Apple Is Normalising Surveillance

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/apple-surveillance-technology

by freddyym • 5 years ago

307 223 5 years ago

wired.co.uk

raxxorrax2• 5 years ago

To be honest, I think this is better for Apple users at this point.

arthur6667• 5 years ago

What a terrible article.

The premise is 'they offer features that use data & say they keep it secure. but what if they actually don't'

Seriously?

dx0343• 5 years ago

Especially as iPhones tend to do more calculations and AI on the device compared to competitors.

coldtea5• 5 years ago

Yes, seriously.

"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes" is a very legitimate and serious question.

Not to mention, it doesn't matter if they actually "do" keep it secure, themselves, as a company, would still have access to all this information.

masswerk13• 5 years ago

The problem with this article is that is poorly researched. Most of the services listed are running locally and storage is also local. (Things might change with automatic remote backups, but this is not what's addressed in the article.)

E.g., the Vision frameworks subjects any images to a local (built-in) neural network and returns the scanned text, which is then most probably put into the system clipboard. How is this surveillance, but copy-and-paste in MS Word was not?

tommit2• 5 years ago

In case anyone else didn't take latin in school, it translates to "Who watches the watchers".

Not sure if this is common knowledge (I highly doubt it). While legitimate, the English saying would have done just as well IMO.

josho• 5 years ago

On the other hand I found it eyeopening.

I love Apple’s privacy stance and have bought in. However this article made me realize that if apple ever wanted to flip the switch and monetize the data they’d have a treasure trove to work from.

It’s not hard to imagine a future Apple facing stagnant revenue growth, a new CEO brought in to turn things around and enabling a new revenue stream monetizing their privacy features as ad features.

I think the real takeaway is we need better government regulations to ensure situations like that cannot occur. Eg. You can’t change the terms of service of existing customers in ways that reduce their data privacy.

threatofrain• 5 years ago

This is just a collection of generic arguments against technology, as opposed to an article offering insight about Apple. Then they stuck Apple's name on it and there's the article.

coldtea5• 5 years ago

The article is full of particular example of what Apple is doing, and explains how Apple is doing it (collecting more info) while touting "more pricacy".

drexlspivey2• 5 years ago

The digitization of text from photos happens on device and not sent to any remote server afaik. However the article dismisses it and equates it to surveillance because

All of these features increase the amount of data collected.

This looks like a cheap attempt to FUD, I don’t see how this feature has anything to do with surveillance.

fundad3• 5 years ago

Anything a digital camera can do is the fault of the first company to sell them: Apple or the company that sells the most: Apple.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbBqbONm1_Q

tchalla• 5 years ago

The new iPhone operating system, iOS 15, can digitise text in photos, enabling users to copy and paste text from an image, or call a phone number that appears in a picture. Scanning nearby buildings with an iPhone will make Maps recognise them and generate walking directions. Algorithms will identify objects in real-time video, and it will be possible to turn photos into 3D models for augmented reality. And users will now be able to carry their IDs in their phone. All of these features increase the amount of data collected.

The basic premise of the article is that : more data -> more surveillance. Certainly, this could be possible. However, is there a way to collect more data and yet not increase surveillance?

Apple created the Bluetooth beacons tracking people in shops, gyms, hotels, airports and more by connecting to their phones.

I think, this is where the author lost me. The contact tracing protocol for Covid was anything but more surveillance. This is what happens when you buy into simplistic narratives.

nixpulvis4• 5 years ago

I think contact tracing is by definition more surveillence (even when reasonably private).

It's just a question of how much value it actually adds during times of crisis like COVID. Then it's a matter of precedence.

dx0343• 5 years ago

How is that more surveillance? Just observing identifiers you can't use to identify individuals (which is the case with contact tracing as implemented) is no surveillance. It's like counting the number of cars on a busy highway, you can use that data in many ways but not for surveillance.

NorwegianDude• 5 years ago

Pretty sure the author is referencing iBeacon.

masswerk13• 5 years ago

But this requires either a dedicated device or a dedicated app with according permissions running. Also, as I understand it, it's actually the device, which locates the beacon.

masswerk13• 5 years ago

Also, I'm not aware that the image to text scan (Vision framework) in iOS 15 and macOS (user-accessible in macOS 12, but requiring some third party frontend in Big Sur) connects to a remote service.

As for end-to-end encryption breaking image search, as I understood it, it was meant to locally match images to a set of encrypted hashes of known offending images before sending them to the iCloud and would warn the user of any conflicting images (also locally). (Personally, I think this may be just a step too far, but it's not implemented as represented in the article.)

Finally, any biometric hashes are stored in a secure enclave and are not accessible by the "normal" machine.

CubsFan1060• 5 years ago

FWIW, I just checked, and live text can be used with no network connection.

walterbell5• 5 years ago

OCR is local, but the resulting text can be indexed by "Siri & Search" (e.g. "Learn from this app" and "Show content in search"), which default on.

Is OCR text stored alongside photos on the file system? E.g. can text be backed up along with photos, or is photo text recorded in OS storage that is unaccessible to the user?

est31• 5 years ago

However, is there a way to collect more data and yet not increase surveillance?

I think this is a basic question of our time, because we introduce so many devices into our lives from various areas that all collect data. I feel that even if you do "privacy conscious" data collection, the data will still land in the hands of others. A lot of the data is also never even entering a device that you own but is always controlled by third parties (like infrastructure operators, shop owners (CCTV), etc).

Sometimes I feel like technology has inherent impacts, no matter how much you want it to not have that impact, because it makes some uses of it really easy while making others really hard. Like copying data is so immensely easy now, to a degree that it's hard to not copy data.

Think of the CCTV example for example. You might be a privacy conscious shop operator so you don't have a CCTV system set up. However, in your street there are 5 other shops, 2 not connected to the internet, 3 which are, and one with bad security that doesn't need password logins. Now you personally have tried to not collect data on your customers, but as the customers walk down the street to your shop, they come across all the other shops, and their images even land in the public internet.

Right now, the impact is countered by video data being so horribly hard to process, taking so much space, etc. So that publicly accessible CCTV system only lets attackers obtain footage of the last 3 days. But eventually, as computers improve, CCTV operators will add facial recognition features, and maybe store the data obtained for longer periods, because the info whether some person walked down the road takes up way less space, so operators might opt to store it for weeks and years.

Suddenly, someone accessing that one CCTV system with bad security has access to the last 10 years of pedestrians walking down the road, and it's only a 10 GB sqlite database (which by then will likely be not much data).

This effect is not just local to CCTV operators, but can be seen everywhere. If a car manufacturer collects telemetry to improve their car product, and does it for all their fleet, they might build a database spanning decades. One day they might get hacked or think it's a good idea to sell that data to insurances, municipalities or whatever. The car manufacturer might not even do it, but you also carry a phone with you with google maps/grindr installed, etc, or it's the municipality which has installed license plate checking CCTV on the road. Or it's the mobile network operators because the cars have to use some means to talk to the car companies. Etc.

masswerk13• 5 years ago

The real horrible part starts where recognition replaces the captured reality. Think of the Xerox JBig2 bug, incorrectly substituting image patches in scans. Now you have documents representing a fictional reality, but with real-life consequences. (Say, you live in a zone of conflict and your CCTV image is mismatched and substituted for a known offending actor. Now you and your surroundings may have a hell of a fire problem.)

coldtea5• 5 years ago

The basic premise of the article is that : more data -> more surveillance. Certainly, this could be possible. However, is there a way to collect more data and yet not increase surveillance?

No. Surveillance is the collection of data by a third party.

What that third party does to the data (e.g. whether it sells them to advertisers or not) is irrelevant. Especially if others like governments can also get access to those.

martimarkov• 5 years ago

I'd say when the data is observed is when it becomes surveillance. If Apple collects this data encrypts in cloud storage and only does analysis on device. Do you still see this as surveillance?

JohnWhigham• 5 years ago

No. Surveillance is the collection of data by a third party.

Do you work for Apple's PR firm by any chance?

8fingerlouie• 5 years ago

Live text in iOS 15 is on-device (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212788)

Live Text uses on-device intelligence to recognize text in photos across the entire system and on the web

And as for AR Walking directions, i can't find any place documenting if it's on-device or cloud based, but i know Maps will download your route information from the cloud. But then again, if you're using GPS, i don't see how AR Walking Directions could do (more) harm.

The contact tracing protocol for Covid was anything but more surveillance

Prior to Apple and Google releasing the contact tracing protocol, various governments had some interesting ideas that focused more on finding infected people than it did on protecting privacy. Contact tracing has actually improved privacy by a lot. You're literally only a random id number, and the way you get notified if you've been in contact is if your random number appears on a list that gets broadcast to your phone. The checking happens on-device. The authorities never know anything but your random id number.

mlindner• 5 years ago

Contact tracing is also disabled by default, so it's kind of moot.

walterbell5• 5 years ago

Live text in iOS 15 is on-device

By default, "Siri and Search" are enabled to scan and learn from on-device content in every app, even if iCloud is disabled.

To opt-out, the user must manually go through every app's Settings and disable multiple radio button defaults per app.

Apple Configurator needs to allow device-wide opt-out of search indexing and harvesting of photos and app data, especially when Siri itself is disabled in Configurator.

ourlordcaffeine• 5 years ago

Wasn't bluetooth beaconing already a thing pre-covid?

krageon5• 5 years ago

anything but

Contact tracing is surveillance and has already resulted in large-scale leaks of sensitive information. Given those things, it is not unreasonable to call it out in this context. Nothing about that narrative is simplistic - the simplistic perspective is that it is for health and therefore okay.

kettleballroll• 5 years ago

has already resulted in large-scale leaks of sensitive information

I must have missed that, could you share more?

bengale• 5 years ago

I feel like I might be reaching for the tinfoil hat but it feels to me like there is a concerted effort to confuse the privacy conversation and turn it into one about how everyone is bad.

Call me paranoid but I think Facebook would love to be in a situation where privacy is an all or nothing game, because no-one is going along for the absolutist privacy vision which means Facebook et al can do as they please. They and their peers also have the money to change the conversation to something like this.

Again, call me crazy, but it's reminding me a lot of the oil companies big push for things like individual carbon footprints, and plastic straws being the real enemy.

version_five2• 5 years ago

I don't understand how people can doublethink so easily about contact tracing. Of course it's surveillance, and it's extremely invasive. You can argue that it's worth it, but to pretend surveillance that you like isn't surveillance is intellectually dishonest.

raxxorrax2• 5 years ago

how people can doublethink so easily

It is really fascinating. It is nothing but surveillance of course. This time it actually may increase security in contrast to most programs government implemented. The difference is that the user has to consent to it, it is transparent and there is the possibility to just shut it off again. That will never happen with hidden data collection by third parties of any kind.

amoshi2• 5 years ago

The contact tracing protocol for Covid was anything but more surveillance. This is what happens when you buy into simplistic narratives.

Guess you're not following the news. Things that look simple can be deceiving.

It did seek to assuage fears, however, by repeatedly assuring Singaporeans that the data collected with such technology would be used only for contact tracing during the pandemic. And that’s where things went wrong.
Earlier this month, it emerged that the government’s claim was false. The Ministry of Home Affairs confirmed that data could actually be accessed by the police for criminal investigations; the day after this admission, a minister revealed that such data had, in fact, already been used in a murder investigation.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/01/11/1016004/singapor...

mojzu• 5 years ago

The article states that Singapore's app doesn't use the protocol developed by Google/Apple, so I assume their app has been designed to collect location data whereas my understanding of the Google/Apple protocol is that it doesn't reveal location data (at least by itself, maybe with enough data/matches you could figure out rough locations)

ceejayoz• 5 years ago

"The Singapore government had previously rejected Apple and Google’s system, saying that it would be 'less effective' in the Singaporean context."

They didn't use Apple's contact tracing system. Probably for this very reason.

beermonster• 5 years ago

“ If Apple is serious about privacy, it should offer an iPhone model for the privacy-conscious: one without facial recognition and without encryption-breaking tools, one in which it is easy to cover the camera, and in which the microphone can be mechanically turned off, among other features. If we want to keep our democracies in the digital age, we need to set limits on what gets tracked. “

So they want Apple to manufacture the Librem 5?[1]

[1] https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/

richardwhiuk• 5 years ago

You can't easily cover the camera in the Librem 5. The lack of coherent vulnerability tracking makes me suspect you'll be compromised by whoever anyway.

fsflover7• 5 years ago

You can't easily cover the camera in the Librem 5

Librem 5 has a microphone/camera hardware kill switch.

dx0343• 5 years ago

I'm even sure Apple would offer it if there was demand. But for the few thousands a year you can sell, it's easier to have 3rd party companies modify existing iPhones/Androids.

fsflover7• 5 years ago

You can't modify an iPhone/Android such that it runs 100% free software.

fundad3• 5 years ago

Yeah if there was enough of a market that Apple sold them, it would be much cheaper than the current cost to make these low-volume Librem devices, not to mention the domestically assembled one for $2000

schleck82• 5 years ago

Some highlights from the Wired cookie popup:

Audience Measurement

Targeting Cookies

Social Media Cookies

Store and/or access information on a device

Create a personalised ads profile

Select personalised ads

Create a personalised content profile

Select personalised content

Measure ad performance

Measure content performance

Apply market research to generate audience insights

Use precise geolocation data

Actively scan device characteristics for identification

Link different devices

Receive and use automatically-sent device characteristics for identification

webmobdev6• 5 years ago

This seems like a deflection - every media platform on the internet relies on the advertising platforms of BigTech in some way. Ultimately, all your data end up there somehow.

medstrom• 5 years ago

Yes, it's not very relevant for an opinion piece how and where it's published. I could make a video that criticises YouTube and it still makes sense to put it on YouTube.

jmull• 5 years ago

It seems relevant to me.

Wired is trying to redefine “surveillance” to mean people collecting and sharing their own information, while at the same time conducting real, detailed surveillance on anyone reading this article.

You might wonder if they being completely disingenuous.

krageon5• 5 years ago

This is fatalistic and wrong. There are plenty of platforms that do not sell you out in this manner (personal blogs run by ethical people exist, for one) and the platforms that do not deserve to be called out for their bad behaviour.

amelius2• 5 years ago

Yes, Wired is bad too. That doesn't mean Apple is somehow good.

schleck82• 5 years ago

I agree, I just thought it was funny to get this popup before reading the article.

croes• 5 years ago

But it's weird to say Apple normalized surveillance when websites did it long before.

cblconfederate• 5 years ago

Wired has nowhere near the power of Apple to change the behavior of people wrt spying

twobitshifter• 5 years ago

In top of that this is a WiredUK article. Of all the existing pervasive normalized surveillance in the UK why are they targeting Apple for “normalizing surveillance”?

nonameiguess• 5 years ago

I think it's unfortunate that commenters so often conflate authors with publishing platforms. Presumably, Wired, like just about any reputable media outlet, gives some amount of editorial independence to the writing staff to isolate them from the business side.

In fact, the author in this case isn't even employed by Wired. She's a professor of Ethics at Oxford.

This raises the obvious question: do people with opinions need to agree with all the practices of a publishing platform to submit their opinion to it? I doubt I agree with all of Hacker News' business practices, let alone Y Combinator's, yet here I am allowing my words to be forever served by them.

resonious• 5 years ago

Super off topic but does anyone go through these with a fine comb and pick the ones you want?

Link different devices? No way. Select personalized ads? Sure!!

lewisflude• 5 years ago

I think this is clickbait. The future of tech is really scary and I fully empathise with that. These new societal problems around data tracking, and the ability to process that data do need to be solved, but trying to skirt around problematic technologies when solving user problems is not sustainable.

I think at least articles like this are good because they create a conversation. Many people who read HN are software engineers, and we all collectively bear at least a little responsibility to make good ethical choices around the tech we use and develop.

Otek• 5 years ago

Users normalised surveillance by buying cheap Android phones from brands like Xiaomi, Huawei and others without thinking about real price of such device - data. Also by buying "smart" devices from these brands. Xiaomi Vacuum can gather tons of informations about home. Air Purifier also. But try to find products of similar quality for an equally low price and you will be faced with the choice of either overpaying or being added to the millions of people who are being tracked anyway. You will become a statistic. No wonder most people don't see any danger in this. Dilution of responsibility.

thablackbull• 5 years ago

American consumers? How does that square with 94% of the marketshare not being from those brands at all[1]?

Or do you mean Samsumg normalizing surveillance.

[1] https://www.counterpointresearch.com/us-market-smartphone-sh...

d3nj4l2• 5 years ago

America isn't the world? Worldwide, Xiaomi is the is the second largest single company by smartphone marketshare: https://www.counterpointresearch.com/global-smartphone-share...

rpastuszak• 5 years ago

Users normalised surveillance by buying cheap …

I agree with the rest of your comment, but I wouldn’t say that “users” normalised it, as their choice in the matter is limited. Now it seems that hidden cost of those services is a problem that will need a cultural shift to see a solution. Education helps too.

Apologies if this sounds like a nitpick, I just think that the language we use when talking about these things matters more than we expect.

cik• 5 years ago

Surveillance was normalized far before that. People have been using Google products and social networks for years before these devices. The only difference is the extent to which one carries that Panopticon with them.

webmobdev6• 5 years ago

That's true - but it's mostly due to ignorance. One of my relative bought a Xiaomi phone (https://www.mi.com/in/redmi-9-power/), and after I pointed out to her that the Xiaomi customised Android OS on it as basically an adware and a blackhole for all personal data on the phone, she asked me for options. When I told her the OS could be replaced (from https://xiaomi.eu/community/), she asked me to do it.

That's one part of it.

The other is that I could replace the OS as Xiaomi (or Sony Open Devices) allow the bootloader to be unlocked and replace the OS. Apple iPhones do not even give you this option.

krageon5• 5 years ago

Xiaomi, Huawei

Google (Pixel), Samsung, Nokia, OnePlus, etc. All such companies are roughly equally evil. The difference might be price (though frankly it usually is not that divergent), but the tracking is the same. Given that the tracking is present at every price point, the price point is not relevant. The origin of the technology is not relevant. All that is relevant is the fact that this is normalised and it should not be.

ClumsyPilot2• 5 years ago

"Xiaomi Vacuum can gather tons of informations about home. Air Purifier also"

Google ads know your age, location, and tons of personal information. Thats enough info for identify fraud.

What does the Air purifier send, level of dust? It does not even know where it is.

d3nj4l2• 5 years ago

It does not even know where it is.

How difficult would it be to add a GPS to one of those? At any rate, "smart" purifiers like the one GP is talking about connect to WiFi etc and are definitely able to find out your location.

nbzso3• 5 years ago

Apple lost me as a customer completely with CSAM this year. But I am thankful because I dramatically reduced my smartphone usage to incidental and mandatory use-cases.

For me this is a strictly personal stance.

People will continue to fall into deep surveillance state not just because only “Nothing to hide” false assumptions. Governments love access to citizens data and partnership with corporations is guaranteed.

On a professional level I “trust” only FOSS software with network access, the others will be air-gaped as much as possible.

sbacic2• 5 years ago

I agree. I've been meaning to buy an Apple laptop to develop on for years now and constantly kept putting it off; first because of quality concerns that have no place in a device with such a price tag and now because of this.

If only there was a Linux-compatible laptop with specs similar to the M1. The only thing that comes to mind are Thinkpads and those things are ugly as hell.

fsflover7• 5 years ago

Not really similar specs to M1, but: https://puri.sm/products/librem-14.

nullwarp• 5 years ago

While not ARM powered, Framework laptops are worth a look and what I ultimately have moved to

masswerk13• 5 years ago

While personally decidedly not a fan of this, Apple's proposed attempt on CASM was quite different from what is generally alleged in that article.

In principle it matched a downloaded set of encrypted hashes of known offending images against any images before they were uploaded to the iCloud and this locally. A recorded offence would result in a local warning, and, if you proceeded, the offending image would have been exposed to further scrutiny and review (by this breaking the end-to-end encryption promise, but you would know and this would have implied your consent). It's not that far from Gatekeeper and other signature matching malware detectors. You may have already problems with the latter, but this is basically where we are.

Clubber3• 5 years ago

The other thing they did was use AI image recognition to scan images sent via text. This wasn't a hash match and much more dangerous. I'm not sure why people get fixated on the CASM thing while ignoring this; this seems much worse to me.

The first feature of the three features will use the phone’s on-device machine learning to check the content of children’s messages for photos that look as if they may be sexually explicit. That analysis will be done entirely on the phone, Apple said, and it will not be able to see the those messages.

If a child receives such a message, it will be blurred and the child wil be warned that it could be sensitive and given information about such messages, as well as being given the option to block the contact. If a child decides to view a message, they will be told that their parents will be alerted, and an adult will then be notified.

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/ap...

vorpalhex• 5 years ago

You're depending on Apple not tampering with or receiving a tampered CSAM hash list. The same company that opened Chinese iCloud to the ccp, took down a voting app when asked by Russia and generally blows around like a leaf on the ask of authoritarian governments.

Gatekeeper and app notarization went from something you could bypass to now a hard block on distributing your own software on MacOS without approval from Apple.

camillomiller• 5 years ago

Let me explain to you as a journalist how this works.

- Facebook is under fire for its leaked papers. - Google is a hot topic because of the lawsuit that reveals collusion with Facebook.

- Apple is relatively free of controversy recently after the CSAM blunder. Then let’s cook up a controversial piece on the other behemoth to cater the big chunk of readers that thinks and wants to see that Apple is evil too, “because of course they are and here is why”. Is this based on facts or on a simplistic interpretation of tech? Who cares!

h2odragon• 5 years ago

We're due for some more "Microsoft is Evil" stories soon, too.

mcphage• 5 years ago

Apple’s usage of Face ID as a way to unlock the iPhone has contributed to normalising facial recognition.

I do t know what their definition of “surveillance” is, but if it includes Face ID, then it’s not a very useful one.

28999357• 5 years ago

I think the logic goes something like this:

Apple is a trusted brand for privacy. Even if FaceID is harmless in terms of surveillance potential, it still associates positively in the minds of users, such that when other vendors — or even the government - decide that they want to use it to, and not with the same on-device protection, etc - people will accept it willingly because it was safe when they did it with Apple.

I agree with other commenters here that these arguments lead to a sort of infinite regression. All of the things Apple has implemented is rather old tech by now. If we accept those as surveillance, we practically can’t have anything. Which sucks.

Apple is trusted now. But they might not always be. They could go the way of their competitors. Then where would we be?

zaptheimpaler5• 5 years ago

By this definition, making anything that CAN be used for surveillance is normalizing surveillance.

I'm tired of this stupid debate and the way its framed.

Over the last decade we have made absolutely incredible leaps in technology by any standard. By nature all new technology comes with the potential to do both good and bad, and usually it does a bit of both.

But making technology on its own is not a bad thing. Lying about it and/or actively ignoring the impact it has on society the way Google and Facebook did is. Conflating technology itself with shitty morals is dumb.

When you build a society where people worship money & fame instead of kindness or sincerity or any moral virtue at all, some people will do literally anything to maximize the $$$ and your society is fucked. It has nothing to do with technology. Go look at the salary threads here or discords full of new grads gaming out total compensations in excruciating detail instead of even considering for a second what impact the company has on the world. They have been taught nothing but capitalism, they know nothing but chase money. Some of them will not flinch in doing the same shit again at some other company 10 years down the line. Even speaking about morality is preaching, old-fashioned, religious, uncool, and dumb now so what do you expect. The best answer the media converged on last time was "hire more humanities students/ teach engineers more literature" as if anyone needs a college course to be taught that lying is wrong.

smoldesu2• 5 years ago

The issue is that Apple has no accountability, unlike Google and Facebook. The only people supposed to keep Apple in line (the SEC and other three-letter agencies) have a mutual interest in maintaining an Apple monopoly.

Plus, it's not like Apple's been caught lying before. Remember when they had to take down their M1 graphs because they were so obviously deceptive? Or how about that time when they said 'political slave labor is not used to build iPhones!' and then we found out that political slave labor is used to build iPhones?

Unless Apple adopts some form of transparency, I don't think I have the capability of trusting them. I agree though, I'm tired of this arguement too which is why I'd really appreciate if Apple gave us something other than a whitepaper of how things should work with no way for security researchers or the common person to verify if that's actually true.

zaptheimpaler5• 5 years ago

Accountability does not work when society as a whole loses its moral compass. The people who were supposed to keep Google/FB accountable were negligent or complicit for a decade.

You may say slave labor is wrong but will you pay $500 more for an iPhone? Most people won't. They will point the finger at Apple while shopping for the cheapest deal on Amazon produced by yet more slave labor in China. Anything to avoid taking on personal responsibility and score a few more $$ for the retirement account. Only widespread personal responsibility works, but it can only arise within a culture that respects and rewards those who take it on and judges people a little more broadly than "success" and $$$.

tqwhite• 5 years ago

No. That's not the issue. The issue is whether it's bad to make systems that digitize lived experience because that data could be used to violate your privacy. Your capacity for trust notwithstanding, Apple has made a major brand commitment to privacy. Violating that would cost them everything. I trust them not to do so.

rimliu• 5 years ago

I have missed, what kind of monopoly Apple is?

amelius2• 5 years ago

By nature all new technology comes with the potential to do both good and bad, and usually it does a bit of both.

But technology can be made without doing bad, see Librem or Pine64.

If you subtract Librem from Apple, what you're left with is anti-consumer surveillance stuff.

Vinnl• 5 years ago

Well, until you get into conflict minerals, depletion of natural resources, environmental pollution, exploitation of workers, ...

(None of that is specific to Librem/Purism or Pine64, but mostly applies to the tech industry at large, of course.)

dec0dedab0de3• 5 years ago

Over the last decade we have made absolutely incredible leaps in technology by any standard.

I don't think things are really that much different now compared to late 2011. At least not different enough to be considered an "absolutely incredible leap"

curioushacking• 5 years ago

I think it may be hard to see technology changes in the moment, but over the last decade alone I think we've had a number of large changes that are starting to be taken for granted.

We have the proliferation of electric vehicles and (at least in the US) a large charging network. There is also a massive difference in the wearable markets. The watches are getting so good that health monitoring and early warning signs are either already here or on the horizon. Cell phones are significantly better. A decade ago a video call would be a novelty and now it is done without a second thought. We finally have the futuristic edge to edge screens and foldables are now on the market.

There are others but they may not fall into the technology that we interact with daily. Things such as the drug technology used to make the covid vaccine. There are also changes in ML with the significant improvements in deep learning and model training.

I'm not sure if any of those count as an incredible leap, I think each one was developed incrementally, but when looking over the course of a decade it feels like a large leap to me.

headShrinker• 5 years ago

Good technology is transparent. If advancements are done right, you would notice much difference.

The truth is, not that much was different between 2000 and 2010 or 1990 and 2000. But 2010 and 2020? This last decade has marked such massive improvements in ways we aren't noticing, and in things we aren't using. Everything from cameras with resolutions and ISOs that are off the charts, OLED, LiPo Battery density, robotics with walking and flight, guidance, wireless transmission and encoding/decoding, Machine learning in everything including your phone, and our phones... they are amazing pieces of kit. Oh, reusable rockets that land themselves! Cars that literally drive themselves. Spot, the robot dog? Right in my office right now, ultra-thin laptops, compact high quality microphones, headphones with unbelievable noise-canceling, 3-axis gimbals, 10-bit n-log external recorders, wireless solar powered remote security cameras, drones with amazing stabilized video quality that you used to need a helicopter to shoot, and on and on and on. The last decade has been insane, turning future dream tech in to Walmart black-friday super sale items. You may not appreciate or even notice the tech advancements in the last 10 years but they have been monstrous compared to any other decade.

reaperducer• 5 years ago

I was thinking about this the other day. Its been a long time since anything meaningful was invented.

The last thing i can think of was the internet. Maybe cell phones. There's probably a bunch of medical stuff, but I'm not well versed in that area.

I mean real inventions. Things that didn't exist. Like light bulbs, or automobiles, or steam engines, or rockets, or jet travel. It seems like the era of real invention petered out in the 1950's to 1970's.

Now things like social media and ad targeting and viral videos are somehow considered innovation. Even the one recent thing I'm impressed by - commercial space flight - is just an iteration of something that already existed.

airstrike• 5 years ago

That's an interesting sidebar... I generally agree with the sentiment, but GPT(-1) came out in 2018. I don't think SoCs weren't nearly as powerful as they are today and GPGPUs were still somewhat nascent, I believe. In 2011 people were still buying PlayStation 3s

azangru• 5 years ago

When you build a society where people worship money & fame instead of kindness or sincerity or any moral virtue at all, some people will do literally anything to maximize the $$$ and your society is fucked

Some people will maximize the $$$ in any society. It's how to make the strive for the $$$ the most beneficial and the least destructive that is the challenge.

onion2k• 5 years ago

Simple solution - make being rich a crime punishable by death.

It worked pretty well for 18th century France.

lallysingh• 5 years ago

Agreed. The article is a giant stretch of logic from the start. There's this at the bottom, though, that I think is worth reading:

All tech giants share a desire to digitise the world. What is left unsaid by Apple and others is that digitising the world entails surveilling it: recording everything, making it taggable, trackable, searchable – and hackable. Of course, asking tech companies not to digitise the world is like asking builders not to pave over natural areas. Unless society sets limits, that is not going to happen. That’s why governments create protected areas when it comes to building.

chiefalchemist2• 5 years ago

That last sentence is key. Of course governments are concerned, Big Tech is nudging gov out of the way. BT is becoming the collecting and controlling force.

I'm not suggesting one is better or worse than the other. But there is a subplot, and it's about control.

boringg2• 5 years ago

Capitalism is what got us to where we are today. It is a powerful form to deploy resources in a country. Is it abused in its current form? Yes. Laying the blame to all the woes on a generation of humanity at the feet of capitalism is a lazy argument at best. I would argue that we shouldn't destroy the capital system but deploy it in a more equitable way.

Also your comment strikes me as someone who doesn't actually engage with anyone under 30 in any real world way but only what is written on the internet. That would create a bias because all the people who might want to talk online to game out their compensation is probably a specific subset of individuals who would reinforce your worldview.

Society is made up of many people and it isn't built by select few. I suggest you reach out to different communities and find people who aren't as jaded as this rant post or offer a way put your energy into engaging and changing the trajectory of society towards where your values lie. Change takes work instead of arm chair quarterbacking a straw man.

matheusmoreira4• 5 years ago

I would argue that we shouldn't destroy the capital system but deploy it in a more equitable way.

So you actually do want to destroy the capitalist system.

zaptheimpaler5• 5 years ago

I am stating the truth as I see it, that's all. It's not some ideological screed against capitalism, it is literally just me describing reality. Reality does have sucky parts and I try to see them as clearly as I see the good parts. Some people call it "ranting", i just call it seeing clearly. It doesn't mean I have a solution to the problem I described, or that I don't engage with the real world. It literally just means I do so while making an attempt to see things as clearly and truthfully as possible. I don't want to get into the tired old debate of "capitalism good or capitalism bad", it is simply too narrow a lens to view everything through. In my view, the problem isn't even about capitalism, its just a manifestation of some of the uglier sides of human nature and competition for social status in the face of actual resource constraints in the world that mean we have to compete for who gets how many resources. Of course the root problems exist no matter what economic system we use.

LurkingPenguin• 5 years ago

But making technology on its own is not a bad thing. Lying about it and/or actively ignoring the impact it has on society the way Google and Facebook did is. Conflating technology itself with shitty morals is dumb.

Even if you believe that Apple is somehow different from Google and Facebook, I think you're missing a key part of the argument made in the article: the technology not only can be used for unethical purposes, it almost certainly will be.

Apple itself doesn't need to be evil. The technology it's pushing is inherently vulnerable and given the value of what it enables to bad actors, will almost inevitably be hijacked for nefarious purposes eventually. Pretending that your technology isn't vulnerable and imminently capable of causing great harm to people is indeed unethical.

When you build a society where people worship money & fame instead of kindness or sincerity or any moral virtue at all, some people will do literally anything to maximize the $$$ and your society is fucked. It has nothing to do with technology.

Have you ever considered that technology has played and is playing a key role in the development of our money and fame-obsessed society? Money and fame have existed in some form for millennia, but thanks to the web and social media, for example, people are now bombarded with a previously unfathomable amount of media that glamorizes it in ways never before possible. This exposure now starts at a very early age and therefore almost certainly shapes how children relate to money, fame, their impressions of themselves, etc.

LeifCarrotson2• 5 years ago

When you build a society where people worship money & fame instead of kindness or sincerity or any moral virtue at all, some people will do literally anything to maximize the $$$ and your society is fucked. It has nothing to do with technology.

Money and fame are self-propagating, you're able to sell more products with fame and make more money with money. Kindness, sincerity, and moral virtues are better than their absence, I agree, but being kind to one person doesn't have the capability of exponential growth, you can't expect that the one act of kindness will allow you later to be kind to 100, then 10,000, then 1,000,000 people.

Technology is a blessing and a curse, it's a Pandora's box that allows scalable ideas to scale to previously unimaginable levels. There was an article here yesterday about how WhatsApp scaled to 1 billion users with just 50 engineers. That kind of action - and its effects on society - would not be possible without technology.

skrebbel2• 5 years ago

"But kindness doesn't scale!"

joedevon• 5 years ago

If you build digital products that serve millions or billions of people, you can scale kindness. One easy change is to spend a bit of time learning about accessibility and incorporating it into your work.

todd3834• 5 years ago

Assuming that everyone who wants to maximize their income is a brainwashed capitalist drone is a mistake. There are many reasons why someone might want to maximize their income. Learning techniques and collecting information from your peer group is not immoral. Several people I know want to make as much money as they can so that they can pay off their house and have enough reserve cash to dedicate the rest of their lives to making an impact where money doesn’t matter to them anymore. Others have massive student loans and the pressure to get out of that debt is enormous.

Also, to suggest these companies are not making an impact on the world is insane. We are talking about companies like Apple and Google and yes… Facebook. Sure, they are not perfect moral companies but they have made massive impacts on the world.

kitsunesoba• 5 years ago

Yes, there is massive downside to not maximizing for money to some extent. It can make the difference between being able to retire while one still has some fragment of youth or not, as well as determine whether you’re just keeping your head above water month to month or are solidly in the black. If you have kids and a significant other, this becomes even more true as you then want to ensure their comfort and wellbeing as well.

It’s less that morality isn’t taught in college and more that the system is structured such that those who don’t do the song and dance lose out big time. No that’s not great, but it’s no fault of the majority of individuals. The system itself needs to be changed. Make sure that people don’t have to work the majority of their waking lives just to have a chance of getting ahead and morality will become a more practical consideration.

whimsicalism2• 5 years ago

anyone needs a college course to be taught that lying is wrong.

I think the moral issues around a lot of tech is more than just "lying is bad" - to conflate it to that means that subtler moral issues will go unnoticed.

What are the moral issues people have with advertising? Is it that lying is wrong? No, I don't think so. What are the moral issues people have around the rentier structure of modern "App stores"? Likewise, it's not just about lying.

I also can't tell if your comment is suggesting that this moral breakdown is a break from the old, or a continuation. Most of the historical evidence seems indicative of a continuation.

zaptheimpaler5• 5 years ago

Call me crazy but I don't believe everything is best taught directly like just crank out a college course. Ethics is one such subject. If you are truly interested in ethics, you can learn about it everywhere - in the news, on TV shows and movies, in novels, watching your friends and just reflecting on all that you see. If not, you can see all the same things without learning anything about ethics. Developing a sense of ethics is a natural by product of being constantly thoughtful and reflective about how your actions impact the world. It's the sort of thing you learn implicitly from your parents & peers & what gets rewarded in the world. In more concrete terms, honoring those who do good and punishing those who don't is a pretty good way to "teach" ethics. Ethics are more a matter of enforcement than teaching maybe.

fundad3• 5 years ago

Warby Parker normalizes surveillance and who makes pencils? Them too.

skrebbel2• 5 years ago

This has got to be the best rant I've seen on HN in a long time.

cudgy• 5 years ago

The last decade has produced very few significant technological jumps in my opinion. Electric vehicles have been around for over a century and the iterations on devices has been largely targeted toward better cameras so people can take selfies to post on the ubiquitous social networks.

The mRNA technology is interesting but unproven as we are seeing with the relative ineffectiveness of the Covid vaccines.

Software technology has been largely focused on new iterations of web frameworks and languages that target the young developers du jour who think that 5 year old frameworks are old school.

Mainly, small iterations of the same stuff is what has been dominating the technology space the last decade. My guess is that we are poised for some interesting new technologies, since it has been a largely ho-hum period for the last decade.

If only the efforts could be focused more toward actually making our lives better instead of focusing only on scraping our lives and diverting our eyes for the benefit of mega tech corporations and their wannabe startups.

matheusmoreira4• 5 years ago

making anything that CAN be used for surveillance is normalizing surveillance

It is. Anything that can be abused will be abused, especially by governments. Companies rolling out clearly problematic technology adds legitimacy to them, it makes them normal.

They have been taught nothing but capitalism, they know nothing but chase money.

Nobody is "taught" capitalism, it is imposed on them. We want to live comfortable, happy lives. We want to have influence in this world. It's not like some trillionaire is gonna come to me and just give me all that.

travisparker• 5 years ago

Well, in regard to your opening point, anything that CAN be used for surveillance WILL be used for surveillance.

ben_palaskas• 5 years ago

This is the most based thing I have ever seen on hacker news. The lack of nuance ( or in the other direction, the lack of genuine consideration in general ) around the moral/spiritual implications of technology in the last hundred years or so is truly sad. Very grateful that this is top comment

zaptheimpaler5• 5 years ago

Thank you, it is an honor to be called based :) Usually people just call it like "hey you're kinda weird you must have aspergers or be a sociopath" (except they don't even call it that, they just think it and i have to guess).

bsedlm• 5 years ago

I recall some articles about schools doing this too.

bni2• 5 years ago

You have two choices:

1. Trust one of the Big-Tech platforms. Use all the conveniences that it provides, such as Cloud storage, integration between devices, etc. Trust them with not leaking/selling your data (or maybe you are ok with this?). You can be damn sure they will analyze your data, for yours and theirs benefit.

OR:

2. Local computing with Debian (or preferred alternative). Participate in reviewing the source code that runs on your machine. Store data locally in your computer or NAS at home network. Do the boring work yourself.

You cant really have "no surveillance" and cloud services at the same time.

silicon2401• 5 years ago

what about encrypting your data before backing it up to a cloud service?

bni2• 5 years ago

Sure, but I would categorize that as under option 2.

gaius_baltar• 5 years ago

That's my approach: cloud is just a dumb storage for backups, these services should not have access to the plaintext data.

koheripbal• 5 years ago

That's really just #2 because you are not really taking advantage of any of the cloud services besides storage - which is the cheapest and least innovative cloud service.

helen___keller• 5 years ago

Agreed, I chose (1) because after introspection I genuinely prefer the convenience given the tradeoffs. But I have the knowledge to pursue (2) at any point (right now my home linux server just acts as a pi-hole -- but it can do so much more if ever needed).

Unfortunately, most people aren't aware they even have a choice, or what the tradeoffs are. I would love to see option (2) more accessible to the average Joe, but I know better than to expect that will ever happen.

fsflover7• 5 years ago

Don't forget to also use Mobian on a smartphone: https://mobian-project.org.

3grdlurker• 5 years ago

Not a US citizen, but what’s noticeably lacking in discussions about surveillance (such as this one) is faulting the very government that’s pressuring companies to comply with state surveillance programs. Doesn’t matter how big you are or how much you’re worth—if your interests do not align with the state you’re not above its power.

nescioquid• 5 years ago

No kidding. The US government has been involved in domestic mass surveillance for about a quarter century now (see Carnivore), predating the pretext given by the terror attacks of 2001. When this was getting off the ground in the 90s, my recollection is that the criticism (if any) one found in the media was oblique. Any surprise that we now have surveillance capitalism?

yboris• 5 years ago

The author of the article, Carissa Véliz, also wrote a great book Privacy is Power:

https://www.amazon.com/Privacy-Power-Should-Take-Control/dp/...

Winsaucerer• 5 years ago

This article might lead a reader to think that surveillance is in itself a problem, using terms like ‘invasive’, and ‘normalising’ (as though the thing being ‘normalised’ is undesirable). While it does appear to distinguish between surveillance and breach of privacy, it doesn’t do so carefully enough. What I actually want are devices that let me surveil MORE of my life, but in ways that respect my privacy, that leave me in control of that data. There are so many benefits that we can receive if companies/software/products were to offer us greater insights(/‘invasive surveillance’) into our lives without breaching our privacy or trust.

When I am surveilling my own life, with devices that only share my data in ways I happily consent to, there is no problem. I can reap great benefits through this. I can take photos of myself and my family. I can monitor my heart through a device on my wrist. I can write personal notes in a journal (whether on paper or digitised) for later reflection. I can keep a history of sites I’ve visited in my browser.

What a company like Apple claims to be doing is to try and bring us the benefits of surveillance without the breaches of privacy — without the forced and reluctant consent to share our data with everyone. Surveillance isn’t the enemy, it’s companies trying to make a product out of that data that really we’d prefer not to share at all.

simonh• 5 years ago

It's odd Wired calls out Apple in particular. For almost every technology Apple works on, like the ones the article discusses that that in theory they _could_ use for surveillance, Google or Facebook is already ten steps ahead _actually_ using it for surveillance.

willseth• 5 years ago

Clickbait

chiefalchemist2• 5 years ago

In terms of normizing surveillance, Apple is late to the party. The truth is "personalization" is a euphemism for surveillance. This language slight of hand has been popular with Google, Amazon, etc.

Per "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism", it's not the surveillance to fear per se, it's how our own meta data and such is being used against us. Now. This info isn't simply predicting behaviour, it's being used to alter and modify our behaviour.

I'm not giving Apple a free pass. But to call out Apple and not the others gives the masses a false sense of truth.

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/living-und...

throwawayswede• 5 years ago

What's ironic is that the first thing you see when you hit wired.co.uk:

Wired
We and our partners store and/or access information on a device, such as unique IDs in cookies to process personal data. You may accept or manage your choices by clicking below or at any time in the privacy policy page. These choices will be signaled to our partners and will not affect browsing data.View Cookie Notice We and our partners process data to provide:
Use precise geolocation data. Actively scan device characteristics for identification. Store and/or access information on a device. Select basic ads. Create a personalised ads profile. Select personalised ads. Create a personalised content profile. Select personalised content. Measure ad performance. Measure content performance. Apply market research to generate audience insights. Develop and improve products.

It really irks me that they blind to how majorly hypocritical they seem when write stuff like that on a crappy journal like this.

Technology journalism died in early 2010s and never came back.

lilactown• 5 years ago

I think the article comes off to many here as anti-technology because it doesn't continue past the thesis: Apple's vast amount of unilateral control over devices and software gives it the ability to surveil the population in ways that were not possible before. It then goes on to suggest a very consumer-centric way of addressing this, through a special iPhone that's more privacy-centric.

This ignores two big things we have to address when thinking about mass data collection.

1. The ability to collect data at scale unlocks capabilities that simply weren't possible before. There are lots of positive outcomes that can come out of this. Focusing on only the negative can lead one to a sort of primitivist mindset, and it convinces no one who feels the positive effects of it.

2. Apple could very well offer a phone with no facial recognition, rock solid encryption, an easily coverable camera, and it would affect close to nothing. The entire point of mass data collection is the "mass" part of it, and as long as people observe the benefits of being tracked (i.e. using maps, social media, finding their lost things, getting notified when their heart rate is up, counting their steps, tracking their sleep, getting notifications, seamlessly backing up their contacts and photos, dictating messages, etc.) then they will continue to be able to collect mass amounts of information regardless if some individuals choose to abdicate completely.

Other people are pointing these things out in the comments because it's the natural antithesis to what the article offers.

Salome Viljoen[0] talks about this thesis/antithesis in her research on data privacy and ways to treat data from a legal perspective. She explores an alternative to the "I'll just take my data elsewhere" and "I'll just not let my data be collected at all" approaches: democratic data governance[1].

One path forward reconceives data about people as a democratic resource. Such proposals view data not as an expression of an inner self subject to private ordering and the individual will, but as a collective resource subject to democratic ordering. Democratic data governance schemes consider the relational nature of data: information about one individual is useful (or harmful) precisely because it can be used to infer features about—and thus make decisions affecting—others.

The problem is not necessarily that Apple (or Google, or anyone else) is collecting data. The problem is that we have very little say in what data they collect, or what they do with it afterwards, because the data is captured by corporations that act as data fiefdoms without any sort of democratic control.

Unfortunately, the massive valuations of these companies are essentially based on the amount of control they have over the data they collected, because it gives them incredible abilities to extract more value out of it. Any loss of unilateral control would be seen as a threat to the value of the companies, which in America makes it very politically distasteful right now. Perhaps that can change.

0: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=rH63p3sAAAAJ&hl=en 1: https://phenomenalworld.org/analysis/data-as-property

duxup• 5 years ago

I feel like it is more telling about tech media outrage hits here when Apple does a thing.

But not for websites... Google... etc.

readonthegoapp• 5 years ago

It seems like most of the top-level comments here are some version, "zomg, I hate wired" -- no reason, just passionate fury.

That surprises me, and makes me think that this simple article showing up in Wired UK is potentially very impactful -- so it is being attacked very forcefully, with lots of handwaving.

Apple's new Citizen Surveillance and Management (CSAM) technology is serious -- the article refers to it specifically -- the privacy concerns are not new. The tech is a legalized version of terrorist technology provider NSO Group's Pegasus software.

We already have a group of people, QAnon, terrorizing the world in order to 'save the children' -- we don't need to add another group in the form of a global $2.5T company.

ksec• 5 years ago

May be instead of arguing Apple is normalising Surveillance, they are normalising Data collection where only Apple can connect Data and everyone else who want Data will have to ask and pay Apple. Likely in the future for Ads on Apple user and Apple taking a 30% cut. This is not some sort of joke I wouldn't be surprised if there are internal plan somewhere. Which would also turn Apple into possibly the largest Ads platform.

I was actually expecting Apple to be doing something like this in 2018 timeframe the moment they dip their toe into App Store Ads. But then the whole privacy thing blow up.

Probably worth linking to Benedict Evans blog post again.

https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2021/5/13/apples-ads...

https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2021/8/27/understand...

Kafkish• 5 years ago

I think Google beat Apple to that by at least a decade. If you're not using an Apple product or service, Apple likely knows very little about you. Google, OTOH, knows a lot about you, whether you use a Google service or products.

karaterobot• 5 years ago

People normalized surveillance by willingly accepting it, or laughing it away because it didn't bother them at the time. As noted already, Wired tracks its users, and participates in tracking networks. "Oh, but that's a whole different thing, that's... normal."

Havoc• 5 years ago

This should really read FAANG.

They all seem to have embraced methods and techniques that seem questionable at best.

Netflix maybe getting a bit of a pass by virtue of not truely being in the personal info game

dopamean• 5 years ago

I'd argue that CCTV everywhere in the UK has done more to normalize surveillance than what Apple is currently doing. I still don't love the trend I'm seeing in tech though.

Grustaf• 5 years ago

But that doesn’t give Apple permission to track our lived experience at all times with its microphones, cameras and sensors.

They also aren't doing that.

Thanks to Apple, physical shops can track us through our phones

Is this referring to Wifi or even 3/4g? I can't see how they can call this "Thanks to Apple", maybe it's something else?

What is left unsaid by Apple and others is that digitising the world entails surveilling it: recording everything, making it taggable, trackable, searchable – and hackable.

I don't think many people would call something "surveillance" if it never leaves the phone, which is the case for almost everything Apple does in this regard. Yes, your phone known where you are at all times, but as long as Apple doesn't, is that an issue?

privat• 5 years ago

Brilliant and a timely piece stating how things really are. After paying $1000 iPads & iPhone plus Apple pooh poohing privacy it still slurps away serious amount of user clickstream without permission. Sure it is less than Google but it is serious enough.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703983704576277...

In iOS Books all your interaction and content meta data gets sent to Apple and there is no way to turn it off. They just say “we do it while safeguarding user privacy and to create better user experience”.

Now that is surely Normalising Surveillance not to mention 24x7 connection between iDevices & Apple servers.

Apple Is Normalising Surveillance

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