this post was submitted on 06 Dec 2023
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[–] [email protected] 276 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (5 children)

This headline is ridiculous; I expect better from Ars Technica. You "admit" to things you shouldn't have done. In this case the government compelled Apple to disclose certain data and simultaneously prohibited Apple from disclosing the disclosure. Thanks to a senator's letter, Apple is now free to disclose something that they previously wanted to disclose, about something they were forced to do in the first place.

Compare to the Reuters headline: "Governments spying on Apple, Google users through push notifications - US senator." The emphasis and agency are correctly placed on the bad actors.

[–] [email protected] 95 points 11 months ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It's so telling, how good chat gpt is at creating click bait.

Ask for 10 click bait titles to any essay. It'll be better than your title.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago

You won’t believe these top 10 generated clickbait titles!

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I was hoping moving to Lemmy would get me away from them but I was wrong.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 11 months ago

Lemmy isn't really that different, beside being decentralized and has less restrictions (and downvotes/upvotes don't mean shit here). People are people and news outlets are the same.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

We need a bot that puts a better title in the comments, or an automod bot that physically changes the titles to be plain

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

This is when AI is actually useful.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Out of curiosity, what was it?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

Ah I accidentally deleted it and I guess the deletion didn’t federate completely, now I un-deleted so we’re good!

[–] [email protected] 31 points 11 months ago

yeah, it looks like most of the other new agencies are attributing it correctly as the government. IMO it's the damn gag order that's most damning. You will spy on them for us and tell no-one.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 11 months ago

To be fair Google was already making this information public via their transparency reports, albeit in aggregate, since 2010 [0].

"Google's transparency report, Ars confirmed, already documents requests for push notification data in aggregated data of all government requests for user information."

Apple conveniently played it safe until the coast was clear. Maybe they'd have been allowed to comment on this privacy issue if they published it in aggregate like Google - e.g. not specifically calling out the U.S. Govt? But that wasn't a risk Apple was willing to take for its users.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transparency_report

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I actually scrolled straight to the bottom of the article to see if it was flagged as being "republished from another Condé Nast property." Just hoping there was an excuse for Ars.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

A letter from a senator doesn't carry much legal force. From my understanding of the article, Apple claims they were prohibited from sharing this information, but a simple letter couldn't overturn something like a legal order or court mandate. The change here doesn't support the claim.

It reads more like Apple chose not to disclose in order to avoid the ire of the DOJ, even though it would have been morally more correct to tell the public sooner.