4 ms·

The US government was spying on everything well before 9/11 [1]. This sort of surveillance has been happening since the dawn of civilization. It's imperative f

The US government was spying on everything well before 9/11 [1]. This sort of surveillance has been happening since the dawn of civilization. It's imperative for elites that wish to stay in power. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON

gambiting 5y ago
Yes, and it's almost expected at this point. But a private corporation doing it voluntarily(apple really doesn't have to implement this, lots of articles on this point) is at least something we can discuss and hopefully vote with our wallets against. Can't do that against a government.
- noptd 5y ago
  Exactly, and even if it's already occurring in some fashion, that doesn't mean we should sit idly by and allow it to get worse.
- colordrops 5y ago
  That's the thing, is it really voluntary? I'm not sure if apple has as much leverage as everyone is thinking. The Chinese government certainly forces companies to do this sort of thing, and there is precedent in the US as well with national security letters and warrant canaries. AT&T has basically been an extension of the NSA, with tap rooms built into their centers, and I'm certain all kinds of things have been forced on companies using some sort of leverage behind the scenes.
  - arvinsim 5y ago
    So who is accountable? Because arguing that "it has always been this way" is not a satisfactory answer,
    - danuker 5y ago
      The powers that be. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/23/nsa-prism-costs-tech-companies-paid https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/23/nsa-prism-cost...
  - Ms-J 5y ago
    I agree with this statement in it's entirety. There are some pretty messed up demands going on I've heard.
- vbezhenar 5y ago
  Of course US forced Apple to do so. Surely NSA have enough levers to force American company to do anything.
  - gambiting 5y ago
    US undoubtedly forces Apple to hand over everything and anything they want. It's not fine, but I feel like we have no say over it anyway. Apple announcing publicly that they will scan your photos is something they chose to do, and the law doesn't require them to so this in their implementation of iCloud.
    - kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
      They probably made a deal with the Justice Dept.: We give you surveillance in exchange for not pursuing an anti-trust investigation. That's the only prize that could justify Apple's "voluntary" behavior.
      - dannyw 5y ago
        Apple in 2022: it would be a shame if dissents could download apps outside the app store, like Signal, which refuses to implement encryption back-door...
      - input_sh 5y ago
        Also see: WhatsApp being end-to-end encrypted, but not encrypting backups to Google Drive / iCloud.
- oreilles 5y ago
  Apple does not spy on your device. They only get information about the data you agree to sending it to them by using their cloud services. It's nothing remotely close to the surveillance we are talking about here.
  - GordonS 5y ago
    You could argue that the public at large "agrees" to total surveillance by: 1. Claiming such things are conspiracy theories, despite an abundance of evidence 2. Not giving a shit, even during the (very brief) period where it was covered (very briefly) in the news 3. Buying into all the thingly-veiled gov and media FUD about terrorism, paedophiles, organised criminals and communists 4. Not protesting en-masse 5. Not voting for a party that runs on privacy and anti-surveillance policies 6. Not starting such a party as in (2), since AFAIK it doesn't even exist...
  - gambiting 5y ago
    I think that's a very dishonest take. The scanning takes place on your device before any data is sent to apple. The fact that you were intending to send that data to iCloud is almost irellevant to the entire discussion since apple has clearly built a system for scanning your files on your device, not in the cloud. There's nothing stopping then from using the exact same technology to scan for literally anything on your phone. It's like if apple added a 360° motorized camera in your home but said "don't worry, it's only pointing at the door!"
    - oreilles 5y ago
      Your phone is the camera. It can already read and write everything that's inside because that's how an operating system works. There is zero breach of privacy unless the result of the scan are sent without your consent. Just like for everything else that's on your phone, scanned or not.
    - Retric 5y ago
      Except Apple already turned iCould on without really making a big deal about it, just up the storage while making everything automatic and nobody would have noticed. This outrage just seems silly in that context because iCloud data is already available on request: https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/law-enforcement-guidelines-us.pdf https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/law-enforcement-guidelin... This is “simply” Apple leveraging people’s phones to run perceptual hashes rather than paying for the servers to do it themselves. Which is why the outrage caught them off guard, from their perspective nothing changed governments have been spying like this since 2011.
- Fiahil 5y ago
  "Vote with our wallet" is an illusion. Do you really think you can cast a vote by _NOT buying_ an iPhone? In large companies -like Apple-, there is tracking of conversions (see the ad -> buy the product), churn (a client who stopped coming/buying), interest/reach (who am I targeting with this ad). And that's it. There is no tracking of "people who would have bought an iPhone but chose not to SPECIFICALLY because of the new tracking feature we added. Thinking this kind of metric is relevant and measurable is a complete fantasy, and borderline silly. Public discussion might influence product decisions. But it have to be hugely controversial to have any effect. You can't "vote with your wallet". That's it. I have no idea why such belief made it's way into pop culture.
  - fouc 5y ago
    A boycott is an illusion?
    - mromanuk 5y ago
      To boycott, a large portion of buyers are needed on board. That’s why “vote with your wallet” in loneliness like a “rational agent” doesn’t work. Are you going to vote and convince others to boycott?
  - danuker 5y ago
    > You can't "vote with your wallet". If there's anything that will make a business listen, it's money (or lack of it). When it affects the bottom line, they are forced to listen. Sure, I don't affect them much by myself. But everyone commenting about Apple around my presence will find out why I am not sponsoring them. There is also the crappy hardware design, not just the privacy issues (which negate the advertising spending they made the months before). Here is what Louis Rossmann, who repairs Apple devices, says: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUaJ8pDlxi8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUaJ8pDlxi8
    - dredmorbius 5y ago
      Pretty clearly, forty-plus years of sustained warnings and criticisms[1] of increasing surveillance and security failures have failed to have any substantive influence on the industry. It's not that the concerns aren't justified. It's that they're far too complex to be communicated and grasped by the public as a whole, and they facilitate far too much by way of immediate profit and market advantage to the vendors who will more than happily ignore the warnings. A boycott by the vanishingly small fraction of the market which does fully grasp the issue is no threat at all. ________________________________ Notes: 1. See: https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/105074933053020193 https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/105074933053020193
- danaris 5y ago
  And what would you buy instead? Apple has been up front about what they're doing. They're explaining how what they're doing is specifically designed to protect your privacy in practical terms. No, they probably don't have to be doing this, and I would be happy if they decided not to. But do you really think that any other phone you buy—apart from something ridiculously niche like a Librem—doesn't have exactly the same problems, only they're still keeping it secret from you? "Voting with your wallet" only works if there are realistic alternatives.
  - yyyk 5y ago
    >But do you really think that any other phone you buy... doesn't have exactly the same problems, only they're still keeping it secret from you? At the moment, ALL of the other smartphone models (except iPhone soon) don't have this problem. There's no reason to bother with client-side given the current server-side implementations and this scanning can't be hidden for long.
Animats 5y ago
It was more narrowly focused in the Cold War era, though. NSA was very focused on the USSR, which was quite opaque from the outside. "Team A" worried about the USSR, "Team B", everything else. Huge amounts of effort had to be expended to get basic info like "where are their air bases"? One head of the NSA said during that period that they produced about three pieces of actionable intelligence per day, of which maybe one per week was important enough to be brought to the attention of the President. Much info went into NSA, but not much came out. NSA belonged entirely to DoD, which had no domestic role and wasn't interested in anybody who lacked serious military power. The "trying to find small numbers of people who might do some terrorist act via SIGINT" is post-9/11. That's when surveillance became dangerous. Now, law enforcement has access to far too much take. Worse, there's a huge US anti-terrorist establishment that's orders of magnitude larger than the number of terrorists and doesn't really have enough to do. So they self-generate work.
- colordrops 5y ago
  How are you so certain they didn't have a domestic role?
  - jkepler 5y ago
    Didn't McCarthyism rely on or expand domestic spying? And didn't they extend suspicions and charges against far more people than the evidentiary basis would have supported? According to Wikipedia, the FBI's ranks nearly doubled in size to accommodate all the new investigations being pursued.
    - Animats 5y ago
      Yes. That was Hoover and the FBI. The CIA also did some domestic stuff, more during the 1960s than later. NSA, not so much. There wasn't much wiretapping in the US before the advent of electronic central offices. Phone switches just weren't equipped for it. Somebody had to physically connect wires to listen in. (Yes, you could listen to a few lines remotely using the test gear. Telcos hated that, because it tied up the automatic line insulation test equipment, COs had only 2 to 4 sets of that, each set took up three racks, and each could only do one line at a time.) In Guliani's old book about taking down the New York mob, he writes about the government having to pay phone bills to New York Telephone for wiretap lines. Once they didn't pay the bill, and the billing system billed the party being tapped. That's where the pressure for CALEA and built-in wiretapping began.
antattack 5y ago
After 9/11 surveillance had been privatized. (not to say it was not going to happen anyway) https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195375886.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780195375886-e-0018?result=1&rskey=jpolp3 https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/978019...

gambiting 5y ago

Yes, and it's almost expected at this point. But a private corporation doing it voluntarily(apple really doesn't have to implement this, lots of articles on this point) is at least something we can discuss and hopefully vote with our wallets against. Can't do that against a government.

noptd 5y ago
Exactly, and even if it's already occurring in some fashion, that doesn't mean we should sit idly by and allow it to get worse.
colordrops 5y ago
That's the thing, is it really voluntary? I'm not sure if apple has as much leverage as everyone is thinking. The Chinese government certainly forces companies to do this sort of thing, and there is precedent in the US as well with national security letters and warrant canaries. AT&T has basically been an extension of the NSA, with tap rooms built into their centers, and I'm certain all kinds of things have been forced on companies using some sort of leverage behind the scenes.
- arvinsim 5y ago
  So who is accountable? Because arguing that "it has always been this way" is not a satisfactory answer,
  - danuker 5y ago
    The powers that be. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/23/nsa-prism-costs-tech-companies-paid https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/23/nsa-prism-cost...
- Ms-J 5y ago
  I agree with this statement in it's entirety. There are some pretty messed up demands going on I've heard.
vbezhenar 5y ago
Of course US forced Apple to do so. Surely NSA have enough levers to force American company to do anything.
- gambiting 5y ago
  US undoubtedly forces Apple to hand over everything and anything they want. It's not fine, but I feel like we have no say over it anyway. Apple announcing publicly that they will scan your photos is something they chose to do, and the law doesn't require them to so this in their implementation of iCloud.
  - kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
    They probably made a deal with the Justice Dept.: We give you surveillance in exchange for not pursuing an anti-trust investigation. That's the only prize that could justify Apple's "voluntary" behavior.
    - dannyw 5y ago
      Apple in 2022: it would be a shame if dissents could download apps outside the app store, like Signal, which refuses to implement encryption back-door...
    - input_sh 5y ago
      Also see: WhatsApp being end-to-end encrypted, but not encrypting backups to Google Drive / iCloud.
oreilles 5y ago
Apple does not spy on your device. They only get information about the data you agree to sending it to them by using their cloud services. It's nothing remotely close to the surveillance we are talking about here.
- GordonS 5y ago
  You could argue that the public at large "agrees" to total surveillance by: 1. Claiming such things are conspiracy theories, despite an abundance of evidence 2. Not giving a shit, even during the (very brief) period where it was covered (very briefly) in the news 3. Buying into all the thingly-veiled gov and media FUD about terrorism, paedophiles, organised criminals and communists 4. Not protesting en-masse 5. Not voting for a party that runs on privacy and anti-surveillance policies 6. Not starting such a party as in (2), since AFAIK it doesn't even exist...
- gambiting 5y ago
  I think that's a very dishonest take. The scanning takes place on your device before any data is sent to apple. The fact that you were intending to send that data to iCloud is almost irellevant to the entire discussion since apple has clearly built a system for scanning your files on your device, not in the cloud. There's nothing stopping then from using the exact same technology to scan for literally anything on your phone. It's like if apple added a 360° motorized camera in your home but said "don't worry, it's only pointing at the door!"
  - oreilles 5y ago
    Your phone is the camera. It can already read and write everything that's inside because that's how an operating system works. There is zero breach of privacy unless the result of the scan are sent without your consent. Just like for everything else that's on your phone, scanned or not.
  - Retric 5y ago
    Except Apple already turned iCould on without really making a big deal about it, just up the storage while making everything automatic and nobody would have noticed. This outrage just seems silly in that context because iCloud data is already available on request: https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/law-enforcement-guidelines-us.pdf https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/law-enforcement-guidelin... This is “simply” Apple leveraging people’s phones to run perceptual hashes rather than paying for the servers to do it themselves. Which is why the outrage caught them off guard, from their perspective nothing changed governments have been spying like this since 2011.
Fiahil 5y ago
"Vote with our wallet" is an illusion. Do you really think you can cast a vote by _NOT buying_ an iPhone? In large companies -like Apple-, there is tracking of conversions (see the ad -> buy the product), churn (a client who stopped coming/buying), interest/reach (who am I targeting with this ad). And that's it. There is no tracking of "people who would have bought an iPhone but chose not to SPECIFICALLY because of the new tracking feature we added. Thinking this kind of metric is relevant and measurable is a complete fantasy, and borderline silly. Public discussion might influence product decisions. But it have to be hugely controversial to have any effect. You can't "vote with your wallet". That's it. I have no idea why such belief made it's way into pop culture.
- fouc 5y ago
  A boycott is an illusion?
  - mromanuk 5y ago
    To boycott, a large portion of buyers are needed on board. That’s why “vote with your wallet” in loneliness like a “rational agent” doesn’t work. Are you going to vote and convince others to boycott?
- danuker 5y ago
  > You can't "vote with your wallet". If there's anything that will make a business listen, it's money (or lack of it). When it affects the bottom line, they are forced to listen. Sure, I don't affect them much by myself. But everyone commenting about Apple around my presence will find out why I am not sponsoring them. There is also the crappy hardware design, not just the privacy issues (which negate the advertising spending they made the months before). Here is what Louis Rossmann, who repairs Apple devices, says: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUaJ8pDlxi8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUaJ8pDlxi8
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    Pretty clearly, forty-plus years of sustained warnings and criticisms[1] of increasing surveillance and security failures have failed to have any substantive influence on the industry. It's not that the concerns aren't justified. It's that they're far too complex to be communicated and grasped by the public as a whole, and they facilitate far too much by way of immediate profit and market advantage to the vendors who will more than happily ignore the warnings. A boycott by the vanishingly small fraction of the market which does fully grasp the issue is no threat at all. ________________________________ Notes: 1. See: https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/105074933053020193 https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/105074933053020193
danaris 5y ago
And what would you buy instead? Apple has been up front about what they're doing. They're explaining how what they're doing is specifically designed to protect your privacy in practical terms. No, they probably don't have to be doing this, and I would be happy if they decided not to. But do you really think that any other phone you buy—apart from something ridiculously niche like a Librem—doesn't have exactly the same problems, only they're still keeping it secret from you? "Voting with your wallet" only works if there are realistic alternatives.
- yyyk 5y ago
  >But do you really think that any other phone you buy... doesn't have exactly the same problems, only they're still keeping it secret from you? At the moment, ALL of the other smartphone models (except iPhone soon) don't have this problem. There's no reason to bother with client-side given the current server-side implementations and this scanning can't be hidden for long.

Animats 5y ago

It was more narrowly focused in the Cold War era, though. NSA was very focused on the USSR, which was quite opaque from the outside. "Team A" worried about the USSR, "Team B", everything else. Huge amounts of effort had to be expended to get basic info like "where are their air bases"? One head of the NSA said during that period that they produced about three pieces of actionable intelligence per day, of which maybe one per week was important enough to be brought to the attention of the President. Much info went into NSA, but not much came out. NSA belonged entirely to DoD, which had no domestic role and wasn't interested in anybody who lacked serious military power. The "trying to find small numbers of people who might do some terrorist act via SIGINT" is post-9/11. That's when surveillance became dangerous. Now, law enforcement has access to far too much take. Worse, there's a huge US anti-terrorist establishment that's orders of magnitude larger than the number of terrorists and doesn't really have enough to do. So they self-generate work.

colordrops 5y ago
How are you so certain they didn't have a domestic role?
- jkepler 5y ago
  Didn't McCarthyism rely on or expand domestic spying? And didn't they extend suspicions and charges against far more people than the evidentiary basis would have supported? According to Wikipedia, the FBI's ranks nearly doubled in size to accommodate all the new investigations being pursued.
  - Animats 5y ago
    Yes. That was Hoover and the FBI. The CIA also did some domestic stuff, more during the 1960s than later. NSA, not so much. There wasn't much wiretapping in the US before the advent of electronic central offices. Phone switches just weren't equipped for it. Somebody had to physically connect wires to listen in. (Yes, you could listen to a few lines remotely using the test gear. Telcos hated that, because it tied up the automatic line insulation test equipment, COs had only 2 to 4 sets of that, each set took up three racks, and each could only do one line at a time.) In Guliani's old book about taking down the New York mob, he writes about the government having to pay phone bills to New York Telephone for wiretap lines. Once they didn't pay the bill, and the billing system billed the party being tapped. That's where the pressure for CALEA and built-in wiretapping began.

antattack 5y ago

After 9/11 surveillance had been privatized. (not to say it was not going to happen anyway) https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195375886.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780195375886-e-0018?result=1&rskey=jpolp3 https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/978019...