Apple's stand on Personal Data privacy Ping!
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Posted on 06/03/2015 10:11:01 AM PDT by Swordmaker
In a blistering speech given to the Washington, D.C.-based Electronic Privacy Information Center on Tuesday, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that many successful Silicon Valley companies have “built their businesses by lulling their customers into complacency about their personal information.”
“They’re gobbling up everything they can learn about you and trying to monetize it. We think that’s wrong,” he said. “And it’s not the kind of company that Apple wants to be. So we don’t want your data.”
There has been some speculation that Cook was specifically referring to tech giants Google and Facebook, though he never mentioned them by name. Cook delivered his remarks remotely after being given EPIC’s Freedom Award.
“We don’t think they’re worth have your email or your search history or now even your family photos data-mined and sold-off for God-knows-what advertising purpose,” Cook continued, according to Mashable.
He apparently isn’t even a fan of companies leaving a “backdoor” open for law enforcement agencies to utilize because it makes the data inherently less secure. He broke it down like this:
“If you put a key under a mat just for the cops, a burglar can find it, too,” said Cook. ”Criminals are using every technology tool at their disposal to hack into people’s accounts. If they know there is a key hidden somewhere, they won’t stop until they find it.”
(Excerpt) Read more at theblaze.com ...
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Thanks for the heads up.
One of the main reasons I moved from MS to Apple was their drive to personal security.
Apple needs to keep working on this but they are years ahead of MS.
Good for Mr. Cook. Despite his (and Apples’) left-leaning ethos, I like their approach to online security. It’s one of the reasons we no longer have a single MS device in the house. Apple fan boy now...
Gee. Timmy Cook said this.
Well good for him.
Hope it’s not just marketing.
“If you put a key under a mat just for the cops, a burglar can find it, too”
That’s a great line, and ABSOLUTELY true about operating systems.
I don't buy that for a second. Apple is tied into the NSA's PRISM program along with the rest of the big boys. Obviously Apple needs to publicly denounce these sorts of things because their customers want that, but Apple is a leftist company which strongly supports Obama's socialist agenda... which includes snooping on "bad" citizens.
“I don’t buy that for a second. ...Apple is a leftist company which strongly supports Obama’s socialist agenda... which includes snooping on “bad” citizens.”
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Then I’d suggest you stick to PCs, Microsoft & Android products and continue to use Google as your main means of support. Then you’ll have peace of mind as you think they’ll respect your privacy in your uninformed, low-information world.
As for me, I’ll stick with Apple products and continue to protect my privacy IN REALITY.
I am amazed anyone has facebook. People put their most intimate details about every aspect of their lives on that infernal site.
I hope this puts the pressure on all other firms that roll over too easily.
I think it's pretty obvious that we won't get privacy with ANY of them. I'm just pointing out that only a fool would think that Apple is somehow different in this regard just because they publicly claim that they're above all that.
Dude, dont bother questioning these guys.
They know it’s bullsh*t, but after the fiasco with Indiana, they really want to rebuild the FR iCult with anything they can slap together.
Any sane person knows Apple or any tech company isnt doing, and wont do anything, to stop the Feds from getting at your info. They just are good at swallowing anything that Apple tosses at them no questions asked so they can keep up with the “Apple cares about me” schtick.
AFAIK, the NSA et al leaned hard on ALL big data companies to provide access - as in “if you don’t give us ‘firehose’ access we’ll have you shut down, and possibly incarcerated”. From what I can tell, Apple has put up the biggest fight against it, doing far more to implement a ubiquitous encryption infrastructure than any other comparable company.
A basic axiom of Apple is “need to know”: don’t tell anyone anything unless they have a compelling objective reason to know. That includes product announcements (don’t admit to something’s existence until it’s either available for sale or _must_ be made public for legal reasons) and customer data (encrypt the he11 out of everything they can so nobody, including Apple, can view hosted personal data - see the “celebrity photo breach”).
You’ve no basis for your “which includes snooping on bad citizens” line.
True, but you have no basis for your faith in Apple either.
“....You’ve no basis for your “which includes snooping on bad citizens” line.”
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You’re definitely right on that. Of course, some folks never let facts get in the way of their desired opinion.
Even here on FreeRepublic we have trolls that come in and make a point of posting FUD (see post 12 above) as part of their never ending anti-Apple jihad to mislead the gullible and low-information readers. Facts will never be allowed to get in their way.
“When reports surfaced that several large companies, including Apple, were participating in a program that gives the National Security Agency direct access to their servers the iPhone and Mac maker denied any involvement. Now Apple has issued a public statement that not only denies participation, but goes on to say that it didn't even know of PRISM before the news reports, and sometimes refuses to fulfill government requests for information....”
Cement, Apple sets its processes up to employ end-to-end high level encryption. And they set it up so Apple itself cannot unencrypt the content and they have adamantly refused to give NSA a “backdoor” capability for NSA to be able to unencrypt.
Of course they have. And, Obama has made the USA respected again and saved healthcare and made the economy great again and is vehemently opposed to dividing people.
I wouldn't believe everything I read, especially when it's liberals doing the writing. Just saying... if you need to keep a secret, I wouldn't suggest puting it on any networked device anywhere.
No, they are NOT. Apple has repeatedly denied ever cooperating with PRISM or any other NSA program or providing any backdoors into their equipment or software. You have no evidence such a thing exists beyond Eric Snowden's claim the NSA was working on breaking into iPhones back in Project DropoutJEEP in January of 2007 (see the date of the document on the lower right hand corner):
That effort required physical possession of the iPhone at some point in the process to install something unnamed that was either hardware or software. . . but it was without Apple's cooperation. . . and was STILL in process on October 10, 2008.
The claim that Apple is a member of PRISM is based solely on this slide from Snowden. . . which is problematic. All of the other companies on the list have specific dates on which they were supposed to have joined, but not Apple. Apple's date is the only one listed in parentheses and does NOT give a specific date for joining PRISM, which is extremely odd for a document created months later.
The other document for some reasons puts Apple out of sequence in their numbering schema for members of PRISM. All of the other known members of PRISM are numbered sequentially in order of their joining PRISM. . . except Apple. That's also very strange. Why is Apple unique on this list just as it is on the timeline arrow?
There has to be a reason for these differences between known and accepted members of PRSIM and Apple. I think it is unique because it was and is still a targeted company that refused to cooperate. The parenthetical date on the timeline was the INTENDED date for Apple to join, not a date certain they had joined. I find the "(October 2012)" date, which is exactly one year after the death of Steve Jobs, who was the driving force behind Apple's refusal to join PRISM from its 2007 inception, when Microsoft eagerly joined, to be an interesting date. . . because that was the time when Apple was expected to have named a new, non-interim, CEO!
However, Apple named Tim Cook as the permanent CEO and he re-itterated Steve Jobs stance on privacy and also stated categorically that Apple had not and would never join PRISM:
Apple issues statement on customer privacy in wake of PRISM allegations"
By Zach Epstein
BGR — Jun 17, 2013.Apple on Monday morning issued a public statement regarding customer privacy after having been named as one of several technology giants accused of cooperating with the NSA’s PRISM program. The company was one of the first to issue a flat-out denial when news of PRISM first broke, stating that it had never even heard of the NSA snooping scheme prior to being asked about it by news organizations. Now, Apple has issued a statement elaborating on how and when it cooperates with U.S. law enforcement agencies seeking private data about its customers.
Apple stated that in the 17-month period ending May 31st, 2013, the company received between 4,000 and 5,000 requests for data from law enforcement agencies in the U.S. “The most common form of request comes from police investigating robberies and other crimes, searching for missing children, trying to locate a patient with Alzheimer’s disease, or hoping to prevent a suicide,” Apple said.
According to the company’s statement, Apple’s legal team evaluates each request and delivers the “narrowest possible set of information” to authorities. It also claims that when it finds “inconsistencies or inaccuracies” in data requests, it refuses to fill them.
Finally, Apple noted that iMessage and FaceTime communications are fully encrypted and not even Apple has the capability to decrypt them. “Similarly, we do not store data related to customers’ location, Map searches or Siri requests in any identifiable form,” Apple also noted.
Apple’s full press release follows below.
Apple’s Commitment to Customer PrivacyTwo weeks ago, when technology companies were accused of indiscriminately sharing customer data with government agencies, Apple issued a clear response: We first heard of the government’s “Prism” program when news organizations asked us about it on June 6. We do not provide any government agency with direct access to our servers, and any government agency requesting customer content must get a court order.
Like several other companies, we have asked the U.S. government for permission to report how many requests we receive related to national security and how we handle them. We have been authorized to share some of that data, and we are providing it here in the interest of transparency.
From December 1, 2012 to May 31, 2013, Apple received between 4,000 and 5,000 requests from U.S. law enforcement for customer data. Between 9,000 and 10,000 accounts or devices were specified in those requests, which came from federal, state and local authorities and included both criminal investigations and national security matters. The most common form of request comes from police investigating robberies and other crimes, searching for missing children, trying to locate a patient with Alzheimer’s disease, or hoping to prevent a suicide.
Regardless of the circumstances, our Legal team conducts an evaluation of each request and, only if appropriate, we retrieve and deliver the narrowest possible set of information to the authorities. In fact, from time to time when we see inconsistencies or inaccuracies in a request, we will refuse to fulfill it.
Apple has always placed a priority on protecting our customers’ personal data, and we don’t collect or maintain a mountain of personal details about our customers in the first place. There are certain categories of information which we do not provide to law enforcement or any other group because we choose not to retain it.
For example, conversations which take place over iMessage and FaceTime are protected by end-to-end encryption so no one but the sender and receiver can see or read them. Apple cannot decrypt that data. Similarly, we do not store data related to customers’ location, Map searches or Siri requests in any identifiable form.
We will continue to work hard to strike the right balance between fulfilling our legal responsibilities and protecting our customers’ privacy as they expect and deserve.
Since that initial statement was released and that article was written, Apple has gone much further with iOS and OS X encrypting user data directly on the user's data on the device before it ever leaves the device to 256 bit AES standards before Apple ever gets it to store, and therefor before it can ever be handed over to NSA or any other agency of any government. Apple cannot itself decipher that data because it simply does not have the keys of its customers data. That has been the situation for the past two years.
As far as I know, they ALL have denied cooperating with the NSA on these projects. I don't think anyone has been put under oath and then denied cooperating... so they all can say whatever they feel their customers want to hear.
Why on earth would Apple or anyone else rattle their customers by admitting anything of the sort?
Do you have any idea what you are talking about when we tell you that Apple users encrypt their data to 256 bit AES standards before it leaves their devices for storage on Apple's servers with a key that Apple does NOT HAVE? Try to educate yourself before you spout off.
Unless someone trying to break into that encrypted data was as lucky as someone who wins the Powerball lottery fifty times in a row, it would take them over 43.3 Undecillion years to try all of the possible keys to find the key to unlock that data if the user had a sixteen character password. Yes, that is a number. An Undecillion is 1035. I think the contents of your data would be moot by then.
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