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From your first link: "Google’s press office did not respond Friday to an email inquiry about the case, but a lawyer standing by for Petrick said he believes t

From your first link: "Google’s press office did not respond Friday to an email inquiry about the case, but a lawyer standing by for Petrick said he believes the evidence was all culled from the hard drives and he has no information that Google participated in the investigation." So this shows Google's "evilness" about as much as it shows the evilness of the browser and OS the guy was using. Speaking of which, as the company that writes the OS and Mail.app, doesn't Apple have just as much access to personal communications for its users as Google does? How do you know that the OS and mail programs don't have back doors that can be used whenever it's required? You can't even get root on your own iPhone (unless you jailbreak it), so in a very real way they have more control over you own device than you do. How can you be sure that it's not beaming your GPS coordinates to [insert evil institution here] all the time? You know when you're sending information to Google, but Apple controls closed-source software running on a location-aware personal device with a microphone on it that people carry around all the time.

ynniv 17y ago
So this shows Google's "evilness" about as much as it shows the evilness of the browser and OS the guy was using. Enabling private browsing eliminates local browser history. There is no such recourse for server-side tracking. Even turning off cookies (and Flash [1]) won't stop that [2]. Apple controls closed-source software running on a location-aware personal device with a microphone on it that people carry around all the time. There is merit to your accusation in that there is no way to monitor network traffic over 3G to verify that audio is not transmitted. However, all cell phones allow basic geo-location via triangulation (most carriers lie about that), so if you don't want to be found you shouldn't have a cell phone at all. [1 | http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/08/you-deleted-your-cookies-think-again/ http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/08/you-deleted-your-cook...] [2 | http://panopticlick.eff.org http://panopticlick.eff.org]
- kiiski 17y ago
  "However, all cell phones allow basic geo-location via triangulation (most carriers lie about that), so if you don't want to be found you shouldn't have a cell phone at all." It is technically possible for all web pages to track your activity there, so if you don't want to be tracked you shouldn't be using the web at all.
glhaynes 17y ago
Would not packet sniffers have told us by now that Apple was transmitting more data than users expect, if that were the case?
- haberman 17y ago
  Maybe, maybe not. What if Mail.app is programmed only to turn on this back door in certain circumstances? Only a very small percentage of people would ever think to packet sniff all the data their computer is sending. If this privacy-invading mode could be turned on by, say, sending a very specific spam-looking message to Mail.app, you could use this capability only when needed and be almost guaranteed that the target user is not running a packet sniffer. Also, how are you going to packet sniff what your iPhone is sending over 3G?

ynniv 17y ago

So this shows Google's "evilness" about as much as it shows the evilness of the browser and OS the guy was using. Enabling private browsing eliminates local browser history. There is no such recourse for server-side tracking. Even turning off cookies (and Flash [1]) won't stop that [2]. Apple controls closed-source software running on a location-aware personal device with a microphone on it that people carry around all the time. There is merit to your accusation in that there is no way to monitor network traffic over 3G to verify that audio is not transmitted. However, all cell phones allow basic geo-location via triangulation (most carriers lie about that), so if you don't want to be found you shouldn't have a cell phone at all. [1 | http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/08/you-deleted-your-cookies-think-again/ http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/08/you-deleted-your-cook...] [2 | http://panopticlick.eff.org http://panopticlick.eff.org]

kiiski 17y ago
"However, all cell phones allow basic geo-location via triangulation (most carriers lie about that), so if you don't want to be found you shouldn't have a cell phone at all." It is technically possible for all web pages to track your activity there, so if you don't want to be tracked you shouldn't be using the web at all.

glhaynes 17y ago

Would not packet sniffers have told us by now that Apple was transmitting more data than users expect, if that were the case?

haberman 17y ago
Maybe, maybe not. What if Mail.app is programmed only to turn on this back door in certain circumstances? Only a very small percentage of people would ever think to packet sniff all the data their computer is sending. If this privacy-invading mode could be turned on by, say, sending a very specific spam-looking message to Mail.app, you could use this capability only when needed and be almost guaranteed that the target user is not running a packet sniffer. Also, how are you going to packet sniff what your iPhone is sending over 3G?