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US senators question big tech, including Apple, on the reason behind inauguration donation...
The original hypocrites are the Republicans. In the early days of Biden's victory, certain corporations called for cutting off donations to Republicans who engaged in election denial. Many Republicans started "clutching their pearls" about corporations needing to "stay in their lane" and out of politics. Yet, those same Republicans are more than happy to rub shoulders with those same corporations. So the real hypocrites are Republicans. When corporations/corporate leaders embrace views that are out of line with the Republican party line, they get all sanctimonious about how corporations should stay out of politics. For the record, I'm no Warren supporter. But I vigorously oppose making Republicans out to be some kind of saints.Cesar Battistini Maziero said:Why don't they question all the lobby money they get?Bunch of hypocrites. The reckoning its coming.
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Leak: what law enforcement can unlock with the 'Graykey' iPhone hacking tool
Yes, Apple is US based company and the law allows the government to obtain search warrants. But you're forgetting an important detail. A search warrant says that the government can search a particular premise and seize specific evidence of criminal activity that it expects to find. But that search warrant is in no way guarantee that the government will find what it's looking for.mfryd said:
It would be a challenge to install a backdoor for only non-American phones.22july2013 said:
How would you feel if the back door only was installed for non-American iPhones. Would you be comfortable with that? When you say "our security" are you talking about Americans, or citizens of the world, including Hamas?DAalseth said:I fully expect 47 to push through a law requiring Apple to build in a back door. With that, there will go our security.
Trump doesn't have the constitutional authority to create any law. Maybe you know that, but the way you worded it sounded like he has some degree of law-making authority.
The iPhone gets a lot of security from the fact that the hardware/software architecture is designed to not allow backdoors. If you change the underlying architecture to allow backdoors, then American phones will essentially have backdoors, we will just have to live with the promise that they won't be opened.
We know from experience, that US law allows the government to obtain search warrants without the subject knowing he is being surveilled. We also know that Apple is a US based company and subject to US law. Should Apple be presented with such a warrant they would be obligated to open the backdoor.
Thus, in practice, you can't have backdoors that apply only to non-US phones.
Now whether or not you think that Apple's level of privacy is a good or bad thing, is a different topic.
Let me give an example of the police searching soemone's home with a warrant. Armed with the warrant, the police can show up at someone's home and search it. The homeowner can't resist or obstruct the police in performance of their duties. If the door is locked, the police will ask the homeowner to open the door or the police will break down the door. But if the police can't break down the door, the homeowner can't be held criminally liable.
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Lack of 'creativity and enthusiasm' prevented big tech antitrust law overhaul
physguy said:It would be nice the the interviewee actually said something substantive. “ They've been allowed to acquire competitors, destroy competitors, favor their own goods and services, engage in very anti-competitive conduct”. Every company in the world does that. It’s called competition and running a business, successfully. It’s only deigned to be a problem when one company has a monopolistic position in a given market. No where in this article, and presumably in the interviewee’s responses do they address why any of these companies are monopolies, and in what market. I believe a good argument can be made that Google is a monopoly in search, that FB is in social media. Beyond that I don’t see it for the tech companies. Amazon certainly isn’t in online retail as there are numerous competitors large and small. Walmart is a significantly bigger company in retail than Amazon. Apple certainly is not a monopoly in phones or apps as they remain the smaller player in both markets. They just provide such service that they get the profitable sectors of those markets. AWS might be in web services, but I doubt it given google, Microsoft, Salesforce, Rackspace, etc.
When politicians say this stuff, they're not looking to make a substantive argument. For that matter, there isn't a lick of proof that Apple or other tech companies acquired competitors simply for the purpose of destroying competition. But that doesn't matter to them. They're trying to appeal to emotion-in this case, anger. They are trying to get people like you and me to get angry at tech companies. They're trying to arouse the inner bloodlust in us. An informed populace that exercises critical thinking and understands business is their worst enemy.
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Spotify, Tile, and Match Group call Apple anticompetitive at Senate hearing
It sounds like you believe that big corporations in itself is a bad thing, and I fully respect your opinion. However, I disagree. I believe that in addition to whether a corporation is big, how that corporation came to be big and/or be the dominant player in the market is an important consideration. To me, there is a big difference between a corporation that makes a better mousetrap and a corporation that prices its competitors out of the market and then jacks up its prices after everyone else goes out of business.dpkroh said:Everyone here claiming Apple is right, boo hoo for the others, does not understand the differences between capitalism, competition, and free markets. They are aso poor students of 20th century American history and the incomparable prosperity of the mid 20th century, that is no more. That prosperity only happened once the government started breaking up large companies and monopolies. Apple, Google, FaceBook, and the like are the "Robber Barrons" of the 21st century. Real prosperity can only return when the government does what it did post WWII. Take down and break up the robber barons to restore free markets and completion, and restore equitable (not equal but equitable) wealth distribution.
Capitalism and competition are NOT the same same. The goal of capitalism is profit maximization. That goal is ultimately incompatible with competition. Profit maximization, unbridled, has the ultimate goal of destroying all current and future competition, to forever protect its monopoly at all costs.
Equal access competition a.k.a. truly free markets are the true drivers of innovation and prosperity. Capitalism is simultaneously the best tool to maximize productivity, and simultaneously the greatest threat to the same, when left unmanaged.
Free markets and competition are good for everyone, except for greed maxing capitalists. Any capitalist that has amassed enough power or wealth to bully competition, no longer sees competition and free markets as beneficial. They see competition and free markets as a threat to their dominance.The greatest expansion of wealth in American history, occurred just after WWII, when the government went after big corporations and broke them up. Everyone won. Wealth was spread far more evenly and equitable and more wealth was generated than when a few big corporations controlled all.
Now we are back to a few big corporations controlling almost everything, especially in technology. I'm always amazed at how easy it is to train the vast majority of people to act against their own self interest. That's the most effective and insidious form of power there is. That is the sort of control that the system has against everyone here cheering on Apple, Google, and the like, while denigrating the others. it's just like the first line of the chorus of the song "Banditos" by "The Refreshments". Everybody knows the world is full of "them".
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DOJ formalizes request for encryption back-doors
You're right this didn't start with Barr. But what makes this administration's attitude so puzzling is that this administration is unabashedly in support of gun rights. This administration refuses to endorse gun control of any kind on principle on the grounds that gun control encumbers law-abiding citizens' right to bear arms. The Obama administration was not so anti-gun controlgatorguy said:
This didn't start with Barr. The Obama administration attempted to do it too a decade ago. Maybe 2010 Obama and his 2015 FBI didn't know anything about the Constitution and laws either, certainly believable.rob53 said:
You can think that all you want but Barr is not your normal AG. Once he's gone, we can start clearing out the garbage and make sure the people who get installed are following the Constitution and laws, something Barr doesn't know anything about.Mike Wuerthele said:
I don't think that this viewpoint that the DOJ has presented is going to change, regardless of who's in charge.ITGUYINSD said:Good ol' Bill Barr. Can't wait until JAN 2021. Buh-bye!
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/us/27wiretap.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/tech-giants-urge-obama-to-resist-backdoors-into-encrypted-communications/2015/05/18/11781b4a-fd69-11e4-833c-a2de05b6b2a4_story.html
It never ceases to amaze me that an administration that is so worried about creating encumbrances on our right to bear arms would openly support encumbering our right to privacy and our right to safeguard our electronic communications.
