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I must admit, I'm no Apple fanboy but in this case, I can easily picture a NSA rep threatening Steve Jobs and Steve Jobs telling him to f * off.
I wonder what would a Tim Cook-made iMessage look like from a security standpoint (probably a lot more like Skype/Hangouts than how it works right now).
A couple of years ago at a Linux conference in Germany I had a discussion with a Microsoft employee at their booth. At that time I was a 'hardcore' linux user with no trust in Microsoft at all. The discussion with the employee went like this: Me: "Hello. Could you tell me what Microsoft is doing at this Linux conference? I honestly want to know that." Him: "We are here to show how our products can work well together…
"Microsoft is oblivious if it is not doing something to divorce itself from the NSA" No John, unfortunately it is not really an option to move 57,000 employees and a headquarters out of the United States. That is what would need to be done. None of the people making statements for these large corporations are lying voluntarily.
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How do you know it was Steve Jobs that prevented Apple from joining earlier? Perhaps Apple just wasn't a priority for the NSA until 2012.
It's conjecture, but it's likely. Apple as a company has put a high value on user privacy, which was heavily influenced by Steve. He was also known for maintaining a high degree of personal privacy for such a public figure (for instance, refusing to put plates on his car).
With that said, do you really want to buy a Microsoft product?
Notice the words appears and apparently. Until there is specific evidence to take those two words away from those sentences, hardly anything will change.
I think it is time to rethink everything, Not just Microsoft. Cloud computing is at risk now too. From Amazon to Google Drive, Gmail, etc. Shared hosting is not even secure any longer. Our connections from our isp can be the source of their spying. People want the ease of computing not secure computing. The polls show it. In the US everyone but the geeks are OK with the NSA. Sad. The system is going to have to change…
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That's bullshit. The problem that people like you don't seem to understand is that online communications can be secure, unless the companies owning the servers themselves cooperate and companies have to cooperate if they have to do so by law. It's only the US that has such a huge budget for spying on people's communications and the US is also part of a select handful of countries going to such great lengths to suppre…
True, but I am talking about the practical risk based on what is known about the spying.
What really bothers me about this is that U.S. companies and individuals have to keep their interactions with the NSA a secret, while obeying whatever demands the NSA has, including the installing of back-doors.
Trust is a fragile thing and we rely on trust for conducting business and for living our lives. My trust in U.S.-based companies has been shaken. Even if the affected companies (such as Google, Microsoft, Apple) want to be trustworthy for their customers, they can be coerced by law to obey whatever the NSA demands and they must also keep it a secret, with absolutely no transparency - they aren't even allowed to say "yes, the NSA demanded some things and we unfortunately complied". Even worse, they can be coerced into making public statements that are full of lies.
I can no longer trust any U.S. based company again.
For example, right now I'm using Skype. But what if the Skype client has a backdoor allowing one to open and listen to my mike any time they want (it's a proprietary blob, we'll never know). What if this backdoor gets hacked and used by people that are not part of the U.S. government? So in spite of the best intentions of the people working on Skype and the NSA; even if I've got "nothing to hide", Skype is all of a sudden a security liability and nothing (short of an open-source client that I can compile and run) can prove otherwise, because Microsoft isn't allowed to be open about it. And I can no longer rely on the fragile trust I've had for Microsoft, because Microsoft can be coerced into being untrustworthy.
See how it goes? We'll see how this unfolds over the next years, however the damage done to U.S. companies will prove to be massive.
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It's conjecture, but it's likely. Apple as a company has put a high value on user privacy, which was heavily influenced by Steve. He was also known for maintaining a high degree of personal privacy for such a public figure (for instance, refusing to put plates on his car).
Apple is a company producing consumer devices, while the others are companies offering Internet services, which is what PRISM targets. Apple has only recently had some success in the Internet services space with iCloud.
That's incitement enough to try to get them on board.
PS. It's *buntu that spins my propeller.
PPS. I'd be interested in what RMS has to say, not just about MS in this case but the whole PRISM/NSA thing in general - he has been warning us.
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True, but I am talking about the practical risk based on what is known about the spying.
What really bothers me about this is not the actual spying - I always assumed that governments do engage in whatever spying they can get away with. What really bothers me about this is that U.S. companies and individuals have to keep their interactions with the NSA a secret, while obeying whatever demands the NSA has, including the installing of back-doors. Trust is a fragile thing and we rely on trust for conducting…
Will?