I always suspected someone inside Apple is making sure that these phones stay vulnerable for Israeli hackers or they don't really fix their bugs.
I'm sure if such a relationship became public,most Americans will forget about it in few weeks time and half will be surprised what the big deal is. But apple will lose out on Asia and Europe where it has solid competition. Their hardware is their bread-and-butter.
It is more plausible for the US government to have planted or extorted an asset working as a developer at apple than apple itself making such a monumentally foolish decision.
Google and Microsoft on the other hand, that I am fairly certain of.
But... i digress a bit, only because Tim Cook was kissing the proverbial king's ring a lot lately. donations are one thing, giving gold gifts in person and on national tv is another.
I don't think I'd read more into it than that.
Which, whilst morally repugnant, does make business sense - if Apple got hit by tariffs or other penalties, you can be sure the Carl Icahn style leeches would be popping out of the woodwork complaining that Tim Cook was ruining Apple / the share price / etc. and trying to orchestrate shareholder and/or board revolts.
(And Good Lord, imagine the threads on here if Apple's value dropped just because Tim Cook didn't give a hideous piece of tat to Trump.)
From Wikipedia: "Bribery is the corrupt solicitation, payment, or acceptance of a private favor (a bribe) in exchange for official action."
But let’s not motte bailey that into proof that Apple intentionally ships backdoors.
I think a bribe is better defined as "you cannot have this thing you want, unless you give me this". A quid pro quo.
I guess it comes down to who the "active" party was.
I would definitely call it a bribe if Tim Cook was the one that asked to get special treatment or lower Tariffs than anyone else and the response was give me a "gift".
Even if you believe it was a bribe, the value of it was purely symbolic. What was given wasn't a change in policy, it was a material gift of zero value to anyone else except for scrap. Others that have been subjected to this behavior have given up things like changes in hiring practices and working with "non favored" organizations.
Everyone is somewhat aware that their phone are not impermeable to government agencies and it doesn't matter, that's the case for Americans of course because they are well used to it, but also for Europeans.
If they were to purposely make 'mistake' to allow Israeli spying companies to compromise their phone, it most likely wouldn't change anything.
This is indeed how I read the comment you replied to.
How is none of this public knowledge
- Are you saying that you believe apple is picking someone who is a real wizz with css, but because of the country’s laws they had to serve with the IDF?
- Are you saying the formality of having to be a former of your previous employer, as part of taking on new employment is to be unexpected in any way?
Firstly, the exploits in play would not be introduced by a “css whiz kid” first of all. Creating holes for rootkits like Pegasus requires deep low level expertise.
Secondly, AFAIK all the teams that would be involved on working on that are located in Cupertino - so these people had to relocate to the US.
But yes, I think finding anyone who was a child in Israel and didn’t serve in the IDF is very difficult. This is doubly-so for the tech sector since the IDF is often where they obtain their initial technical education and are serving between 18 and 21.
Unless you’re blanket just going to disallow recruiting from Israel or hiring people who moved from Israel to the US and might even be US citizens. But then you’re also going to have to explain why you’re applying this policy to Israelis and not Koreans, Singaporeans, Taiwanese, Norwegians, who have similar mandatory service requirements (plenty of countries do).
I’m not saying that Mossad don’t try to get their own secret agents working long term undercover in these places. But that’s also true of other secret services of enemies and allies alike and I would think they’re less likely to generate exploits intentionally and more likely to gather information and look for exploits by having access to source, documentation, and able to get information from peers. But Israelis having previously worked in the IDF doesn’t really provide any signal to me on the motivations or beliefs of that person.
You know what, you’re absolutely right. But you’d be wrong if it turns out it’s not the general IDF we’re talking about, and specifically not one all Israelis have to serve. And that Google has all the good stuff.
But anyway I’m going to let you believe what you believe about a corporation that makes “donations” to a military, and I’m going to believe what I believe.
Like https://www.amazon.com/app-controlled-vibrator/s?k=app+contr... ?
Is there a "Rule 34" type proclamation where if it exists someone will add an app to it whether it needs it or not.
/s