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Comment by audunw | Hacker News Reader

> Standing up for your right to not use your device as you please?

What right? Most people (but not enough) have some sense that privacy is an actual right. The number of people who think that it's a right that every device you own with an MCU or CPU should be a completely open general programming platform is a fraction of a percent.

> Standing up for your right to lock-in your data with a single vendor?

What lock-in? You can have all your iPhone data (contacts, notes, etc.) on Gmail if you want, you can have all your photos synchronized to Dropbox. Which data are you referring to?

I have to be honest and say that this comment comes off as a knee-jerk reaction. I mean, you probably have some valid criticism in there if you worded it better. It would definitely be much better for us geeks if iPhone was more open. But a right? Get real.

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> What right? Most people (but not enough) have some sense that privacy is an actual right. The number of people who think that it's a right that every device you own with an MCU or CPU should be a completely open general programming platform is a fraction of a percent.

Ultimately, those are the same thing. There is no privacy if you can't inspect it and verify that it's upholding its promises.

> What lock-in? You can have all your iPhone data (contacts, notes, etc.) on Gmail if you want, you can have all your photos synchronized to Dropbox. Which data are you referring to?

If you've used one word processor, how do you open them in another without using any external service?

> There is no privacy if you can't inspect it and verify that it's upholding its promises.

But unless you're a top-end OS developer AND a top-end embedded systems designer at the same time, how are you going to analyse something as complex as the iPhone and verify that?

I have done this. iOS may be closed source, but firmwares are no longer encrypted, so you can reverse engineer anything that you are curious about.

Sure, you can see the code / source / raw binary. But actually analysing and verifying every part for security or privacy concerns - bearing in mind you have to consider all the possible interactions this code can generate - and that's before you even get to the hardware interactions - is still beyond 99% of developers, never mind normal people.

I was speaking to "There is no privacy if you can't inspect it and verify that it's upholding its promises" actually, and I probably agree with you, as your point applies just as much to open source.

> If you've used one word processor, how do you open them in another without using any external service?

By using a share sheet to send it to the other word processor, surely.

> Ultimately, those are the same thing. There is no privacy if you can't inspect it and verify that it's upholding its promises.

If you want to go down that road the software you need to inspect includes all the software with access to your data.

In android's case this includes all sorts of proprietary code running in google's infrastructure that you'll never see. If you enable all the features of a modern android phone the amount of data google tracks about you is staggering. All that data is available to any government that asks for it directly from google. Google is actively incentivised to data mine, use and sell my data. I don't think they sell it - but thats the direction the incentive arrows point.

If you want to roll your own, or use one of the non-google android forks then I respect that decision from a privacy standpoint. (Although my security engineer voice is much more nervous.) But stock android is a privacy disaster (at least if you worry about google / the US govt). The ability to root your device is nice, but in google's ecosystem the computers that really matter are the servers.

No, Android isn't good either, but at least it's possible to use Copperhead and co.

> The ability to root your device is nice, but in google's ecosystem the computers that really matter are the servers.

Funny that, does Apple allow push notifications without telling APNS about the notification message yet?

> Funny that, does Apple allow push notifications without telling APNS about the notification message yet?

Yes, of course they do. That's what remote-notification UIBackgroundMode is for. How did you think encrypted messaging apps like WhatsApp and Signal showed message previews?

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