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Apple's battle is against Surveillance Capitalism, not against state-level surveillance. In fact, there is no publicly traded company that is against state-leve

by websites2023 5y ago

Apple's battle is against Surveillance Capitalism, not against state-level surveillance. In fact, there is no publicly traded company that is against state-level surveillance. It's important not to confuse the two. Think of it this way: If you want to hide from companies, choose Apple. If you want to hide from the US Government, choose open source. But if your threat model really does include the US government or some other similarly capable adversary, you are well and truly fucked already. The state-level apparatus for spying on folks through metadata and traffic interception is now mode than a decade old.

tablespoon 5y ago
> Think of it this way: If you want to hide from companies, choose Apple. If you want to hide from the US Government, choose open source. It's not just the US government: they've been cooperating with the PRC government as well (e.g. iCloud in China runs on servers owned by a state-owned company, and apparently China rejected the HSM Apple was using elsewhere, so they designed one specifically for China). Apple has some deniability there, but I personally wouldn't be surprised if China could get any data from them that it wanted. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/17/technology/apple-china-censorship-data.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/17/technology/apple-china-ce...
- websites2023 5y ago
  Both the US government and Chinese government can get whatever they want from both iCloud and IMessage. Best not to use it for anything that could make you a target of theirs.
krrrh 5y ago
The problem is that as governments gain access to new technological capabilities and exploit crises to acquire more emergency powers, increasingly large numbers of peoples’ threat models begin to include government. The best hopes against a population-wide Chinese-style social credit system being implemented in the US remain constitutional and cultural, but the more architectural help we get from technology the better. “Code is law” is still a valid observation.
- websites2023 5y ago
  The US has a rather weak central government. The Chinese-style social credit system isn't necessary, because private corporations already do it. Scanning your ID when you return things, advertising profiles, etc.
deleted 5y ago
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tablespoon 5y ago

> Think of it this way: If you want to hide from companies, choose Apple. If you want to hide from the US Government, choose open source. It's not just the US government: they've been cooperating with the PRC government as well (e.g. iCloud in China runs on servers owned by a state-owned company, and apparently China rejected the HSM Apple was using elsewhere, so they designed one specifically for China). Apple has some deniability there, but I personally wouldn't be surprised if China could get any data from them that it wanted. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/17/technology/apple-china-censorship-data.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/17/technology/apple-china-ce...

websites2023 5y ago
Both the US government and Chinese government can get whatever they want from both iCloud and IMessage. Best not to use it for anything that could make you a target of theirs.

krrrh 5y ago

The problem is that as governments gain access to new technological capabilities and exploit crises to acquire more emergency powers, increasingly large numbers of peoples’ threat models begin to include government. The best hopes against a population-wide Chinese-style social credit system being implemented in the US remain constitutional and cultural, but the more architectural help we get from technology the better. “Code is law” is still a valid observation.

websites2023 5y ago
The US has a rather weak central government. The Chinese-style social credit system isn't necessary, because private corporations already do it. Scanning your ID when you return things, advertising profiles, etc.

deleted 5y ago

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