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Comment by retube | Hacker News Reader

The FBI's position seems entirely defensible. The phone data may yield important information - accomplices, contacts etc.

It also seems pretty disingenuous/hypocritical for Apple to plead "customer privacy" when the ENITRE BUSINESS MODEL of much of the smart phone and app industry (from which Apple directly benefit with a 30% commission) is predicated on abusing customer privacy.

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> It also seems pretty disingenuous/hypocritical for Apple to plead "customer privacy" when the ENITRE BUSINESS MODEL of most of the smart phone and app industry is predicated on abusing customer privacy.

Apple uses privacy as a major selling point. Apple has also proven very bad at abusing customer privacy for profit, they have even shuttered their own advertising service.

Apple does not use customer data as part of their business model. This is a unique Google/Android feature.

also unique to Facebook, Yahoo, Amazon, all SEOs...

Sources to back up your claim?

How about this?

"...we never sell your data."

http://www.apple.com/privacy/approach-to-privacy/#personaliz...

It seems that the extraordinary claim requires data. I haven't seen the line item on Apple's earnings report that breaks out where they're making money from customer data.

We don't actually know that. The best we can say is that don't seem to use customer data. I'm not saying they do, but, we can't demonstrably say they don't either.

Sure we do, but you are welcome to continue to be skeptical.

so prove it then. I'd actually love to be proven wrong about that.

The burden of proof lies on the accuser...

Or so they say.

That's not really how that works. I think you should look into it a bit more. I'm not accusing them of anything. I'm saying we can't prove that they aren't using customer data. I'm basically saying you can't prove a negative.

> The FBI's position seems entirely defensible. The phone data may yield important information - accomplices, contacts etc.

They should already have this information from their 'metadata' collection programs. If the FBI was doing their job at any point this wouldn't even be a subject of debate.

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