Apple has done extraordinary things to protect user privacy, tech investor says (video at link)

Apple is framing itself as better at data privacy and protection than other tech giants — and it is, Elevation Partners' co-founder Roger McNamee told CNBC on Wednesday.

"Apple has really done extraordinary things over the last year to protect consumer privacy, but also to create security," McNamee said on CNBC's "Closing Bell."

"For implementing [data protection measures] in products without being forced to by the government, they really are a beacon of hope," he added.

“And with things, like Siri, where they process it locally so your data’s not in the cloud where it’s vulnerable,” said McNamee, an Apple investor and early investor in Facebook.”

Siri is now only processed on the phone? I never turned it on because when it first cane out, the warning from Apple was they had to upload your voice (and your Contacts list) in order to tweak. train it / have enough processing power for it to work..

Is this correct now with latest iOS (and which phones)? You can use Siri and Dictation without sharing your voice and Contacts data with Apple’s Cloud?

Then why are they lobbying to have the givernment get into the privacy and security rights by law?

They aren't. Read what Tim Cook really said, not what the drive by media says he said. The problem is that Google and Facebook and Twitter ignore such basic concepts. . . while Apple embraces them. Thats a big difference.

They took one incomplete sentence out of a long narrative in which he was talking about the abuses of Google, Facebook, Twitter, and the other big tech companies doing things such as reading their users' emails, tracking their browsing, listening to conversations, and then selling those users' personal data for profit. . . and then saying ". . . [but] I think some level of government regulation is important to come out of that."

"I see privacy as one of the most important issues of the twenty-first century. We’re at a stage now where more information about you is online and on your phone than there is in your house… We [at Apple] take that very seriously. I’m not a pro-regulation kind of person. I believe in the free market. Deeply…
". . .[but] I think some level of government regulation is important to come out of that."
"You are not our product."
"The narrative that some companies will try to get you to believe is, 'I’ve got to take all of your data to make my service better.' Well, don’t believe them. Whoever’s telling you that, it’s a bunch of bunk."
"What users want from us, and what we’ve always provided them, is a curated platform, and that’s what we do. We don’t take a political stand. We’re not leaning one way or the other. You can tell that from the stuff on the App Store, in Podcasts, etc. (Well, that is a bunch of malarky. Look at banning Alex Jones.— Swordmaker) You’ll see everything from very conservative to very liberal. And that’s they way I think it should be."

The problem as I see it, is if the Social Media platform cannot police themselves according to the true spirit of the First Amendment, I fear we are opening the door to the government to TRY to do it, but that means the government (read a politician or his arm's length puppet, a bureaucrat) gets to define what free speech means. . . after years of special pleading and rule making. It won't be "live and let live." nor will it be "I may not like what you are saying, but I will defend to the death your right to say it!" it will be pablum dressed up in thou shalt not offend anyone and offense is in the eye of the offended. BAH!

I long ago advocated an age restricted .xxx domain for adult sex related websites, with severe penalties for .xxx advertising that invaded the other domains. The ACLU and other leftists shot it down as too discriminatory as porn, they said, should be allowed on all domains and available to all ages and demographics. These were the same idiotic groups who sued to require libraries to permit homeless bums the ability to view porn where children could see them and the porn they were watching, and not sequester them out of public view. I now know this was deliberate, a part of the destruction of American mores.

Is this correct now with latest iOS (and which phones)? You can use Siri and Dictation without sharing your voice and Contacts data with Apple’s Cloud?

It has been for many things for some time. Apple never uploaded your contacts. . . voice recognition was done at first on the cloud but your iPhone always worked well on the device with "call so-and-so" by name. . . although sometimes you maybe had to spell the name phonetically for it. However, if you ask a question. that will go to the cloud to be answered, but Apple doesn't keep it. Once answered, its deleted.

Think about your query to me. . . Apple's new phones neural engine has the ability to do FIVE TRILLION DECISIONS PER SECOND. . . why would they need to take the time to upload a voice track to the cloud where they'd have to share the attention of an admittedly fast server processor with thousands of other Siri voice parsers at a few billion decisions per second, if your query got undivided attention, which it won't. Your iphone's neural engine can.

Don't worry about your contact's list being on the iCloud. It's encrypted better than your bank encrypts your bank data. Most financial data is encrypted to 128bit AES but your iCloud data and even your iPhone contents are encrypted to 256bit AES level encryption. Nothing has been ever "hacked" from the iCloud.

Contrary to claims that some pervert hacked nude pictures of celebrities from Apple's iCloud back in 2016 in the so-called "Fappening," it never happened unless you want to call phishing the celebrities themselves for their passwords, "hacking," or using their own celebrity biographies to answer their security questions to change their passwords, because they told the world they grew up on "Pepperwood Drive" and their first car was a "Volkswagon Jetta," which just happened to be the answers to their self created security questions. . . and it was too much trouble for them to use two factor security. The guy who stole the photos admitted that's how he got the very few he got from iCloud. The rest he got trading from collectors who got them from other sources on line. iCloud is secure.

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