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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

#141

Post by davidcgl »

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…

> Google says "don't be evil" and then goes out and does evil.

"Evil" such as serving you ads?

> Google's product is your private info.

Better ads targeting using your private info - not selling your private info to advertisers/governments. It's evident how much you distrust Google, but don't spread and allude to FUD.

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

#142

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#143

Post by QuantumRoar »

Making a speech is easy, compared to actually doing the right thing.

Just a month ago, I was asked by an employee of an Apple Certified Service Provider to decrypt my hard drive in order for Apple to make a "hardware test". There was an issue with my display, but they insisted that Apple's hardware test needed to have access to the data on my hard drive and send information back to Apple via the Internet. What about privacy, now?

So, don't believe anything they tell you. If you want to be secure, you need to take care of it yourself.

Edit: Just to make it clear, the employees were asking me, to hand over my administrator password, which should be added to their database, in order for the technician to successfully run Apple's hardware tests. This is literally the most insane thing that ever happened to me...

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

#144

Post by microtonal »

tolmasky wrote: post #118
threeseed wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. iMessages is not dead simple. Not sure if you've ever worked on highly concurrent, real time systems but they are never as trivial as it seems to the lay outsider. And whilst I can't comment on it getting messages out of order (never happened to anyone I know) it isn't widespread based on media reports. 2. Not sure why you are comparing App Store with Amazon when Apple has an equivalent: the Apple Online Store. It…

1. Here you go, first result from Google search: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4408578?start=0&tstart=... . Problem starts in 2012, still going end of 2014. 50,000 views. My current issue with iMessages is the completely random behavior of whether my computer or phone will get the message. Before iMessage it was pretty deterministic, now its like a game! The frequent solution is to text my iMessage email AND p…

Its dead simple because other services seem to have figured this out. Twitter does actual real time systems, and its not 1-to-1. Slack meanwhile seems to have no trouble delivering me messages.

I can confirm these problems. When I had an iPhone and iMessage, they were out of order all the time, and delivered unpredictably.

However, Slack, Twitter, etc. are not solving the same problems. iMessage does end-to-end encryption and has perfect forward secrecy (which, if I understand correctly, implies that they need to re-key fairly often).

https://www.eff.org/secure-messaging-scorecard

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

#145

Post by davidcgl »

randomsearch wrote: post #136

Everyone seems to be Apple-bashing, and ignoring the fact that Apple really don't make money out of your private information. They make cash out of selling devices. So their interests are more aligned with yours. You may have noticed that Google don't make their money out of selling hardware. So they make it through other means. This is really inarguable, regardless of whether you think Apple are using that for marke…

> So their interests are more aligned with yours.

Exactly how does a company that makes money through selling you products have its interests more aligned to yours?

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

#146

Post by anon1385 »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #66
stephenr wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 think, sadly, that's not true. The government can force them to change their business, and begin recording personal information that passes through their hands. Its very strange.

There is a lot of tracking Google does that couldn't just be instantly turned on at the request of a government if Google wasn't already doing it.

For example Google Analytics: if that product didn't exist the government couldn't just ask Google to install tracking scripts on half the websites in the world without anybody noticing.

You could argue that the government could force Google to create and market Google Analytics. But that just re-enforces the idea that we shouldn't be using Google Analytics - we don't even know if it isn't entirely a program created at the request of the US government (I don't actually believe this, but it's where you end up if you start worrying about the government forcing Google to change their business).

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

#147

Post by etchalon »

QuantumRoar wrote: post #143

Making a speech is easy, compared to actually doing the right thing. Just a month ago, I was asked by an employee of an Apple Certified Service Provider to decrypt my hard drive in order for Apple to make a "hardware test". There was an issue with my display, but they insisted that Apple's hardware test needed to have access to the data on my hard drive and send information back to Apple via the Internet. What about…

That's not even a little insane.

They needed access to something, and asked you for it to complete their work.

It would have been insane if the guy had just hit a button, and your data was decrypted.

As it stood, you were always in complete control of your data.

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

#148

Post by etchalon »

davidcgl wrote: post #145
randomsearch wrote: post #136

Everyone seems to be Apple-bashing, and ignoring the fact that Apple really don't make money out of your private information. They make cash out of selling devices. So their interests are more aligned with yours. You may have noticed that Google don't make their money out of selling hardware. So they make it through other means. This is really inarguable, regardless of whether you think Apple are using that for marke…

> So their interests are more aligned with yours. Exactly how does a company that makes money through selling you products have its interests more aligned to yours?

Because that company makes its from me, directly. It has to cater its products to ME, and not to advertisers, or enterprises, or anyone else.

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

#149

Post by slyn »

davidcgl wrote: post #145
randomsearch wrote: post #136

Everyone seems to be Apple-bashing, and ignoring the fact that Apple really don't make money out of your private information. They make cash out of selling devices. So their interests are more aligned with yours. You may have noticed that Google don't make their money out of selling hardware. So they make it through other means. This is really inarguable, regardless of whether you think Apple are using that for marke…

> So their interests are more aligned with yours. Exactly how does a company that makes money through selling you products have its interests more aligned to yours?

By building and providing a product or service that you need/want/like enough to pay for?

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

#150

Post by mirimir »

peteretep wrote: post #128
mirimir wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can one buy Apple products for cash, without supplying any personal information or identication? Edit: This is a prerequisite for meaningful privacy. Plus having a pseudonymous account, funded by Bitcoins, for buying apps and stuff. Otherwise it's all based on trusting Apple, and so there's a single point of failure.

Yes; even if that's not true for Apple stores, plenty of resellers.

Can one setup a pseudonymous Apple account, funded via Bitcoins?
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