If the majority of the citizens want that, then they can outvote their leaders. If the minority of the citizens want that, they either convince the majority to agree, or they keep quit.
I haven't bought the iPhone for the privacy stance. Apple is a part of PRISM. There is ZERO % chance that their privacy stance is more then a façade. While I try to protect my privacy from other private companies, I do not have that privacy requirement from the government as long as what they're doing is legal and collecting it to the extent permitted by the law. I will instead petition and support senators that would change the law to my liking. But if the majority disagrees, either I stop doing it, or I keep trying to change the law slowly by spreading awareness about why it's wrong.
How far back can you take that? Were they right about slavery, the nazis etc.? Or were they somehow magically wrong then, but are right ever since?
tyranny of the majority is scary to you, neglect by the minority is scary to me. What should happen in a reasonable world is that governments maintain sovereignty and that Apple, in particular on software questions (hardware would be tricky to do), to comply with regional governments.
What's blatantly absurd is that a gadget company even starts to argue with the government of the United Kingdom.
You seem to assume I am arguing for no tracing at all, but am simply saying I doubt the UK's own technology is better in terms of preserving privacy than Apple's, while achieving the same goal.
Laws, at least theoretically, exist so that you're protected in certain situations even if you don't have any actual "might".
I am simply saying that my belief in UK's own, homegrown tech, is less than Apple's/Google's tech, which is saying something as I am no fan of either.
Do you have a source for that?
Or a reason for us to believe an anonymous persona instead of a corporation that could be held liable if their claims were proven to be false?
Not op but I agree with this (within reason) having said that I don’t really think this is a moral export from Apple, more just a desire for control. I don’t think this desire is totally a bad thing (it can enable very good and consistent ux) but there is definitely a line they are walking.
Your statement can be re-interpreted as "whoever has the power not only makes the rules but has complete moral right to do so". That is clearly not correct. I'll just quickly violate Godwins law by pointing out this would mean the Nazis were correct, as they were the leaders elected by their citizens and thereby had the right to decide what was best for their citizens. And this is from the "elected leaders" part of your statement, not even the "different ways of governance" portion. Your statements can also be used to support slavery, etc.
If you believe in any kind of society that is not selective by ethnic or ideological group, there are universal human rights that must be adhered to. If you don't, then obviously your opinion becomes less relevant because we may not be in the same ethnic/ideological group and so one or the other us may not have the right to speak and to discourse in whatever society this is.
We can debate whether privacy is one of them, but knowing where everyone is and following them every moment of the day and being able to locate them down to a meter and follow all of their interactions enables and very strongly supports a lot of what we would call bad behaviour by a government - selected secret police apparatus, suppression of journalism, other cultures, and dissent, ideological control, restriction of movement, slavery, genocide, etc.
Sovereign countries are sovereign of course. But that's a truism that's irrelevant in this discussion. Such countries can ban Apple products if they don't like it. Choose your own values and build your own products.
---
> "Many eastern cultures do not value privacy as much as you guys do, and it's fine."
Actually it's not fine at all, in my opinion. I understand having different values, but we are talking about privacy and being born in the communism of Eastern Europe, I think privacy should be a basic inalienable human right.
I value companies that don't compromise on such values, as it shows not all of them are morally bankrupt.
And yes, I avoid products from Chinese companies for that reason and I'm always skeptical of US products too. Sorry, but I'll never buy stuff from companies like Huawei, not until I'll see a strong commitment to privacy, especially when the administration of the host country sees human rights as an existential threat and targets activists from other countries.
ECHR Article 8 – Right to respect for private and family life
1. Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.
2. There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.
(yes, there is a lot of elasticity in that "except")
Stop buying stuff from Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft because these companies are a part of a surveillance program called PRISM. IF you really value privacy, you wouldn't just abandon Huawei, but you'd do the same for these companies too. Unless you have a double standard of course.
No, I don't use Google or Facebook either. And I've been avoiding Microsoft since the '90-ties.
Even if one NEVER explicitly uses any Google or Facebook service, they would still be feeding their day to them just by visiting completely unrelated websites.
Apple does a lot more good for people than either of them.
And yes, I think that Google is still better compared to Apple as far as the web is concerned. I can freely block their trackers if I want to. Google's interests align with the future of the web. Apple's interests are a complete walled garden. As a consumer, for as long as the web thrives, most people benefit. When a wall garden happens, that is when consumers lose in the longer term.
I would not take the government at its word here. Their entire contact tracing program has been a shambles. They contracted the work out to their friends, put the ex-CEO of one of the countries worst ISP's in charge and wasted months trying to hack together their own soution that was never going to work in the first place. If it was really an Apple issue they could go ahead and release their Android app.
> not having permission from Apple to use a specific API in an app
The privacy question is real. While it is very awkward to have companies making public policy, sometimes it's the more secure outcome. See also the FBI's use of exploits to bypass iPhone security.
This is particularly awkward when "a means to determine who has been where and with whom" coincides with a time of large public demonstrations.
I don't agree with the public humiliation part of your post, don't really see it. It seems like a stretch to connect the Corona apps to this even though most of the world figured out how to slow down Corona without any of these apps.
Whether it's OK for Apple to keep those APIs private, that's a debate we can have, but it's not the same thing as the highway robbery they are doing with app developers.
This will show people the fact that apple is not going to protect them from the government (dispelling bullshit marketing). In turn, it will make people adopt truly open and ownable (?) tech, because for some reason people are way more negative about govt control than about apple control.
So it's a win in my book.
During COVID, governments around the world have been making major decisions based on mobility data from Apple and Google which shows trends of where people are visiting and what mode of transit they are using. The real-time mobility data from Apple and Google is far better than anything the government has itself. This is a big wake-up call to the governments that they have been basically supplanted by private companies. I'm sure no president or prime minister likes having to give a press conference where they have to say "According to Apple, we see good compliance with government regulations...."
Yesterday, the UK announced it was abandoning its own COVID contract tracing app and moving to the Apple model because they couldn't figure out how to make iPhones wake up via bluetooth (because that's a private API only available to Apple). A major western government is facing huge public embarrassment in a public health crisis over what comes down to not having permission from Apple to use a specific API in an app. That's the kind of thing that pisses off politicians, regardless of whether or not you think the UK followed the best technical path.
Combine all that with Apple now forcing companies to adopt their sign-in systems and payment methods in order to reach what is now part of the public infrastructure and Apple has created a situation where they've managed to piss off everyone across the political spectrum, from the hard-core free market people to the leftist public good people.