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Yes, well “actual” law-enforcement agencies “actually” use tons of data that originates with Meta and alphabet respectively - at a scale that literally no other

Yes, well “actual” law-enforcement agencies “actually” use tons of data that originates with Meta and alphabet respectively - at a scale that literally no other organization has the ability to comply with

talldayo 2y ago
At that point you may as well implicate Apple, along with the rest of FAANG for being members of PRISM. According to their transparency reports, both Apple and Meta have an ~90% turnover rate for account details to US authorities. If you think it's "spyware" to comply with a legally valid subpeona then you're really not going to like your options. https://transparency.meta.com/reports/government-data-requests/country/US/ https://transparency.meta.com/reports/government-data-reques... https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/us.html https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/us.html Ironically, Google actually comes out on top in this respect for continuing to maintain an Open Source OS you can actually use. Neither Meta nor Apple provide ways for a user to avoid their first-party user profiling to the same extent.
- AndrewKemendo 2y ago
  Yea Apple, AT&T, Verizon, Oracle etc…
- Xelbair 2y ago
  >At that point you may as well implicate Apple, along with the rest of FAANG for being members of PRISM. Of course, as they should be. lets not go so far ahead to call Android an "open" product, as flashing a custom rom is severely limited(both flashing, and your capabilities afterwards - for example you might run into issues with banking apps) - but at least you can read the source(without any guarantees that rom contents match it)
  - talldayo 2y ago
    > lets not go so far ahead to call Android an "open" product Why not? When you use Android without Google services it makes perfect sense that some features break. The Play Store services won't work, which is bad but not critical for a smartphone. Pretty much every local feature Android has isn't broken by using a third-party ROM without Google services. I think it's perfectly fair to call Android an Open product, no less than Ubuntu is an Open product despite selling services to their users. > but at least you can read the source(without any guarantees that rom contents match it) There are multiple guarantees. You can build the ROM locally and flash it yourself if you're paranoid, the only parts you can't fully inspect is the firmware (which goes for most modern devices anyways). You can also match the official checksum provided by the ROM developer to verify that you're not being MITMed, decompress the ISO archive to inspect it before flashing, or use your Superuser privileges to inspect the root directory after installation. Android is uniquely open, and I don't think the existence of consequences for gutting Google services changes anything (for me, at least).
alephnerd 2y ago
Once they are provided said data after litigation, what can they do with it? The data provided by these platforms is basically raw data that's useless alone. They need a platform to attribute metadata to a person, store said metadata at scale, or target a user with said metadata directly. This is where the surveillance players listed come in, and they don't ask for a warrant or subpoenas because they are vendors selling a platform. Don't get me wrong - I agree with you that user data collection needs to be better regulated (GDPR and similar regulations like CCPA), but the companies listed are way more mercenary and are the companies that unmask users from the raw metadata provided, and can go well beyond the capabilities platforms like Meta or Google can provide. Finally, it's safe to say that social media subpoenas are often used for parallel construction, when LE or Intelligence used one of the vendors listed. ShdwDrgn is a good example of that. Edit: After a bit of thinking, maybe this list needs much more nuance. There are various types of surveillance tech, and used for different reasons/tasks. For example, throwing Palantir in the same bucket at Candiru doesn't make sense, but both can be used in conjunction, and imo it doesn't feel right to put Meta in the same bucket as Candiru or Zerodium I might be a bit pedantic, but I feel like that pedantry is needed in order to make a better case about how scary the entire surveillance/intel market can be. That said, I still stand by my statement that a Gnu or FOSS stack wouldn't protect against a number of the vendors listed.

talldayo 2y ago

At that point you may as well implicate Apple, along with the rest of FAANG for being members of PRISM. According to their transparency reports, both Apple and Meta have an ~90% turnover rate for account details to US authorities. If you think it's "spyware" to comply with a legally valid subpeona then you're really not going to like your options. https://transparency.meta.com/reports/government-data-requests/country/US/ https://transparency.meta.com/reports/government-data-reques... https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/us.html https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/us.html Ironically, Google actually comes out on top in this respect for continuing to maintain an Open Source OS you can actually use. Neither Meta nor Apple provide ways for a user to avoid their first-party user profiling to the same extent.

AndrewKemendo 2y ago
Yea Apple, AT&T, Verizon, Oracle etc…
Xelbair 2y ago
>At that point you may as well implicate Apple, along with the rest of FAANG for being members of PRISM. Of course, as they should be. lets not go so far ahead to call Android an "open" product, as flashing a custom rom is severely limited(both flashing, and your capabilities afterwards - for example you might run into issues with banking apps) - but at least you can read the source(without any guarantees that rom contents match it)
- talldayo 2y ago
  > lets not go so far ahead to call Android an "open" product Why not? When you use Android without Google services it makes perfect sense that some features break. The Play Store services won't work, which is bad but not critical for a smartphone. Pretty much every local feature Android has isn't broken by using a third-party ROM without Google services. I think it's perfectly fair to call Android an Open product, no less than Ubuntu is an Open product despite selling services to their users. > but at least you can read the source(without any guarantees that rom contents match it) There are multiple guarantees. You can build the ROM locally and flash it yourself if you're paranoid, the only parts you can't fully inspect is the firmware (which goes for most modern devices anyways). You can also match the official checksum provided by the ROM developer to verify that you're not being MITMed, decompress the ISO archive to inspect it before flashing, or use your Superuser privileges to inspect the root directory after installation. Android is uniquely open, and I don't think the existence of consequences for gutting Google services changes anything (for me, at least).

alephnerd 2y ago

Once they are provided said data after litigation, what can they do with it? The data provided by these platforms is basically raw data that's useless alone. They need a platform to attribute metadata to a person, store said metadata at scale, or target a user with said metadata directly. This is where the surveillance players listed come in, and they don't ask for a warrant or subpoenas because they are vendors selling a platform. Don't get me wrong - I agree with you that user data collection needs to be better regulated (GDPR and similar regulations like CCPA), but the companies listed are way more mercenary and are the companies that unmask users from the raw metadata provided, and can go well beyond the capabilities platforms like Meta or Google can provide. Finally, it's safe to say that social media subpoenas are often used for parallel construction, when LE or Intelligence used one of the vendors listed. ShdwDrgn is a good example of that. Edit: After a bit of thinking, maybe this list needs much more nuance. There are various types of surveillance tech, and used for different reasons/tasks. For example, throwing Palantir in the same bucket at Candiru doesn't make sense, but both can be used in conjunction, and imo it doesn't feel right to put Meta in the same bucket as Candiru or Zerodium I might be a bit pedantic, but I feel like that pedantry is needed in order to make a better case about how scary the entire surveillance/intel market can be. That said, I still stand by my statement that a Gnu or FOSS stack wouldn't protect against a number of the vendors listed.