Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

The first line of defense against this is, and always will be, not publishing so much information about yourself. They can not mine what you do not provide.

We can argue all day about the ethics of the conduct of companies and states looking at these data, but it's a non-issue if the data simply don't exist.

Second, I've been fighting for regulations for over three years and I'm getting somewhere, but I'm also starting to think that we need technical solutions to many of these problems. One of the things I see as a problem is that people always want more, but privacy and security often require less.

For example, old charsets only supported Latin characters. With the introduction of Cyrillic characters many assumptions started breaking.

Each time I try to think through how to make the web / internet simpler I realize that it either requires pushing the complexity onto people unprepared to deal with it—an English speaking daughter may want to copy and paste her Russian mother's Cyrillic name, say—or it fails to handle the use cases we need it to handle.

I know this seems kinda abstract, but do you ever think about that interplay? Are there any insights or anecdotes you find useful?

There are tons of other shady companies out there doing nefarious things with your data.

We're going to need platforms that support group encryption and better security for apps.

And you always will. Principles and money are often at odds. This is not an easily fixable problem as the well-intended solutions often cause more problems. Enforcement of existing statutes and accepting legal-yet-unethical practices is unfortunately the most rational approach.

> We just can't compete with data at that type of fidelity.

Only in a situation where interminable growth is required in a race to the top. Otherwise, there's room for everyone and that's why there are thousands of software products that "compete" just fine. The key is just making sure there are platforms that allow everyone to build everything.

It takes years of dedication to be a professional electrician or plumber, but anybody off the street can build an application that aggregates personal information and isn't subject to any sort of regulation or oversight or system of professional ethics.

That doesn't just safeguard the public. It also safeguards the employed individuals when they say, "No, that is not allowed under the ethics of my profession."

This isn't about "let's make the government save us," it's about creating a legal framework to protect the interests of the public and give ethical considerations in data management and software design some legal backing.

I appreciate all your work and contributions to the community in general. Please keep your chin up and keep moving forward.

1) His team + Apple Directors that I firmly believe, both in words AND in their action, are strong proponents of privacy of the user

2) The Apple Board + Sharedholders that would revolt if the privacy principles from (1) prevented access to a market of ~1.4 billion people, and potentially gave a competitor like Huawei a further leg up.

In this scenario, I don't see it as "grand-standing," but more of a necessary public act that US should move more in the policy direction of the EU, in spite of steep lobbying from most of the Valley / FANG group that would benefit from less-strict privacy regulations.

In filings to a court during the FBI legal fight, Apple addressed this topic head on. The reason it was brought up in the first place was because national security establishment water holders were putting out the idea that Apple makes exceptions for China, and the Department of Justice parroted it [1].

From Apple's filing [2]:

>Finally, the government attempts to disclaim the obvious international implications of its demand, asserting that any pressure to hand over the same software to foreign agents “flows from [Apple’s] decision to do business in foreign countries . . . .” Opp. 26. Contrary to the government’s misleading statistics (Opp. 26), which had to do with lawful process and did not compel the creation of software that undermines the security of its users, Apple has never built a back door of any kind into iOS, or otherwise made data stored on the iPhone or in iCloud more technically accessible to any country’s government. See Dkt. 16-28 [Apple Inc., Privacy, Gov’t Info. Requests]; Federighi Decl. ¶¶ 6–7. The government is wrong in asserting that Apple made “special accommodations” for China (Opp. 26), as Apple uses the same security protocols everywhere in the world and follows the same standards for responding to law enforcement requests. See Federighi Decl. ¶ 5.

and a declaration from Craig Federighi personally [3]:

>Apple uses the same security protocols everywhere in the world.

>Apple has never made user data, whether stored on the iPhone or in iCloud, more technologically accessible to any country's government. We believe any such access is too dangerous to allow. Apple has also not provided any government with its proprietary iOS source code. While governmental agencies in various countries, including the United States, perform regulatory reviews of new iPhone releases, all that Apple provides in those circumstances is an unmodified iPhone device.

>It is my understanding that Apple has never worked with any government agency from any country to create a "backdoor" in any of our products and services.

>I declare under penalty of perjury under the laws of the United States of America that the foregoing is true and correct.

That was a few years ago, but Tim Cook basically reaffirmed that a few weeks ago in this interview with Vice [4]. The new law means Apple's Chinese iCloud data needs to be stored in local data centers, but Apple continues to maintain sole control of the keys. Whether you believe them or not, or whether you think that's a meaningful distinction is up to you. But end-to-end encrypted services like iMessage or iPhones itself, remain so and are still unblocked in China.

You might be wondering why Apple seemingly gets an exception when services like WhatsApp are blocked. The answer should be obvious: Apple being an old-world company that still makes products in meat space, (indirectly) employs a lot of people in China. That gives them leverage that other companies don't have.

So they have to comply with certain Chinese laws such as taking down the NYT app, VPN apps, being unable to operate iTunes Books or Movies in China, etc. But that's a small price if it means their core products remain uncompromised.

[1] https://www.lawfareblog.com/deposing-tim-cook

[2] https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2762131/C-D-Cal-1...

[3] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2762118-Federighi-De...

[4] https://youtu.be/VD1cP8SK3Q0?t=244

Which is utterly cringeworthy.

iPhone user thinks iPhone is best thing since sliced bread. News at 11.

I admit they are better than Google on the privacy issue, but should we be grateful for having an alternative that abuses us in different ways?

Of course, it's very nice that Apple made the decision to pick this edge, but they did it because they could not compete with Google on web services. So now they're publicly speaking to try and take the sting out of Google's edge. And that's healthy competition, the direct result will be that the consumer benefits, and I can agree we can be grateful to have these powerhouses fighting for our satisfaction.

Don't assume moral disposition when a CEO is talking his book.

Maybe Tim is really a good person, who knows?

But if Tim were the CEO of Facebook he'd be singing a different tune.

Don't underestimate the ability of CEO's to align their personal views with that of he company.

Apple is sensing blood in the water on Google and Facebook, and this is a smart, basic PR move to go on the offensive against those companies.

Now - I do think it's likely that Cook does actually believe what he is saying - so I'm not fully calling him a hypocrite or anything. But he is a business guy, and were he to be the head of a company for whom this angle would not apply, I suggest strongly he'd have a different story to tell.

When businessmen speak, it's mostly 'just business'. I don't mean that cynically, just pragmatically.

If you think the business community dislikes taxes, just wait until a law is proposed that gives people a private right of action against companies that leak their data. I don't think the term "white hot" would suffice.

Before they were public Google did a lot of stuff that was seemingly just "because we can". Give geeks a metric-shit-ton of money and that'sb what you get.

This line sounds like the "businesses aren't allowed to do things that don't maximise profits" myth.

I'd like some competition that's actually with Apple (that is others who respect privacy, not Google, Microsoft et al) as I am increasingly disappointed in Apple hardware.

It's not so much that I think that Apple is more virtuous than Google, that'd be naive. It's more that their business model seems to align better with actually respecting their user's privacy instead of siphoning as much data as they can even if that means using ridiculous defaults, nagging and dark UI patterns.

Do you acknowledge this comes at a huge cost? Apple has a fraction of the marketshare as Android in countries like India. Apple's iPhone prices out billions of people. Android-based phones don't. If Android-based phones adopted Apple's business model, billions of people would not have smartphones.

Chinas use of data is definitely not the way to go.

However, I would also caution against the push for almost complete privacy as that IMO leaves out a number of potential advantages from systems having enormous amounts of data about us.

The primary advantage of technology is that it is able to automate and remove a number of things we would otherwise have to do manually, semi-manually etc.

To the extent that we do more and more in the digital space, our digital identity becomes much more important and that creates a new problem that can't be solved through privacy IMO but have to be solved by allowing digital identities to learn how to trust each other (which means exchange data/information).

I don't think there are many ways around that unless you want to get off the grid completely (which is certainly one way to do things).

This is where I think the decentralized part becomes really valuable. How can we own our own data but exchange it with others and build trust over time just like we would in the real world.

Cause in order to take advantage of the technology you will need to feed it with the primary thing that keeps it alive, data.

You can call it hypocrisy but it doesn't affect the validity of Tim Cook's argument [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque

Given that the source on this is one guy at Goldman Sachs, I’d treat that number with some suspicion.

It would be stupid of them.

Used iOS devices are the Kia version.

all told 300+400+300 = 1000 which is STILL lower than the cost of the iPhone x max

Wondering if they could accomplish the same thing many car brands do i.e. Honda <> Acura

I suppose the best path would be to create a new phone that could either boot Android or your privacy-respecting OS, this way you could still get the mainstream sales with Android and you'd target the niche users who value their privacy with your custom system. Still seems very difficult to achieve, if you want your phone to be cheap you need to target a high sale volume to dilute the cost of your R&D.

I think the big problem is that smartphones never really had an healthy open source ecosystem going because it was all about closed hardware and locked bootloaders. Without a decent open source stack available it's hard to bootstrap a new system. And even if you did manage to do it you'd still need to convince people to port their apps to it (because not having Whatsapp or Instagram is going to be a deal breaker for many).

People behave as if this is impossible, but the options are all right there in the settings. There are a few places you lose some features but not super significant ones, and mostly those are because the tracking is intrinsically involved in the functions of the app.

The cheapo androids are more like the Yugo of mobile devices, and the nicer Androids basically cost the same or a little more. iPhone 7 is $1 on many promo deals.

If you go to companies with compliance requirements, iPhone owns the market, and is by far the cheapest solution. One of my "side hustles" in a very large org was managing about 40k iOS devices and 400 android devices... it basically cost about $9/year to manage, including staff. Staffing was basically 40-60% of two IT guys and half of 3 interns. If we broke the cost down further, the Androids would have been significantly more expensive, as additional 3rd party software was required as well as many more man-hours.

The iPhone is magic in that way, with sufficient scale, you deliver almost magical capability to your whole company, including network connectivity, for less than the run cost of a PC. And it costs something like 80% less to manage than a PC. If you look at companies in industries like field service, iPhones are almost a profit center.

Apple's market strategy was already primed towards a privacy-focused stance, since their profit center is selling physical devices. Thus, when privacy becomes a Big Deal in the world, Tim doesn't have to push hard to get Apple to line up with his beliefs. If Apple had been an advertising-focused company before Snowden, I doubt we'd be seeing as hard a push as they're giving right now.

That being said I can totally believe that he genuinely believes what he says. Actually I'd wager that most tech people, including at Google and Facebook, see that we're having a problem with "big data" and the compulsive profiling of their users. The potential for abuse is tremendous.

Regardless of ulterior motives I think we should rejoice, having a behemoth like Apple taking such a clear stance on this issue could generate enough momentum to have an actual change in mentalities.

I was a BlackBerry die-hard until they switched to Android. A privacy-focused phone using a Google OS, what a joke. Switched to iPhone and it’s pretty good, only thing I miss is the real keyboard.

The $40 should just be a number that would pass the lowest threshold the antitrust regulators will accept. My guess is that $40 doesn't have much to do with lost advertising revenue.

There's nothing inherently wrong with agreeing to give a company access to your data. But it's absolutely wrong that once you've handed your data over, that company can do whatever it wants with it, with no restrictions, as if they own it.

This is transparency - following through and actually giving a damn about things like child labor. They found 2 cases of underage labor in 2017 after auditing 756 facilities and over 1.3M workers. They made it a core violation of their supplier code, meaning that if and when underage labor is found via audit, that supplier loses its business with Apple.

Go read the report - you might find that Apple is a pretty damn thorough company when it comes to responsible labor. Is there more they could do? Yes, there always is - but they're doing quite well so far.

I really hoped they'd add this in iOS12.

'Buy apple products, we care about your data. We will help protect it. Encrypt it. Not share it. And block others form trying to get your data'

But are Apple as benevolent as they say? Do you trust such a gigantic corporation? Are they colluding with governments instead of just advertisers?

Also Apple's own "repair method" is to tell you that it's broken, without so much as opening the case and just replacing any component that seems to act up, costing you up to the device's original price in repair fees.

What do you suggest Apple should do instead of comply with the law? Require it's employees to incriminate themselves?

> Advertisers grew increasingly frustrated with Apple’s unwillingness to grant them access to the wealth of data the company possessed from its customers and Apple’s hundreds of millions of iTunes accounts. Every decision in advertising is born in data — 70 percent of agencies and 73 percent of brands use data to target the desired audience. Strong analytics tools are becoming ever more important as advertisers strive to keep ads relevant.

From: https://techcrunch.com/2016/03/28/the-downfall-of-the-walled...

How many investors did Apple lose for not data mining users?

Look at the P/E of Google and Facebook and then look at the P/E of Apple... Apple sweats every dime of their $1T valuation.

https://www.ped30.com/2018/10/24/tim-cook-brussels-data-secu...

Prove that localized models built on small datasets work.

Invest in cryptography and user anonymity technologies.

Instead he's just sitting on it like smaug.

I'm not even sure it rates in the top 50 outside of paranoid tech workers with nothing more important to worry about.

Growth may stall, but throwing away one of their primary advantages over nearly every other tech company is a pretty stupid strategy.

That said, I do think people should not be surprised that when they reveal pieces of information to a company that that information is used by that company in ways that they don't 100% agree with. If you give up information, you're giving up (some amount) of control over how that information is used.

Sure, please paste here your email and other accounts logins.

Maybe you say you can't trust some random stranger on the internet but why would your trust companies, they have no morals, they want only to make money for themselves and on top of that they are incompetent and they can lose your data and random people on the internet will have it.

Because:

> Personal information is extremely valuable.

The main problem isn't making use of personal information, but using it in such a way where it is not clear to the user as to what is being collected by whom, and what is the value they're getting back for that information.

Moreover, is is extremely hard to know about and control leakage of that info to parties you didn't consent to directly.

1) No opt-out. Some companies and institutions are decent about this, but the overwhelming majority of companies who are collecting information about me I've never heard of and couldn't name. I'm not asked if tracking, etc. is okay, OR am presented with some dense glacier of legalese when my only interest is to read some article.

2) No transparency. Who has what information about me and how are they using it? I haven't the foggiest clue, if I'm being honest about it, and I'm a relatively technologically sophisticated and aware user.

3) No deletes. Even when a company offers to "delete your data", how can this be verified complete? It is difficult for me to trust a company or institution's word on this having so insidiously collected the data in the first place. Now, before you take issue with "insidiously", consider the information asymmetry present when an average person (non-lawyer/engineer superstar hybrid) signs up for FB or Gmail. There is definitely a sense in which it is clear that you aren't getting something for nothing, but at 16 that didn't occur to me, and now the damage is done.

4) What, precisely, is this data going to be used for? Creepy ads are one thing, and have been pervasive enough long enough that I think many folks see they as normal now. I don't like the advertising economy, and take steps to shield myself and my family from it to the degree that is possible within our inconvenience tolerances, but the scary thing about this data goes beyond shitty frothing-mouth marketing efforts. When the advertisers are done with it (hah!) it is still there, waiting to be exploited in a political, judicial, or military effort of some kind. Google "Sesame Credit" for info on China's bone-chilling weaponization of social media. And yes, I know, China isn't a beacon of human rights, that isn't the point. I suspect that if China can do this out in the open, there are closed doors in DC behind which a more subtle, similar effort is at least an on-again/off-again discussion.

So no, I can't agree with you that "whatever hypothetical problem that could result from such collection of data could be solved more efficiently in a different way". I work at a 2nd tier retailer whose "Customer 360 Experience" is a surveillance program a lesser nation state would be envious of (I was very surprised to learn how much collection efforts have evolved for in brick and mortar stores). Once the data is collected, it's damned near impossible to "uncollect". Genies don't like to go back into their bottles.