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Comment by dijit | Hacker News Reader

The main corrolarry is your user account.

One could convincingly argue that dead accounts are e-waste.

The main reason I guess we don't say that is because we have expiration policies.

But if you lose access to your, say, facebook account with 100GiB of uploaded content, then that content is going to be sitting consuming at least 300GiB of media (replication, backups etc;).

Thus: is that a problem?

I see a device like this as an extension of my self, having it "open for all" is not desirable; I want to knowingly give it to someone.

If someone takes it, or I do not unlock it, then I don't want the possibility for it to unlock. I paid for it, it's mine, in perpetuity until I say otherwise, even if I'm dead: since as I mentioned it's an extension of me... it is dead too.

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> I paid for it, it's mine

Funny misconception, that. You paid for it, but Apple controls it. You trust Apple to do the right thing, but you cannot prove that they do. You cannot hold them accountable for doing the right thing, either.

So, how can you trust it as an extension of your self? I understand your argument, but you've based it on a misconception if you think you're the ultimate user with the greatest authority over your device. Apple makes the rules, the only thing you do as a user is agree to play by them.

No, the great thing is that even apple can’t do everything with your device! If it’s encrypted they (presumably) can’t access that data at all.

Unlocking a device by apple has no bad incentives associated, at the very worst case someone else can use your owned device without access to any of your data, aka stealing. And that assumes that apple will corruptly open it for someone else which they have zero interest in and that just accounts for regular old stealing with a billion dollar company’s help?

you really think apple doesnt have a way to completely wipe your device without your permission?

> If it’s encrypted they (presumably) can’t access that data at all.

We just have to trust their implementation, which is conveniently proprietary and unaccountable.

> And that assumes that apple will corruptly open it for someone else which they have zero interest in

Are you sure about that? They very publicly gave the Chinese government control over Chinese iCloud data a few years ago. That, and they've been part of PRISM for the better half of a decade now. When a company has a working relationship with multiple sovereign governments, I'm not sure you can strongman the "Apple will save us" argument.

This is also a problem with Google, Microsoft, Amazon, 95% of cell carriers, most cable companies and your laptop manufacturer (regardless of company). Apple knows you feel insecure about this, so they market their products/services to you with this in mind. News flash: does anyone really think the largest company in America (let alone the world) isn't in kahoots with the American government? Microsoft was. Google was. IBM was. And Apple is bigger than them all.

Encryption is great. Mixing it with snake oil isn't. People are correct to call out Apple's failures to protect their users in this conversation, because their track record isn't very benevolent.

> We just have to trust their implementation, which is conveniently proprietary and unaccountable.

I also have to trust Debian, as I can’t audit millions of lines of code.

You really have no choice but to trust your OS vendor. If you don’t, find another vendor.

That's where the transparency part comes in. Nobody reads every line of code, but feasibly anyone could read any part of it. Patches are examined as they roll in. Really the software distribution model is no different than trusting your apps to auto-update properly.

Apple doesn't have accountability. It's not that nobody wants to prove them right, it's that their system has been deliberately designed so that no one can.

Does it really matter that you can read any line if you can’t verify whether the binary you download is truly made from said sources? There is always some trust at some level, whether it is some debian server or apple is just another question.

It only bothers me when the publisher-in-question is a cardholding member of PRISM, without two cents of developer goodwill to their name. I'm normally more generous with small-timers, but try to stick to OSS all the same.

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