
Learning with Privacy at Scale - gok
https://machinelearning.apple.com/2017/12/06/learning-with-privacy-at-scale.html
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gizmodo59
Of the big tech companies (GOOG, FB, MSFT, APPL) I really respect Apple for
the things they do to protect privacy. From standing their ground against
three letter agencies to ensuring user privacy even while collecting
information. Albeit they don't earn the major portion of their revenue from
ads unlike GOOG and FB its still commendable.

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giacaglia
The funny thing is that Google was the first to introduce Differential Privacy
to a production service into Chrome . Also differential Privacy was first
created at Microsoft. Apple just followed Google and publicized it much more

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SpikeDad
Funny thing is Google is the last company I expect to respect my privacy and
I'm usually correct.

Apple has incorporated differential privacy in all of their products so yea
they get to publicize it more.

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cromwellian
How do you feel about brazenly breaking all of those principles to make money
on the Chinese market. Do you with think iPhones sold in China protect Chinese
citizens from surveillance?

I think their principled stand in the US is somewhat diminished because they
take no risks from it, it comes mostly with free marketing differentiation.
But when the rubber hits the road and they face a choice between selling a
compromised product based on government demands or deciding to refuse, they
bow down.

What does that say about what would happen if one day they develop a
multibillion dollar revenue stream for profiling say, app installs and store
behavior. Would they be able to resist that if their stock is otherwise
sagging because the market demands the new revenue stream?

To me, Tim Cooks statements on commitment to privacy are hypocritical and
contradicted by legitimizing and even failing to criticize openly the actions
of Beijing.

Some people will say "but he has to follow local laws". IMHO, "just following
orders" is too often an excuse for enabling evil behavior. If you are stately
that you are strongly principled about issue X, and then decide you're going
to go to Region Y where it is well known they don't respect X and with high
probability will compel you to act against X, then you don't get to make the
excuse you have no choice but to jettison your principled stand on X while in
Region Y. You could also just decide not to sell in Region Y so as not to be
subject to compulsion against your principles.

This whole episode makes their stance look like a marketing campaign. It's
easy to say "I don't do X" if not doing X doesn't cause you to lose any money
from your existing business. Hey, my work doesn't make weapons that bomb
people. We're taking a principled stand and pledge not to include any feature
that could be used for bombs. Very brave. But then one day, a government
contract forces you to sell something to a bomb maker, and suddenly you're
like "I have no choice. They won't buy my coffee makers unless I sell them
this timer that can be used to make bomb triggers."

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an_account
I like that they provide great privacy protections when they can by law. Most
companies don’t. Very few companies put so much effort into privacy.

I don’t expect them to break laws. And I don’t expect them to pull out of
entire countries, let alone the most populous one on earth.

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cromwellian
Doing everything on device is cheaper than running a large service, and
exposes you to less risk. Ingesting a billion photos a day and running say, ML
on them server side is more expensive than having the consumer pay for it on
their local device.

It's unlikely any online service they can come up with from data will come
close to their iPhone business, so it would mostly be a cost and distraction
and a risk. That's why I say, investing in differential privacy or running
photo recognition on device is a much smaller effort than scaling out a
billion user service.

That's not to say what they're doing is bad, but I don't think it's a brave
stand, and I don't buy it as a principled stand, because of the complete
silence on China, not just obeying the government actions, but not even
verbally protesting them -- even in Western media.

In the US, Apple, if compelled by an FBI warrant to hand over data, would do
it, but would publicly resist and complain about it. Not only does Apple
comply with Chinese demands, they don't even dare criticize the Chinese
government or resist in any way. This to me is selling your soul for
marketshare.

And Tim Cook's appearance at the Wuzhen conference extolling China's "open"
internet just made him look like a tool.

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freedomben
I'm really glad Apple takes these positions in privacy. I think their efforts
benefit all users, not just Apple users, because the other companies have to
respond.

I would love to see them take it further by reducing the amount of "trust"
required, such as more open sourcing and support for open source OSes (like
Linux). They have definitely improved from "closed end to end" of Steve Jobs,
but they could do even better.

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spullara
Is this sufficient to satisfy the GDPR?

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phoneboy
They use a term "privatized records" that is not directly recognized by the
GDPR. If this is equivalent to data anonymization or pseudonymization is a
mathematical proof, that I'm not familiar with. Still kudos to Apple for doing
"something", then it remains to be seen how well it stands the test of time.

