HN user
I don't think we should say that it's either or. I think it's far more likely given their past history, that privacy is both something they care about and something that makes good business sense to them. Recall the pretty stern answer Tim Cook gave when questioned about their environmental programs: http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/tim-cook-soundly-reje...
Still I think that would become obvious pretty quickly. I've actually had people start writing out a textbook algorithm that just solved the wrong problem. And then completely stumbled when trying to explain how the program would arrive at the intended result.
I usually ask questions until the person is out of his comfort zone, and if he is completely clueless on how to proceed at that point it's a red flag.
I can tunnel all network traffic from my Apple devices through a VPN and prove that they still work fine, and I can have a look at the amount of traffic Apple sends and see if it corresponds with the "yes" and "no" answers I've given to their privacy questions.
Which is fine and dandy until you get that one person that cheats by getting help from someone else.
At my job, our interview guidelines explicitly say that we don't expect non-graduates to be able to whip out fancy data structures. We want to see that the person can program, how he thinks about problems and system design, and how they deal with being stuck. I've seen people with impressive CVs and PhDs that were unable to solve very simple programming tasks.