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Comment by jcrei | Hacker News Reader

Oh snap. And Apple has been touting itself as the champion of privacy in comparison with Google, Facebook and Microsoft... This doesn't look good for them

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Being the victim of criminal behaviour, and not caring about other people's privacy are two very different things.

Caring about peoples privacy, and technological negligence that results in that privacy being impinged upon, are in fact the same issue.

It's not technological negligence to allow customers the means to access their own data if they forget their password. it's common sense.

It's technological negligence if you set out to protect customers privacy, but your employees decide to steal it anyway, because they can.

In the end, this is a problem with _all_ cloud services that do more than just _store_ data. If it does anything with your information at all then it's possible for an insider to look at it.

By that argument, all theft is negligence.

Technically speaking, you are correct, but so what?

It does kind of sound like victim blaming, but if you store a bunch of cash under your mattress, don't be surprised if someone tries to take it.

Likewise, if you store a bunch of customer data, someone will try to come and take it. If you make it accessible to anyone other than the customer, you can't act surprised if someone takes it.

Yes, and if this is indeed true, so what?

It means that any system or organization that isn't already perfectly secure is an embodiment of negligence.

Since that is impossible, all companies and all systems are negligence.

A term that applies to everyone means nothing.

Nevertheless you can say it and make businesses you don't like sound bad.

Well, I guess there is a difference between what your company as a whole believes in, and what 20 criminals disguised as employees do...

Even the NSA has leakers.

And if the NSA championed themselves as the defenders of privacy, how hard would you roll your eyes?

For my point it doesn't matter what the nature of the information is. Both Apple and the NSA want their people to keep secrets secret. But I think the NSA goes a fair bit further to prevent their employees from leaking far more sensitive info, and leaks still occur.

It's not Apple's policy to sell information. This is employees engaging in criminal behavior. Still not good for Apple, but it's correctable (firing and pressing charges as appropriate; institute stronger internal policies on both hiring and information access). Facebook and Google can't stop selling our information without going out of business (or a major pivot).

Google doesn't sell the information either. (You can buy ads, though.)

It kind of doesn't matter though. They are still the cause of a bunch of data being leaked through their actions. They should be held accountable for it whether it was intentional or not.

Your point is very valid, but the crime being committed against their customers is also very valid.

Google doesn't sell our information.

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