Quote of the day by Apple CEO Tim Cook: 'If you put a key under the mat for the cops, a burglar can find it, too' — a stark warning on threats to undermine privacy

Because the cops convinced the city council to pass a local ordinance mandating that all residents leave a key where the cops can find it.

You wouldn't, but that's what governments are effectively asking be done, lending validity to the analogy.

I mean, it’s not like there’s cases of police committing abuse and misuse, are there…?

A rare insight into Tim Cook’s mind.

*Tim Apple

Or... you and a friend on another floor put your keys under each other's mats. Then you both always have a way in and the chance of a burglar figuring it out is almost zero.

I know it's only a joke, but this comment highlights something that many folk in power seem to forget.

Houses and their doormats are in a single physical location that has an unambiguous legal jurisdiction. In any given country, if you break into a house you are subject to that country's laws.

Not so with the Internet. It's very difficult to legislate for something like this because other countries' laws can just ignore you, and you have no power over those countries and their laws. So, making things physically secure is far more effective than legislation, especially when it comes to the Internet.

Granted, it's a work in progress; after all the commandment that says "You shall not steal" hasn't fully stopped burgling or thieving, but I'm sure it will happen soon.

/s /s

Considering they are sending all of your iOS activity back to themselves without encryption, to track you for ad serving, yep.

https://www.osnews.com/story/145322/apple-adds-keylogger-to-ios-app-store-for-targeted-advertising-tied-to-your-account-and-unencrypted/

So this was before he just made gurgling noises with Trump's ball sack in his mouth like he does now.

yup, and one persons freedom fighter is another person enemy and all that.

Oh an btw I decide what guilty means. Open up your curtains.

I think you're missing the point. Apple has famously resisted implemented back doors for the authorities.

He's warning against leaving that metaphorical key under the mat.

Stop acting like giving gold bars to a paedophile is bribery. It was obviously a payment for child prostitution.

I don't think they went through with it.

I remember reading a related article reclaimthenet

This same Home Office served Apple with a secret order, a Technical Capability Notice, demanding a backdoor into end-to-end encrypted iCloud backups, first for every human on the planet and later, after Washington threw a tantrum, for British users alone. Secret being the operative word, since the law gagged Apple from so much as admitting the order existed.

Apple’s answer was to rip its strongest encryption out of the UK entirely rather than build the thing, sniffing that it has “never built a backdoor or master key to any of our products or services,” and the fight is still grinding through the courts. That is the track record of this government, one that asks one company, in the dark, to dismantle encryption for an entire nation is not a government you hand a camera-side scanner and trust to use it gently.

Already signed, took very little time.

40% of Cops

Tim Cook wasn't addressing you personally. It's an analogy.

American?

To be fair, their main competition is Microsoft.

You are not "giving the key to the cops" with Apple, I am so sick of seeing this bullshit misinformation online regarding user privacy. iCloud storage now provides the ability for users to store their encryption keys on their own devices locally, see 'Advanced Data Protection'. On top of that, even Apple doesn't have the ability to access user encrypted cloud data, because no one besides possibly state level agencies, has the capability to crack AES-256 encryption; hence why it is the industry standard. There was even the famous San Bernadino Legal Case case where Apple flat out denied the FBI a backdoor into a known terrorist's phone because of the wide-scale security risks it would've introduced into their devices. In the end they had to buy a backdoor exploit from an Australian Cyber firm.

Has Apple been notorious for traditionally overspending on advertising, packaging, and hype campaigns to justify higher prices? Absolutely, but in ~2020 Apple realised this wasn't sustainable (at least for their phones) and made a significant pivot towards more affordable iphones. They first test ran this in 2018 when they launched the iPhone XR for $749 alongside the $999 iPhone XS. Then in 2020 they made the actual pivot with the release of the iPhone SE (2nd Gen) for just $399, placing flagship processing power in an older chasis. Then in 2022 they decided to make the same pivot with their Laptops, and for the first time in modern history, Apple intentionally cultivated a tiered budget laptop strategy.. Then you have the release of the Macbook Neo as recently as last year, and now Apple is starting to make budget competitive laptop models.

Anyways I sincerely apologise for these massive walls of text, I promise I am not an Apple shill, I have just been extremely passionate about computing hardware and cybersecurity ever since I began my unboxing video and Edward Snowden interview phase as a kid, so I have been following the evolution of the 2010s hardware and digital landscape era for the entirety of my childhood and adolescence; at a certain point, you get sick and tired of seeing people outright lie and spread misinformation that ends up causing people to make terrible misinformed decisions. What I hate more than anything however, is specifically those who end up demotivating people from exercising proper cyber hygiene (because of doomer propaganda), and making terrible product decisions (especially when it comes to Apple) because of historical misalignments with today's current technology trends (see the .com bubble burst, death of netscape + internet explorer, death of widespread user forums and the corporatisation of the internet, the end of Google's public perception of innocence, and the rise of ML and AI integration).

If you're to take anything away from this rant it should be the awareness that the technological landscape is evolving so fast that you can never be certain you're making an informed decision, without first verifying the validity of whatever beliefs are informing your choice. Something easy you can do, is get into the habit of always asking yourself "Are these beliefs based on current or past facts?"- this line of reasoning has never once failed me my entire life, and I should know considering I've been browsing the web for as long as I've known how to read.

Literally 1984.