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The uncynical take is they just didn't realize this was an issue and changed it immediately when they found out it was.

by wilg 3y ago

cryu 3y ago
Nah. I was with Apple for the better part of a decade; Apple care[sd] about user privacy only insofar as it gave them something else to bash Google about[1] [1] Getting into a knock-down-drag-out with the new honcho overseeing CoreOS about us "doubling down on user privacy" was one of the last straws for me. Everybody in the audience was source-disclosed (and some of us had even read the relevant parts :), and the guy had the audacity to claim a certain thing was impossible when we knew that particular thing was not only possible but was being uploaded to the mothership ...
- JimDabell 3y ago
  > Apple care[sd] about user privacy only insofar as it gave them something else to bash Google about Apple have done a lot of work in relation to privacy, and I am struggling to think of times they have bashed Google in relation to that work. It’s rare for Apple to refer to competitors at all. For instance, here’s Apple’s documentation on tracking prevention in WebKit: https://webkit.org/tracking-prevention/ https://webkit.org/tracking-prevention/ This is clearly the result of privacy work spanning many years. I can’t think of a time Apple have bashed Google in relation to any of this functionality. This goes for pretty much everything I can think of where Apple is clearly working on privacy-improving measures. If the only reason Apple works on privacy is to bash Google, where is all the Google bashing? Because I can see a lot of privacy work, but I can’t see a lot of Google bashing.
  - cryu 3y ago
    I should have made the scope of my comment more clear: the Google-bashing was internal. I honestly could not care less what the marketing spin was; internally, we were being told things that we knew to be false. I'm speaking specifically about the "absolute technical impossibility of providing certain information residing in the iDevice to anyone, even when the request was accompanied by a search warrant", which was the mantra circa 2014. The market differentiator was "we care about user privacy, in stark contrast with Google, who monetizes all data on their devices". That was horseshit, as a specific security team regularly handled exactly those requests ... and heaven help you if you pointed that out in any discussion with management. Things look a lot different from the inside. (edit: s/piracy/privacy/)
simion314 3y ago
>The uncynical take And would this be the only thing they did not realize or there is still a giant list f things that require to be made public until Apple realizes that those things are incompatible with their PR about caring about the customer privacy. Maybe is time that Apple customers demand Apple to disclose what other data is released to authorities without a warrant and why is Apple not attempting to fight back against that.
matwood 3y ago
People love to bash on Apple, but I don't think they even tried to defend this. They instead immediately changed it.
- _heimdall 3y ago
  I think part of the pushabck against Apple is that they knew this was possible and believed they could only talk about it once it was publicly known. Apple has plenty of lawyers. If they honestly didn't agree with this practice they could have politely told the feds to f$#& off. The fact that it took public reporting to make Apple feel safe discussing this means that (a) they did know (2) they didn't stop it and (d) this could pretty easily be little more than PR cleanup.

The uncynical take is they just didn't realize this was an issue and changed it immediately when they found out it was.

by wilg 3y ago

The uncynical take is they just didn't realize this was an issue and changed it immediately when they found out it was.

cryu 3y ago

Nah. I was with Apple for the better part of a decade; Apple care[sd] about user privacy only insofar as it gave them something else to bash Google about[1] [1] Getting into a knock-down-drag-out with the new honcho overseeing CoreOS about us "doubling down on user privacy" was one of the last straws for me. Everybody in the audience was source-disclosed (and some of us had even read the relevant parts :), and the guy had the audacity to claim a certain thing was impossible when we knew that particular thing was not only possible but was being uploaded to the mothership ...

JimDabell 3y ago
> Apple care[sd] about user privacy only insofar as it gave them something else to bash Google about Apple have done a lot of work in relation to privacy, and I am struggling to think of times they have bashed Google in relation to that work. It’s rare for Apple to refer to competitors at all. For instance, here’s Apple’s documentation on tracking prevention in WebKit: https://webkit.org/tracking-prevention/ https://webkit.org/tracking-prevention/ This is clearly the result of privacy work spanning many years. I can’t think of a time Apple have bashed Google in relation to any of this functionality. This goes for pretty much everything I can think of where Apple is clearly working on privacy-improving measures. If the only reason Apple works on privacy is to bash Google, where is all the Google bashing? Because I can see a lot of privacy work, but I can’t see a lot of Google bashing.
- cryu 3y ago
  I should have made the scope of my comment more clear: the Google-bashing was internal. I honestly could not care less what the marketing spin was; internally, we were being told things that we knew to be false. I'm speaking specifically about the "absolute technical impossibility of providing certain information residing in the iDevice to anyone, even when the request was accompanied by a search warrant", which was the mantra circa 2014. The market differentiator was "we care about user privacy, in stark contrast with Google, who monetizes all data on their devices". That was horseshit, as a specific security team regularly handled exactly those requests ... and heaven help you if you pointed that out in any discussion with management. Things look a lot different from the inside. (edit: s/piracy/privacy/)

simion314 3y ago

>The uncynical take And would this be the only thing they did not realize or there is still a giant list f things that require to be made public until Apple realizes that those things are incompatible with their PR about caring about the customer privacy. Maybe is time that Apple customers demand Apple to disclose what other data is released to authorities without a warrant and why is Apple not attempting to fight back against that.

matwood 3y ago

People love to bash on Apple, but I don't think they even tried to defend this. They instead immediately changed it.

_heimdall 3y ago
I think part of the pushabck against Apple is that they knew this was possible and believed they could only talk about it once it was publicly known. Apple has plenty of lawyers. If they honestly didn't agree with this practice they could have politely told the feds to f$#& off. The fact that it took public reporting to make Apple feel safe discussing this means that (a) they did know (2) they didn't stop it and (d) this could pretty easily be little more than PR cleanup.