I know I’m largely shouting into a void here but I wish we could bring back some neutrality to news, reduce the editing-choice of extraneous emotion, and actually look at things with some balance and gray instead of reducing everything down to some kind of political rhetoric.
Of course it is their doing. Why are they even storing messages and metadata to begin with? Why are they exposing us to this risk? There should be nothing there for any government to find. In an ideal world they'd be connecting us to each other peer-to-peer so that our encrypted communications don't even touch their servers.
Bit Tech's insatiable hunger for personal data is a massive liability for all of us. Their guilt is not to be excused. Governments would have nothing if not for their extensive non-consensual data collection.
Really? I'm not so sure about that.
If the FBI wants my data, they'll need to come to my premise with a warrant.
Otherwise, they're SOL. And how much does that cost me over and above what I spend for the infrastructure I require? Zero.
How many companies that mine my personal information (for whatever reasons) do I use? Zero.
You are substituting your trained-in prejudices for the laws of nature, IMHO.
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As time went on, people wanted more and more user data, click bots made targeting entirely neccesary.
Or how livid people get when their photos are gone. Most iPhone owner's backup plan is "iCloud".
Most people don't care about privacy, they care about convenience.
Sometimes backup customers will use sub-services that require that, but it would be nice if it was behind a big privacy toggle.
I would posit most people don't care if a 3rd party has access to their data, all they care about is not losing their stuff when they lose their device/password. They don't care about the technology behind it, which requires the 3rd party to have access.
And I don't know if most people are aware of how easy it is for their data to be stolen.
Backing up to a computer could be made somewhat easier, though. And iCloud could have a warning instead of being on by default.
How? It's about as easy as it gets. It's just easier to use iCloud backups because it takes less steps.
> And iCloud could have a warning instead of being on by default.
Why? If it had a warning and the person doesn't have another computer to back up to, they wouldn't have backups at all. That actually makes things worse for the consumer.
You could theoritally make an argument that the phone could auto-detect if you have a suitable computer for backing up to and then suggest that instead of iCloud, but why would Apple do that?
And furthermore, there would then need to be additional warnings about how you need to back up your computer too otherwise if you lose your phone then your computer is your only backup until you get a new phone.
I think you're grasping at straws here. It's a better user experience for the average user to just have iCloud on by default. They made it plenty easy for power users and even non-power users who care about privacy to avoid iCloud. I don't think they have a legal or moral obligation to steer you away from iCloud.
None of this cloud storage stuff is necessary. It's nice to have the option to use it but it should be optional. I'm sure these companies are smart enough to automate this process without requiring third party servers or even an internet connection.
It is optional. But people choose it because it's a lot easier than what you do.
The money is in the metadata
Big tech stores personal data, big government subpoenas the data secretly. They're both strongly to blame.
And I don't really see how the phrase 'big tech' loses any subtlety in an article about facebook and other major services.