

Apple Gestapo: How Apple Hunts Down Leaks - colinplamondon
http://gizmodo.com/5427058/apple-gestapo-how-apple-hunts-down-leaks

======
ghshephard
I read through the article and thought that pretty much all the activity taken
by the Apple Security team sounded reasonable. If I'm not mistaken, everything
described was taking place in the work place/work systems/etc...

The sketchy companies go a little further, and start doing this with people's
_personal_ lives. I'm thinking about when Patricia Dunn (HP Chairman) hired a
private investigator to start hacking into people's Cell Phone Bills to find
out who they were talking to - Not just from the office, or on office
equipment.

There is a reason why you see so many Silicon Valley people carrying two
laptops, two cellphones, etc... - One of them is for work, and is to be used
in the workplace, and is handed over / searched / subject to surveillance /
carries confidential company material. The other one is for personal stuff.

If there was a material leak from my organization, and it was jeopardizing my
livelihood, I would darn well _hope_ company security would have its act
together and would track down the leak in a professional manner.

~~~
elai
Wouldn't you have to relinquish your personal laptop/cellphone is such
situations too?

~~~
tptacek
If you bring your personal laptop into a high-security area and refuse to
submit to a search, then, without calling the police, and unless grellas shows
up to school me because I am not a lawyer, all your employer can do is fire
you.

~~~
sown
What about my underpants?

I could hide a usb key in there with vital information. Since I'm bringing my
own personal underpants can they search it to?

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wooster
This is wholly-fabricated nonsense. I worked at Apple for 5+ years and,
besides for knowing what actually happens in these situations, there are a
couple of dead giveaways that "Tom" was never an Apple employee (or, at least,
not in Cupertino).

~~~
brown9-2
Such as?

~~~
wooster
"They don't ask for cameras because there are no cameras at Apple: Employees
are not allowed to get into the campus with them."

I mean, really, come on. That's just laughable.

~~~
antonovka2
I can also confirm that Apple does not have a "no camera" policy on campus.

Or a "gestapo". The security is very well run, however.

~~~
silencio
While Apple employees aren't subject to that, if you're just wandering around
as a visitor taking pictures, security will ask you to stop.

------
makmanalp
I don't know how people who work in large companies expect to have privacy on
the company premises anyway: most of those companies make you sign a set of
rules that basically says you forfeit your rights. Same concept in the
military, you don't have a right to privacy because (they say) it would be to
difficult to manage privacy and check for spies at the same time.

~~~
wheels
In more sane countries, they expect to have privacy because there are
reasonable worker protection laws. Something of this sort would be illegal in
most western countries.

As an American that's been in Germany for the last 8 years, it often blows my
mind what's actually taken for granted as being acceptable in the US.
Searching through employees' mail is illegal here (as would be searching an
employee's personal belongings, drug tests, the whole shebang).

~~~
tptacek
How is it "sane" for companies not to be able to control and monitor their own
Internet connections? People clearly do abuse those connections to violate IP,
confidentiality, and insider trading agreements.

~~~
wheels
People also use their home internet connections to violate IP, confidentiality
and insider trading agreements. Using the purported Apple-logic from this
post, Apple is (indirectly) paying for that too, so shouldn't they be able to
monitor those connections as well?

A utility argument here, I don't believe is the way to approach this. There
are all sort of "useful" things that companies could do that most folks would
agree cross the line into invasion of privacy, in the US or elsewhere.

I think there are two important assumptions I'm working with:

\- People have a right to privacy in personal affairs

\- The work place being only for work is an idealization that in practice does
not exist

My argument won't make sense if you don't agree on those two.

Employment is one of the fundamental elements of the social fabric, and the
rights of employers and employees are participant to a more general social
contract. There exists a line at which a company must sacrifice some utility
to uphold its end of that contract (e.g. they can't make people work 12 hour
shifts, 7 days a week, even if they think it'd boost output), and as employers
have an imbalance of power in negotiating employment terms, the government, in
the interest of the people, lays down some guidelines for what the minimum
boundaries are. Every developed country has this. The only variant is the
extent of those stipulations, not their existence.

I believe the right to privacy is important enough that it's something that an
employee _should not_ be obliged to forfeit it in an employment contract. And
since it's clear that personal and professional spheres overlap in the
workplace, no, I don't think the company should have unrestricted access to an
employee's data or actions in the workplace or through work-provided mediums.
I don't think there should be microphones in every room; I don't believe that
all thoughts discussed in the coffee corner are thusly entitled to the
company. Even if they did buy the coffee and the chairs and are paying you at
that time. And for me, and the legislators of many (most?) western countries,
that clearly extends to internet access and company cell phones.

~~~
tptacek
Scott, employees generally are only able to use their home Internet
connections to violate confidentiality _because_ their work computers and
connections are poorly policed.

And, it is as a direct result of rampant abuse of company resources that
companies are now deploying draconian security controls on worker machines,
locking down USB connections and intercepting and parsing Word documents in
the OS kernel. I've been involved in several deployments of these products
(not a fan), and I can tell you that it's not an abstract concern that is
driving their adoption. Bad stuff is routinely happening on company networks,
and companies need to be able to protect themselves.

People have a right to privacy in personal affairs, but people need to make
arrangements for their privacy when they're at the workplace. The idea that a
Dell desktop that a Fortune 500 company provides you with becomes a bastion of
personal privacy just because you decide to use it to check your GMail is
untenable. Companies need workers to be able to handle sensitive information,
and they need workers to be able to use computers and networks to do their
job, and they cannot be expected to grin and bear it as their confidential
information walks out the door and onto Yahoo Finance message boards.

Germany has powerful computer privacy laws. It is also not a great epicenter
of tech entrepreneurship.

~~~
jrockway
_It is also not a great epicenter of tech entrepreneurship._

Perhaps a stable society where people are protected from overbearing authority
is more valuable than making a couple of extra dollars today. It is definitely
more valuable than a slightly smaller cell phone or a website where you can
share 140 character messages with your friend.

There are bigger risks to business than some employees posting a few internal
word documents to Yahoo Finance. The worldwide financial crisis was not due to
inadequate monitoring of employees' personal e-mail, after all.

~~~
tptacek
I simply disagree that privacy on workplace computers is worth more than money
or smaller phones. I see no greater good being traded for the drag on
businesses. If you want workplace privacy, you can provide it for yourself,
and you can avoid jobs where intense monitoring is a reasonable condition,
such as R&D on the industry's most secret products.

I don't know what the worldwide financial crisis has to do with this, but
intensive workplace privacy laws would have hurt the investigation and wind-
down of fraudulently priced contracts, not helped it. Hey, you brought it up.

~~~
jrockway
_If you want workplace privacy, you can provide it for yourself, and you can
avoid jobs where intense monitoring is a reasonable condition, such as R &D on
the industry's most secret products._

Can you? Can the majority of people make the right decision here?

It's illegal to sell your child to someone. Why is it legal to sell your
privacy?

~~~
tptacek
Because that is a stupid analogy.

~~~
jrockway
I don't think it is. People will often trade something for money that they
really shouldn't. If a person has $a and wants $b, and someone will give them
$b in exchange for $a, people will often give up $a regardless of the long-
term consequences.

Apparently selling children was a problem for society, so it is generally not
legal now. People made the wrong decision, and it hurt society, so now making
the wrong decision is no longer an option, and our society is better for it.

I think selling your privacy for a salary is detrimental to society in the
same way, so it makes sense to use the legal system to remove the option. Then
employees can't be tempted into making bad decisions with respect to their
privacy by their employer, or rather, by the threat of non-employment. Plus,
people that care about their privacy will no longer have to be off-the-grid
wackos, and their value to society is increased as a result.

~~~
ajju
So you think people are stupid enough that they cannot decide whether selling
their privacy is a good decision, therefore the government should make this
decision for them?

How about health..we _know_ that people are so stupid that they will sell
their health for food (eat cheap fast food that is horrible for their health).
Should we ban fast food?

May be we should let people decide what people are comfortable with.

~~~
jrockway
_May be we should let people decide what people are comfortable with._

The problem is when people stop caring about privacy because so many others
made that decision for them, and the choice completely disappears. I would
want to ban fast food if all healthy food became unavailable as a result of
its popularity.

------
geekles
This sounds like due diligence to protect shareholder interests.

"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't
be doing it in the first place." - overheard in an interview somewhere.

~~~
sown
And if I'm not a criminal, I shouldn't be treated as such.

It's a tad selfish, if you don't mind me saying, of you to automatically
assume it's OK to give away my rights in addition to yours.

~~~
antonovka2
This is Apple, not the Government. If you don't like the legal terms of
employment, California is an at-will state. Quit.

That said, this article is total ridiculous bunk. Gizmodo has been trolled.

~~~
chrischen
Even with the government: you don't _have_ to obey laws. You can go live in
jail. There's always an alternative option. Freedom is about having fair
options.

------
tptacek
I'm pretty sure people are in fact allowed to bring cameras onto the Apple
campus, and, from what I can tell, there are no metal detectors or bag
searches of any sort there. My knowledge is secondhand, but I'm inclined to
believe that much of this article is BS.

~~~
quilby
In Israel, because there is a fear from terrorists, before you go into any
shop, restaurant, mall, or university, your bag is searched (for ~30 seconds)
and sometimes a metal detector is used (a hand-held one). I know nothing about
Apple HQ, but it would be trivial to set something like this up.

Unrelated, but they (Gizmodo) shouldn't have used the word 'gestapo' or
anything else related to nazis.

~~~
selven
And it's not just one off-handed comparison - the article goes on and on about
it. It really trivializes the hardships of people who _couldn't_ just leave
and get another job, and where the stakes involved torture and death.

~~~
tptacek
Not only that, but people opt to work at Apple, some of them not just in spite
of the secrecy but because of it; Apple is super-sensitive because what their
people work on tends to really matter in the marketplace.

------
houseabsolute
Sweet . . . I wish I worked on something so important that the secret police
would interrogate me about it.

------
jrockway
How long until someone needs medical attention during one of these lockdowns,
and they are fired for leaving to go to the doctor, or feel that they must
endure the problem (and risk complications) in order to keep their job?

Not long, I bet, and I imagine that this practice will remain legal for ... oh
... about 3 months after that first case.

I hope Apple increases the frequency of this practice so that it attracts the
attention of legislators sooner, and so that their brightest employees seek
employment elsewhere. The beginning of the end is near.

~~~
tptacek
I think it's pretty ridiculous to imply that Apple would accept _spectacular_
corporate liability by dissuading someone from seeking emergency medical
attention during an IT investigation. So my guess as to the answer to your
question is: it will never happen.

Apple's brightest employees (on the high-security projects) have been aware of
extreme security measures for many years now, and positions on those teams are
sought after.

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DenisM
The reason why they need these draconian measures is that employees feel
disenfranchised and expect to gain more by leaking secrets than by
contributing work and sharing in the rewards. Steve Jobs himself would never
leak anything - he has a stake in the outcome that the leakers believe they
don't.

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shalmanese
A quick Google reveals no references of any Worldwide Loyalty Team before this
Gizmodo "expose". I call bullshit on the entire article.

------
ugh
Those Nazi comparisons sure are so funny.

~~~
makmanalp
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwins_law>

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CamperBob
_They don't ask for cameras because there are no cameras at Apple: Employees
are not allowed to get into the campus with them. If the cellphone is an
iPhone, it gets backed up onto a laptop. "In fact, at the beginning they used
to say that the iPhones were really their property, since Apple gave every
employee a free iPhone," he points out. All the employees are asked to unlock
and disable any locking features in their cellphones, and then the special
forces will proceed to check them for recent activity._

ROFL. Gizmodo.com has been trolled.

