Of all the allegations that the Department of Justice has laid at Apple\u2019s door, the most contentious is perhaps its salvo over security and privacy. Apple has warned that if the DOJ gets its way, Apple products \u2014 especially the iPhone \u2014 will be less secure for users. Meanwhile, the DOJ claims that Apple\u2019s much-touted privacy features are pretextual.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The complaint in the DOJ\u2019s antitrust lawsuit against Apple says that the company \u201cwraps itself in a cloak of privacy, security, and consumer preferences to justify its anti-competitive behavior.\u201d In the press conference announcing the lawsuit, Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter said Apple\u2019s choices have actually made its system \u201cless private and less secure.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cApple selectively compromises privacy and security interests when doing so is in Apple\u2019s own financial interest,\u201d the complaint reads, \u201csuch as degrading the security of text messages, offering governments and certain companies the chance to access more private and secure versions of app stores, or accepting billions of dollars a year for choosing Google as its default search engine when more private options are available.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
It\u2019s a particularly aggressive shot at a company whose branding strategy heavily emphasizes privacy by design. In Epic v. Apple<\/em>, the judge found that user privacy and device security were acceptable reasons behind some of the company\u2019s extremely restrictive (and financially lucrative) App Store policies. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n In press briefings, spokespeople for Apple have taken umbrage with the DOJ\u2019s assertion that the company\u2019s privacy and security features are pretextual and have asserted that the antitrust suit will ultimately harm users.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The DOJ\u2019s attack on one of the core tenets of Apple\u2019s brand identity relies on how broad the general concept of user privacy is, going far outside of the issue of App Store review to make its point. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n The complaint emphasizes that, unlike iMessages, iPhone users\u2019 SMS communications with Android users \u2014 i.e., green bubble texts \u2014 lack encryption.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cApple forces other platforms to use SMS messaging. It doesn\u2019t allow them to integrate with iMessage or another encrypted message platform built-in,\u201d Cliff Steinhauer, director of information security and engagement at the National Cybersecurity Alliance, told The Verge <\/em>in a phone interview. Since SMS messages aren\u2019t encrypted, they\u2019re less secure by default.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Apple has previously said its devices would begin supporting RCS, a more secure messaging protocol that will make communications with Android devices encrypted, later this year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But the DOJ is on shakier ground once the attention shifts away from green bubble texts and back to the App Store. At the DOJ press conference, a reporter noted that a member of Congress said that stripping Apple of the ability to vet the products uploaded onto the App Store could \u201copen the door to apps made in China and Russia, and other adversaries, if you will.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Attorney General Merrick Garland said the lawsuit\u2019s goal is to limit \u201cexclusionary conduct\u201d in the App Store, not to reduce Apple\u2019s ability to vet apps. The lawsuit specifically asks the court to prevent Apple \u201cfrom using its control of app distribution to undermine cross-platform technologies such as super apps and cloud streaming apps.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div>\n But super apps like WeChat effectively function as app stores of their own. For the DOJ, this has less to do with privacy than it does competition. It\u2019s not like that\u2019s coming out of nowhere \u2014\u00a0the lawsuit notes a board of directors presentation in which Apple described super apps like WeChat as a \u201cmajor headwind\u201d to boosting iPhone sales abroad.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n However, some security experts note that Apple\u2019s App Store is indeed safer than those on Android phones.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cOur data from millions of device scans on iOS and Android devices around the world suggests that open app stores lead to more malicious activity than closed ecosystems,\u201d said Danny Rogers, the CEO of the cybersecurity company iVerify, whose app detects malware on phones and computers. \u201cSo while opening up app stores to third parties might be good for competition, it will likely increase malicious activity as well.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n That malicious activity ranges from operating system-level compromise to the presence of spyware like Pegasus, Rogers told The Verge. <\/em>\u201cWe see almost 100x more frequency of security issues pop up on Android compared to iOS,\u201d Rogers said, even though the app has conducted more iOS scans than Android scans.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Daniel Kahn Gillmor, the senior staff technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union\u2019s speech, privacy, and technology project, said the higher rate of malware on Android devices may be related to the phones having a \u201cmuch longer shelf life\u201d than iPhones. \u201cYou\u2019re going to find more vulnerabilities on these old, outdated Android devices simply because those old, outdated Android devices are out there and they\u2019re on sale,\u201d Gillmor said. \u201cApple has done a good job of keeping their update process regular \u2014 and also at decommissioning old iPhones. They\u2019ll tell you, \u2018This thing is not good anymore, you have to get a new one. We cannot support it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Gillmor agrees that an app store \u201cwith much looser controls\u201d could lead to \u201cmore invasive, infectious garbage being pushed onto people\u2019s phones,\u201d he said. \u201cBut that risk is worth it, because it means that we also allow software that Apple might disapprove of, for whatever their political reasons are.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Gillmor noted that Apple banned the game Phone Story<\/em>, which satirized the company\u2019s manufacturing process, from the App Store in 2011. An app that tracks US drone strikes was rejected from the app store a dozen times before Apple allowed it to go through.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIt\u2019s unquestionable that Apple exercises tight control over its ecosystem than is necessary to have a healthy software ecosystem\u201d on its phones, Gillmor said. \u201cEven Apple\u2019s computers let you install software from anybody that you want.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n For now, it\u2019s simply too soon to say how iPhone users\u2019 privacy will be affected \u2014 we don\u2019t even yet know what the Justice Department wants as a remedy if it wins, let alone what it will actually get. (And all of that, of course, is contingent on it winning in the first place.) \u201cThere are so many different pieces of this,\u201d Steinhauer said. \u201cI don\u2019t see how they could possibly win all or lose all.\u201d <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n[ad_2]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [ad_1] Of all the allegations that the Department of Justice has laid at Apple\u2019s door, the most contentious is perhaps its salvo over security and privacy. Apple has warned that if the DOJ gets its way, Apple products \u2014 especially the iPhone \u2014 will be less secure for users. Meanwhile, the DOJ claims that Apple\u2019s …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34438,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34437"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34437\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}