Tag Archives: Apple

FBI ‘Deeply Concerned’ After Apple Says Nearly All iCloud Data Now Has End-to-End Encryption, by Katabella Roberts

Posted on December 9, 2022 | Leave a comment

The government is deeply concerned that someone out there might be keeping secrets from the government. From Katabella Roberts at The Epoch Times via zerohedge.com:

Apple on Dec. 7 announced a string of new security features, including full end-to-end encryption for nearly all the data its users store in its global iCloud storage system, prompting concern from the FBI.

The Apple logo at an Apple Store in the Brooklyn borough of New York City on Oct. 23, 2020. (Brendan McDermid/Reuters)

In an overview of the new feature posted to the Apple website, the California-headquartered tech giant said its “Advanced Data Protection” optional setting will provide its users with the “highest level of cloud data security” and keep user data safe even in the event of a data breach in the cloud.

“If you choose to enable Advanced Data Protection, your trusted devices retain sole access to the encryption keys for the majority of your iCloud data, thereby protecting it using end-to-end encryption. Additional data protected includes iCloud Backup, Photos, Notes, and more,” Apple said.

End-to-end encryption means that not even Apple can access the data, according to the company.

“If you lose access to your account, only you can recover this data, using your device passcode or password, recovery contact, or recovery key,” the company said.

The new feature will be available on iOS 16.2, iPadOS 16.2, and macOS 13.1 for users in the United States by the end of the year, before rolling out to the rest of the world in early 2023, according to Apple.

Users can enable it by enrolling in two-factor authentication for their Apple ID and setting a password or passcode on their devices.

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China Restricts Movement Across iPhone City, by Tyler Durden

Posted on November 23, 2022 | Leave a comment

Maybe the Chinese aren’t as docilely accepting of state authority as many of those touting China’s “development model” claim. The twitter videos speak for themselves. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

Update (1100ET):

China’s Zhongzhou, home to Foxconn’s massive iPhone factory, will begin to enforce mobility restrictions across eight districts in main urban areas on Friday. The reason, well, authorities blame it on ‘rising Covid infections,’ though we should note that the new restrictions come as massive unrest has erupted at the factory of more than 200,000 workers.

Zhongzhou authorities posted a statement on its WeChat page on Wednesday about mobility restrictions from Friday through Sunday.

“At present, the epidemic situation in our city is still severe and complicated,” the statement said. Health officials will conduct daily mass PCR tests and request that residents in high-risk areas stay within their homes.

You can find more about the chaos unfolding at the iPhone factory below…

* * *

On Wednesday, unrest broke out at Foxconn’s massive iPhone factory in Zhengzhou, central China, reported Bloomberg. Videos on social media showed hundreds of workers, if not more, clashing with security personnel after a month of strict Covid restrictions.

Manufacturer Foxconn confirmed the outbreak of “violence” and said it would work with local authorities to quell further violence. It released a statement that said workers were furious about pay and living conditions.

“Regarding any violence, the company will continue to communicate with employees and the government to prevent similar incidents from happening again,” the world’s largest producer of iPhones wrote in a statement. 

As Covid infections increased across Zhengzhou and iPhone factory, Foxconn adopted a “closed loop” system for employees in October. Workers were forced to live on campus and were prohibited from physical contact with the outside world – including family members.

Then by late October, strict Covid restrictions for workers sparked minor unrest at the facilities of about 200,000 workers — all were banned from eating in public and forced to eat meals back at their dorms.

By early November, while Beijing ramped up its zero Covid policy by locking down the surrounding metro area — workers began to flee the factory.

Now in videos posted on Weibo and Twitter that AFP and Reuters have verified, all hell appears to have broken out as hundreds of workers clash with security guards and people in hazmat suits.

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Apple’s Diabolical Plan To Control The Ads, by Jack Raines

Posted on August 26, 2022 | Leave a comment

Apple is going after the ad market it ignored for many years. From Jack Raines at Young Money via zerohedge.com:

Season 19 of the popular comedy television show “South Park” premiered in Fall 2015. If you are an avid South Park fan, you may remember this season for its introduction of “PC Principal,” an over-the-top social justice warrior/elementary school principal.

However, there was an underlying sinister plot to the entire season as well: Internet ads had become sentient, and they were taking over the world by manipulating human behavior.

In the clip linked below, Eric Cartman gives a detailed monologue about the rise of ads from simple television advertisements to cleverly disguised internet ads.

https://southpark.cc.com/video-clips/z5ztqt/south-park-ridding-the-world-of-ads

The idea that internet ads are sentient beings trying to wipe out mankind is as comical as it is preposterous, but Cartman’s timeline of ad development is surprisingly accurate. A little bit too accurate.

On a long enough timeline, every large company eventually becomes an ad network.

Don’t believe me? Facebook (Meta?), originally a social network that allowed friends to connect over the internet, built a $500B business as an advertisement platform.

Alphabet, the parent company of both Google and YouTube, generated $55B in ad revenue in Q1 2022.

Amazon may very well be the fastest-growing ad network in the world right now.

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Former Intelligence Officials, Citing Russia, Say Big Tech Monopoly Power is Vital to National Security, by Glenn Greenwald

Posted on April 21, 2022 | Leave a comment

Yes, we have to have Google in its present form to protect the nation. From Glenn Greenwald at greenwald.substack.com:

When the U.S. security state announces that Big Tech’s centralized censorship power must be preserved, we should ask what this reveals about whom this regime serves.

(l) An illustration of the CIA logo (Getty Images); (r) An illustration shows the logos of Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft displayed on a mobile phone and a laptop screen. (Photo by JUSTIN TALLIS / AFP)

A group of former intelligence and national security officials on Monday issued a jointly signed letter warning that pending legislative attempts to restrict or break up the power of Big Tech monopolies — Facebook, Google, and Amazon — would jeopardize national security because, they argue, their centralized censorship power is crucial to advancing U.S. foreign policy. The majority of this letter is devoted to repeatedly invoking the grave threat allegedly posed to the U.S. by Russia as illustrated by the invasion of Ukraine, and it repeatedly points to the dangers of Putin and the Kremlin to justify the need to preserve Big Tech’s power in its maximalist form. Any attempts to restrict Big Tech’s monopolistic power would therefore undermine the U.S. fight against Moscow.

While one of their central claims is that Big Tech monopoly power is necessary to combat (i.e., censor) “foreign disinformation,” several of these officials are themselves leading disinformation agents: many were the same former intelligence officials who signed the now-infamous-and-debunked pre-election letter fraudulently claiming that the authentic Hunter Biden emails had the “hallmarks” of Russia disinformation (former Obama Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former Obama CIA Director Michael Morrell, former Obama CIA/Pentagon chief Leon Panetta). Others who signed this new letter have strong financial ties to the Big Tech corporations whose power they are defending in the name of national security (Morrell, Panetta, former Bush National Security Adviser Fran Townsend).

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Posted in Civil Liberties, Collapse, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Government, Horseshit, Intelligence, Media, Privacy, Surveillance, Technology, War

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Russia Removed From Apple Maps

Posted on March 13, 2022 | Leave a comment

From The Babylon Bee:

CUPERTINO, CA—In an unprecedented effort to put additional pressure on Russia, Apple Inc. has announced they will be removing the entire country from Apple maps.

“As far as we’re concerned, Russia no longer exists on our detailed map of the entire world,” said CEO Tim Cook from his vacation home in Beijing. “And if Apple Inc. says you don’t exist, then you don’t exist! Russia is now the East Atlantic Ocean. Take that, Russia!”

Other tech companies are following suit, with Facebook and Twitter also blocking access in Russia. DoorDash and Uber Eats are still active, but will only allow for the delivery of Burger King. Even Roblox has restricted access to their online world to anyone with a Russian-sounding last name.

Any travelers using Apple maps in Russia will be told to drive in a straight line through the East Atlantic Ocean until they reach Asia or a NATO country while the voice navigator relentlessly insults Vladimir Putin.

Cook has promised to restore the country of Russia to Apple maps once Putin ceases his aggression, or when WEF Chairman Klaus Schwab gives him permission to—whichever comes first.

https://babylonbee.com/news/russia-removed-from-apple-maps

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Apple’s iconic “1984” commercial airs during Super Bowl XVIII – 1984

Posted on January 22, 2022 | Leave a comment

The “1984” commercial was a masterpiece of the genre. From history.com (h/t The Burning Platform):

During a break in the action of Super Bowl XVIII on January 22nd, 1984, audiences first see a commercial that is now widely agreed to be one of the most powerful and effective of all time. Apple’s “1984” spot, featuring a young woman throwing a sledgehammer through a screen on which a Big Brother-like figure preaches about “the unification of thought,” got people around the United States talking and heralded a new age for Apple, consumer technology and advertising.

The ad was directed by Ridley Scott, who directed the genre-defining dystopian science fiction film Blade Runner in 1982. The spot was in a similar vein, depicting a bleak and monocrhome future where a crowd of bald extras—many of them actual skinheads from the streets of London—stood before an enormous screen broadcasting a message of conformity. A runner enters, pursued by police, and hurls the hammer at the screen, destroying it just as the Big Brother figure announces “We shall prevail!” The text in the last shot makes the references to George Orwell explicit: “On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like 1984.”

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The All-Seeing “i”: Apple Just Declared War on Your Privacy, by Edward Snowden

Posted on August 27, 2021 | Leave a comment

Apple is taking a big step towards become an agent of governments’ totalitarian surveillance. From Edward Snowden at edwardsnowden.substack.com:

By now you’ve probably heard that Apple plans to push a new and uniquely intrusive surveillance system out to many of the more than one billion iPhones it has sold, which all run the behemoth’s proprietary, take-it-or-leave-it software. This new offensive is tentatively slated to begin with the launch of iOS 15⁠—almost certainly in mid-September⁠—with the devices of its US user-base designated as the initial targets. We’re told that other countries will be spared, but not for long.

You might have noticed that I haven’t mentioned which problem it is that Apple is purporting to solve. Why? Because it doesn’t matter.

Having read thousands upon thousands of remarks on this growing scandal, it has become clear to me that many understand it doesn’t matter, but few if any have been willing to actually say it. Speaking candidly, if that’s still allowed, that’s the way it always goes when someone of institutional significance launches a campaign to defend an indefensible intrusion into our private spaces. They make a mad dash to the supposed high ground, from which they speak in low, solemn tones about their moral mission before fervently invoking the dread spectre of the Four Horsemen of the Infopocalypse, warning that only a dubious amulet—or suspicious software update—can save us from the most threatening members of our species.

Suddenly, everybody with a principled objection is forced to preface their concern with apologetic throat-clearing and the establishment of bonafides: I lost a friend when the towers came down, however… As a parent, I understand this is a real problem, but…

As a parent, I’m here to tell you that sometimes it doesn’t matter why the man in the handsome suit is doing something. What matters are the consequences.

Apple’s new system, regardless of how anyone tries to justify it, will permanently redefine what belongs to you, and what belongs to them.

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“This Is About Control, Not Children”: Eric Weinstein Calls Out Apple’s Virtuous Pedo-Hunter Act, by Tyler Durden

Posted on August 9, 2021 | 1 comment

Apple has become an instrument of Deep State surveillance. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

Last week, Apple announced that they would begin analyzing images on its devices before they’re uploaded to the cloud in order to identify child pornography and report it to the authorities, sending privacy advocates through the roof.

Apple defended the decision – claiming there’s a ‘1 in 1 trillion chance of false positives.’

“Instead of scanning images in the cloud, the system performs on-device matching using a database of known CSAM image hashes provided by NCMEC (National Center for Missing and Exploited Children) and other child safety organizations. Apple further transforms this database into an unreadable set of hashes that is securely stored on users’ devices,” the company said in an announcement.

Privacy advocates have pointed out the obvious slippery slope of allowing big tech to infiltrate our personal lives under the guise of fighting [evil thing], and the next thing you know Apple is hunting dissidents for human rights abusers, reporting who owns what guns, or people taking ‘suspicious’ routes that deviate from their normal pattern. As the Electronic Frontier Foundation notes:

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again now: it’s impossible to build a client-side scanning system that can only be used for sexually explicit images sent or received by children. As a consequence, even a well-intentioned effort to build such a system will break key promises of the messenger’s encryption itself and open the door to broader abuses.

All it would take to widen the narrow backdoor that Apple is building is an expansion of the machine learning parameters to look for additional types of content, or a tweak of the configuration flags to scan, not just children’s, but anyone’s accounts. That’s not a slippery slope; that’s a fully built system just waiting for external pressure to make the slightest change. -EFF

They’re hypocrites anyway

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Posted in Business, Civil Liberties, Collapse, Government, Law, Media, Politics, Privacy, Propaganda, Surveillance, Technology, Tyranny

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On the Hypocrites at Apple Who Fired Antonio Garcia-Martinez, by Matt Taibbi

Posted on May 15, 2021 | Leave a comment

One guy makes some statements that might arguably be construed as misogynistic, the other sings songs that leave no doubt about their misogyny. Which guy gets fired and which guy has a seat on the Apple board? From Matt Taibbi at taibbi.substack.com:

Much easier to ruin a career than mess with a corporate cash cow

I’m biased, because I know Antonio Garcia-Martinez and something like the same thing once happened to me, but the decision by Apple to bend to a posse of internal complainers and fire him over a passage in a five-year-old book is ridiculous hypocrisy. Hypocrisy by the complainers, and defamatory cowardice by the bosses — about right for the Invasion of the Body Snatchers-style era of timorous conformity and duncecap monoculture the woke mobs at these places are trying to build as their new Jerusalem.

Garcia-Martinez is a brilliant, funny, multi-talented Cuban-American whose confessional memoir Chaos Monkeys is to big tech what Michael Lewis’s Liar’s Poker was to finance. A onetime high-level Facebook executive — he ran Facebook Ads — Antonio’s book shows the House of Zuckerberg to be a cult full of on-the-spectrum zealots who talked like justice activists while possessing the business ethics of Vlad the Impaler:

Facebook is full of true believers who really, really, really are not doing it for the money, and really, really will not stop until every man, woman, and child on earth is staring into a blue-framed window with a Facebook logo.

When I read Chaos Monkeys the first time I was annoyed, because this was Antonio’s third career at least — he’d also worked at Goldman, Sachs — and he tossed off a memorable bestseller like it was nothing. Nearly all autobiographies fail because the genre requires total honesty, and not only do few writers have the stomach for turning the razor on themselves, most still have one eye on future job offers or circles of friends, and so keep the bulk of their interesting thoughts sidelined — you’re usually reading a résumé, not a book.

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Parler Just Flipped Big Tech’s Jan. 6 Conspiracy Theory on Its Head, by Tyler O’Neil

Posted on March 26, 2021 | Leave a comment

Parler wasn’t upended because of what was on the site or any laxity in keeping advocacy of violence off of it. Rather, it’s been a target of a big tech conspiracy because it’s a platform for conservatives. From Tyler O’Neil at pjmedia.com:

(Parler screenshot)

In the days after the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, Big Tech moved against a conservative alternative social media platform, Parler, based on the premise that the rioters has used Parler to plan the attack on the Capitol and that Parler had failed in its responsibility to prevent such coordination. Based on this narrative, Apple and Google removed Parler from their app stores and Amazon removed Parler’s internet hosting. Yet on Thursday, Parler flipped the narrative on its head.

On Thursday, Parler sent a response to the House Committee on Oversight and Reform’s request for documents regarding the riot, the company explained in a press release. In that response, Parler revealed that it had “proactively developed an open line of communication with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the fall of 2020 and referred violent content and incitement from Parler’s platform over 50 times before January 6th. Parler also warned the FBI about specific threats of violence being planned for the events at the Capitol on January 6th.”

The letter details Parler’s efforts “to flag and remove unlawful speech from its platform that was not protected by the First Amendment.” It also notes that of the 270 charging documents filed by the Department of Justice, 80 percent of social media references involved Big Tech platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. “Only 5% referred to Parler.”

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