, Apple has had face recognition in Aperture, and probably iPhoto, for many years. Probably around the time that Facebook got it. Of course people who dislike Apple are unlikely to be using Apple software and wouldn't know this. Edit after the vote brigade: These are two straight up statements of fact. When you down vote them, you tell me that you're being ideological and you don't care what the facts are. Alas,…

Likely explanation for the downvotes: By stating "Apple has had face recognition in Aperture, and probably iPhoto" here, you're heavily implying some things which aren't true at all.

In particular, you're implying that as well as including local face recognition features, Apple is somehow transmitting face recognition data to its servers and/or elsewhere. This is simply not true; these features are entirely local.

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

#78

Post by magicalist »

stephenr wrote: post #65
magicalist wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

The government doesn't force Google to run their business the way they do, dependent as it is on such huge amounts of personal information, to provide "better" (for some peoples value for better) targeted ads. If Google don't track/store what I search for, what results I click through to, etc, it doesn't matter what the US government asks them for - they are technically unable to hand over data they don't have.

I guess. It's a tradeoff, really. I find it very convenient to store all my photos with Google, for instance, and I make that decision with eyes wide open. Same with search history or even location history. I'm sympathetic to the argument that there are a lot of consumers making that decision without full knowledge (the help documents are actually pretty good[1], but you have to know they exist to read them). However, I'm not remotely sympathetic to the idea there's no possible reason one would make that tradeoff.

[1] https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/54068

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

#79

Post by krisgenre »

I find taking pot shots at competing companies really cheap. Its 2015 and by now I think most people are aware that Facebook and Google collect all the information they can so that they can offer their services for 'free'.

How many would really pay for email, cloud storage, search, social network, browser..? what guarantees do I have that the government will NOT have access to my data if I pay for it?

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

#80

Post by DigitalBison »

pen2l wrote: post #72
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…

> “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,” That is just really , really , REALLY RICH, coming from the company who's behind this kind of shit: http://i.imgur.com/1lGp7ps.jpg Yep, to turn off ad-tracking, you have to go to... Settings... then 'General'...…

Not sure how recently it was changed, but on my phone running iOS 8.3 that setting is under Privacy -> Advertising.
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