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Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

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Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#91
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a big difference between recognizing "open the photos app, computer" and "what times is the avenger's showing today, Siri?"

How do you plan to get the Avengers showtimes without connecting to the internet?

You misunderstand what the internet connection is for. Right now most machine learning models run on server farms and your voice snppet is sent to the server, where the model processes it. They then send the interpretation back

"Local model" means the voice snippet is processed on your device. Never beamed off to a server farm.

The interpretation might be:

  Action: internetSearch
  QueryString: movie times for "Avengers" [near me || {userPreferences.movieTheater}]
  UseLocation: true
Which then kicks off whatever process Siri has for handling internet search actions

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#92
post #70

That's very good. The more high-profile people speak up against what's happening, the more the general public realizes what's really going on. Frankly, most non-technical users have no idea how they're profiled and what the real and potential dangers are. You know what's funny? We reached a point where 100% private conversation between two endpoints is finally possible, without the dependence on any third party (be i…

WhatsApp is (we are told) end-to-end encrypted using the same protocol as Signal.

As far as I understand this, correct me if this is wrong, this means the content of your messages is encrypted. There is still important data to fetch about who you talk to, how much and when.

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#93
post #74
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple's stance has been completely consistent. They comply with the law while making their ethical beliefs and stance as a company clear where they disagree with it. What do you suggest Apple should do instead of comply with the law? Require it's employees to incriminate themselves?

I agree, and you can also tell that Apple is on the right side of this because of that FBI phone unlocking case. Apple fought the government tooth and nail, and they made it literally impossible to do for later models of phones. That whole incident really impressed me. Of the "giant evil megacorporations that will dominate our cyberpunk future", I think Apple has slightly more moral sense and backbone compared to Goo…

That's an interesting view, considering all the outrage on this site related to Google potentially entering the Chinese market under their law. It was deemed utterly immoral... and Apple gets a free pass although their own CEO it talking about human rights?

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#94
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can get paid in the form of a free OS for your smartphone? Or free use of a video streaming platform?

>You can get paid in the form of a free OS for your smartphone? I paid full price for my phone, there was no warning or contract for me selling my data. I also do not remember a clear EULA about me selling or paying with my data, usually this EULAs are emphasizing that data is collected to give us better services not that is sold/shared with third parties.

> data is collected to give us better services

Literally every company that steals your data and sells it, has this sentence in their data privacy terms.

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#95

First response: This sounds good, maybe I should consider Apple for my next device? Second response: Was undermining Google the reason he held the speech in the first place?

Before you consider Apple as your next device provider, remember that they right now are completely shutting down third party repairs of their devices. Also Apple's own "repair method" is to tell you that it's broken, without so much as opening the case and just replacing any component that seems to act up, costing you up to the device's original price in repair fees.

What's this got to do with privacy?

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#96
post #87

Hi Apple. Please: • add VPN on/off to control center • allow per-app VPN via Apple Configurator, without enterprise MDM • once the above two are available, we can use Tor, IDS, DPI or pihole on a per-application basis, to reduce data harvesting • bonus1: allow the open-source iOS MDM community OR the iOS Shortcuts community to make it easy for novice users to have one-click install of "privacy-plus configurations" •…

I’d like to see better sand boxing of the Photo album on iOS. Facebook, LinkedIn and others are known to raid your photos if they have access to it. Ideally you could limit their ability to read and write to just a specific photo album. Or limit write and read separately. At the moment your ability to enable and disable the permission is based on what permission the app requests and they show up together.

iOS has long had an API for allowing access to individual photos from the system photo picker. Unfortunately many apps eschew this because they prefer having access to all of the user’s photos.

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#97

I have owned couple of google phones (Nexus and Pixel). Today for the first time ever I am considering buying an iPhone. I would pay premium for privacy on Google devices if they make it available. And we now know what the price is - $40 in EU. Just sell it like this Google.

have owned couple of google phones (Nexus and Pixel). Today for the first time ever I am considering buying an iPhone

I was a BlackBerry die-hard until they switched to Android. A privacy-focused phone using a Google OS, what a joke. Switched to iPhone and it’s pretty good, only thing I miss is the real keyboard.

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#98
Translation: "Please outlaw our competitors' clever software so no one will have any reason to buy anything else. Also people should not have the option to use free service which will further improve our margins, thanks".

If nothing else he gets free advertising from a fawning noncritical press.

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#99
post #34

It's sad how the introduction of a new class of devices "smartphones" brought along with it a surveillance software platform in the form of Android. Where it is clear that the only incentive for google to develop it is exfiltration of as much personal data as they can. In contrast in the case of Apple you have a customer relationship with the company that sold you the device and they have an incentive to keep you as…

I would kill for a Linux phone, but until that happens I would settle for a phone that comes with root access (or at least allows technically capable users to get it) and let's me control my own data and device from the bare metal up. Because even if Apple has less incentive to exfiltrate data, I don't want to have to trust any company to do the right thing or to keep doing it.

You might be interested in this project.

https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#100
post #87

Hi Apple. Please: • add VPN on/off to control center • allow per-app VPN via Apple Configurator, without enterprise MDM • once the above two are available, we can use Tor, IDS, DPI or pihole on a per-application basis, to reduce data harvesting • bonus1: allow the open-source iOS MDM community OR the iOS Shortcuts community to make it easy for novice users to have one-click install of "privacy-plus configurations" •…

I’d like to see better sand boxing of the Photo album on iOS. Facebook, LinkedIn and others are known to raid your photos if they have access to it. Ideally you could limit their ability to read and write to just a specific photo album. Or limit write and read separately. At the moment your ability to enable and disable the permission is based on what permission the app requests and they show up together.

There is an "add-only" permission, but it seems the app can override and insist on "read/write" permission.
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