The ability to abide by all store rules are not only legally enforceable contracts between companies — they are legal agreements after all — but a strong indicator of whether companies will abide by the normalized standards required to do business in an ecosystem.
Privacy protection is not the issue at the heart of these concerns: it’s national security.
Right, and that's a challenge with privacy in general, whether or not there's a contract (and whether or not that's scoped to apply to future owners of the company).
Right now, the legal system does not always afford breaches and violations of privacy the level of gravitas that they deserve.
Yes, but they're lying when they do so. What's required legally, and the industry-wide standards that are currently in place are both insufficient. Adhering to them is great, but companies doing so cannot reasonably be characterized as being defenders of privacy if that's all they're doing.
I've used and greatly appreciate their security related standards. For privacy, there needs to be a lot more legislation upon which standards can be built. Security is in the interest of companies but customer privacy most of the time is not, they need legal mandates with real repurcussions.
Which is a problem. I'm much happier if that restriction both exists and is enforced. If we can't see that contract, then it's all based on trust, and trusting tech companies with personal information has not gone well so far.
This also shows that if we care about the preservation of privacy, we can't depend on technology to solve the problem on its own. No matter how well-engineered software might be, it's ultimately subordiate to national and international law. A company can refuse to cooperate up to a point, but a government can always force it to either comply or cease doing business.
The Verge's recent technology survey showed that at least its audience believes that Google and Amazon are better protectors of personal privacy than Apple, so their strong stance on encryption and privacy is not yet completely effective in differentiating them from competitors. Hopefully articles like this will enhance the perceived value of privacy, because we need both private and public entities to agree on privacy for it to be effective.
But we’re talking here about major corporations who would (largely) follow the law if there was a law with teeth commensurate with the potential rewards form abuse of privacy.
These don't seem like particularly new concerns to me, though. U.S. businesses have used 3rd parties to carry or store sensitive information for decades.
Do you worry that Verizon is listening to or recording all your phone calls? Or FedEx is opening and reading the documents you're overnighting around? Or that document storage companies are opening every box they store, in case there's something useful in there? How do you know Quickbooks isn't mining your bookkeeping data so they can sell leads to tax or collections firms?
And what about IAAS and PAAS companies like AWS, Google Compute, or even hosting companies like Rackspace or Softlayer, who typically have root access to every machine they manage? How many companies--even big companies--own all their servers and the buildings they are in?
Ultimately, our economy is based on specialization and carefully constructed relationships of mutual obligation. Contracts have to mean something or there's not much business going to get done.
Have we not learned to assume the worse from these institutions/corporations yet? Again and again it's proven they will go as far as they're able to.
Unless there is proof they DON'T do this, like some law that is clearly enforced, or some piece of code that mathematically prevents it from doing so... I think it is more than safe to assume they can and they have violated privacy concerns.
Isn't that another strawman? You're gonna find clauses like that in every legal agreement on earth, the relevant points here are what they commit to and how they act and have acted historically.
You can of course not trust them and keep your data away, it's your choice; but there is no question they are the most privacy respecting of the bunch - because, as the OP said, they are a hardware and services company and staying that way is a competitive advantage.
Privacy protection is not the issue at the heart of these concerns: it’s national security.
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