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
19h 32m ago by lemmy.today/u/sanitation in technology from www.techradar.com
Why would I leave a key under my mat for the cops in the first place?
Cops can just knock down the door.
Yeah, they're used to being able to force their way in anywhere, but in the digital space, many people have steel security doors, and the police don't have a battering ram big enough.
Also, kicking down the door leaves evidence and usually require some sort of justification or approval. If they have a key to a backdoor, they don't have to tell anyone they were inside, or ask for permission to use 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.
It’s an analogy to the government asking for backdoors into phones and such
This Tim Cook?
*Tim Apple
We have an easy peasy solution to that.
We will just make it illegal for burglars to look under the mat.
And if they do look under the mat, we will also make it illegal fro them to take the key.
Finally we will also make it illegal for burglars to use the key.
See there an absolutely bullet proof solution, so why does the tech industry continue to claim this is a bad idea?
As a politician I simply can't understand why they are so contrary to this idea that will increase safety for everybody!!
/s (just in case)
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.
That’s security through obscurity, as well as shared keys.
What happens when the burglar in waiting watches someone grab the key and use it?
Or in the case of phone security, what happens when your address is printed on the key?
A better analogy is fire lock boxes, where apartment complexes have a master key stored in a box out front that can be unlocked with a master key firemen carry.
Unfortunately, that bic pen trick turned out to work on those lock boxes a decade or so ago, meaning all a burglar needed to get into ANY residence in ANY building with a fire lock box was a bic pen. In fact, a burglar could open the box, get the key, duplicate it, put it back in the box, and nobody would even know security had been compromised.
It’s a pretty good analogy for what’s being asked for here.
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.
It's not only a joke, it's an analogy to show how stupid the claims of politicians are, that they want to have a backdoor for law enforcement.
Of course the analogy isn't perfect for the reasons you describe, and those reasons makes it actually worse.
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.
They just haven't shown it to enough school kids yet. That will fix it!
Talk is cheap
Keep pretending that the NSA doesn't already have a million backdoors in your proprietary garbage, Tim.
Considering they are sending all of your iOS activity back to themselves without encryption, to track you for ad serving, yep.
So where’s the actual story with the ’provided screenshots’? This article is just some rando saying things.
Clicking links is difficult, I get it. Here, I did that for you:
This article is based on... a random twitter post that it does not even link to? I'd like to see concrete data supporting this claim.
Whole article be like: source: trust me bro
It sounds like you trust Apple. I don't
From 2022: Apple sued for tracking users' activity even when turned off in settings The iPhone maker knows a lot about what a user does on their phone.
App developers and security researchers Tommy Mysk and Talal Haj Bakry from the software company Mysk recently found that iOS sends "every tap you make" to Apple from inside one of the company's own apps. According to the developers, attempts to turn this data collection off, such as selecting the Settings option "disable the sharing of Device Analytics altogether" did not affect the data from being sent.
https://mashable.com/article/apple-data-privacy-collection-lawsuit
From 2026: Apple plans to change its Hide My Email privacy feature that could make it less effective
Apple said in a note to developers on Monday that in the coming weeks the company will move its anonymously generated email addresses to private.icloud.com, effectively making it easier for apps and websites to know that an email address is private and block users from signing up.
Existing addresses will continue to function and forward mail without interruption, Apple said in the note to developers. The company added that app and email providers would have to update their filtering to ensure that emails to customers who rely on the feature continue to go through.
Several Apple users on Reddit criticized the change to the email domain, saying it would make it more difficult to use the service.
From 2026: Siri AI may be privacy-first, but the new 'personal-context understanding' features really creep me out
Here's the thing. it doesn't actually matter how secure Apple makes its AI, I'm still not too keen on it being able to dive into the depths of my phone to score for data. It doesn't matter if the goal of that is to hand over some random piece of potentially-helpful information when it thinks I might need it.
https://tech.yahoo.com/ai/apple-intelligence/articles/siri-ai-may-privacy-first-051500606.html
I don’t trust Apple, but I also don’t blanket distrust them. Of those three articles you posted, the only one that gives me pause is the one from 2022 where Apple was sending App Store navigation data back home. I have NEVER trusted the App Store. It has been intentionally hard to use, using dark patterns, and tracking usage ever since iPhone OS 2. Unfortunately for the researchers, it has also been very clear about this; it’s essentially a website that can only be accessed with their custom client.
Up until recently, I’ve mostly trusted Apple because their business goals align with my personal goals; breaking that trust would only harm them without providing any benefit. Recently however, the services arm of the company has gone more aggressively into advertising; I don’t trust ANYTHING from Apple that’s linked to advertising, which now includes not only the App Store, iCloud, Books, News, Stocks, Fitness, Podcasts, Apple Music and Apple TV, but also Apple Maps.
Especially when the cops ARE the burglars in the first place.
Yeah but we saw how quickly you bowed and kissed the ring of king Trump.
That shit erodes trust.
I think it's important to note that quote was from 2015.
So this was before he just made gurgling noises with Trump's ball sack in his mouth like he does now.
If Apple were truly serious about an individual’s security and privacy, they’d facilitate self hosted online services as peers to the versions they provide on their platforms.
They can be best in class at what they do, but exclusively locking everyone into their ecosystem obliterates any meaningful good will.
Why are you drawing your curtains? You must have something to hide. All your neighbours live in glass houses, why do you insist on this strange idea of privacy? Open up, if you're not guilty there's nothing to be afraid of.
Only guilty people draw the curtains.
Oh an btw I decide what guilty means. Open up your curtains.
but YOU are the one GIVING the key to cops tim.
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.
resisted? the era they pretend to do it is gone. 
They're all essentially trying to manipulate Trump by playing into his narcissism. This is bad and not what I want to see, but it might not be an (intentional) act of submission.
That we know of
Doesn't apple backdoor UK users anyway?
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.
Politicians who don't understand technology (and some that do) will continue advocating for a break in encryption "so they can catch the bad guys."
No, you fuck. Either it's protected or it's not. I've just been listening to the latest podcast from 404 Media (you should check them out; print and audio). One of their primary stories is about cops accessing Flock cameras to stalk their ex-partners. AUTHORITY NEEDS LIMITS.
If you're Canadian, please sign this petition against Bill C-22:
https://www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-7416
Already signed, took very little time.
Also Tim cook quote, "you're so great Mr. Trump, we had an army man, nake you a special trophy just for you. The base is literally a gold bar that I'm illegally giving you. Isn't that fun, you're so great trump. Thank you trump. I love you trump. It's such a joy to socialize with you trump"
Sightly paraphrased
Especially when the cops are the burglars.
40% of Cops
I don’t put a key under the mat, even less for the cops.
Tim Cook wasn't addressing you personally. It's an analogy.
The analogy presumes you want cops to have free access to your home
Also, we paid some bribes to a fascist so....
Its also aimed at Bill C-22 in Canada that the liberals are trying to speedrun into a law.
A burglar doesn't intend to fuck up your whole life and/or extinguish it. I prefer the burglar over the cop.
American?
Nevermind a disgruntled employee just sharing it.
"But," he continued, "If you put an obsolete anthrax-infected key under your mat, that's one burglar we don't have to worry about."
If you put the key under the bed, the Esptenos will diddle you and declare you a national security threat.
It's a game of whack-a-mole: if one place allows access, privacy seekers will move elsewhere.
Will* find it.
That's why apple is so cutting edge. Wait, maybe they are just experts in the obvious?
To be fair, their main competition is Microsoft.
angry Linux noises
I do not trust apple a single second, that they do not have their own backdoors in their OS. I can't prove it, but I bet they scan their customers just as much as google does. They just say they don't to justify their horrendous prices AND milk them for marketing purposes. Double-wammy.
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 now 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.
Why would you want a cop in your house?
ATAB
All Tim Apples are Bastards
What privacy? It's not even a discussion anymore, it's gone. No point even talking about privacy. It really is gone.
Literally 1984.