13 ms·

I just don't understand how a 60 year old gay man doesn't see how insidious this all is, and somehow trusts law enforcement to be such a benevolent actor.

adventured 5y ago
Tim Cook isn't in charge. They're starting the process of complying with, acquiescing to, the multitudes of politicians in the West that are demanding a change in the super structure of online privacy and how it's treated. Anyone here think Yahoo executives actually decided whether the company joined PRISM or not? Those executives also were not in charge. There is a bigger boss in DC, radically more powerful, and most everybody here knows what they're after. They're sick of waiting, they're going to attempt to make another big surveillence move during the relative calm of the Biden Admin (they couldn't do it effectively under Trump, there was too much chaos, the government wasn't functioning very well). What program is actually being put into place right now - that Apple is probably joining up to, as with PRISM - that we won't find out about for many years? It's going to get a lot worse across the board over the coming decade.
- notheretoo 5y ago
  Hell go back and check out what happened to quest over the carnivore shit. “Our” government has been pulling this shit since the 90s.
- devwastaken 5y ago
  Apple hasn't made this argument, so this isn't why they're doing it. Don't create artificial reasons. If we were to base this on hypothetical law requirements apple might as well remove all forms of encryption too. But they're not.
  - thatguy0900 5y ago
    I mean, if it's true of course they wouldn't. No company was saying they were doing things because of prism, either. If there is a forced government cooperation they will be under a gag order.
  - cronix 5y ago
    Has Apple even once admitted knowing of, or that they participated in PRISM even when official documents were released showing that Apple joined PRISM just after Jobs died? Nope. None of the companies listed did, in fact they all publicly denied it because they are not allowed to by national security "law". So, how can Apple make any argument when they legally aren't allowed to talk about it? Do you think Cook believes in your privacy so much he will go to prison for revealing it? Nope, he's the one who let them in Apple to begin with and "privacy" is a sales pitch everyone laps up. They've been compromised for over a decade. There is no security. It's all lies on top of lies. Have you ever heard of what happens to people when they reveal top secret government spying programs? Snowden? Drake? Binney? Manning?
  - aksss 5y ago
    The presence or lack of an argument by Apple that they're being coerced by intelligence/LE agencies is not demonstrative of anything. You know that gag orders are a thing. You know that the programs revealed by Snowden were not the subject of disclosures by the participant organizations or any argument such as you're expecting Apple to make under the same conditions. All we know is what they do. It's not a stretch by any means to suspect that when an American corporation adopts uncharacteristic policies that violate their customers' privacy, the government is probably involved. Difference here is that unlike TrueCrypt, Apple can't just shut down. Hell, even the rumor of Apple doing this has beneficial impact to law enforcement. The press release may be the product. Let's take the effort at the most altruistic face value - defeating child porn mongers. If you're trying to herd such people to a very narrow set of solutions that you can monitor and/or control, simply undermining trust in the alternative options may be enough without actually implementing invasive tools being discussed. The comedy in some of this is how hammy the next act can get - if I were a cynical man, I'd expect a technology to come out in response to Apple's move, or maybe it's out there already but suddenly gets a new push for mindshare. I'm sure the security world has a term for solutions like this. Not really honey pots, but more like fly paper. A product the agencies have either straight up owned or surreptitiously gained control over, marketed to people who would use it for ill.
  - HWR_14 5y ago
    Apple has announced they are only rolling this out to iPhones in the US. That makes it look like a legal requirement to me.
    - bigwavedave 5y ago
      > Apple has announced they are only rolling this out to iPhones in the US. That makes it look like a legal requirement to me. I'm just some guy with a beard, I honestly don't know anything about anything- in my eyes, it looks like less of a legal requirement and more of a stepping stone. Granted, those things aren't mutually exclusive and I'm not privy to any information others don't have, I'm just cynical.
- k33n 5y ago
  Predictably downvoted to oblivion. Absolutely spot on.
  - themaninthedark 5y ago
    What is most interesting(read horrifying) to me is that people will argue that this is not a 4th amendment violation because private company. But will later then argue that it is not Apple's fault because the government pressured them. If the government is pressuring Apple to violate someone's privacy and Apple does so, that makes Apple's actions in that case a state actor and makes the actions unconstitutional.
    - ViViDboarder 5y ago
      The nuance is that both of these can be true. Apple isn’t violating the 4th and Apple has no choice (unproven). The government, by way of Apple, could be violating the 4th amendment.
  - justinzollars 5y ago
    HN is getting to the point where you can't discuss ideas unless you comply with a particular orthodoxy.
    - unanswered 5y ago
      HN has been that way for a very long time. Maybe you just started disagreeing with the orthodoxy, so now suddenly it's a big deal.
    - Clubber 5y ago
      Keep posting your ideas anyway. It's not like we get to turn in our karma for a free eraser or anything. Speak your mind, the orthodoxy usually comes around eventually anyway.
      - k33n 5y ago
        This whole thread was censored by the mods. They're very troubled and sad individuals.
- helloworld11 5y ago
  You got downvoted into greyness on your comment despite the clear, bleeding obvious fact that just a few fucking years ago, several major tech companies got outed by Snowden's leaks for having done exactly these kinds of things t the government's behest for years while those who claimed such a thing was happening were considered paranoid. It's absurdly blind to think that the same isn't possibly happening again quietly under somewhat different conditions now.
  - ryandrake 5y ago
    OP is probably getting downvoted for insinuation without explanation: > There is a bigger boss in DC, radically more powerful, and most everybody here knows what they're after. OK, so tell us! Who is the mustache-twirling villain, and what are they after? I'd love to know. Be specific. Is it Joe Biden? If so, what's the end result? He gets money? OK, draw the lines for us between this technology and Joe Biden getting money. If it's somebody else leading this conspiracy, who specifically? What specifically are they after? Without these details, OP's post is just an episode of the X-Files: Something's out there, and you know what it is, I just won't tell you!
    - spoonjim 5y ago
      It's obviously not Joe Biden. It's the intelligence and law enforcement agencies of the USA, i.e. CIA, NSA, FBI, who despite perhaps not having "mustaches" to "twirl" have definitely done things like "spy on all American's phone calls" and "overthrow democratically elected leaders of South America to preserve American business interests."
    - aksss 5y ago
      Joe Biden couldn't lead himself out of a paper bag; I think we all know that if ever there was a figurehead president, he's it. Not sure why the source of things like PRISM and all have to be a single evil person - I think you watch too many Bond films. I can't articulate any sort of form to the driving will behind what we see happening to the security state over the last twenty years in particular, but we do know that privacy continues to erode, that agencies basically dictate agendas to the press through "leaks" and even by putting retirees directly on their payrolls. That much is known. I don't know if it's productive to attempt the characterization of this phenomenon as some Scoobie-Doo mystery to be solved and unmasked. It's probably more important to oppose the policies, politicians, and press that seem to align with an agenda that promotes the bargain of us turning in freedoms for a promise of safety.
- anomaloustho 5y ago
  Who is “they”?
- chuckSu 5y ago
  Conspiracy theory much?
lagadu 5y ago
The privilege that comes from being as rich as he is overpowers anything else. From his perspective the system is always on his side (the good guy side), so that's his perspective for society in general.
buttholesurfer 5y ago
Maybe he just wanted to identify others like him?
justinzollars 5y ago
Maybe he has no choice. Maybe the government has threatened Apple? We don't see anything behind the curtain. One thing is certain. I've lost trust that the iphone is my device.
- NotChina 5y ago
  It seems like a different Apple than the one that was previously so defiant to authoritarian abuses from the last administration.
  - nomel 5y ago
    If that's true, then doesn't that act as evidence that they are being forced in some way? Yahoo [1], and others, were forced with other programs, with threads of treason for talking about it [2]. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8305925 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8305925 2. https://www.businessinsider.com/marissa-mayer-its-treason-to-ignore-the-nsa-2013-9 https://www.businessinsider.com/marissa-mayer-its-treason-to... Wow, very different search results when using google vs duckduckgo.
res0nat0r 5y ago
Apple being a trillion dollar company overrides all of that in the end.
radicaldreamer 5y ago
Do you think Tim Cook uses iCloud? They keep encrypted local backups over WiFi around as an iOS feature for a reason...
- ornornor 5y ago
  How do you do that? It sounds very interesting.
  - finiteseries 5y ago
    Good old fashioned syncing with a Mac on the same local network. Don’t even have to use iTunes anymore, it’s all been moved to the Finder where the iPhone or iPad shows up as an external device.
quickthrowman 5y ago
It’s almost certainly his billion dollar net worth insulating him from the worries of the plebs, it’s my standard assumption when someone asks: “Why is (billionaire) seemingly out of touch?”

adventured 5y ago

Tim Cook isn't in charge. They're starting the process of complying with, acquiescing to, the multitudes of politicians in the West that are demanding a change in the super structure of online privacy and how it's treated. Anyone here think Yahoo executives actually decided whether the company joined PRISM or not? Those executives also were not in charge. There is a bigger boss in DC, radically more powerful, and most everybody here knows what they're after. They're sick of waiting, they're going to attempt to make another big surveillence move during the relative calm of the Biden Admin (they couldn't do it effectively under Trump, there was too much chaos, the government wasn't functioning very well). What program is actually being put into place right now - that Apple is probably joining up to, as with PRISM - that we won't find out about for many years? It's going to get a lot worse across the board over the coming decade.

notheretoo 5y ago
Hell go back and check out what happened to quest over the carnivore shit. “Our” government has been pulling this shit since the 90s.
devwastaken 5y ago
Apple hasn't made this argument, so this isn't why they're doing it. Don't create artificial reasons. If we were to base this on hypothetical law requirements apple might as well remove all forms of encryption too. But they're not.
- thatguy0900 5y ago
  I mean, if it's true of course they wouldn't. No company was saying they were doing things because of prism, either. If there is a forced government cooperation they will be under a gag order.
- cronix 5y ago
  Has Apple even once admitted knowing of, or that they participated in PRISM even when official documents were released showing that Apple joined PRISM just after Jobs died? Nope. None of the companies listed did, in fact they all publicly denied it because they are not allowed to by national security "law". So, how can Apple make any argument when they legally aren't allowed to talk about it? Do you think Cook believes in your privacy so much he will go to prison for revealing it? Nope, he's the one who let them in Apple to begin with and "privacy" is a sales pitch everyone laps up. They've been compromised for over a decade. There is no security. It's all lies on top of lies. Have you ever heard of what happens to people when they reveal top secret government spying programs? Snowden? Drake? Binney? Manning?
- aksss 5y ago
  The presence or lack of an argument by Apple that they're being coerced by intelligence/LE agencies is not demonstrative of anything. You know that gag orders are a thing. You know that the programs revealed by Snowden were not the subject of disclosures by the participant organizations or any argument such as you're expecting Apple to make under the same conditions. All we know is what they do. It's not a stretch by any means to suspect that when an American corporation adopts uncharacteristic policies that violate their customers' privacy, the government is probably involved. Difference here is that unlike TrueCrypt, Apple can't just shut down. Hell, even the rumor of Apple doing this has beneficial impact to law enforcement. The press release may be the product. Let's take the effort at the most altruistic face value - defeating child porn mongers. If you're trying to herd such people to a very narrow set of solutions that you can monitor and/or control, simply undermining trust in the alternative options may be enough without actually implementing invasive tools being discussed. The comedy in some of this is how hammy the next act can get - if I were a cynical man, I'd expect a technology to come out in response to Apple's move, or maybe it's out there already but suddenly gets a new push for mindshare. I'm sure the security world has a term for solutions like this. Not really honey pots, but more like fly paper. A product the agencies have either straight up owned or surreptitiously gained control over, marketed to people who would use it for ill.
- HWR_14 5y ago
  Apple has announced they are only rolling this out to iPhones in the US. That makes it look like a legal requirement to me.
  - bigwavedave 5y ago
    > Apple has announced they are only rolling this out to iPhones in the US. That makes it look like a legal requirement to me. I'm just some guy with a beard, I honestly don't know anything about anything- in my eyes, it looks like less of a legal requirement and more of a stepping stone. Granted, those things aren't mutually exclusive and I'm not privy to any information others don't have, I'm just cynical.
k33n 5y ago
Predictably downvoted to oblivion. Absolutely spot on.
- themaninthedark 5y ago
  What is most interesting(read horrifying) to me is that people will argue that this is not a 4th amendment violation because private company. But will later then argue that it is not Apple's fault because the government pressured them. If the government is pressuring Apple to violate someone's privacy and Apple does so, that makes Apple's actions in that case a state actor and makes the actions unconstitutional.
  - ViViDboarder 5y ago
    The nuance is that both of these can be true. Apple isn’t violating the 4th and Apple has no choice (unproven). The government, by way of Apple, could be violating the 4th amendment.
- justinzollars 5y ago
  HN is getting to the point where you can't discuss ideas unless you comply with a particular orthodoxy.
  - unanswered 5y ago
    HN has been that way for a very long time. Maybe you just started disagreeing with the orthodoxy, so now suddenly it's a big deal.
  - Clubber 5y ago
    Keep posting your ideas anyway. It's not like we get to turn in our karma for a free eraser or anything. Speak your mind, the orthodoxy usually comes around eventually anyway.
    - k33n 5y ago
      This whole thread was censored by the mods. They're very troubled and sad individuals.
helloworld11 5y ago
You got downvoted into greyness on your comment despite the clear, bleeding obvious fact that just a few fucking years ago, several major tech companies got outed by Snowden's leaks for having done exactly these kinds of things t the government's behest for years while those who claimed such a thing was happening were considered paranoid. It's absurdly blind to think that the same isn't possibly happening again quietly under somewhat different conditions now.
- ryandrake 5y ago
  OP is probably getting downvoted for insinuation without explanation: > There is a bigger boss in DC, radically more powerful, and most everybody here knows what they're after. OK, so tell us! Who is the mustache-twirling villain, and what are they after? I'd love to know. Be specific. Is it Joe Biden? If so, what's the end result? He gets money? OK, draw the lines for us between this technology and Joe Biden getting money. If it's somebody else leading this conspiracy, who specifically? What specifically are they after? Without these details, OP's post is just an episode of the X-Files: Something's out there, and you know what it is, I just won't tell you!
  - spoonjim 5y ago
    It's obviously not Joe Biden. It's the intelligence and law enforcement agencies of the USA, i.e. CIA, NSA, FBI, who despite perhaps not having "mustaches" to "twirl" have definitely done things like "spy on all American's phone calls" and "overthrow democratically elected leaders of South America to preserve American business interests."
  - aksss 5y ago
    Joe Biden couldn't lead himself out of a paper bag; I think we all know that if ever there was a figurehead president, he's it. Not sure why the source of things like PRISM and all have to be a single evil person - I think you watch too many Bond films. I can't articulate any sort of form to the driving will behind what we see happening to the security state over the last twenty years in particular, but we do know that privacy continues to erode, that agencies basically dictate agendas to the press through "leaks" and even by putting retirees directly on their payrolls. That much is known. I don't know if it's productive to attempt the characterization of this phenomenon as some Scoobie-Doo mystery to be solved and unmasked. It's probably more important to oppose the policies, politicians, and press that seem to align with an agenda that promotes the bargain of us turning in freedoms for a promise of safety.
anomaloustho 5y ago
Who is “they”?
chuckSu 5y ago
Conspiracy theory much?

lagadu 5y ago

The privilege that comes from being as rich as he is overpowers anything else. From his perspective the system is always on his side (the good guy side), so that's his perspective for society in general.

buttholesurfer 5y ago

Maybe he just wanted to identify others like him?

justinzollars 5y ago

Maybe he has no choice. Maybe the government has threatened Apple? We don't see anything behind the curtain. One thing is certain. I've lost trust that the iphone is my device.

NotChina 5y ago
It seems like a different Apple than the one that was previously so defiant to authoritarian abuses from the last administration.
- nomel 5y ago
  If that's true, then doesn't that act as evidence that they are being forced in some way? Yahoo [1], and others, were forced with other programs, with threads of treason for talking about it [2]. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8305925 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8305925 2. https://www.businessinsider.com/marissa-mayer-its-treason-to-ignore-the-nsa-2013-9 https://www.businessinsider.com/marissa-mayer-its-treason-to... Wow, very different search results when using google vs duckduckgo.

res0nat0r 5y ago

Apple being a trillion dollar company overrides all of that in the end.

radicaldreamer 5y ago

Do you think Tim Cook uses iCloud? They keep encrypted local backups over WiFi around as an iOS feature for a reason...

ornornor 5y ago
How do you do that? It sounds very interesting.
- finiteseries 5y ago
  Good old fashioned syncing with a Mac on the same local network. Don’t even have to use iTunes anymore, it’s all been moved to the Finder where the iPhone or iPad shows up as an external device.

quickthrowman 5y ago

It’s almost certainly his billion dollar net worth insulating him from the worries of the plebs, it’s my standard assumption when someone asks: “Why is (billionaire) seemingly out of touch?”