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Comment by fh9302 | Hacker News Reader

This article is highly misleading, making it sound like Siri is collecting data from apps and sending it to Apple. This is not the case, Siri Suggestions are fully on-device, though they can sync accross devices with mandatory E2EE. Apple never gets access to any of this data.

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Apple can remotely execute code on any internet connected device running an proprietary Apple operating system.

It is only a matter of time before courts realize this.

The CCP controls the Apple software signing HSMs in China for a reason.

But if this is your threat model - that you have no trust of the operating system or the vendor - then all of this is pointless because at any time they can just backdoor themselves. Apple could just never ask or collect this, but still they're one update away from starting to collect it.

Of course that's always a threat with any computer, but you must place some amount of trust somewhere.

> from starting to collect it.

So even then they would have no data before that point!

If Apple did not collect the data today, then a court order in the future will not allow them to collect data that was not stored today.

Personally I only use reproducibly built FOSS software and I isolate most of my hardware and workloads from each other with virtual machines via QubesOS.

Proprietary software is not at all required to be well integrated into modern society.

  you must place some amount of trust somewhere.

Using something and trusting it are different things.

Siri suggestions might more accurately be termed "Springboard suggestions". From what I recall, it essentially works as a fuzzy matcher for suggesting applications to launch in similar contexts (time window, previous app used, etc.). It's like a smart history feature, and no, I don't think it ever leaves the device at all or even syncs via iCloud, since I have completely different suggestions across my iPhone and two iPads.

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