
Apple CEO Tim Cook: 'Privacy Is a Fundamental Human Right' - davidbarker
http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/10/01/445026470/apple-ceo-tim-cook-privacy-is-a-fundamental-human-right
======
jamieyy
In that case, why are they supporting CISA?
[http://fortune.com/2015/09/24/tech-vendor-cybersecurity-
bill...](http://fortune.com/2015/09/24/tech-vendor-cybersecurity-bill/)

~~~
hoorayimhelping
This [1] is the letter linked to in the article that is evidence they support
CISA, correct?

Maybe it's because I can't read legalese very well, but this looks like tech
companies asking congress to codify our rights for the digital age, and to
provide a well defined legal framework for those rights to exist within. I'm
not really seeing support for sweeping powers of spying; it seems like they're
asking for the opposite in fact. Again, I may be misreading that.

1:
[http://www.bsa.org/~/media/Files/Policy/data/09142015CongLea...](http://www.bsa.org/~/media/Files/Policy/data/09142015CongLeadershipDataAgendaLetter.pdf)

~~~
takeda
It's not as much legalese but trying to hide a wolf in sheep clothing.

They put other legislations around (I did not inspect them, so can't comment)
and among them (in the center so person skimming it might miss it) they put:
"Cyber Threat Information Sharing Legislation". They don't mention which bills
they are referring to and they made sure that acronym doesn't match CISPA. If
you search it you will find that there's no legislation with that name, and
the only results you get are CISPA.

Why those companies want CISPA? Because it removes all liability from them
when they share the data without a warrant. Basically we no longer will be
able to sue them for violating our privacy.

~~~
mozumder
> Why those companies want CISPA? Because it removes all liability from them
> when they share the data without a warrant. Basically we no longer will be
> able to sue them for violating our privacy.

Nothing in CISPA allows them to violate their EULA.

If they had EULAs that violated your privacy in the first place, then that's a
problem between you and the company, independent of CISPA.

~~~
takeda
This is irrelevant. EULA is between company and the user it is also imposed by
the company. What they write might not necessarily be enforceable.

~~~
mozumder
Great. Then don't agree to those EULAs, and don't use their products/services.

Problem solved.

And we didn't even involve CISPA!

~~~
takeda
Once that would become a law they no longer even have to mention it in the
EULA, because it takes precedence. In addition to that all companies would be
doing it so it's not like you can "vote with your wallet".

So I'm still not following why EULA has to do with anything in this context.

------
staunch
> _If you buy something from the App Store, we do know what you bought from
> the App Store, obviously. We think customers are fine with that._

Users should also be able to install apps on their iPhones without Apple
knowing what they're doing. Personal computing devices shouldn't have
artificial walled gardens.

But I agree with him on everything else and think he's a hero for what he's
doing.

~~~
larrywright
I think that what Apple has done here is an acceptable tradeoff. The app store
trades a small amount of privacy for a lot more security. Looking at Android's
perpetual issues with this makes me think that Apple made the right choice.

~~~
gozo
So we have forgotten XcodeGhost already or the iCloud hacks?

~~~
jolux
Neither of which would be aided by opening the walled garden?

Which isn't to say I don't think there are advantages to Android's model and
that of more open package repositories in general, especially for power users.
However most of Apple's base is people who don't care about openness or extra
repositories, they want their iPhone to work with a minimum of fuss and not
have to worry about malware like you do on Android.

The fact that we can only point to a single (XcodeGhost) cromulent
exploitation of the Apple App Store stack is a testament to how good Apple is
at maintaining the relative security of the iOS ecosystem.

~~~
gozo
The point is that security is not an inherent or necessarily attainable
feature of a walled garden. Some people seem to think that just because Apple
approves apps there isn't going to be any security issues. The approval
process does prevent some security problems, and has some other features, but
mobile security overwhelmingly comes from things like sandboxing.

~~~
jolux
Perhaps that's the case, but if it is, then it seems clear that Apple's
sandbox is far better than Android's as well. Also, approving apps does cull
out a range of malware, because it is human- and computer-analyzed before
entry. As I said previously, this has its downsides, but it does make it
harder to get malware into the iOS App Store. Not impossible, but harder.

------
djhn
"Here is what we do on our platform. Here is what an unnamed search engine
company does, or might in theory do, on their platform. You will probably
agree: what we do is better in multiple, obvious ways. To be even less subtle,
I am indeed trying to cast our competitor in very bad light."

If they're willing to walk the walk, I don't even mind how transparent this
"privacy as a competitive advantage" strategy is.

~~~
IBM
They have been for years and people wondered why they didn't talk about it
because of how it differentiates them from the competition. Now they're
talking about it and a common comment here is "they're only doing it because
Google makes their money from advertising", well yes that's the point. Kind of
funny but predictable.

Having a business incentive that's aligned with privacy is the absolute best
thing you could ask for if you want privacy. First because it will ensure they
remain committed to it, and also because it shows up the competition and
forces them to move in that direction as well.

[http://www.apple.com/privacy/approach-to-
privacy/](http://www.apple.com/privacy/approach-to-privacy/)

This shows pretty clearly that they "walk the walk".

~~~
lern_too_spel
As long as they have your data and don't give it to anybody else, there is no
meaningful difference in privacy based on how they process the data. Why is
processing words in emails for search indexing and spam filtering less of a
problem for privacy than matching ads to words that appear in emails or
figuring out helpful suggestions from them? It isn't, but Apple is happy to
pretend it is to the rubes who will pay to use an inferior product.

------
pbreit
Amen. Who the heck wants their own government spying on them? I'd rather be
"less safe" whatever that even means. The government works for us, not the
other way around.

~~~
mozumder
You mean the "spying" program that was revealed to have filters to filter out
their own citizens communications?

Seriously, why do people conveniently ignore this little fact? Why would these
filters exist, as revealed in CLASSIFIED documents, if the government were
interested in spying on its own citizens?

If the government were interested in spying on you, they would just do it.
They wouldn't need to build machines to protect your privacy rights.

~~~
aianus
What difference does that make? Foreigners deserve privacy too.

~~~
mozumder
OK then codify that into a law.

But, right now, the NSA does what is legal, which is to spy on foreign
nationals.

~~~
aianus
Legal is meaningless. What they're doing is wrong.

~~~
mozumder
Or right. Take your pick - all morals are relative.

We decide what matters when its time to write the laws.

------
sigmar
Apple's comments on privacy over the past year have seemed very opportunistic.

>But what they don't want to do, they don't want your email to be read, and
then to pick up on keywords in your email and then to use that information to
then market you things on a different application that you're using. ...

They don't have the technology/infrastructure to perform machine learning
techniques that google employs. So they will say 'we think it's a feature that
none of our services interoperate.'

~~~
drew-y
Apple actually has a solid argument when they say "Our users are not our
products". Very little of Apple's revenue comes from ads so they really have
no need for the infrastructure. However, considering they are one of the
largest companies in the world with hundreds of billions in the bank, I
seriously doubt it would be very hard for them to setup that sort of
infrastructure.

~~~
EdwardDiego
> Very little of Apple's revenue comes from ads so they really have no need
> for the infrastructure

However, they wish to carefully control the advertising on iOS, if you want to
uniquely identify a user for retargeting purposes, well, tracking cookies are
evil, but iAd is good!

[https://developer.apple.com/iad/my-audiences/iad-my-
audience...](https://developer.apple.com/iad/my-audiences/iad-my-
audiences.pdf)

~~~
sigmar
Fond something near the end of that link:

>In the spring of 2015, iAd plans to provide developers with unique audience
insights about the users in your segments, viewable in iAd Workbench—including
their distribution by gender, age, geography, and iTunes Preferences. With
audience insights, app developers can find new users with similar
characteristics to their existing customers, and tailor messages for
retargeting campaign

Did they abandoned this or not? Seems contrary to their current "we aren't
using your data" mantra

~~~
mattress
They are definitely using our data, but probably not in the same way. More of
a we won't use your data unless it's to improve your experience with our
device.

------
shmerl
Didn't Apple support CISA recently? Actions are more important than words.

------
chipperyman573
What's with apple and their super-privacy stance lately? First his letter, and
now his interview. Not that I mind it, but I feel like they're expecting
something bad to come out soon.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
Apple is essentially the only major US tech company that doesn't rely heavily
on advertising income (and thus on online profiling to target ads
effectively), and they've realized that this gives them a moral high horse
from which to attack their competitors without actually having to change any
of their own habits.

~~~
Cookingboy
Neither Amazon nor Microsoft rely heavily on advertising income.

Neither does IBM, HP, Oracle, Cisco, Salesforce, etc.

In fact when it comes to "major US tech companies", either by revenue or by
market cap, I can only think of Facebook and Google that make money mainly
from advertising income.

~~~
derefr
Everybody you listed, excepting Amazon, make the majority of their revenue
from the enterprise, not the consumer. B2B companies don't need to use privacy
as a differentiator, and would gain no advantage by doing so; enterprises
_want_ "managed" software that enables them to spy on their employees.

Amazon, the consumer-focused exception, makes their money on physical products
not produced by them, and on cloud services—both of which are mostly privacy-
neutral as far as _third parties_ go. Amazon knows what you tell Amazon (your
shopping history; your AWS API calls) but their business model doesn't involve
giving that information to anybody else. They could _theoretically_ take a
stance on privacy, but they aren't doing much to _enable_ privacy; just
coincidentally avoiding doing anything that negates it.

------
patrickaljord
The only way to have real privacy when it comes to software is by it being: 1)
open source and 2) executable on your own servers. Open source in itself is
not enough, but it is a required pre-condition, same thing with the fact that
you can run it on your own server. In these aspects, Android is way ahead as
there exist projects to replace all the proprietary parts.

[http://www.replicant.us/](http://www.replicant.us/)

------
danharaj
If you are talking about rights, then you're already in trouble. You do not
need to talk about rights until someone has the power to violate them.
Governments murder people without heeding the power of their rights, human or
otherwise, fundamental or otherwise. The only thing that power answers to is
power.

The language of rights does not challenge the fundamental structure of the
system.

------
Mikeb85
It's certainly an interesting angle with which to attack Google.

A few pertinent details:

> The government comes to us from time to time, and if they ask in a way that
> is correct, and has been through the courts as is required, then to the
> degree that we have information, we give that information.

Pretty standard stuff. They'll basically give up your info if any court orders
them to.

> There have been different conversations with the FBI, I think, over time.

> I don't support a back door for any government, ever.

He doesn't support back-doors. Notice he didn't say there isn't a back-door.

As far as I can tell, Apple will 'give up' your information more or less to
the same degree Google will.

Google also runs some algorithms over your data to match an ad to you. Not
sure why this is so bad, no data has been given to a 3rd source.

This just strikes me as fluff to attack Google.

BTW, both companies' transparency reports (or at least part):

[http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests/co...](http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests/countries/)

[http://www.apple.com/ca/privacy/government-information-
reque...](http://www.apple.com/ca/privacy/government-information-requests/)

BTW - if you compare requests to number of total users of each platform, Apple
gives up more data. Not that it matters too much, both seem to comply with
applicable laws, although Google's transparency report does seem more
extensive.

Either way, not sure I can see the practical difference here.

~~~
IBM
Actually he's repeatedly said in public that there's no backdoors.

[http://www.engadget.com/2014/01/24/apples-tim-cook-there-
is-...](http://www.engadget.com/2014/01/24/apples-tim-cook-there-is-no-
backdoor-the-government-doesnt/)

------
verusfossa
Apple supports CISA though which is pretty much poison to privacy...

------
Amorymeltzer
>If you're in our News app, and you're reading something, we don't think that
in the News app that we should know what you did with us on the Music app —
not to trade information from app to app to app to app.

I thought this was the most interesting quote in the article. I would've
assumed the all Apple products would be colluding together, but Cook seems to
be saying that isn't the case. That's actually a pretty big gift to consumers,
but I wonder what it means up top. Does "Apple" get my news and mail info
separately, or do the news app and mail app get their content and deal with it
independently of mama Apple? It's a great sentiment - and I can't imagine he'd
say it in this sort of interview without truth to it - but it's hard to
imagine it in play.

~~~
qyv
The quote specifically says they don't share data between apps, but not that
they don't collect data from all of the apps and correlate it behind the
scenes. Perhaps it is an overly cynical point of view, but true to the spoken
words.

------
natch
It's undeniable that part of this stance is simply asserting that Apple
products are designed with user interests in mind. Implying that some other
companies have different interests in mind, and sure, you can draw your own
conclusions about the products of those companies. Yes, drawing this contrast
is a marketing opportunity, and it makes no sense for Apple to pass it up, so
Tim doesn't.

But I think just as importantly this stance is about girding for a fight
against government-mandated back doors. After some noise about this from parts
of the US government, some important people in government have started to come
to their senses, but that doesn't mean it's over, whether in the US or with
other governments around the world.

------
pratikjhaveri
A tad "holier than thou" attitude pointing a finger at your competitor and to
a large extent the entire internet economy. It would be nice to dial down the
spin/FUD machine esp when you're the CEO. Ad targeting will and has evolved.
Good things happen when you understand the user and their needs - I for one am
willing to trade my privacy for USEFUL features and products (to paint this as
only ads is injustice). Just like I'm willing to trade my $s for good devices.

~~~
yarou
The irony of your comment is that most ad companies play the victim and
moralize how blocking ads is akin to murder. Ad targeting has evolved alright,
but not in a way that has helped consumers one bit.

It's become an arms race to the bottom, essentially. To coddle ad companies as
if they are mom and pop shops that are struggling is not only naive, but
dangerous.

------
Animats
_" I don't support a back door for any government, ever."_

Note that he did _not_ say that no Apple product has a back door.

~~~
gambiter
And?

He also didn't say the camera on iPhones stays off when you're not using them.
That must mean they're taking pictures of us and uploading them to Tim Cook's
personal sex grotto for him to ogle us, right? I mean, he didn't say they
DIDN'T do it, so...

That is to say... perhaps we could keep the paranoia and speculation to things
that have a basis in reality?

------
sethrubenstein
"We believe in privacy" except when it affects our bottom line. We will
totally sell you out if you're in China and 100% allow the government to
censor your requests. We say we believe in privacy in the West because dumb
people believe us but really were just all about that cashhhhhhh.

------
aetherson
The claim that the NSA and the FBI are coming to an agreement that everyone
should own their own data and backdoor-less encryption is cool sounds more
naïve than I think Tim Cook can possibly be in real life.

------
eccstartup
Do you have full control over your iPhone?

------
sawthat
I'm at

------
baliansa
This is just a plain attack on Google. _sigh_

~~~
nindalf
For so long we've heard "consumers don't care about privacy" and a lot of
companies have seen success based on that idea. Now Apple is challenging that
status quo, differentiating themselves from their competitors and offering
consumers a choice on privacy. I can't see that as anything but good.

~~~
pdkl95
> "consumers don't care about privacy"

It's worth pointing out that while this was obviously propaganda (or wishful
thinking), we now have some proof that this isn't true:

[https://www.asc.upenn.edu/news-
events/publications/tradeoff-...](https://www.asc.upenn.edu/news-
events/publications/tradeoff-fallacy-how-marketers-are-misrepresenting-
american-consumers-and)

