Apple does not have a history of giving most of their data to the US government. I'd go so far as to say that they have given less than .00001% of their data to the US government and they were probably legally obligated to do so. Apple actually has a history of not bending over to the government.
Apple likes to loudly proclaim that they care about protecting their user's data, but they also refuse to put their money where their mouth is. That to me is telling enough.
I do think it's important to note that I have not seen direct evidence of them abusing that data, but we've seen plenty of companies/governments/organizations doing bad things for years without direct evidence.
Actually I think they do - if they're ever legally required to give up data here they seem to not really put up a fight, or have an incentive to make the data useless for the govt.
What I'm saying is expecting Apple to have your back sounds meh.
What you say makes sense, the problem is that in the (strange?) world we live in I have more trust in Apple than in my government regarding my data, both technically and from an incentive perspective.
An interesting read, I would agree with the author, Apple is making it difficult, not impossible for govt to get your data.
TLDR, apple's claim is misleading, govt can get data in other ways
What Apple does with all the data they collect may be one of the best guarded secrets in the world. Assuming they invest heavily to collect the valuable data and do not use it for financial or power gain does not make any sense.
Yet the page says "less than 0.00385% of customers had data disclosed due to government information requests."
So they ARE giving data to the government at their request...
BTW, that percentage of say, 100 million customers (which I'm sure Apple has, probably more) is 3850 people, not an insignificant number...
Anyhow, I personally wouldn't trust anyone anyway. Google, MS and Apple are all American corporations, and need to comply with US law, no matter how asinine.
I would expect Apple not to sell this data. They don’t need to, and the bad press if it gets exposed could loose them more money. Their business model doesn’t require it.
Even in US, Apple regularly gives data dumps to US government. iCloud DOES NOT have the same privacy guarantees than iMessage and similar. The iCloud Privacy Policy closely mirrors Googles.
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