True, but only for users in that country. And Apple is free to leave if they don't like the terms.
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And ultimately, the regulations benefit the regulated.
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Apple Disables Clearview AI's Developer Account After Violating Enterprise Certificate Rules
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I, too, am a privacy advocate. Cloud facial recognition, or at least its use by governments and businesses, needs to be stopped, yesterday. The best way to prevent use of cloud facial recognition services by governments and businesses is, of course, for it to not be offered to anyone in the first place.
For those on FB that "don't have anything to hide": Did you think some XYZ company was going to be able to access your photos for use in global surveillance? Perhaps you don't have anything to hide, but maybe someone else you know (in your posted pics) does, or maybe someone just looks like a "bad person" to the, flawless /s, AI algo.
No one’s argued otherwise, including those who oppose those regulations. Come up with a logical argument.
A company locking down and hindering the user+developer experiences allow other companies to create open experiences that everyone wants. This increases competition.
Apple does not currently have a monopoly on the phone market or the app market.
The comments in this thread pretty clearly distinguish those from free countries and those that are used to their governments controlling every part of their lives. Incredibly insightful read.
Except the EU is not a country but a group. And it should not be for a government to tell companies how they make their products. I am sure people would think the EU would have more pressing things to do.
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Not sure where you live but in Australia I see tonnes of kids with Apple devices. Also let’s speak of innovation. Apple had lightning which is reversible before USB C and also Apple took pet in the creation of USB C. MacBook was one of the first devices to have it. People like to throw around the word innovate without knowing what it actually means. Nowadays it is companies throwing features at a wall to see what sticks then charging over the top prices and using everyday users as beta testers. Not innovation lazy product R&D
country or group, they can determine their policies themselfe and should do it in the public interest. This benefits us all, instead off a few shareholders. Standardization/harmonization is key for innovation, for example just look at homekit; still no lift off for apple, but now they joined the group trying to standardize it, it wil accelerate innovation. Wouldn’t it be great to get your imessages in whatsapp and viceversa, you know like when you could text the world?
I yearn to live in a country where there is a camera capturing and recording faces at every intersection, at every public venue, at every transit facility, at every workplace, at every public building, at every store, at every school, at every home... everywhere and anywhere, constantly recording and tracking who, where, when and why.
Ahhh.... Viva face recognition! /s
Ahhh.... Viva face recognition! /s
Except governments do not always have the best interests of their constituents and are not always interested in what benefits all. And in tech I would argue that they should not be having a say in general. Except when it comes to protecting peoples right to privacy and and holding companies to account for data breaches and selling of data.
You do not trust your government do you? If it’s beneficial to us, I say please, if not not.
My government’s job is not helping companies to rule and dominate the world but making/enforcing rules and regulations to protect us, the voter, to clarify ‘when needed’. Batteries, rfradiation, etc. all public domain and subject to regulation.
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The misconception is who should do what? When did a company protected your privacy? The discussion started with our governments, not the big companies..
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Clearview AI is setting a dangerous precedent and for that reason alone they should be banned. A company like that could be a front for people who are ideologically not on the side of democracy and have a long term vision of dismantling democracy.
Systems like these scrape face data from online sources but also from accounts that have been set to 'private' without clearly informing platform and app users what could be done with this data, in the short term and the long term. Users should be informed what could happen with that data if it falls in the hands of criminals, authoritarian regimes, or even your own government if it one day turns into a machine for oppression.
We know already that facial recognition for minority groups, such as Afro-Caribbeans, is often faulty and targets innocent individuals.
Now let's take a look at how facial recognition is being used in China. Face data is scraped from search engines and from social media apps. It is then collated with other personal data - your name, your data of birth, medical history, location, religion, political persuasion, threat level to the regime, credit score, etc.
Apps like Tik Tok, WeChat, Whatsapp, Instagram play on user's need for attention by introducing cute filter games that collect facial data which can be sold to these databases.
The data is fed into surveillance systems used to track a citizen's movements and behavior patterns. What happens if the regime one day decided to purge a number of citizens based on the way they are behaving or if their political beliefs are moving in a different direction (towards democracy) than the leadership? Weaponized drones can be fed the data and purge those citizens very quickly, within days.
Likewise if such a regime or terrorist group want to invade territory they could also use the above method to clear opposition before invasion. This isn't a sci-fi scenario. Maoists taught these methods to the North Vietnamese Army (NVA). They would send spies to live in villages for months. The spies would collect the names and addresses of every person or family who had voiced opposition to the NVA. That information was then used to purge hundreds of people in overnight assassinations before an invasion. The result was complete surrender with no resistance.
You cannot guarantee that your government will always be in favor of democratic processes. We have seen how easy it is for government to be subverted - either by racism, corruption, dark money, crypto bribery, kompromat, ideological persuasion, social media troll farms, or religious fundamentalism. Your intelligence agencies are normally on your side but your elected leaders have the power to cripple them or replace them under the guise of 'draining the swamp'.
That's why surveillance capitalism, along with tools for corrupting the political process, can easily result in a society that falls to authoritarianism.
Systems like these scrape face data from online sources but also from accounts that have been set to 'private' without clearly informing platform and app users what could be done with this data, in the short term and the long term. Users should be informed what could happen with that data if it falls in the hands of criminals, authoritarian regimes, or even your own government if it one day turns into a machine for oppression.
We know already that facial recognition for minority groups, such as Afro-Caribbeans, is often faulty and targets innocent individuals.
Now let's take a look at how facial recognition is being used in China. Face data is scraped from search engines and from social media apps. It is then collated with other personal data - your name, your data of birth, medical history, location, religion, political persuasion, threat level to the regime, credit score, etc.
Apps like Tik Tok, WeChat, Whatsapp, Instagram play on user's need for attention by introducing cute filter games that collect facial data which can be sold to these databases.
The data is fed into surveillance systems used to track a citizen's movements and behavior patterns. What happens if the regime one day decided to purge a number of citizens based on the way they are behaving or if their political beliefs are moving in a different direction (towards democracy) than the leadership? Weaponized drones can be fed the data and purge those citizens very quickly, within days.
Likewise if such a regime or terrorist group want to invade territory they could also use the above method to clear opposition before invasion. This isn't a sci-fi scenario. Maoists taught these methods to the North Vietnamese Army (NVA). They would send spies to live in villages for months. The spies would collect the names and addresses of every person or family who had voiced opposition to the NVA. That information was then used to purge hundreds of people in overnight assassinations before an invasion. The result was complete surrender with no resistance.
You cannot guarantee that your government will always be in favor of democratic processes. We have seen how easy it is for government to be subverted - either by racism, corruption, dark money, crypto bribery, kompromat, ideological persuasion, social media troll farms, or religious fundamentalism. Your intelligence agencies are normally on your side but your elected leaders have the power to cripple them or replace them under the guise of 'draining the swamp'.
That's why surveillance capitalism, along with tools for corrupting the political process, can easily result in a society that falls to authoritarianism.
Like everybody else who's rightfully tired of having to bow to Apple's arbitrary rules - rules that Apple itself does not adhere to at all. Those rules are just for third party developers, not fir Apple's own software.
And no king should be above their own laws.
That being said, developers shod just step out of that Walled Garden. It won't take long for Apple to change their tune.
Sure, developers. Let’s all go to a platform where everyone just pirates all the apps, where nobody prevents rip-off apps, where our intellectual property is not protected, and where we can’t make any money!
Sounds great!
I would love to see a digital vigilante take on the CEOs and other officer & employees of companies like this. I don't have the IT skills to do it myself but I am sure someone does. They could start a website to "exonerate the innocent" by proving how squeaky clean all these people are by showing all their photos, credit histories, marriage and divorce records, vehicle registrations, addresses, kids names, schools they attend, pets, etc. etc. They could even incorporate some real-time location data purchased illegally from wireless carriers in case anyone wants to meet up a CEO while he is out car shopping just to say "hi". After all, I'm sure none of these people have anything to hide so they shouldn't mind any of their information being made public and easily searchable.
Does anyone care?
Well, the US police will care if people have to buy Android phones to run their app.
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Has been posted before, but this case here has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with privacy or ClearViews notorious problems with privacy.
Instead of getting a "Developer License" for $99 per year, which allows you to put apps on the App Store after they are reviewed by Apple, they got an "Enterprise License" for $299 per year, which allows you to put apps on the phones of your employees, and _only_ on the phones of your employees. These apps are not reviewed by Apple. They don't need to be reviewed, because the app is only used by your employees. Apple found that the app could be downloaded by everyone, not only ClearView employees. That's why Apple did the same they have done before when companies violated the terms of their Enterprise License: Shut all apps down that were created with that Enterprise License by revoking ClearView's enterprise certificate.
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Winnie, ClearView used an Enterprise License. Do you know what an Enterprise License is?
They had a contract with Apple, and they were absolutely clearly in violation of their contract. They gave their app to people that are not ClearView employees. That's why their license was shut down. Apple did not apply any rules whatsoever to what the software was doing. With an Enterprise License, there is no review of your software at all.
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I don't have any high opinion of ClearView at all, but their app was shut down because they were in violation of their Enterprise License. The only restriction of an Enterprise License is that you can only give the app to your own employees, and nobody else.
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As you so brillantly point out, Apple's rules and large market enable developers to make money; so they follow them. If they didn't, they'd leave. Apple's 30% cut is not that unreasonable when compared to what industries and retail markup. Apple simply takes the cut from an established price by the developer, rather than have the developer set their price to Apple and then Apple add a markup; which is what most retailers do.
And regulate apple? Oh my, next you want an usb-c port as well..
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But most retailers do not force suppliers not to promote their product or subscriptions anywhere else like apple does. Apple does not enable developers, they filter developers and force them to comply and eventually pushes them out when to succesful. Like with retailers, they are prohibited to sell beneath the apple listprice. Apple dictates and does not cooperate. Sadly this now is normal MO with all the likes of apple, and you condoning it..
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I’m aware, but I believe Apple, Google, etc. should update their policies to outright forbid the use of cloud facial recognition through their distribution channels in the absence of legislation that forbids its use. (Also, note here since I think some others may have missed it that I’m referring strictly to cloud facial recognition. If it’s done locally, like Face ID for authentication, I can’t realistically take issue with it.)
Whether legislators would ever be willing to make law enforcement surrender its shiny new toy remains to be seen, and it’s tricky because Apple doesn’t review enterprise apps and Android more easily allows sideloading apps, and there’s still the web to contend with, but I can think of few better solutions in the interim to inhibit the proliferation of this technology that by any reasonable standard is more dangerous than it is beneficial.
Realistically, the U.S. needed robust personal data regulations à la GDPR years ago, but it’s never too late to start. That could’ve prevented Clearview AI from existing in the first place and almost certainly in its current form.
ClearView could have submitted their app to the AppStore. But then they would have had to follow Apple’s review guidelines. Maybe they didn’t follow that path because their app was rejected from the AppStore?
Apple regularly updates their review terms when people do obnoxious things (that Apple didn’t think of). I’m only up-to-date with things that concern _me_ as a developer, and my app doesn’t do anything obnoxious. So I wouldn’t know if ClearView could get on the AppStore right now, but possibly not, and Apple might want to get rid of them anyway.