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Any terrorist or organized crime that would ever be stupid enough to make their plans with a smart speaker nearby would most assuredly be easily caught via legitimate/legal means anyway. This is simply the government wanting the ability to easily surveil the masses with complete disregard for the right of privacy.
Anyone who has a smart speaker in their house should assume the manufacturer is listening to everything that is said because that is what those devices do.
 
I love how Apple pretends to be the good guy and I love how people believe it. LOL!

It's not about being "the good guy" (this isn't a bad Hollywood flick). It's that user data plays an insignificant role in Apple's business model, unlike with many tech companies such as Amazon, Facebook, Google. As such, they can afford to take a strong, largely consistent stance on privacy.
 
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Download Signal Private Messenger. It’s free, cross-platform, has disappearing messages, has the gold standard of end-to-end encryption, and does not support iCloud backups.
 
Apple only follows the law in China.
That was and will always be China's law. Australia is now moving towards it. If AU finalizes it then Apple will do 1 of 2 options. Abandon the AU market or move all AU accounts to an AU data center and provide the government access to that information (ala China). AU will see increases in cost (they already get ripped due to some AU laws).
 
Apple Security is already severely compromised with having a very large subset of users on Infrastructure owned by a fascist totalitarian dictatorship which also Has access to private keys.
I very much doubt that the USA has any private keys.
 
If Apple is forced to compromise their encryption in Australia then the encryption we enjoy here might be compromised as well, since it's a shared code base and any method Apple implements has the potential to be utilized here too (by hackers), whether Apple wants it to or not.
True in it's current state but Apple will do the same as in China. Move all AU accounts to a region data center and give the AU access to that.
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Wich only counts for people outside of China.


They didn’t try much in China. Instead they gave iCloud keys over to government. Apple is a joke when it comes to privacy where it is really needed.
Except this was the law before Apple got to China. Everyone doing business in China is doing it this way.
 
It amazes me when Governments legitimately believe thst weakening encryption will simply stop people be8ng terrorists, as opposed to driving them deeper underground where they’re even harder to track.
They might ask the experts. Like the NSA. These guys don't care about privacy, their job is to keep the USA safe. And the NSA has stated again and again that strong encryption is overall helping the security of the USA. It makes it more difficult to find criminals and terrorists, but it protects the security of government, army, companies etc. , not only the security of private citizens.
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Anyone who has a smart speaker in their house should assume the manufacturer is listening to everything that is said because that is what those devices do.
HomePod, like all iOS devices of the last few hears, has a chip that recognises when you say "Hey Siri" and nothing else. And when it hears this, it starts listening properly. It's quite important for iOS devices, because that chip uses very little power so it can listen all the time without emptying the battery - but it only recognises these two words, nothing else. Actively listening would drain the batteries quickly.
 
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It’s official. Tim Cook even mentioned it in his last interview. Of course you have to listen closely.
You're aware that they don't have iCloud Keys but full access to the iCloud data on the iCloud Servers in China were there are only accounts of Chinese citizens or those with China iCloud accounts. Also every company in the planet working in China does this. It's the reason that Google used on why they left but there seem to be some more issues related to possible Search Engine code being stolen. Note: Google wants back in to China.
 
Apple only follows the law in China.
Apple follows the law everywhere. China doesn’t have laws requiring Apple to create a backdoor to their devices. The encryption is the same and the owners of the device has the only keys. Apple has access to any unencrypted data on iCloud but emails and text are encrypted there as well. The US government was trying to force them to weaken security by creating a key for them that we are supposed to believe they could keep safe.
 
If there’s one thing that you can’t criticize Apple for, it’s their stance on your right to privacy.

I agree, they usually do their best for you. When they don’t it is usually because they are blackmailed or threatened in one way or another. Usually when their business interests are on the line. One has to remember that Apple often has to deal with governments that are often run like a mafia. Ok China they are run by communists and in other countries their current leaders leave a lot to be desired. Many of those leaders don’t care about the privacy of their citizens. Google is the biggest example. Each new phone they release forces you to save all your contacts to their Gmail cloud server forcing you to hand over all your personal contacts to them if you wish to use their smartphone. Luckily Apple does not do this to their customers/users while they do give you the option to do so if you want to but that is an “option” and not a “MUST” which is unlike what Google does.
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Yes, especially in China.
Apple does their best actually. In China they are blackmailed and threatened by the local communist government but they leave workaround options which are basically loopholes. You don’t have to use the local Apple Cloud server. You can use one from abroad. Those Apple Cloud servers are not blocked in China.
 
It’s official. Tim Cook even mentioned it in his last interview. Of course you have to listen closely.
Can you please provide a link? Thanks
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It’s official. Tim Cook even mentioned it in his last interview. Of course you have to listen closely.
They are “storing it in china”. It does not translate to “giving” it to the Chinese. It will be equivalent to claiming that iCloud keys of the whole world is accessible by the US government
 
Can you please provide a link? Thanks
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They are “storing it in china”. It does not translate to “giving” it to the Chinese. It will be equivalent to claiming that iCloud keys of the whole world is accessible by the US government
You can look up his last interview yourself on YouTube where he says the chinese have some of the Keys. And yes they are storing iCloud Data of Chinese Population on Chinese government infrastructure. And hand over some of the private keys to the Chinese totalitarian regime. Of course you could have easily looked that up yourself instead of writing some half informed rebuttal.
 
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You can look up his last interview yourself...


From the MacRumors Rules for Appropriate Debate:

Debate

Guidelines: Be willing to engage in fact-based, constructive debate. Look for ways to inform and learn from others.

Rules:
  1. Sources. If you claim that something's a fact, back it up with a source. If you can't produce evidence when someone asks you to cite your sources, we may remove your posts. If you started the thread, then we may remove or close the thread.
 
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No
I agree, they usually do their best for you. When they don’t it is usually because they are blackmailed or threatened in one way or another. Usually when their business interests are on the line. One has to remember that Apple often has to deal with governments that are often run like a mafia. Ok China they are run by communists and in other countries their current leaders leave a lot to be desired. Many of those leaders don’t care about the privacy of their citizens. Google is the biggest example. Each new phone they release forces you to save all your contacts to their Gmail cloud server forcing you to hand over all your personal contacts to them if you wish to use their smartphone. Luckily Apple does not do this to their customers/users while they do give you the option to do so if you want to but that is an “option” and not a “MUST” which is unlike what Google does.
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Apple does their best actually. In China they are blackmailed and threatened by the local communist government but they leave workaround options which are basically loopholes. You don’t have to use the local Apple Cloud server. You can use one from abroad. Those Apple Cloud servers are not blocked in China.
Not doing business at all with such regimes would also be an option. Google did it before they turned evil.
Apple could do it, they are all about Social Justice here in the West. But Chinese dictatorship throwning homosexuals into jail and labor camp... , implementing social scores with help of apple and implementing governmental iCloud infrastructure with help of apple.... and Tim rainbow parade Cook „privacy is a basic human right“ behind all this is hypocrisies an a whole new level.
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From the MacRumors Rules for Appropriate Debate:

Debate

Guidelines: Be willing to engage in fact-based, constructive debate. Look for ways to inform and learn from others.

Rules:
  1. Sources. If you claim that something's a fact, back it up with a source. If you can't produce evidence when someone asks you to cite your sources, we may remove your posts. If you started the thread, then we may remove or close the thread.
Look I gave you the source Tim said it in his last interview. It’s on YouTube. Since you want to play stupid:

You need time marks too or can you handle watching the whole 8 minutes?
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Apple follows the law everywhere. China doesn’t have laws requiring Apple to create a backdoor to their devices. The encryption is the same and the owners of the device has the only keys. Apple has access to any unencrypted data on iCloud but emails and text are encrypted there as well. The US government was trying to force them to weaken security by creating a key for them that we are supposed to believe they could keep safe.


False. Majority of data is not end to end encrypted. Emails are not encrypted at all.

„Consistent with standard industry practice, iCloud does not encrypt data stored on IMAP mail servers“

Source:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303
 
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No

Not doing business at all with such regimes would also be an option. Google did it before they turned evil.
Apple could do it, they are all about Social Justice here in the West. But Chinese dictatorship throwning homosexuals into jail and labor camp... , implementing social scores with help of apple and implementing governmental iCloud infrastructure with help of apple.... and Tim rainbow parade Cook „privacy is a basic human right“ behind all this is hypocrisies an a whole new level.
[doublepost=1539498936][/doublepost]
Look I gave you the source Tim said it in his last interview. It’s on YouTube. Since you want to play stupid:

You need time marks too or can you handle watching the whole 8 minutes?

You mean like Google does in America and other countries..?

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-...error-attacks-government-access-a7803041.html
 
True in it's current state but Apple will do the same as in China. Move all AU accounts to a region data center and give the AU access to that.
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Except this was the law before Apple got to China. Everyone doing business in China is doing it this way.

I will stop posting here about apple merging with the Chinese dictatorship the day apple stops all the virtue signaling about social justice, tolerance and privacy. Promised.
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See above.
 
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This government is in the death throws and will be gone in 6-9 months. Problem is, the alternative Labor Party has the same policy regarding encryption and privacy; a gradual erosion of human rights and civil liberties in the name of "security" despite its link being tenuous at best. There's a concerted push in all of the "5 Eyes" countries to erode all boundaries and protections to privacy for the purpose of control and suppression of dissent. Only sustained and organised resistance can limit the pace of its progression.

It's truly alarming the amount of information the government can access already from metadata alone.
 
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Considering here in Australia we now have our equivalent of Trump as prim minster and the left party won’t stand up for well, anything.

Thanks Apple for trying to put some ‘reason’ into the mass of stupid ideas.
 
It's not about being "the good guy" (this isn't a bad Hollywood flick). It's that user data plays an insignificant role in Apple's business model, unlike with many tech companies such as Amazon, Facebook, Google.

I think you mean: user data plays an insignificant role in Apple’s business model, unlike Amazon, Facebook, Google... and MacRumors.

Don’t forget, this site harvests then sells all your user info and personal data too.
 
Australia trying to be relevant and in the news :)

Just kidding, love you Aus! You gave us Kylie!!
 
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