Re:Facebook Employees Say Apple Fight Is “Self Serving”
by sneak on Wednesday December 23, 2020 @03:27PM
(#25521799)
I'm the author of the article that seemed to alert everyone to Apple logging that app launch data.
Apple does indeed care a lot about user privacy. The system that was logging that data was an effort to prevent malware on end user systems. They are taking steps to encrypt the data, and I would be unsurprised if they use bloom filters to keep the list of apps clientside only.
The privacy issue with Apple isn't that Apple is some shade of "evil", it's that Apple takes the view that your data is safe with Apple because they won't misuse it, and that they know how to keep it safe.
In the age of warrantless FISA orders (known to some as PRISM, which we know thanks to Ed Snowden) mentioned and counted explicitly in Apple's own "transparency report", we now know that that isn't true. Apple knows it, too.
If the government can take any of your store user data at any time without a warrant, at what point after you have become painfully and totally aware of this fact do you become complicit in the fact that you are part of the state surveillance apparatus? At what point do you have a moral obligation to stop collecting data from your customers, knowing that if you save it, it will be available to the state, without a warrant, for all time?
This is the issue with Apple, not some lack of focus on customer privacy. Apple cares a lot about customer privacy, but they seem to have punted on the fact that Apple having customer data also means that the state surveillance organizations have access to all of that same data, as well.
Apple's surveillance-enabling lack of end to end cryptography (or the backdoors they've placed in the end-to-end encrypted parts like iMessage) is the real issue here. I don't think Apple wants to surveil your non-e2e iCloud Photos or nudes in iMessage attachments in your non-e2e iCloud device backup to sell ads or something - but they know or should know that the state does want to surveil this information, and they definitely know that the US government victimized 30,000 Apple users in that fashion last year, without a warrant.
Apple does indeed care a lot about user privacy. The system that was logging that data was an effort to prevent malware on end user systems. They are taking steps to encrypt the data, and I would be unsurprised if they use bloom filters to keep the list of apps clientside only.
The privacy issue with Apple isn't that Apple is some shade of "evil", it's that Apple takes the view that your data is safe with Apple because they won't misuse it, and that they know how to keep it safe.
In the age of warrantless FISA orders (known to some as PRISM, which we know thanks to Ed Snowden) mentioned and counted explicitly in Apple's own "transparency report", we now know that that isn't true. Apple knows it, too.
If the government can take any of your store user data at any time without a warrant, at what point after you have become painfully and totally aware of this fact do you become complicit in the fact that you are part of the state surveillance apparatus? At what point do you have a moral obligation to stop collecting data from your customers, knowing that if you save it, it will be available to the state, without a warrant, for all time?
This is the issue with Apple, not some lack of focus on customer privacy. Apple cares a lot about customer privacy, but they seem to have punted on the fact that Apple having customer data also means that the state surveillance organizations have access to all of that same data, as well.
Apple's surveillance-enabling lack of end to end cryptography (or the backdoors they've placed in the end-to-end encrypted parts like iMessage) is the real issue here. I don't think Apple wants to surveil your non-e2e iCloud Photos or nudes in iMessage attachments in your non-e2e iCloud device backup to sell ads or something - but they know or should know that the state does want to surveil this information, and they definitely know that the US government victimized 30,000 Apple users in that fashion last year, without a warrant.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud-exclusiv...