Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
I agree with your overall premise and reasoning... really, I honestly do
But I still can't bring myself to be concerned the NSA is going to hack my iPad


Even if it doesn't personally concern you because you don't mind them seeing your data or meta data one should be extremely angry and opposed to the NSA on pure principle alone.
 
You get it...

You aren't getting it.

You may very well not have anything to hide. You're just "stating your 1st Amendment protected right" to free speech and an opinion, right?

You say that NOW. But what about LATER?

Isn't it painfully obvious that the government ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS takes more than they say they will? They lie. They cheat. They steal. They wage wars that don't do any good for anyone. (as if any war is good)

Your petty opinion NOW may LATER turn into something ILLEGAL (legal law or not, if you understand where I'm going with that) and for that you may be a target.

It will be EASY to dredge up your past and turn it against you. You will have a nice pretty picture painted of how you are not (or were not, as it may be) a patriotic citizen in line with the laws of the time.

Take me for instance- you do realize that the way I'm speaking can VERY EASILY be held against me in the future, no?

If you don't think it's coming, then you haven't learned a thing from history. That's a fact.

Also- Krazy Bill- I love your avatar. Always enjoyed that little guy back in like 2000 or whenever he was just a video riding that invisible motorcycle!

To everyone claiming "if you aren't doing anything illegal you have nothing to worry about" - I challenge you to say that to any of the 110,000 people of Japanese decent (80% of which were born in the US) who were forcibly rounded up and relocated to "internment" camps in the United States during WWII. Most have died over the years but some, including George Takei (Star Trek's Lt. Sulu), can still speak about it from first hand experience. He wasn't doing anything illegal, he must have made up all the things he said about his family being forced from their home in California and relocated to a tar paper shack without running water.

Or for that matter, ask any of the 11,000 people of German decent who were rounded up and forcibly relocated in the US during WWII. Or the 600,000 Italians in the United States who lost their right to own cameras and firearms and who were required to carry ID cards. None of these people had been convicted of, or even accused of planning a crime against the United States. They were all rounded up (with the assistance of data provided by the U.S. Census Bureau) because of what they MIGHT do.

The United States has come a long way since WWII and I do not expect people to ever be rounded up again based on their ethnicity. But, what if it were possible to identify POTENTIAL "threats" based on their political views or who their known friends are? What if someone could write an algorithm that could calculate a "threat index" based on views a person has expressed in private emails, comments they have made on blogs, and the number of cases of ammunition they have ordered in the past 5 years?

Nope, they haven't broken any laws, they have NOTHING to worry about.
 
Who cares, are you plotting a murder or terrorist attack? No? Ok than.

I seriously hope you're trolling. Who do you think decides who is considered a potential terrorist? Do you honestly think that only wrongdoers will ever be punished or suffer from this?

Oh to be naive. It must be a glorious existence for you.
 
Wow…are you in for a rude awakening...

I think he might be... If they have access, seems like they can simply -put- something there illegal and then "find" it whenever they wish. Far more efficient than waiting for someone to make an actual mistake.

"Dear Citizen: Nice editorial in Monday's Times, and great rally you led the day after. Odd thing... take a look at your photo stream. Ewww.... You're a dirty boy. BTW, answer your doorbell."
 
Nothing. I question them too. But the OP is saying he's NOT doing so and being a good, docile little citizen while at the same time trying to assert that ohnoes! The government sees everything everyone does on their iPads!

So, he's doing two really bad things: Claiming to not question government motives, and grossly over asserting what we know the government is capable of doing on an iPad. What they CAN do is bad enough. Using that already-bad truth to go well into tinfoil hat territory though, opens up the debate to people who will try to do one of two things: use that overreaching paranoia to quash good discussion on what's going on, and/or use the argument to suggest (falsely) that getting a Blackberry/Windows/Android-powered device will put up this magic invisible wall that will better protect them from prying government eyes.

I'm merely asking why he's speaking out of both sides of his mouth.
I'm making no assertions, just asking a question in an effort to stimulate conversation on the best way to protect privacy on these new devices.

Is showing respect for your government and still desiring privacy talking out of both sides of my mouth? These notions can be mutually exclusive. Please read more carefully before bashing your fellow forum members and stifling discussion.
 
Is showing respect for your government and still desiring privacy talking out of both sides of my mouth? These notions can be mutually exclusive.
Sounds like you meant to say that they don't have to be mutually exclusive (i.e. one can do both).
 
If you just use your iPad yourself, self contained so to speak. Government doesn't know anything about it. However reach out in any way, internet, text, messaging, skype calls, then you use channels that can and are being watched, recorded, and saved for possible future review. Nothing you can really do on your IPad to secure all this metadata.

Even if, you were to encrypt a text lets just say. Your intended addressee would still be recorded. From what I have read about Snowden's revelations it's these pathways that are being mined.

I'm not plotting anything, but i still do not feel comfortable with unknown people, with unknown agendas knowing every web site i have ever visited. Especially since I had zero input about this being done.

Our bill of rights are being eroded away. You realize habious corpus has been suspended under the Patriot Act (an ironic name for it). It is now legal for you to be arrested, without being told the charge. Taken and detained, no calls, no lawyer, no hearing before a judge and held indefinitely. Think about that.
 
I'm making no assertions, just asking a question in an effort to stimulate conversation on the best way to protect privacy on these new devices.

As you've been called to the carpet on by many posters in this thread over, you started with a sensationalist title that asserts, without any evidence, credible or otherwise, that the NSA has systematically implanted a backdoor on the iPad line.

That certainly stimulates discussion all right, but a good portion of it is noise: having to refute speculation presented as fact.

Reasonably protecting privacy on an iPad and similar devices is actually not too hard, but it involves dropping a lot of the common services people frequently use. Dropbox, Google Apps, iCloud, are all out, pretty much; if you use them, you should treat them as non-secure, non-private channels. The same for SMS, instant messaging and e-mail as a whole: most e-mail in particular is sent in the clear, and once it leaves any device you control, the content is now completely out of your control.

Part of the answer is in rolling some of your own solutions: an encrypted VPN on a server you control using keys you've generated yourself (OpenVPN is a good option, among others). A solution like owncloud can also be deployed (again, on hardware you trust and control) to provide "cloud" functionality and document/resource sharing.

That, for now, is the best you can do (hence "reasonable," these measures don't work so well under the "unreasonable" measures taken recently by some government agencies to mine personal data). If that's not enough, then the only option beyond that is to lobby lawmakers to reign in the NSA and similar elements. Their control is tight enough that you're not going to guarantee your privacy without pretty much going off the grid.

Is showing respect for your government and still desiring privacy talking out of both sides of my mouth?

When elements of that government are found to be attacking individual privacy, among other constitutional rights, systematically in the name of security, then yes, I firmly believe that to be the case.

It is NOT reasonable, nor does it make sense, to "respect" what the government is currently doing, and then wonder aloud about how the data on your iPad might be leaked to that same government, and complain that you're not getting enough privacy without taking additional measures. It's a lot like a retiree who actively depends on medicare and social security, voting for a tea party candidate who seeks to cut off "entitlements:" the logical fallacy in that is pretty monumental.

These notions can be mutually exclusive. Please read more carefully before bashing your fellow forum members and stifling discussion.

I can read fine, thank you. And what discussion am I stifling? You seem to be articulating yourself just fine. If anything, discussion has been dramatically stimulated, and it appears you're the one now trying to quash dissent.
 
Last edited:
Given the somewhat recent revelation that the NSA can hack an iPhone and iOS7,

I must have missed an article. Could you post a link to the evidence that they indeed can cause all I have seen are tin foil type rumors. Especially without having access to the devices. I would be very interested in reading more about this.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.