> this still doesn't solve the problem of whether Apple themselves are abusing your privacy

Eventually you have to trust someone. This added transparency from Apple is commendable. I support open source for publicly funded software, but if it's privately owned and funded, you can choose to buy and use it or not. Private companies are not under any moral obligation to open source their code or methods.

Some people are successful while open sourcing everything, and that is commendable too.

>Eventually you have to trust someone. This added transparency from Apple is commendable. I support open source for publicly funded software, but if it's privately owned and funded, you can choose to buy and use it or not. Private companies are not under any moral obligation to open source their code or methods.

Funny how you change your argument mid-paragraph. "It's okay! You have to trust somebody. Or maybe you don't. But anyway, it's a private company, so just don't buy it!"

Well the latter is not what GP was arguing in this thread is it? -.-

You have a choice about where you place your trust. You seem to want me to say "buy it" or "don't buy it" and I'm saying it's up to you.

> Eventually you have to trust someone.

Perhaps, but Apple is the last company I would trust. They work in a culture of secrecy and engineer for obscurity rather than transparency, and that does not make them trustable at all.

> Private companies are not under any moral obligation to open source their code

But I will give far more trust to those who do so, or at least the privacy-critical parts. With Android I need to trust no-one; I can modify things on the OS level that do not necessarily execute apps in the way those apps expect to be executed, and that is the ultimate privacy guarantee.

I own the hardware, so how my hardware runs software should be my choice; the entire set of instructions and APIs for creating phone apps is merely a suggestion for how the OS should execute apps, and how a stock OS executes apps, but does not necessarily reflect how I choose to have my hardware execute them.

Why do you have to eventually trust someone?

Because you would need to write and/or audit your entire technology toolchain — software, build tools, operating systems, hardware, etc — which isn't feasible for anyone.

not a single person, but the sum of all people looking at the different parts. that's how open source works.

I mean, I've known a few developers that worked at apple. I trust them every bit as much as the average developer who reads open source code. They vouched that the code they worked with at apple was attempting to be secure and wasn't trying to steal user's data.

If I'm not going to read the source code myself either way, why should I trust that random open source code-reader X who says "yup, didn't see any malicious code" vs a developer friend who works for apple and says "yup, no malicious code"?

Honestly, more often than not there's a lot of overlap between those people... And I'd bet that there's a ton of eyes I'd trust on iOS's source code given how many devs apple pays to work on it, while I think there's far fewer on most non-corporate open source projects.

I don't think the issue we should worry about will always just be one bad actor in an organisation.

A corporation like Apple (or TikTok) will sometimes decide to implement features that are antithetical to its users best interests, because there's a commercial imperative to do so.

If the code is closed-source, it's more difficult to assess whether this is the case.

I've said this before, but the dogmatic belief that open source automatically means something is safer just isn't true.

In theory it means something could maybe be safer, but it far from guarantees it.

Being able to inspect the code is a necessary but insufficient measure for being secure. If you cannot inspect the source code, you are not fully aware of how the program works.

Tools like strace can help you analyze a program's behavior from the outside, but you get limited insight into its internals (e.g., what algorithms is it using?).

Being open source does not automatically make software more secure. A successful compilation doesn't automatically make your code bug-free. Yet both are necessary to achieve the desired goal: security and correctness, respectively.

How often do you inspect the code of the open source programs you use every day? How about when updates come out? Do you check again?

Or, do you trust that someone has looked at it? How much faith do you have in someone out there in the community?

My point isn't that open source isn't a good thing--my point is that it's not the silver bullet a lot of people blindly assume it to be. Hence the second line of my post:

> In theory it means something could maybe be safer, but it far from guarantees it.

But for a closed source one there’s definitely no way to audit the source code.

Sure there is: tools like strace, dtrace and eBPF let you “peak under the hood” of nearly any application, not to mention disassemblers like IDA Pro and Ghidra.

I have debugged all sorts of issues with closed source applications using these tools.

neither did I say it's automatically safe, nor define "safe" as in bug free.

The commented I replied to implied that one would walk through the entire stack, every line of code, to audit e.g. an app running on a phone. This is most certainly not what OP meant. Rather, on a whole OSS is mostly transparent, while proprietary software is not. There are of course bugs, but that's not the focus here with "safety".

What we care about is intention. Private companies's have a track record in implementing features that go directly against the benefit if their end-users, e.g. tracking or vendor-lock-in. These anti-features, like the one described in the article, are much harder to detect precisely because the software is proprietary.

Sure, but then you're putting your trust in those people. The point was that an individual can't possibly have the time or resources to do it themselves and so, at some point, they have to put their trust in someone else.

And thus you would need to trust those people.

It's better to trust several people, with competing interests, that one single entity. This is like, democracy 101, come on.

Better than trusting a black box from a single business.

The (ongoing) saga of libssh alone should be enough convincing that many eyes do nothing as regards shallowness.

I read in a news paper that one time this search party completely missed a young girl they were looking for. Your logic would dictate that search parties are a waste of time. Is open source a panacea? No, clearly, as you stated. Are more eyes, even untrained ones, better than no eyes? Ask all the people saved by search party volunteers every year.

Wait a minute. So it's better to have government finances be closed to the public, right? Because after all, you would need to audit 100,000s of pages of documents to understand what's going on -- which isn't feasible for anyone.

Homebrew software and hacks aren't feasible solutions for the general population. You can't expect a tech-illiterate person to put up with all of that to protect their right to privacy. Like it or not, solutions like Apples' are much more efficient at protecting 1 billion (exaggeration) people at once.

Not just illiterate. How many people here have the time or desire to inspect every app they use? It's a ridiculous proposition. We all have better things to do.

Obviously the onus isn't on every single user to single handedly verify themselves that the software is correct. Do you check your government's finances yourself? So why should they even publish it? By your logic, that is.

The answer is that if it's open then multiple people with differing interests, such as competitors, or even independent organisations such as non-profit auditors, can check the code.

That's like saying that freedom of speech should be banned because most people have nothing to say. User rights needs to be there for the people who need it. The iPhone is currently a black box where it's very hard to know what is happening in it, that's a big issue in terms of privacy and accountability of the platform, not to mention the anti-competitive behaviours.

Is there a practical solution that isn’t a black box? For the general population, not enthusiasts.

Yes, there's a whole market for Android devices which are both opened and very secure.

I'm not even sure how something like T2 could be done with an open platform

Let the user replace the manufacturer's keys with their own?

Imagine grandma accidentally putting her phone number in instead of an encryption key.

You're right, but you are also missing the point. Consumers in general have access to one of only a few options for computing tasks. To date, of these mainstream options, only Apple is taking a meaningful stance on privacy. Is it self-serving, sub-optimal, or otherwise broken? Probably. Is it the best thing for privacy currently widely available? Probably.

Apple’s approach improves privacy in most contexts for all of its users, enough to shape market practices. Your approach works for a tiny, tiny sliver of people - which, by the nature of population-level snooping and marketing, are irrelevant.

> I'm probably going to get downvoted to hell

It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Don't bring it up next time. Reverse psychology (in an attempt to not get downvotes) doesn't work here, it just pisses people off (and is against the rules to complain about), so you WILL receive downvotes for mentioning it.

It happens whether or not I say that actually. Every time I disagree with Apple I get downvoted to oblivion. There are just too many Apple fanboys here who believe Apple is the be-all end-all of everything privacy.

Or what you’re saying doesn’t add to the conversation. Simply blaming ‘fanboys’ isn’t useful. I don’t think any of the responses to you post believe that Apple are the “be-all end-all” of privacy, but they are arguing that for the typical consumer (something that is too often overlooked) they currently provide the best solution available. The critical bit there is typical consumer. If you’re a “power user” (what a horrid expression) and want to go another route, have at it! You have a choice.

> On Android (by modifying the OS)

I’m genuinely curious how you can imagine this is a realistic solution.

Developers could create a third party ROM with the privacy enhancements which users could install.

How is users having to trust third-party developers about privacy features in a ROM different to users having to trust Apple?

Independent audits could be conducted on those privacy enhanced ROMs, if there was enough interest.

I'm not saying this is the most practical solution to this problem but at least it's a possibility.

Anybody can have a look at the ROM to see if it makes sense whereas only Apple can realistically audit the iPhone.

You say “anybody” But I’m not a programmer, I would have no idea what I’m looking at. And trust me, neither would the vast majority of humans.

Beyond that, have you considered the actual average user? You either never worked tech support or forgot. It’s bad out there, it’s like people are moving backwards with computer skills because of phones.

> You say “anybody” But I’m not a programmer, I would have no idea what I’m looking at. And trust me, neither would the vast majority of humans.

That's still a way better outcome than having a single uncountable company being able to do audits.

> Beyond that, have you considered the actual average user? You either never worked tech support or forgot. It’s bad out there, it’s like people are moving backwards with computer skills because of phones.

People are becoming worse with computer skills because manufacturers try very hard to remove owners from how their machine works, I'm not sure going further into this way will help. In a very locked down device like the iPhone, the phone owner can't even understand what it's doing even if they wanted to.

The difference is realistically possible vs not possible.

I think the point stands.

It’s still about trust.

There's nothing to be gained by trusting a large corporation.

By defending user privacy, Apple is able to have a direct affect on the bottom line of its rival corporations.

All corporations behave according to incentives that will help they to progress further than their competitors. If they don't rival coporations will take the lead.

So should why should I trust anyone? The crux of these arguments is essentially anti-capitalism. That’s fine. But be upfront about it. There is a debate to be had around the ethics of privacy in a capitalist free market economy. In this instance, for me at least, Apple is the devil I know. Your point around trusting corporations is totally valid, but I’ve yet to see a similarly valid argument for trusting open source projects. “You can read/compile the source code” is only valid if it is all encompassing. At some point in that line of argument trust still has to be deferred.

Conceptually, trust suggests we don't need to question, or exercise due diligence. I'd argue, in a capitalist system, you definitely shouldn't trust anyone! Capitalism is based on incentive.

--

So following on from this. Is the crux of these arguments anti-capitalist?

No .. it's not anti-capitalism. It's realistic. Even more realistic if you believe in a capitalism system and want to compete.

I feel that capitalism works most successfully when it provides more people with a better quality of life.

Fundamentally, there are conceptual problems with a capitalist system .. factors that lead to scenarios that are likely to lead to the system operating sub-optimally.

An example of a problem; if a corporation is allowed to grow without limit, how can new companies realistically compete?

The remedy? I guess it's up for discussion. But I think regulation can prevent the worst form occurring, and many markets have measures in place to carry out this type of regulation.

--

Why am I saying this?

Because I feel that open-source is simply a remedy to a conceptual problem that exists within our capitalist economy. It is not antithetical to capitalism.

Namely, the question it serves to answer is; how do we balance the power provided by digital technologies with the incentive companies have to exploit these powers for commercial gain?

Open-source is a logical answer to this. You could argue, we don't have the tools available to highlight any injustices contained in a code-base. My answer would be .. that doesn't mean we conceptually couldn't or won't in the future.

Closed source is a conceptual dead end - and won't lead to a better future.

Android is open source, iOS is not.

The Android almost everyone uses is not open source.

The iOS _everyone_ uses is not open source.

Check out the Xposed framework. It's pretty neat.

> Or you can let access to your photos, but only let it see a walled garden of a few select photos.

iOS 14 has this now.

And any access to sensitive data always prompts you. And if you deny the request it sends empty data back to the app. Exactly like what you describe.

Yes but you could do this on Android since version 1 because it was open source. You could always modify the OS to spit out fake sensor data and appease apps that would otherwise not run if you didn't give them permissions.

My privacy shouldn't depend on Tim Cook's product management timeline.

I hate how our options are "Choose apple and blindly trust them" or "Chose android an see in the open that your data is being abused"

You forgot option 3: use Lineage+microg and enjoy the most private and secure platform available on a smartphone today. But if you chose the first one then you can't, because apple won't let you choose the software that runs on the equipment you bought.

I used to use linageOS no gapps and I loved it but then my nexus 5x died and I got a pixel 2 and linageOS support stopped at the pixel 1. It seems to me that the age of custom roms is over. Android got good enough that the only reason for a custom rom was privacy and extended updates. Since the pixel 2 is still updated there is no reason other than privacy and I guess no one was willing to put in the work for just that.

> Since the pixel 2 is still updated there is no reason other than privacy

Features.

- The ability to run Android without Google. - The ability to change the location of your clock. - The ability to have some apps open with the status bar and navbar and some not. - The ability to change your WiFi network without opening settings (yes, I'm still upset they removed that. I use an Android 8 tablet daily, so I'm unlikely to forget). - Adding invisible left/right dpad buttons and a menu button in my navbar. - Change the number of quick settings. - Change the screen dpi (this is implemented these days, I think, but only with 3-5 settings available) - use adb without first plugging into a computer. Maybe I'm going somewhere and I'll need to restart my phone. - run Linux in a chroot (far better than proot) - install Fdroid privileged extension without losing access to security updates.

You can say full well that you don't care about these, you don't have to care. However, these are all things that you can't do without an alternative ROM (or without rooting, which loses access to updates).

Still, it doesn't support my phone....the only thing that keeps me from jumping on Lineage.

I don't understand why this is controversial: companies will continue to abuse us so long as there is a profit incentive to do so.