Apple Is Creating A Terrifying Future For The World - The Drescher Drop Issue #7
From privacy issues to sideways developer deals to employee tracking, Apple sure has been in the news a lot lately.
It was 2016 when Apple CEO Tim Cook famously stared down the FBI and refused to let the government into an iPhone. It wasn’t an extraordinary iPhone. It was actually a rather crappy one, and it was outdated by three years. Its owner was a nobody, that is until she joined her boyfriend in an ISIS-inspired shooting spree in San Bernardino that left 15 people dead.
Tashfeen Malik, one of the perpetrators, didn’t survive the terrorist attack but she did leave behind her iPhone 5C. The FBI wanted to see what she had on it. There was only one problem: it was locked, and Apple security is renowned for being EXTRA secure.
FBI analysts couldn’t get into the phone. So they sent a standard form letter to Apple that directed them to unlock it. Apple replied that they couldn’t. Even Apple can’t get into its customer’s data. The FBI casually replied “Well then create a backdoor program that can. Get back to us when it’s done.”
The Apple privacy saga begins when Tim Cook replied personally to the FBI.
“No.”
Apple Privacy Marketing
I don’t know what the FBI said to Tim Cook in private, but judging from their public reaction, they were shocked. All the tech giants played ball with them. Google and Facebook were best buds with the NSA, the CIA, the DOJ, et al. Microsoft let government security agencies access their servers with merely a warrant. Heck, even Canada’s Blackberry was best friends with the US Department of Defence!
The FBI applied for a warrant from a lower court. They got it. Tim Cook still refused.
The media got wind of the story and the ensuing drama turned into Apple’s greatest PR miracle in corporate history.
Apple’s stand was simple. When a customer bought an Apple device they signed a user agreement with Apple. That agreement went both ways. According to the agreement, Apple could not and would not ever access a customer’s private phone data, under any circumstances.
The FBI’s warrant didn’t have teeth because US contract law superseded the lower court’s ruling. Apple could not legally be forced to create a program that broke its own customer agreement.
The case went through the courts until the FBI finally gave up. Apple scored a victory. In an age when everyone’s data was for sale, here was a tech behemoth who was fighting the good fight!
Apple rode that horse for the next five years. New customers piled in. Apple sales blew through the roof. A year after the FBI fight, Apple became the richest company in the history of the world, with a trillion dollars of cash.
That’s more money than any government. In history.
Privacy For All!
Apple rolled out new privacy-focused technologies. Safari, Apple’s trademark web browser, would now block trackers and sandbox advertisers so they couldn’t track you across the internet.
Siri, Apple’s voice assistant, would do its machine learning on your device, not in the cloud.
Your calendar and reminders and email and notes and the music you listened to and the news stories you read would all be private.
What a breath of fresh air!
Then Apple took on Facebook and Google directly in 2020 when they announced that apps on your iPhone wouldn’t be able to track your usage unless you specifically gave them permission. The iPhone would block those particular apps from collecting data.
Mark Zuckerberg threw a hissy fit and released paid ads across the US, blasting Apple for ruining advertising and threatening to make people pay to use Facebook. Google quietly accepted their fate.
This brings us to 2021, and…
Apple's Weird About-Face
It was during a July earnings call with investors that Tim Cook casually mentioned that Apple would be installing a backdoor algorithm directly on everyone’s iPhones, iPads, and Macs that would search for CSAM.
CSAM is Child Sexual Abuse Material.
Cook went on to talk about other initiatives, but some of the tech journalists on the call paused him.
“Hold up. You’re installing a backdoor on Apple devices?”
The shit hit the fan.
This atomic bomb dropped right at the beginning of what became one of the worst months in Apple’s 5-year reign of glory.
CSAM Security Fears
It’s illegal to have CSAM. Almost every company scans its cloud servers 24 hours a day for CSAM. It gets reported to the authorities the moment it’s found. Google and Microsoft are quite good at filtering CSAM off their servers. Facebook’s been doing it forever (and I don’t envy the poor bastards who sit and watch all this footage).
Apple does not scan iCloud. As a result, critics estimated that there are more than 24 million CSAM photos and videos stored on Apple servers, and that iPhone has become the number one way that predators share information.
It makes sense that Apple would choose to clean up. But the way they’re doing it leaves a lot of questions.
NeuralHash
The US-based NCMEC (National Center for Missing and Exploited Children) collects all evidence regarding child abuse around the world for use by US authorities. It has a massive database of millions of horrifying videos and pictures.
The NCMEC has assigned a special hash to each individual photo and video. A hash is a long string of letters and numbers. It’s the way an algorithm ‘reads’ an image.
Apple’s new ‘NeuralHash Engine’ that will get installed on everyone’s iPhone this fall looks for images that contain the same hash. If it does, someone at Apple will review the image. If it’s CSAM, the customer gets reported to the FBI.
What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
China is one of Apple’s biggest markets. Hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens carry an iPhone.
Furthermore, China is key to Apple’s entire supply chain. Apple spent two decades building up the relationships and the networks so that every single Apple product gets manufactured by Chinese factories with precision and quality.
What if the Chinese government one day suggested that Apple add some hashes to its NeuralHash engine that looks for pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong? They could also suggest that if Apple doesn’t comply, they might not be that welcome in China.
What if Saudi Arabia asks Apple to include hashes that look for LGBTQ+ people? What if Russia wants to find opposition journalists?
Apple In The Thick Of It
Digital Frontiers Foundation blasted Apple’s CSAM plans. The American Civil Liberties Union denounced it. The New York Times and Forbes have come out against it in strong editorials. Edward Snowden has criticized it.
Worse yet, millions of Apple customers have been bashing the plans on Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, etc
A lot of people are angry about it.
What happened to not installing backdoors on Apple devices? What happened to Apple as the keeper of privacy in a world where privacy was all but gone?
Apple started a firestorm with that CSAM announcement. I don’t think they were expecting the backlash they received. They’ve grown used to being the ‘good guys’ and found themselves struggling with a PR disaster on their hands.
Apple tried to calm people with rambling explanations in podcasts and YouTube videos. Apple even rolled out their super-charismatic chief of product development (and some say the next CEO) Craig Federighi during a Washington Post interview. He stumbled and failed to calm fears.
Apple’s entire defense boils down to “Just trust us, bro.”
The Future Is 1984
Look, the government is huge. The state is massive and all-powerful. It has unlimited resources. It is uncaring and unstoppable and it is starving for more and more personal data and more and more power. The government isn’t human. People work in their little siloed departments, unaware of what the department next to them is doing. Politicians come and go. The state chugs along, unstopping.
The future of privacy looks scary. Apple’s about-face on privacy means there is nowhere that people can hide from the government. Right now it’s CSAM, which on the surface is a noble cause. But how many calamities start with “Won’t ANYONE think of the children?!?”
Tomorrow it could be your political opinion or the people you hang out with. It could be your choice of sexual partners or even the type of literature you read. All it takes is a simple hash inserted into your phone.
That’s the future we’re facing.
Apple's super-charismatic fan-fave Craig Federighi "Just trust us."
Unsettled Lawsuits
Then in late August news broke that Apple settled a dozen lawsuits at once through a shady deal with developers. The developers had taken Apple to court over Apple’s locked-down App Store business model that hurts small and mid-sized developers.
Apple takes a hefty cut of all sales and has very expensive fees for placing an app in the App Store. Unlike Android, you cannot sideload apps onto your iPhone from third-party websites or stores. Apps can’t suggest that a customer goes off the app to purchase a subscription or software. It all has to go through the App Store where Apple takes a 30% cut.
For small startups, this is life-threatening and ensures that only the big rich development firms get access to Apple’s 1 billion+ customers.
Apple settled with the plaintiffs by offering them $100 million and a reduction of App Store fees to 15% for any developer who makes under $60,000 a year.
They seemed satisfied.
Technically, Apple got its way.
The Future Looks Locked Down
The future looks grim for small-time app developers. Apple just got away with a huge win for monopolizing apps and having the power of life and death over smaller businesses.
Google is already making noises about locking down the Android system, at least on its own Pixel line of smartphones. After all, if Apple can get away with it and reap a profit, why shouldn’t Google?
Microsoft is resisting so far and announced that they wouldn’t charge developers any fees to put apps on the Microsoft Store, and furthermore, they would HELP developers who wanted to direct customers off the platform to make purchases.
Don’t expect that to last long.
We’ll see more and more software giants take this route, until your ability to pick and choose what apps you want is predicated by which operating system you use. The future of consumer technology looks siloed and locked down.
Apple Employees And Big Apple Brother
In late August The Verge broke a story that detailed how Apple spies relentlessly on its own employees. Their phones, their personal conversations, their emails…everything gets monitored by Apple’s Corporate Security.
When employees leave the company, they are told they cannot wipe their data or face litigation. Apple keeps private employee messages and their digital footprint somewhere deep in their shiny security bunkers at Cupertino.
The Verge managed to get in touch with a dozen employees, both current and past, who said the same thing: their personal lives are heavily scrutinized by their employer.
Apple reasons that it is the only way to control leaks. They don’t want top-secret technical information falling into the hands of their competitors or a hostile government. After all, Apple is constantly researching new technologies, and every year rumors of these projects somehow leak to the media.
It’s rather ironic, considering that Apple is the supposed defender of privacy. Across San Francisco Bay, Google is quite open with its employees and protects their data. Google leaks its own information out every year. It’s part of its marketing style. They don’t care if their employees leak the info. It’s all PR.
There’s a reason that Google is ranked the #1 employer in the world, with the highest levels of job satisfaction, while Apple sits somewhere below an AT&T call center.
The Future of Work Is Scary
Apple’s 1984-style treatment of its employees points to a terrifying future where your corporate employer will watch you 24 hours a day. Off work? Too bad. You’re being monitored. Messaging your sister? Great, your employer read your message (don’t worry, your sister’s employer also read your message).
What kind of life is that?
Apple Is Building An Orwellian Future
Apple can route out wrong think on your device. They can stop you from using anyone else’s products and they can crush your small business unless you do as they say. Apple can also ensure that your job depends on invasive monitoring of your personal life.
This is a nightmare and it’s the future that Apple is dragging the world towards. Whether they realize it or not is unknown. They make Google and Facebook look like kittens. Their wealth and their ability to even stare down the US government makes them unstoppable.,
This is the future. A world dictated by corporate behemoths like Apple. A world where you, a mere serf who exists to work and then die, do what they say and when they say it.
They have the technology and the power. Enjoy the future!
Snowden UNMASKS Apple’s New Ploy To SPY On You!!
UPDATE FRIDAY SEPT 3
In a surprise about-face, Apple took to Twitter to announce that they would delay the rollout of CSAM NeuralHash software.
“Last month we announced plans for features intended to help protect children from predators who use communication tools to recruit and exploit them, and limit the spread of Child Sexual Abuse Material. Based on feedback from customers, advocacy groups, researchers and others, we have decided to take additional time over the coming months to collect input and make improvements before releasing these critically important child safety features.
I’ll be closely monitoring this story as it develops and will let you know how it goes.
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