3 ms·

> Apple is part of PRISM. So are/were Microsoft, Yahoo!, Google, Facebook/Meta, YouTube, AOL and Skype. The Washington Post stated, after analysis 98% of PRISM

by sbuk 4y ago

> Apple is part of PRISM. So are/were Microsoft, Yahoo!, Google, Facebook/Meta, YouTube, AOL and Skype. The Washington Post stated, after analysis 98% of PRISM production is/was based on Yahoo!, Google, and Microsoft. Not defending or apologising - merely stating fact. This is trotted out so often that it needs highlighting. Not trying to change your mind either - you do you. Just offering some balance to your opinion. I know that you are "holding a trillion dollar business accountable(tm)", but lets hold all these multi-billion dollar business accountable too. > Apple put iCloud in Chinese government datacenters. As does every company that has a market presence in China. iCloud is hosted in China and operated by GCBD. Effectively nothing to do with Apple and has little baring on iCloud. It's not private for local users, and that is bad. This does not mean that China legitimately has access to iCloud globally.

smoldesu 4y ago
> but lets hold all these multi-billion dollar business accountable too. Oh, for sure. Microsoft is far-and-away one of the worst handlers of data, Yahoo and Google aren't much better either. This is a strawman though, and while it provides a nice bit of context around the rest of the status-quo for privacy, it doesn't absolve Apple of the fact that their security is half-theater, and the other half has convenient backdoors and workarounds for the involved parties. Given that the topic of this article is "Hardening MacOS" and not "Reviewing The Standards of Security in Big Tech", I chose to focus on Apple's particular issues, especially since the issues with those other companies are so well-documented on HN. > It's not private for local users, and that is bad. This is what I used that point to illustrate. Apple claims that privacy is a human right, yet apparently not all humans are created equal? It's a strange bit of hypocrisy, one they could easily avoid by refusing to negotiate with countries that take advantage of them.
- imwillofficial 4y ago
  I don’t think this is a unfair statement to make. The “petty threats” make up the large majority of risk for average users. Faaaar larger. If your threat model includes worry about state level actors, Tails or QubesOS is the only thing I would recommend

by sbuk 4y ago

smoldesu 4y ago

> but lets hold all these multi-billion dollar business accountable too. Oh, for sure. Microsoft is far-and-away one of the worst handlers of data, Yahoo and Google aren't much better either. This is a strawman though, and while it provides a nice bit of context around the rest of the status-quo for privacy, it doesn't absolve Apple of the fact that their security is half-theater, and the other half has convenient backdoors and workarounds for the involved parties. Given that the topic of this article is "Hardening MacOS" and not "Reviewing The Standards of Security in Big Tech", I chose to focus on Apple's particular issues, especially since the issues with those other companies are so well-documented on HN. > It's not private for local users, and that is bad. This is what I used that point to illustrate. Apple claims that privacy is a human right, yet apparently not all humans are created equal? It's a strange bit of hypocrisy, one they could easily avoid by refusing to negotiate with countries that take advantage of them.

imwillofficial 4y ago
I don’t think this is a unfair statement to make. The “petty threats” make up the large majority of risk for average users. Faaaar larger. If your threat model includes worry about state level actors, Tails or QubesOS is the only thing I would recommend