Hacker News Reader

Comment by logicOnly | Hacker News Reader

It really goes to show Apple Advertising has no basis in reality. "Security" claims are obviously debunked on a weekly basis if you work in tech.

"Privacy" claims are just as nonsensical as we've seen Apple bend to multiple governments (PRISM). You bet Apple will sell your privacy if the deal is good enough.

That being said, I don't think anything can be secure, we must treat everything as potentially compromised and act accordingly. I diversify my emails/bank/HDD/etc... So if one gets hacked, I didn't lose everything. Edit- Also those Superstars may be known, but you bet there are experts that would take the money rather than prestige.

View on HN

> "Privacy" claims are just as nonsensical as we've seen Apple bend to multiple governments (PRISM)

From everything I have seen, PRISM wasn't about companies cooperating. It was about literally hardware splicing the fiber lines between FAANG type corp datacenters and taking that info. Google famously was using dark fiber unencrypted and started encrypting that traffic between DCs because of it. It just so happens you split a fiber line into 2 by using a crystal prism...

PRISM absolutely was about tech companies sharing data with the government.

From the PRISM Wikipedia article[1]:

> The documents identified several technology companies as participants in the PRISM program, including Microsoft in 2007, Yahoo! in 2008, Google in 2009, Facebook in 2009, Paltalk in 2009, YouTube in 2010, AOL in 2011, Skype in 2011 and Apple in 2012.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)#M...

"Participating" covers a broad range of activity when it comes to this program, and would include things like having a portal to provide the legally mandated info that must be returned upon proper presentation of a warrant. Is it really 'sharing data with the government' if the latter shows up with a properly executed warrant for the data?

PRISM data is obtained without a warrant, even for USians whose data is supposed to be protected by a warrant, because of a special secret interpretation of the FISA Amendments Act (FAA) Section 702.

It's warrantless, and the court that decides whether or not it's legal is itself classified and unaccountable and almost never denies surveillance.

This abuse was cited by Ed Snowden as one of the reasons he came forward. It's a public law, but a secret interpretation by a secret court that cannot be challenged by the people to which it applies.

It's not inaccurate to describe it as a military coup, given that it allows the US intelligence community to surveil everyone in the legislature and judiciary.

Section 702 only allows them to request data from accounts that belong to foreigners outside the US, so no, it doesn't allow the US intelligence community to surveil everyone in the legislature and judiciary.

The slides on that page diagree. PRISM was/is a data collection project. The sources came from other projects like the diagrams show. Those dont show anything about cooperation, only collection.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)#/...

The documents don't identity them as "participants." They only say when data from those company was ingested into PRISM, which is simply a data integration program between the NSA and the FBI. The FBI's Data Intercept Technology Unit is clearly labeled in the slides.

The government issues a Section 702 order for some account(s) data, the company reviews the request and denies it if the account appears to belong to somebody in the US or an American (both of which cannot have their data requested via a Section 702 order), and then sets up a forward to the FBI. PRISM then geta that data from the FBI and parses it into fields for various NSA databases. Again, this is very clearly drawn out in the system diagram slide that Snowden leaked.

You're thinking of WINDSTOP programs like MUSCULAR, not PRISM.

Google end-to-end encrypts Android backups. Apple does not end-to-end encrypt iCloud backups (on by default on every iOS device), and it serves as an effective cryptographic backdoor to the end-to-end encryption in iMessage by escrowing the keys (as well as the full message content and attachment history) to Apple each night, using Apple keys, which permits Apple (and by extension the FBI, without a warrant) to read every message sent or received by a device in such a default iCloud backup configuration, without ever touching that device.

They were going to fix this, but Apple Legal killed the project while it was underway. This was done at FBI request, according to Reuters' sources.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud-exclusiv...

No, that is upstream collection, which is separate from PRISM.

You seem to be quite prone to making unfounded hyperbolic pronouncements about Apple in several different threads lately. As the responses show, it might be worth toning down the rhetoric and staying true to proven reality for a while concerning this subject.

Hyperbolic? Literally both are backed by factual examples. Did you read the article?

Some companies are horrible to their customers, is there something wrong about posting literal facts and comparing to marketing lies?

Apple is far from perfect, but often in the context of its market peers being much further from perfect. In that context, saying that their considerable security efforts and accomplishments amount to nothing but marketing lies is more than a little uncharitable.

I think that saying that Apple is especially bad at security would be wrong. But apple claiming they are the only ones who can protect users might be going a bit far....

Does Apple make this claim?

No. The only people who make this claim are Apple critics who put words in Apple's mouth to justify whatever clickbait blog post they're putting out this week to pad their resumes and harvest echo chamber thumbs.

But as we know from politics, if you tell a lie enough times it becomes the truth.

"I'm a Mac

And I'm a P----Error"-Apple ad year 200x

And as you mentioned, like politics, you can deny it and fanatics will believe you..

Apple making fun of BSOD is not what the parent comment posited. Let me recap for you: "the only ones who can protect users"

Those ads aired so long ago that they referred to Windows Vista, they hardly seem relevant

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/01/apple...

In the article you linked to, I didn't see Apple claiming they alone can protect user's privacy. I read instead that Apple suggested all companies should strive to protect their user's privacy.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/03/tech/apple-iphone-privacy-ad/...

Not seeing Apple claiming only they can protect user's privacy. Instead the article quotes Tim Cook trying to pressure the governments t recognize privacy as a fundamental human right.

> Not seeing Apple claiming only they can protect user's privacy

You would if you had watched the commercial.

I watched the video, still didn't seen any claims that only Apple can protect a user's privacy. You must be reading between the lines where I am not.

Yes, this was their TV Advertising for a decade.

I don't watch TV much, but they seemed to have pivoted to the word "privacy"

Well they claim that no one else can run a AppStore on iOS, because if someone else did it it would be a big security vulnerability.

> I think that saying that Apple is especially bad at security would be wrong.

iOS vulnerabilities cost less than Android vulnerabilities because there are just so many iOS exploits on the market.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com