Linked List: December 18, 2020

Friday, 18 December 2020

Steve Jobs on Privacy 

Steve Jobs on stage at the D8 conference in June 2010, interviewed by Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher:

Privacy means people know what they’re signing up for, in plain English, and repeatedly. That’s what it means. I’m an optimist, I believe people are smart. And some people want to share more data than other people do. Ask them. Ask them every time. Make them tell you to stop asking them if they get tired of your asking them. Let them know precisely what you’re going to do with their data.

That’s what we think.

In the audience: Mark Zuckerberg. Maybe he should have listened.

Apple’s stance on privacy hasn’t changed an iota. Neither has Facebook’s.

Kara Swisher: ‘Facebook’s Tone-Deaf Attack on Apple’ 

Kara Swisher, in her column for The New York Times:

Facebook declared in the newspaper ads that it was “standing up to Apple” and warned that such a change will be the ruin of small businesses. More like the ruin of Facebook. The company is terrified that giving users single-click power to control their own information will force people to realize just how loud is the data-sucking sound coming from Facebook’s app.

Let’s be clear: Apple is no saint. While looking and acting like a defender of user privacy has long been a core tenet of the company, its bottom line does not depend on advertising, and ridding the world of intrusive marketing by kneecapping Facebook is good for its business.

In fact, Apple has its own sins to answer for. Many people claim it has too much control over the third-party developers that are dependent on Apple’s mobile app ecosystem, an issue that has gained a lot of regulatory and legal attention of late. Apple takes a 30 percent cut of many of the transactions that take place in the App Store, and many companies say that fee is unreasonably high; some say it is predatory.

It’s a good column overall, and I think Swisher hits on a major point at the end — that Facebook more than ever rues not having succeeded, and perhaps regrets having giving up on, owning its own phone platform.

But the above quoted bit is way too “both sides”. It’s pure whataboutism. The “Apple is no saint” angle, regarding greed over the App Store commission, plays into Facebook’s hands. Facebook’s whole argument is that Apple isn’t really interested in user privacy, they’re just being jerks to spite Facebook because Facebook’s targeted advertising is a boon to small businesses, and Apple is against small businesses because, uh … and here is where Facebook hopes you lose interest in the argument and just buy the basic premise that Apple isn’t really interested in privacy for privacy’s sake. It’s cynical — an appeal to the belief that no company believes in anything if it isn’t profiting from the belief, so Apple’s privacy stance must be benefitting it in some sneaky way.

It’s entirely possible, and I say it’s true, that Apple’s bottom line does not depend on privacy invasion not by happenstance but because the company well and truly believes in privacy as a human right to its core.

Whatever you think of Apple’s 15 to 30 percent commission on App Store commerce, it really has nothing to do with the company’s privacy policies.

Justice Department Charges Zoom With Suppressing U.S. Calls About Tiananmen Square, at Behest of China 

Drew Harwell and Ellen Nakashima, reporting for The Washington Post:

A security executive with the video-tech giant Zoom worked with the Chinese government to terminate Americans’ accounts and disrupt video calls about the 1989 massacre of pro-democracy activists in Tiananmen Square, Justice Department prosecutors said Friday. […]

Prosecutors said the China-based executive, Xinjiang Jin, worked as Zoom’s primary liaison with Chinese law enforcement and intelligence services, sharing user information and terminating video calls at the Chinese government’s request.

Jin monitored Zoom’s video system for discussions of political and religious topics deemed unacceptable by China’s ruling Communist Party, the complaint states, and he gave government officials the names, email addresses and other sensitive information of users, even those outside China.

Outrageous in so many ways. How in the world can Zoom ever claim that calls are private and encrypted when they’ve clearly demonstrated the ability to monitor them, and abused that in patently offensive ways? Best to assume that every call made with Zoom is monitored by the Chinese government. Remember too that Zoom employs 700 people in China on its engineering staff. I’d be surprised if Zoom’s source code and server infrastructure was not riddled with backdoors and eavesdropping features.

Allowing a Chinese-controlled company like Zoom to operate in the U.S. — and this goes for TikTok too — is to some degree in contravention of Karl Popper’s paradox of tolerance. We, as a tolerant society, should not disallow communication services from other societies. But we must make an exception for services from intolerant societies, and there’s simply no question China is intolerant.

Australia Sues Facebook Over Onavo VPN It Used as Spyware 

Natasha Lomas, reporting for TechCrunch:

Yet more trouble brewing for Facebook: Australia’s Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is suing the tech giant over its use, in 2016 and 2017, of the Onavo VPN app to spy on users for commercial purposes.

The ACCC’s case accuses Facebook of false, misleading or deceptive conduct toward thousands of Australian consumers, after it had promoted the Onavo Protect app — saying it would keep users personal activity data private, protected and secret and not use it for any other purpose, when it was being used to gather data to help Facebook’s business.

“Through Onavo Protect, Facebook was collecting and using the very detailed and valuable personal activity data of thousands of Australian consumers for its own commercial purposes, which we believe is completely contrary to the promise of protection, secrecy and privacy that was central to Facebook’s promotion of this app,” said ACCC chair Rod Sims in a statement.

Not sure why Australia is the only country suing Facebook over this one, because they did it worldwide. Previous coverage here at Daring Fireball:

When I say that Facebook is aligned with Epic in wanting to see Apple forced by government antitrust regulators to allow third parties to circumvent the App Store and install whatever software they want on iPhones and iPads (but especially iPhones), we already know the sort of stuff Facebook wants to do but is blocked by Apple. Spyware. Just outright spyware that tracks everything you do on your phone. They already did it, and used the information they gleaned from it to decide to buy WhatsApp for $20 billion.

Facebook’s frustrations with Apple’s user-centric privacy concerns and control over iOS run a lot deeper than the new mandatory privacy nutrition labels and upcoming ad-tracking opt-in controls launching in a few weeks.

Facebook Wades Into Epic’s Dispute With Apple 

Sarah E. Needleman and Jeff Horwitz, reporting for The Wall Street Journal:

As part of a pledge to assist challenges to what it called Apple’s anticompetitive behavior, Facebook plans to provide supporting materials and documents to Epic Games Inc. The “Fortnite” parent sued Apple this year, claiming the tech giant’s App Store operates like a monopoly. Facebook said it isn’t joining the lawsuit but helping with discovery as the case heads to trial next year.

A spokeswoman for Epic declined to comment.

Like I wrote earlier this week, for Facebook to get what it wants on iOS, they’re going all-in on the argument that Apple’s control over its own platform is abuse of a monopoly. But Facebook and Epic are particularly well-aligned here, in that what they both want is to ship their own apps for iOS without going through the App Store. Epic, so they don’t have to pay anything to Apple, and Facebook so they don’t have to follow Apple’s privacy rules.

Woz’s Schematics for Prototype Apple II Sell for $630,000 

Steve Wozniak, in a letter accompanying the diagrams:

These documents, circa 1975, are my original Apple II prototype schematics and programming instructions. They are precious. On these work-in-progress diagrams, you can even see my breadboarding technique, where I’d go over drawn connections in red as I soldered the wires in. At the time, I favored using a purple felt tip pen for writing, so it’s interesting to see these notes decades on. The prototype was hand-wired while I was still an engineer at Hewlett-Packard’s Advanced Product Division, where I was involved in the design of hand-held calculators.

Indiana Jones voice: These belong in a museum.

I’m not joking. I don’t want to get all sappy here, but if Woz doesn’t design the Apple II, there’s no Apple. There’s no Mac in 1984, there’s no iPhone in 2007. There’s no NeXT in between, and a NeXTStep box is where the web was created. None of it happens like it did without these genius designs for that amazing computer.

Apple Support Document Explains AirPods Max Low-Power States 

Apple Support:

If you set your AirPods Max down and leave them stationary for 5 minutes, they go into a low power mode to preserve battery charge. After 72 stationary hours out of the Smart Case, your AirPods Max go into a lower power mode that turns off Bluetooth and Find My to preserve battery charge further.

If you put your AirPods Max in the Smart Case when you’re not using them, they go into a low power mode immediately to preserve battery charge. After 18 hours in the Smart Case, your AirPods Max go into an ultralow power mode that turns off Bluetooth and Find My and maximizes battery life.

This jibes with what I’ve experienced, but it’s great to have these time frames documented. (I just asked for this a day ago.)

Also, you can check the battery status on the AirPods Max themselves:

If you press the noise control button when your AirPods Max are connected to power, the status light will turn green if the charge has more than 95 percent remaining, or amber if the charge has less than or equal to 95 percent remaining.

If you press the noise control button when your AirPods Max aren’t connected to power, the status light will turn green if the charge has more than 15 percent remaining, or amber if the charge has less than or equal to 15 percent remaining.