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This is clearly a highly-technical project by teams at both Google and Apple, and presumably those teams have social overlap with the userbase here on Hacker Ne
by jka 7y ago
This is clearly a highly-technical project by teams at both Google and Apple, and presumably those teams have social overlap with the userbase here on Hacker News.
The risks raised by this article appear credible and worthy of consideration.
It'll be interesting to see whether Google and Apple do openly respond to any of the specific concerns raised by the privacy and security community - for exmaple, whether the functionality will be time-limited to the duration of COVID-19.
Google and Apple would gain huge potential leverage over nations worldwide if they retain the sole ability to offer and withdraw the functionality and to vet the applications that are allowed to use it.
- threeseed 7y ago> Google and Apple would gain huge potential leverage over nations worldwide You do understand that Apple/Google are not in charge of the world. They operate within each country based on the laws that each government puts in place. It would be trivial for any country to force this functionality to be on/off and dictate which apps it can be used with.
- jka 7y agoFor nations with the technical & legal staff and time required to review, address and negotiate updated legal terms with Google and Apple, that may be true. Since you sound familiar with the situation, can you provide a link/reference to evidence of a country trivially changing the behaviour of an operating-system level feature like GACT after it has been deployed?
- chefkoch 7y agoThere was a special Windows version for the EU.
- jka 7y agoThank you. Are you referring to the "Microsoft Corp. v Commission of the European Communities" case[1]? (lodged in 2004, resolved in 2007 - and led to the release of a version of Windows without Windows Media Player installed-by-default) [1] - https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX:62004TJ0201 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX:62...
- threeseed 7y agoGovernments don't need to negotiate with Apple/Google they just pass a law. Example being Russia which told phone makers to either pre-install their apps or stop selling their products. Or EU pretty much telling the entire software industry how high to jump with GDPR.
- comex 7y agoThis comes to mind: https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/7/20903613/apple-hiding-taiwan-flag-emoji-hong-kong-macau-china https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/7/20903613/apple-hiding-tai...
- koenigdavidmj 7y agoFor nations like the US, this is true. For somewhere like Australia? If it became truly necessary, that’s a small enough market to write off if necessary.