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Has anyone ever asked bus companies to start hunting pedestrians for sport? The answer is clearly no. Contrary to that, the demands from governments and others

Has anyone ever asked bus companies to start hunting pedestrians for sport? The answer is clearly no. Contrary to that, the demands from governments and others for tech companies to "take responsibility" and become enforcers of all sorts of perceived virtues is reaching a crescendo. And it's not just about clearly dangerous things like child porn or terrorism. The UK government seriously demands the takedown of "harmful but not illegal" content. Just think about that concept of "harmful but not illegal" for a moment and you'll see that the sort of overreach that userbinator is talking about is anything but "some absurd extreme".

pvg 7y ago
I still have a lot of trouble seeing how Apple removing a critical vulnerability - a completely mundane act with plenty of precedent from both Apple and others - is some clarion call that, if left unheeded, will have Siri judging everyone's hentai collection next. Why this - preventing myriads of users from becoming campeople - of all things? Why not, say, every Chrome autoupdate ever?
- Crinus 7y ago
  > I still have a lot of trouble seeing how Apple removing a critical vulnerability You have that trouble because you are focusing on the "critical vulnerability" part and ignoring the fact that Apple decided to uninstall a program they had nothing to do with from your computer without your consent. The intentions might be noble, the implications however are less so.
  - pvg 7y ago
    But they didn't uninstall 'a program'. The product itself was unaffected. And, again, this was done in consultation with the makers of the 'program' who had screwed up badly enough to be unable to fix the problem themselves. Nothing happened here that doesn't regularly happen when all sorts of things update.
    - Crinus 7y ago
      These are unimportant details, the issue is with Apple modifying people's computers silently and the users themselves having no knowledge or any say about it. Replace this instance with something that you disagree about (imagine Apple removing VPN software from Chinese customers due to demands from China or "fixing" existing VPN software with backdoors that enable Chinese authorities to wiretap Chinese people) and see what the issue is here. (if that example would happen or not is irrelevant, i'm making it to help you see the issue in a context i think you'd disagree with Apple about, i'm not making it for you to argue if that would happen or not)
      - pvg 7y ago
        You brought up the details, inaccurately, to now tell me the details don't matter. You can understand, I hope, how this starts to feel like an exercise in eel juggling.
        Crinus 7y ago
        I didn't brought up details, i explicitly mentioned in my first reply to you to ignore the specifics of this case, ie. the details, and see what happened without them.
      - HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago
        > something something Apple, a US-based company who prides itself on privacy helping China spy on people. Apple engineers go to China. Anything they do to help the Chinese government can immediately affect their own workers. If they did that, and a bunch of people with Apple devices got thrown in jail / whatever, their stock, and moral standing, would suffer some serious blow-back for it. Google Chrome has a thing that pops up when it thinks you might be getting attacked / phished by somebody. I wouldn't mind if OS X terminated my connection and said "Hey, we don't think this is safe" to me, especially if it was something that the average person isn't likely to notice and can cause damage to them (also, in China [relative to the US], the stakes for everything are generally higher- the US probably tracks you around, China for sure does that and is actively nabbing people a lot more frequently, too.)
  - dpkonofa 7y ago
    >uninstall a program they had nothing to do with from your computer without your consent. Incorrect. Users who are vulnerable to this had already decided to uninstall Zoom and that's why it was a vulnerability. Zoom had decided to ignore the user's wishes and leave their server behind so that it could re-install the software. Apple's update simply enforces the users' past decision to uninstall the application.
- fauigerzigerk 7y ago
  The problem is that Apple appears to have made an exception to its own rules in this particular case. If I understand correctly, they used a first party system update mechanism to change third party software. It's like Google making an ad hoc decision to use Chrome autoupdate to silently patch a particularly bad vulnerability in Microsoft Word just because they can. So what is the principle behind this kind of exception? It's simply this: If it's bad enough, normal rules can be suspended and anything goes. It's like declaring a state of emergency. It's not normal or mundane. Now the question becomes what is bad enough and who gets to decide what is bad enough? People will point to incidents like this and ask questions like: Why was the San Bernardino attack not bad enough for Apple to suspend its ususal rules? Why can people store tons of pirated music on their Macs without Apple taking action? Why does Apple allow criminals to hide behind end-to-end encrypted messaging software? If Apple has decided to take responsibility for the security of all third party software on macOS then they should say so. They should change the rules instead of breaking them in an ad hoc fashion. Then we can all decide whether or not we want to hand total control to Apple (and to those who have control over Apple).
  - pvg 7y ago
    The problem is that Apple appears to have made an exception to its own rules in this particular case. If I understand correctly, they used a first party system update mechanism to change third party software. I don't see anything in the article that suggests this - as I read it, it pretty much says the opposite. What else have you read that outlined these rules and the exception Apple made?
    - fauigerzigerk 7y ago
      The article says "Apple said the update does not require any user interaction and is deployed automatically." As far as I know, there is no system-wide update mechanism for third party software not distributed through the Mac App Store that does not require any user interaction. So apparently they (ab)used the system update mechanism.
      - 7y ago

pvg 7y ago

I still have a lot of trouble seeing how Apple removing a critical vulnerability - a completely mundane act with plenty of precedent from both Apple and others - is some clarion call that, if left unheeded, will have Siri judging everyone's hentai collection next. Why this - preventing myriads of users from becoming campeople - of all things? Why not, say, every Chrome autoupdate ever?

Crinus 7y ago
> I still have a lot of trouble seeing how Apple removing a critical vulnerability You have that trouble because you are focusing on the "critical vulnerability" part and ignoring the fact that Apple decided to uninstall a program they had nothing to do with from your computer without your consent. The intentions might be noble, the implications however are less so.
- pvg 7y ago
  But they didn't uninstall 'a program'. The product itself was unaffected. And, again, this was done in consultation with the makers of the 'program' who had screwed up badly enough to be unable to fix the problem themselves. Nothing happened here that doesn't regularly happen when all sorts of things update.
  - Crinus 7y ago
    These are unimportant details, the issue is with Apple modifying people's computers silently and the users themselves having no knowledge or any say about it. Replace this instance with something that you disagree about (imagine Apple removing VPN software from Chinese customers due to demands from China or "fixing" existing VPN software with backdoors that enable Chinese authorities to wiretap Chinese people) and see what the issue is here. (if that example would happen or not is irrelevant, i'm making it to help you see the issue in a context i think you'd disagree with Apple about, i'm not making it for you to argue if that would happen or not)
    - pvg 7y ago
      You brought up the details, inaccurately, to now tell me the details don't matter. You can understand, I hope, how this starts to feel like an exercise in eel juggling.
      - Crinus 7y ago
        I didn't brought up details, i explicitly mentioned in my first reply to you to ignore the specifics of this case, ie. the details, and see what happened without them.
    - HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago
      > something something Apple, a US-based company who prides itself on privacy helping China spy on people. Apple engineers go to China. Anything they do to help the Chinese government can immediately affect their own workers. If they did that, and a bunch of people with Apple devices got thrown in jail / whatever, their stock, and moral standing, would suffer some serious blow-back for it. Google Chrome has a thing that pops up when it thinks you might be getting attacked / phished by somebody. I wouldn't mind if OS X terminated my connection and said "Hey, we don't think this is safe" to me, especially if it was something that the average person isn't likely to notice and can cause damage to them (also, in China [relative to the US], the stakes for everything are generally higher- the US probably tracks you around, China for sure does that and is actively nabbing people a lot more frequently, too.)
- dpkonofa 7y ago
  >uninstall a program they had nothing to do with from your computer without your consent. Incorrect. Users who are vulnerable to this had already decided to uninstall Zoom and that's why it was a vulnerability. Zoom had decided to ignore the user's wishes and leave their server behind so that it could re-install the software. Apple's update simply enforces the users' past decision to uninstall the application.
fauigerzigerk 7y ago
The problem is that Apple appears to have made an exception to its own rules in this particular case. If I understand correctly, they used a first party system update mechanism to change third party software. It's like Google making an ad hoc decision to use Chrome autoupdate to silently patch a particularly bad vulnerability in Microsoft Word just because they can. So what is the principle behind this kind of exception? It's simply this: If it's bad enough, normal rules can be suspended and anything goes. It's like declaring a state of emergency. It's not normal or mundane. Now the question becomes what is bad enough and who gets to decide what is bad enough? People will point to incidents like this and ask questions like: Why was the San Bernardino attack not bad enough for Apple to suspend its ususal rules? Why can people store tons of pirated music on their Macs without Apple taking action? Why does Apple allow criminals to hide behind end-to-end encrypted messaging software? If Apple has decided to take responsibility for the security of all third party software on macOS then they should say so. They should change the rules instead of breaking them in an ad hoc fashion. Then we can all decide whether or not we want to hand total control to Apple (and to those who have control over Apple).
- pvg 7y ago
  The problem is that Apple appears to have made an exception to its own rules in this particular case. If I understand correctly, they used a first party system update mechanism to change third party software. I don't see anything in the article that suggests this - as I read it, it pretty much says the opposite. What else have you read that outlined these rules and the exception Apple made?
  - fauigerzigerk 7y ago
    The article says "Apple said the update does not require any user interaction and is deployed automatically." As far as I know, there is no system-wide update mechanism for third party software not distributed through the Mac App Store that does not require any user interaction. So apparently they (ab)used the system update mechanism.
    - 7y ago