quote:

Originally posted by chongosuerte:
Makes one consider a pager and a faraday bag.

Do pagers and pager companies even exist anymore? And, if they do, from where would one make their return calls, being as most public phones have gone the way of paper maps and buggy whips?

quote:

Originally posted by chongosuerte:
I’m honestly disgusted with how reliant I have personally become on a smartphone.

Y'know, I've been devoting more thought to this, in the last couple days, than I had recently. I'm beginning to suspect much of that for which I thought I needed these devices might be more "gee, this is neat" and "gee, this is convenient," rather than an actual need.

E.g.: My Apple Watch has been off my wrist for two days. Other than occasionally glancing down to see what time it was, I have not missed it. I am beginning to wonder just how much I need it and wondering if maybe upgrading it a few months back might have been a mistake? 'Course, I had no way of knowing at the time Apple was going to pull a stunt like this.

My point is: If it's more a want than a need, is it worth all the baggage that comes with it?

I'm not going to make any irrevocable hasty decisions, but I am beginning to re-evaluate my addiction to digital toys.

quote:

Originally posted by Jupiter:
Since the title of the thread is "Apple to Abandon Industry-Leading Privacy and Security", I couldn't help but ...

... continue to completely miss the point and instead pursue beating a dead horse.

Since you appear fond of such behavior and life's too short: Goodbye.

quote:

Originally posted by cas:
How do the laws work, where/when is the crime committed?

Say theoretically there was a place, country whatever where child porn was legal. They host a website with it... is it a crime for you to just to view it? Or does it become a crime if you save it to your computer?

There is no difference. If you are looking at an image on your computer monitor, the data for the image is on your computer, whether you downloaded/saved it or it just appears on a website.

Depending on a number of details, it might only be stored in RAM rather than on your hard drive, but if you can see it on your screen, the data is in memory somewhere in your computer.

quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:

quote:

Originally posted by chongosuerte:
Makes one consider a pager and a faraday bag.

Do pagers and pager companies even exist anymore? And, if they do, from where would one make their return calls, being as most public phones have gone the way of paper maps and buggy whips?

quote:

Originally posted by chongosuerte:
I’m honestly disgusted with how reliant I have personally become on a smartphone.

Y'know, I've been devoting more thought to this, in the last couple days, than I had recently. I'm beginning to suspect much of that for which I thought I needed these devices might be more "gee, this is neat" and "gee, this is convenient," rather than an actual need.

E.g.: My Apple Watch has been off my wrist for two days. Other than occasionally glancing down to see what time it was, I have not missed it. I am beginning to wonder just how much I need it and wondering if maybe upgrading it a few months back might have been a mistake? 'Course, I had no way of knowing at the time Apple was going to pull a stunt like this.

My point is: If it's more a want than a need, is it worth all the baggage that comes with it?

I'm not going to make any irrevocable hasty decisions, but I am beginning to re-evaluate my addiction to digital toys.

quote:

Originally posted by Jupiter:
Since the title of the thread is "Apple to Abandon Industry-Leading Privacy and Security", I couldn't help but ...

... continue to completely miss the point and instead pursue beating a dead horse.

Since you appear fond of such behavior and life's too short: Goodbye.

"such behavior"? LOL...I must have really crossed the line with my comments.
Really not trying to upset you.
Discussing "Privacy and Security" in a thread called "Apple to Abandon Industry-Leading Privacy and Security" didn't seem too far off topic.

quote:

Originally posted by jelrod1:
This came known right after I made my switch from Apple. It is crazy the things they are doing now. Besides this they are moving to a way to add surveillance to Imessage supposedly to let parents get alerts for pictures kids receive.

Pinephone, Lightphone, or DeGoogled Phone for me now.

I'm going to have to start looking into these.

I'm really not anxious to go back to Android. I left Android for reasons. Those reasons remain.

I swear that, if I could, I'd go back to my good ol' Palm Centro. It was just "smart" enough to give me the minimum of what I needed, and nothing I did not. Phone, contacts, texting, calendar, alarms, camera, and ran a password manager. All sync'd to my computer, rather than a cloud service.

And I'm not even certain I need a password manager on my mobile devices any longer, now that I'm retired.

Meanwhile, mentioned to Mrs. ensigmatic "I may have to buy a new wrist watch." "Not until you clean out the collection of old watches you have," she replied. So I did. Lo and behold, the last watch I had been wearing when I bought my first smart watch was still running and had the correct time! (It's been sitting in a drawer for five years?)

The band was busted, but I had a high-quality band on a watch that was dead. Did the swap and...



My Apple Watch has been powered-down and stashed in a drawer since Friday. I'm going to try life without a smart watch for a bit.

My iCloud photo storage is down from over 800 photos and videos to less than 80. I'll probably have the rest of them cleared-out by week's end. I've cancelled the 50GB storage plan. I've cleared-out most other iCloud files and data. I had alarm system notifications going to my Apple email account. They're now going to one of my virtual servers on a server farm and whatever I had in Apple email folders has either been moved or simply deleted.

Just waiting on a refund for returned items, then the Apple Card will be cancelled. (I've already made another card the default in Apple Pay and removed the physical card from my physical wallet. [I bet it will make a good scraper.]) Then I'll push my Apple Cash into our checking account. I'll probably kill Apple Pay shortly thereafter.

The Lightphone works great with Verizon. They actually treat it as a smart watch. If someone sends me a picture it forwards to my email so I don’t miss it. That works great. It falls short on sending customers pictures. It just can’t do it. I’d hoped the Verizon message service would be a solution but it’s just not that good or stable. There are many alternative ways to send pictures but more challenging when to a customer you only have their cell number. LightOS is based on the android open source project.

The Pinehone has the most potential I think. It’s not plug and play though and getting it to work with Verizon is a struggle. It’s a fun “project” that hopefully one day can be the one. There are tons of OSs to mess around with.

Degoogled phones like from Brax is really the best alternative right now I think if you want low fuss.

https://brax.me/prod/host.php?f=_store&h=rob&p=

Obviously it can be done yourself too. I think most are running LineageOS on them.

I've been looking into these alternatives a bit this morning.

The Lightphone actually looks good, but it's missing one big need and a couple wants:

• No Band 71 (TMO 600MHz) support--that's a show-stopper
  
• Would like to have either pwsafe or Bitwarden password managers
  
• Would like to have Signal Private Messenger
  

Does the Lightphone mount as a USB drive for easy transfers between phone and computer?

The Pinephone looks interesting, but it does not yet have functional (certified) VoLTE support, which means TMO won't even provision it on their network.

After that it's the Android platforms with one of the Linux phone OS'. Haven't spent any time looking into those.

In other news Democrats are ditching their iPhones for retro flip phones. Biden has already lost his iphone in a tragic boating accident. Polaroid camera and instant film sales have skyrocketed in the DC area.

I can't wait for a company to come out with a phone that doesn't track everything and keep it in a database. Same thing with app developers who actually charge for an app that works without harvesting the phone for information to be sold to the highest bidder.

quote:

Originally posted by joel9507:
[quote]Can anyone explain how a self-appointed vigilante (i.e. Apple) could violate the 4th Amendment prohibition against unreasonable search, and come up with evidence that could be presented in court? I don't see any restrictions making it OK to do unreasonable searches, as long as it's not the Feds doing the search.

Not defending the crimes Apple is targeting - shoot the bastards, and you'll hear not a peep out of me - but you can't just search everything, sifting for crime XYZ.

I don't know what Apple is playing at, but they will lose customers and, I believe, aid zero prosecutions by gathering inadmissable evidence.

Apple isn't violating any constitutional rules or laws, YOU grant them permission when you buy the phone and activate the IOS.

Its called a EULA, and every app, operating system, television, anything you have that has software on it is controlled by the EULA.

In order for you to run the equipment you pay these companies for you must agree to the EULA, where inside are all the rules and agreements that nobody reads, but they immediately click and say ok because A) if you don't, it won't work, B) they have become the norm in electronics land.

Want to use your Android/iShit, say yes to the EULA.

Should Apple/Google et al be spying on users, grabbing screens, looking at pictures, reading texts, email, listening to your conversations for key words, all in the "name of advertising" be permitted, no. Congress needs to redefine what EULA's can allow.

But until then, the only person authorizing all this intrusion is the end user, because if you don't your $1300 iShit Pro with multi spy cams is just a brick until you do..

quote:

Originally posted by Hildur:
I can't wait for a company to come out with a phone that doesn't track everything and keep it in a database.

If you mean in the form of what's commonly referred-to as a "smart phone": I don't think you're going to ever see that.

(If you have a modern "smart TV," it's doing the same thing, btw.)

quote:

Originally posted by HRK:
Apple isn't violating any constitutional rules or laws, YOU grant them permission when you buy the phone and activate the IOS.

Yup. But you'll notice they're doing this "first" here in the U.S. I'm betting that's because in EU, at least, this scanning software they're going to install would run afoul of the EU's much better privacy laws.

quote:

Originally posted by HRK:
Its called a EULA, and every app, operating system, television, anything you have that has software on it is controlled by the EULA.

True, dat. Which is why I've so far stuck with Linux for computers, why our lone "smart TV" didn't get its advanced features enabled and is not on the network, and one reason why we switched to iThings.

quote:

Originally posted by HRK:
Want to use your Android/iShit, say yes to the EULA.

To be fair and unbiased, shouldn't that be, oh... Assdroid?

quote:

Originally posted by HRK:
But until then, the only person authorizing all this intrusion is the end user ...

Yup.

But I think Apple may have finally jumped the shark with me. I'm now seriously entertaining backing the ol' tech train up about ten-fifteen years.

Like I wrote, earlier: I'm not going to make any precipitous, irrevocable changes, but I'm certainly in heavy ponder mode.

quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:

quote:

Originally posted by Hildur:
I can't wait for a company to come out with a phone that doesn't track everything and keep it in a database.

If you mean in the form of what's commonly referred-to as a "smart phone": I don't think you're going to ever see that.

(If you have a modern "smart TV," it's doing the same thing, btw.)

What about people who root their phone and install some verison of Linux that's open source?

quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:

Does the Lightphone mount as a USB drive for easy transfers between phone and computer?

.

This thread sheds some Light on it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Light...the_lightphone2_and/


It doesn't mount like a usb device, but you can get all up in it if you want and do a lot of things. I do know someone is working on Signal.

quote:

quote:
Originally posted by HRK:
But until then, the only person authorizing all this intrusion is the end user ...

Yup.

But I think Apple may have finally jumped the shark with me. I'm now seriously entertaining backing the ol' tech train up about ten-fifteen years.

Like I wrote, earlier: I'm not going to make any precipitous, irrevocable changes, but I'm certainly in heavy ponder mode.

To be clear I"m in no way defending the practice of Apple, Google et al, and I don't see any of the listed alternatives being able to stay away from the lucrative revenue streams of data sales, or at some point sharing information with governments...

Governments want it, these companies want money, once again, users become the product.. Its why you'll never see new privacy laws against EULA's, since it would prevent obtaining the data governments desire.

quote:

Originally posted by Hildur:
What about people who root their phone and install some verison of Linux that's open source?

As I noted, above: I haven't looked into this very far, yet. But they hold promise.

From what I did read so far, however, those run only on older hardware. That, in itself, isn't necessarily a problem, save for being able to actually acquire it.

quote:

Originally posted by jelrod1:

quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:
Does the Lightphone mount as a USB drive for easy transfers between phone and computer?

This thread sheds some Light on it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Light...the_lightphone2_and/

It doesn't mount like a usb device, but you can get all up in it if you want and do a lot of things.

Thanks. I'll take a look.

quote:

Originally posted by jelrod1:
I do know someone is working on Signal.

Good. That's a fairly significant "want" for me. Band 71 would require new hardware (Lightphone 3?). If they can do SPM, there's no reason they couldn't do one of the open-source password safes, too.

They don't appear to have a user community forum? That's kind of surprising.

quote:

Originally posted by HRK:
... I don't see any of the listed alternatives being able to stay away from the lucrative revenue streams of data sales, or at some point sharing information with governments...

The Lightphone, Pinephone, and Android hardware platforms running Linux phone software might. Should?


Meanwhile, I sent my missive off to Apple:

quote:

It has come to my attention Apple plans to start scanning iPhones, iPads, and other customer-owned Apple products for child pornography images, as well as begin "wire-tapping" iMessage traffic. I regard this as an egregious invasion of my privacy and a violation of the trust I'd placed in Apple.

My personal devices being scanned for anything, by anybody, is not acceptable. Period. Likewise my communications with others. If Apple goes ahead with this plan, I will have to consider replacing the Apple equipment we currently own--returning to Android for mobile products, and replacing our Apple TVs with another brand.

In the meantime, I have begun taking steps to distance my family from the Apple ecosystem and have cancelled plans to purchase several additional Apple products.

It's all mainly on Reddit. The thing is very basic to start with and communicates via Light site. Rooting it does look to open many doors though limiting you to only what the hardware can do. I may mess with that approach soon just to experiment. The guy in that thread gained access to many apps.

quote:

Originally posted by jelrod1:
It's all mainly on Reddit. The thing is very basic to start with and communicates via Light site.

Hmmm...

quote:

Originally posted by jelrod1:
Rooting it does look to open many doors though ...

I'm not interested in going there. I want an appliance, not another hobby

This message has been edited. Last edited by: ensigmatic,

quote:

Originally posted by HRK:

Governments want it, these companies want money, once again, users become the product.. Its why you'll never see new privacy laws against EULA's, since it would prevent obtaining the data governments desire.

Yep. Government and Big Business = Partnership from Hell.

quote:

Maybe not for Apple but anything gained is fruits of the poisonous tree for prosecution purposes.

But, I seriously doubt this really has anything to do with locking up child predators.

Apple, as a private entity is not only legally allowed to monitor traffic on it's network, but as a Provider is required by Federal law to self monitor and self report child exploitation imagery stored or transmitted on its service. This information is provided by ISPs to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children who then review it and forward it to local and/or Federal ICAC units for investigation.

The way it works is the ICAC will get a complaint from NCMEC that the John Smith Facebook page (or iCloud, or whatever) has been sending or receiving apparent CEI. Examples of the observed material will be included in the complaint. The ICAC will then get a search warrant for the account in order to obtain the original imagery and other data required for prosecution.

Providers also routinely check their servers for any such material that might be stored on them.

NCMEC keeps the hash values of all known CEI which enables providers to look for those known images and videos without having to actually look at the content of user accounts. Only when a file of interest is identified by hash value does a human being look at the file to determine if it is in fact CEI. How specific are hash values? You are statistically more likely to run into a complete stranger with a DNA match to you than you are to find 2 different files with the same hash.

I knew child exploitation was a problem. I had NO IDEA just how big a problem it was until I had the misfortune to be assigned to investigate it for a few years. I've been a cop a long time. I've seen literally hundreds of dead people, most of which died hard. NOTHING has ever followed me home and given me nightmares like the things I saw working ICAC cases. Those files identified by hash, yeah, we have to look at every one of them prior to prosecution. I do not miss that assignment. At all.

As a side note, while I'm on my soap box, PLEASE monitor what your kids do online. PLEASE. Teenagers are the same as we were when we were teens, except now they have access to the world wide web and no concept of the long term consequences of the things they are sharing or who they might be sharing them with. Teenagers is actually not accurate. I had a lot of cases involving kids as young as 11 actively sharing things online. We had trouble convincing juries that transcripts of text messages were actually the victim speaking because "kids don't talk like that." Unfortunately they do.

quote:

Originally posted by copaup:
Apple, as a private entity is not only legally allowed to monitor traffic on it's network, but as a Provider is required by Federal law to self monitor and self report child exploitation imagery stored or transmitted on its service.

Only that's not what Apple will be doing. What Apple will be doing is scanning files (photos and videos--for now) on users' phones and tablets.

That is the electronic equivalent of, during the height of the War On (Some) Drugs, having cops go from door-to-door, walking into homes at will, with no advance notice--much less a warrant, to inspect homes for the presence of drugs.

quote:

Originally posted by copaup:
I knew child exploitation was a problem.

And you know what? I have a hellua lot less empathy for that problem today than I had yesterday.

Anybody who, in the interest of pursuing their campaign, no matter how well-intentioned, infringes on my right to be left the fuck alone loses my support.

quote:

Originally posted by HRK:

quote:

Originally posted by joel9507:
[quote]Can anyone explain how a self-appointed vigilante (i.e. Apple) could violate the 4th Amendment prohibition against unreasonable search, and come up with evidence that could be presented in court? I don't see any restrictions making it OK to do unreasonable searches, as long as it's not the Feds doing the search.

Not defending the crimes Apple is targeting - shoot the bastards, and you'll hear not a peep out of me - but you can't just search everything, sifting for crime XYZ.

I don't know what Apple is playing at, but they will lose customers and, I believe, aid zero prosecutions by gathering inadmissable evidence.

Apple isn't violating any constitutional rules or laws, YOU grant them permission when you buy the phone and activate the IOS.

Its called a EULA, and every app, operating system, television, anything you have that has software on it is controlled by the EULA.

Thought exercise. **************

Eula states in the boilerplate, 'by clicking on this button, you agree to waive all your Constitutional rights and agree that this EULA shall prevail over all Federal, state and local laws, and our slave induction patrol will come pick you up at 10AM and you agree to comply.' and you click the button.

Can they then enslave you and point to the EULA? And the police, who otherwise would arrest them for kidnapping see the EULA and say, "Oh, well, then, OK. Carry on."

End of thought exercise
*********
So, maybe a better phrase would be 'controlled by the EULA, to the extent the EULA complies with existing law'

Next up- scanning your phone for "hate imagery"- pics of firearms and/or the American flag. Perhaps you have a pdf copy of the US Constitution on your phone. Maybe you have a book on the American Civil War on your phone- images of slavery and oppression, pics of Confederate flags.

After that- scanning for "hate politics"- You have a video of a speech by Donald Trump on your phone, or an article by Victor Davis Hanson. Oh, look, you're going to a political rally next Saturday. Google surveillance will be there with you every step of the way.

Anyone who's OK with this stuff because it's for "da chirren" is part of the problem. I'm not kidding. If you support this state-sanctioned surveillance, you are a very big part of the problem.