Tag: apple

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The Price of Privacy

An inkling into the profits that “social” media companies that collect and sell our data was gained from the most recent regulatory filings by Facebook/Meta and SnapChat. Both companies placed a fairly specific dollar value on the revenues they lost ever since Apple made it nearly impossible for these companies to track customers across apps on iPhones and iPads. If $10 billion per quarter is any indication, then perhaps these companies should be paying their users $100 each every quarter for the privilege of tracking them.

The second half of 2021 has not been kind to tech giants that rely on ad targeting thanks to Apple’s App Tracking Transparency policy.

Source: Apple’s Privacy Policy Cost Snap, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube an Estimated $9.85 Billion in Revenue

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Apple to Governments: Choose Markets over Repression

Apple accused NSO Group, the Israeli surveillance company, of “flagrant” violations of its software, as well as federal and state laws.

Source: Apple Sues Israeli Spyware Maker, Seeking to Block Its Access to iPhones

This is a fascinating case. Will courts allow Apple to stop a surveillance tool that governments clearly love? Will the US government come out in favor of Apple or NSO group?

Without a doubt, NSO group needs to be wiped out of existence because it clearly empowers monsters and dictators against civil rights activists, journalists and citizens outside of their countries’ jurisdictions. The NSO group is indisputably allowing repressive regimes to consolidate their power and even to manipulate international trade. As such, the company must be wiped out of existence, and the Israeli government must be held to account for supporting and protecting the NSO group.

It is a forgone conclusion that Apple will sue the Israeli government, too, once the Israeli government’s role is made clear during discovery. Of course, Apple will have a huge bargaining chip. Apple’s main chip design center is in Hertzliya, Israel. So, the Israeli government must weigh the small revenues and huge influence that NSO Group brings in against the blockbuster investment that Apple is making in the Israeli tech sector and Israel’s economy.

It’s a no brainer. The clear choice is to kill NSO and allow companies and marketplaces to function without illegal influence, but governments tend to act stupidly in such situations. Let’s hope that the US and Israeli governments don’t act like morons.

NSO group HQ in Israel

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The FAANG Wars Escalate

The war between Apple and Microsoft on one side, and Amazon, Facebook and Google on the other officially started in September of last year, and they just escalated with Apple’s release of iOS 14.5. Apple’s declaration that it will end app tracking–the practice of allowing the developer of one mobile phone application to be able to use your mobile device to track your activity in other applications you use on the mobile phone and to correlate your activity with your browsing habits on your computer and phone–is a major pillar of the business model of companies like Facebook and Google who collect this information in order to target ads at you specifically.

The practice goes much further, however. Both companies build “psychographical” profiles of users with such tracking information and use these models to control what each user sees. App tracking is thus one of the many elements of control through which Google and Facebook control the total user experience: they tailor the content they place before you in order to elicit the emotional response that will trigger you to click the ads they have included in the content they place before you. This is why, for example, Google is estimated to collect 20 times as much data as Apple does. It sounds sinister, and it is. (In the case of Amazon, this information is used to display search results that will maximize Amazon’s profit on the sale, not the value for the customer.)

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FAANG Go to War

Apple was the instigator, and the fire has been fueled by two explosive books about Facebook’s abhorrent behavior–‘Zucked by Roger McNamee–and about the exploitative nature of the free internet in general–Ten Arguments for Deleting your Social Media Accounts Right Now by Jaron Lanier. The battle lines have been drawn, and Apple and Microsoft are unofficially allied against Google, Facebook, especially, and, to a lesser extent, Amazon. Let’s examine this battle two ways: idealistically and cynically.

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Where are the Borders in the Computing Cloud?

Nominally, the case (linked at the end) is about “privacy”, but the underlying questions are far deeper and far more relevant to anyone who is using any form of “cloud” service: Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple, Twitter, Microsoft, etc. The government insists that it can access data belonging to a suspect even if that data is stored on a server in another country, but the service company, Microsoft in this case, insists that it cannot provide that data because that act violates the terms under which it operates its servers in Ireland. The question is, therefore, where is the virtual border drawn? Is material belonging to an American subject but stored on a server in a foreign country under a foreign account that was created in that country subject to US law or the laws of the country in which the account was created. A question in the affirmative leads to the following conundrum.

“If U.S. law enforcement can obtain the emails of foreigners stored outside the United States, what’s to stop the government of another country from getting your emails even though they are located in the United States?” Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president and chief legal officer, said in a blog post on Monday.

Where is the line drawn? Does the account belong to the person and, thus, subject to the laws of whichever country in which the person is residing, or is the data owned by the provider and, thus, subject to the laws of the country in which that provider is operating? If the former, then, indeed, foreign countries can have free access to data stored on American servers. This will please Chinese officials who want to identify dissidents. If the latter, then some country–perhaps Ireland–may well become a haven for data akin to the way Switzerland is a haven for money. Neither branch of the dilemma is particularly satisfying. Not solving this problem is an invitation to disaster in the not too distant future as our data slowly come to represent the totality of our existence.

What do we  want as users? Do we want our data to be ours, or do we want to relinquish control to technology companies in order to relieve ourselves of the responsibility of living with the consequences of the data? The breakneck pace of progress in technology doesn’t leave much time for the deep discussion that the subject demands. When the shit hits the fan, it’s going to get really messy. Wear your best virtual rubbers.

Source: U.S. Supreme Court to decide major Microsoft email privacy fight