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Apple Sticks it to the Man Like they Should

Discussion in 'Entertainment and Technology' started by Pret Allez, Feb 17, 2016.

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  1. Pret Allez

    Pret Allez
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    You can read the rest of the letter here.

    I don't recall if I posted this before, but for people who are not sure why tech companies have such opposition to police forces and intelligence agencies, remember that your country's national criminal investigation agency won't be the only one asking (the most relevant part starts at 4:17):

    [youtube]ShUyfk4QB-8[/youtube]
     
    #1 Pret Allez, Feb 17, 2016
    Last edited: Feb 17, 2016
  2. Chip

    Chip
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    ... and, by contrast, Google is on record, at least with your search history, email, viewing habits, and just about everything else, as saying to the government "Come on down... we'll help you out!". The days of "don't be evil" are long, long gone.

    To be clear, I'm certainly not saying Apple is lily white. But I'm really glad they're saying "screw you" to the government.
     
    #2 Chip, Feb 17, 2016
  3. mychemromance99

    mychemromance99
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    I agree with Chip.
    Google is plain sucking up to the the government. The "Don't be evil" days are dead.

    I am huge Apple fanboy, but I'm not gonna lie that Apple is noble and pure white, but yeah I applaud Tim Cook for having the audacity to post that message.
     
    #3 mychemromance99, Feb 19, 2016
  4. colt

    colt
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    That open letter was borderline sexy. I was so proud of them! And I hope that they are able to stick to their guns! The idea of the government forcing them to hack their own systems is pretty sick....since you KNOW they are going to keep that tech despite anything they say.

    However, I'm sure the gov already has hackers good enough to do it for them...I wonder if this is the "legal" way around it.

    Anyways, I've never really fanboyed for Apple (I do love my Ipad <3) But this made me want to support them if it ever came down to it. Show me a petition, they have my signature!
     
    #4 colt, Feb 20, 2016
  5. Ryu

    Ryu
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    Surely the FBI should know how to hack one of the most purchased phones of all time. Christ...
     
    #5 Ryu, Feb 20, 2016
  6. plant

    plant
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    I agree with the above posters. Hell yeah Apple
     
    #6 plant, Feb 23, 2016
  7. Kasey

    Kasey
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    This is more of a marketing response than a we really care what happens response.
     
    #7 Kasey, Feb 23, 2016
  8. Benway

    Benway
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    Yeah, except if the government wants to access the terrorist's iCloud account, which they don't need permission for. This whole "Ooh, Apple is being so brave" thing is a joke. Besides that, the game has changed.
     
    #8 Benway, Feb 23, 2016
  9. Pret Allez

    Pret Allez
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    Well, I don't know how iCloud is implemented and whether or not they keep the keys in escrow or not. If they don't have an implementation of key escrow, then they cannot in fact fork any given account over. The best they could do is provide US law enforcement or intelligence with the salted hash of the data and let them brute force it (user passwords are generally weak). Alternatively, they could implement a client-side attack to MITM the authentication phase.

    Anyway, no matter what happens with the laws that tech companies have to follow, client-side encryption is always going to be an option...
     
    #9 Pret Allez, Feb 23, 2016
  10. Libertino

    Libertino
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    Tim Cook recently released a statement denying that it was a marketing strategy, which comes as no surprise to anyone. They will never admit to it being a marketing strategy, but it is. However, that doesn't mean that it isn't also a statement of values: ultimately I do believe that Apple's higher-ups are pro-privacy.
     
    #10 Libertino, Feb 24, 2016
  11. Pret Allez

    Pret Allez
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    I agree with brother Libertino. I think that while anti-corporate cynicism may be warranted in many cases, in this case, it could possibly by genuine. As my linked video mentions, law enforcement actually causes a lot of problems for tech companies because of how privacy and policy powers interact across different jurisdictoins (that is, across different countries). This problem is bigger than just US tech against US law enforcement/millitary intelligence. It is, in some ways, pitting nations against each other. For example, some countries may have what are called "data localization" laws which force data on or created by their citizens to be hosted on servers that are actually in the country. Further, they may limit how that data can be transferred to other countries. This causes pretty big problems for the tech industry as a whole, and it's causing wide architectural changes.

    And unfortunately, almost all of this is being done by EU countries in response to overreach by US federal government agencies.

    So I humbly submit that pushback from a major tech company is in fact a big deal and positive for the rest of us, even if we don't think their reasons are 100% genuine. It's good that tech companies are specifically engineering impossibility of compliance into their products.
     
    #11 Pret Allez, Feb 24, 2016
  12. Benway

    Benway
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    I really have a hard time believing that the FBI/NSA can't hack the phone. This is a media circus.
     
    #12 Benway, Feb 24, 2016
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