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Apple VP of SW Engineering: "Apple devices are the most secure consumer hardware on the market" ... except for how Apple sends a copy of all of your data tha

*Apple VP of SW Engineering: "Apple devices are the most secure consumer hardware on the market"* ... except for how Apple sends a copy of all of your data that passes through their servers to the NSA. No, I'm not espousing a conspiracy theory, this has been brought to light by Edward Snowden's revelations. Now, we don't know how much of the data on Apple phones gets sent to Apple's servers, so it's not literally everything on your phone, but at least everything that's backed up remotely, and possibly more. So, pot calling the kettle black. --- *"to curb the abuse of state-sponsored spyware"* Note that Apple is not saying "to prevent", only "to curb". But even worse than that, they're saying "curb abuse", not "curb use", as though that type of state spying is not inherently abusive. --- *"State-sponsored actors like the NSO Group spend millions of dollars on sophisticated surveillance technologies without effective accountability. That needs to change,"* Apple has a larger R&D budget than most world states. In fact, Apple themselves probably spend more money on sophisticated surveillance technologies than half the world's states combined. Certainly if we count things like dynamic image analysis from all those cameras on phones and cars and such. Why is it an unaccountable foreign corporation better than a government? They're both pretty bad.

smoldesu 5y ago
Friendly heads-up: if you try to say anything negative about Apple here on Hacker News, people will tend to downvote you out of cognitive dissonance alone. It doesn't matter if what you're saying is the truth, the people here just really like to roleplay as security experts and pretend like Apple is somehow different from the other PRISM-compliant corporations.
- dang 5y ago
  This isn't remotely true, as anyone can see for themselves using the search box at the bottom of every page. Please don't post unsubstantive comments here, such as spurious generalizations about the community. The people who feel the opposite way about $BigCo make exactly the opposite spurious generalizations—the dominant variable affecting this is the passions of the perceiver. In other words, it is in the eye of the beholder. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=%22false%20feelings%20of%20generality%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20dislike%20notice&sort=byDate&type=story&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - smoldesu 5y ago
    I respectfully disagree. No matter how arbitrary or obliquely bad of a decision Apple makes (supporting mass-surveillance, adding a notch to a laptop, buying out the entire 5nm node from TSMC), there are people on this site that will defend it. These people represent the majority of interactions I've had on the subject over the past year, because anyone who criticizes the dominant culture of the site gets run out of town on a rail. Every attempt I make at good-faith discussion around Apple ends with accusations, dogpiled downvotes and completely off-topic flamewars. I'm not the sort of person who cares about those things, but denying that they happen? It's in every $BigCo thread, every day. Without healthy skepticism to balance blind support, meaningful conversations cannot happen. When we fail to hold companies accountable for their actions, innovation dies. As this is a site made for entrepreneurs and starry-eyed startup jockeys, I think fostering discussions around the shortcomings of bigger companies opens the dialogue around creative solutions and novel products. Some people treat this site as a place to do battle for their favorite companies though, which ultimately harms the quality of discourse and reduces us to nothing more than tribal warfare.
    - dang 5y ago
      Of course you're going to get pushback when you post grand claims, provocations, and outright flamebait like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29344580 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29344580. Your own posts are generating it. That's not evidence of bias in the community, it's a reflection of what you're doing on the site. Please stop that. It's not what this site is for, and we ban accounts that keep doing it.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]

*Apple VP of SW Engineering: "Apple devices are the most secure consumer hardware on the market"* ... except for how Apple sends a copy of all of your data tha

smoldesu 5y ago

Friendly heads-up: if you try to say anything negative about Apple here on Hacker News, people will tend to downvote you out of cognitive dissonance alone. It doesn't matter if what you're saying is the truth, the people here just really like to roleplay as security experts and pretend like Apple is somehow different from the other PRISM-compliant corporations.

dang 5y ago
This isn't remotely true, as anyone can see for themselves using the search box at the bottom of every page. Please don't post unsubstantive comments here, such as spurious generalizations about the community. The people who feel the opposite way about $BigCo make exactly the opposite spurious generalizations—the dominant variable affecting this is the passions of the perceiver. In other words, it is in the eye of the beholder. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=%22false%20feelings%20of%20generality%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20dislike%20notice&sort=byDate&type=story&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- smoldesu 5y ago
  I respectfully disagree. No matter how arbitrary or obliquely bad of a decision Apple makes (supporting mass-surveillance, adding a notch to a laptop, buying out the entire 5nm node from TSMC), there are people on this site that will defend it. These people represent the majority of interactions I've had on the subject over the past year, because anyone who criticizes the dominant culture of the site gets run out of town on a rail. Every attempt I make at good-faith discussion around Apple ends with accusations, dogpiled downvotes and completely off-topic flamewars. I'm not the sort of person who cares about those things, but denying that they happen? It's in every $BigCo thread, every day. Without healthy skepticism to balance blind support, meaningful conversations cannot happen. When we fail to hold companies accountable for their actions, innovation dies. As this is a site made for entrepreneurs and starry-eyed startup jockeys, I think fostering discussions around the shortcomings of bigger companies opens the dialogue around creative solutions and novel products. Some people treat this site as a place to do battle for their favorite companies though, which ultimately harms the quality of discourse and reduces us to nothing more than tribal warfare.
  - dang 5y ago
    Of course you're going to get pushback when you post grand claims, provocations, and outright flamebait like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29344580 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29344580. Your own posts are generating it. That's not evidence of bias in the community, it's a reflection of what you're doing on the site. Please stop that. It's not what this site is for, and we ban accounts that keep doing it.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]