| General > General Technical Chat |
| Apple privacy letter (Law enforcement through your phone) |
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| MrMobodies:
Given a phone some years ago and was so upset with the Sony stock firmware it sat away for a about year. Every time I tried to set it up to turn off the annoying stuff I ended loosing my temper and turning it back off. Like I am somewhat stupid and confused don't know what I am doing that the developer thinks they know me better than myself and make assumptions based on gestures or anything I do thinking they are actually helping me. I removed it and tried this LineageOS which does have a few annoyances but seems to be a lot better than the other. The Sony stock firmware had some version of Microsoft Swiftkey. I discovered it was different when I was trying to turn off the usual spelling, predictive and suggestions but there were no settings to disable these things on the Swiftkey keyboard settings. I know how to spell and what to type so all it was doing was taking room over the keyboard and distracting me with suggestions that kept on changing on every key press. I read somewhere in the Swiftley settings that it collects the words I type and sends it to Microsoft for analysis... I was furious "That's taking the p*ss". Maybe I was doing it properly but I couldn't get the original Android keyboard on there to set as the default where I know I could switch those features off. Thread about it here: https://community.sony.com.mk/t5/x-series/remove-swiftkey/td-p/3498298/page/3 There was a lot other stuff too like excessive overlay dimming worse than what it is now, some annoying home screen thing with an animation in the background that kept on appearing out of nowhere or by some input gesture with suggestions and hints constantly interrupting what I was trying to do that I coudn't hide or disable and I found it like harassment. I think I did eventually find it in the apps bit but the disable was faded out and stop didn't seem to do anything. I am not sure if it is a stock or Sony thing or not but I could not find no settings for it. I had no some trouble with a bootloader tool to install the image but found that clearing the partitions solved that. I am also pleased I can set the DPI in developer settings to get more estate and pinch and zoom. I use Firefox 68 for the addons and took a bit of time to turn off silly things in the about:config that work against me like auto zoom on every page load, input selection, autofocus, inflexible touch input seems inconsistent on scrolling like it is second guessing how I want it to scroll sometimes locking to horizontal and I don't always know the proper names of many of these settings to search for. it works with some extensions I need like Stickyducky and Adblock that I can add a network list too. One thing I am still looking for is to always set desktop site. It seems pretty functional for the small things I use it for. The only thing touching things on the edges seem difficult but I think it is because it is curved. I wouldn't use my phone for anything serious maybe I might use them for dedicated tasks but not for personal stuff or use it to sign in on websites. |
| floobydust:
My old phone with CyanogenMod would mysteriously turn on WiFi, WiFi hotspot and Bluetooth- despite me turning that all off. It creeped me out, did it once or twice a year whenever I left town. Not sure if "something" was polling surrounding ID's or it was a sweep by a certain surveillance state that made the phone. There is no privacy, only its illusion :-X |
| magic:
--- Quote from: bd139 on August 07, 2021, 08:17:46 am ---Apple fanboy here. I have a MacBook Air, iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch. I also use iCloud and iCloud email. As of yesterday I have a Ubuntu desktop machine and all my data has been migrated. All iCloud storage and email has been disabled and forwarded. All my devices will be disposed of over the next few weeks. --- End quote --- You are not a true zealot if you quit so easily ;D --- Quote from: bd139 on August 07, 2021, 08:17:46 am ---This is too far and since this they have been pushing internal memos doubling down on this being a good idea and stating that people are misunderstanding it. They are not. I live in the UK which is a large surveillance state. This can and will be leveraged. Apples ecosystem was previously “the least bad” for privacy but now they choose to build in feature which make it by far the worst while pushing arrogant misinformation about the potential uses under secondary mandates. As someone said on HN: don’t shit in my hand and call it chocolate. --- End quote --- You are right about the clear path for escalation, but they are technically right too and it's a classic PR trick. People never understand shit and I'm sure there is a ton of nonsense conspiracy theories in circulation out there, so their best bet to detract from legitimate criticism is to concentrate on debunking the bullshit. Everybody is doing it that way and it works |O I suspect that some men in black suits and/or high level politicians were involved, given Apple's former public stance on user privacy. Today it's pedophiles, tomorrow it's terrorists, 10 years down the line and it's 24/7 video streaming to help catch pickpocketers in public transport. As for the means of pressure, well, remember that the US is a country where you can be liable for hot coffee being hot. And the same one which somehow managed to bust The Pirate Bay, Megaupload and Julian Assange even in foreign jurisdictions. I'm sure that aiding in trafficking of child pornography can be problematic too. What if Apple was found not to do enough to stop it by refusing to implement common sense, noninvasive, privacy-preserving countermeasures? At any rate, knowing typical Apple customers, I doubt that the feature was demanded by them. --- Quote from: tooki on August 07, 2021, 03:39:41 pm ---As for the sexting filter for kids, it’s kinda strange to me, insofar as I don’t really believe in empowering helicopter parents. --- End quote --- Thank you, Apple fanboy, for never failing to deliver :-+ |
| TimFox:
People love to raise the McDonald's coffee case as an example of supposedly excessive litigation. For a reasonable description, check Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s_Restaurants McDonald's had already settled similar suits for scalding injuries, but did not change their practice. |
| bd139:
New attack vector on this already. The CSAM hash sources are from NCMEC “and other child protection sources” which is a loose collection of individual organisations and lobby groups with no scrutiny and oversight. So some asshat maliciously uploads other content, your kid downloads it off Google into iCloud photos and your door gets kicked down in the middle of the night. Or a third party injects CSAM hashes into a system via external attack because the source of truth somewhere is probably a CSV on a cranky old unlicensed windows desktop at a non-profit (this is reality if you look at data protection prosecutions over the years). Tooki: privacy can only be reasoned about as a worst case outcome from any technical decision. This is actually really my day job; protecting people’s financial data. Regardless of the facts or technical merit of the solution the point is that only the whole concept can be qualified, not just the technical aspects. That’s probably where we got our wires crossed so apologies if you felt I was standing on your toes there. As for recovering the data, Apple already can decrypt your iCloud photos contents; check the terms and conditions. They will do that under existing rules not from technical outcomes from this. Their process would be to use this as a basis to decrypt the rest. Incidentally I have now isolated and removed all my devices other than my iPhone from my iCloud account. I will retain the iPhone with no iCloud involvement where possible for the near future as I have some stuff which is required for work still on it. And quite frankly I need to recoup some investment before I spend on something else. |
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