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Comment by epoxyhockey | Hacker News Reader

Apple is a PRISM participant, as of Oct 2012 (one year after Steve Jobs died). I highly doubt any iMessage is more secure than a plain text SMS sent via any cell carrier's network. Apple probably offers a sexy interface for the Feds to read everything.

Reference: http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/prism-sl...

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Do any down-voters care to offer a comment? Is it that one contests that Apple is a PRISM participant?

I think you're being downvoted because you got a little too excited while bashing Apple. iMessage is most certainly more secure than plain text in most cases, save for the VERY exceptional case where the NSA might be watching IF they do have a key on your phone. Plus, anyone who's used Apple's partner portals knows they're just as capable of shitty design as everyone else.

Thanks for the insight. Rather than excitement, I am actually most disappointed in Apple caving into the PRISM scheme because I hold them to a bit higher standard than other companies when it comes to privacy.. kind of like being told that Santa doesn't exist.

"In most cases" isn't enough any more these days. People are targeted alone by metadata - and killed too.

I didn't downvote you, but the leaked PRISM docs don't show "participation". They show that the NSA was getting the data. If they were doing it by, ex, inter-datacenter fiber tapping then Apple wouldn't have "participated" or even known about the leak.

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