I noticed what you wrote (at least some of the parts) but you maybe came to the conclusion that I said “you are using FB and the other stuff” - I didn’t. And also, using a mobile phone to check your software does not necessarily mean “carrying it around the whole day”. So, back to the Apple ecosystem.
Like you I also suspect they are not telling fully the truth about what they are doing with the content of our Macs. But the same goes with Windows or Google’s OS. I’m not knowldegeable enough to suspect “even Linux can be hacked”.
But one straw I clinge on: It’s software and it doesn’t matter if the devs are government or secret guys, they just face the same problems of incompatibility and weak OS or firmware updates like we all do. For confidential information there are better ways than using a mail system, no matter how encrypted it pretends to be. And I’m not talking about Thor network or other sinister parts of the web. The moment I connect a computer or smartphone to the net I simply have to consider the lack of confidentiality.
I totally agree that there are a couple of Apps on a Mac hard to find for Windows or if so, they work differently and most of the time less efficient than I can use them on a Mac. My Macs are 100% Adobe-free and although I read that MS Word on a Mac is a better experience, I’m fine with pages. Or Affinity Publisher if it has to be a bit more stylish.
It annoyed me often, how many Macs were/are used in advertisements for Windows-only apps. These days I just grin, when I see another Mac with “repaired” Apple logo and montaged a screenshot of some content management system which never worked and never will work on native Mac OS. Are there really no Windows PCs around trying to look “technically advanced”?
There’s a difference between a potential lack of confidentiality and participating in systematic data-logging and harvesting.
All of Google’s systems, all of Facebook’s system, all of Microsoft’s systems, all of Twitter’s systems feed directly into the NSA’s data harvesting and data mining systems. Your Tweet twelve years ago on a throwaway account when you were ten years old is logged. Every Facebook like or picture posted and then deleted.
Apple rebuffed all attempts to rope them into the National Security system (sometimes called ECHELON) until 2012 the year after Steve Jobs died. Apple is now mostly on-board but if one avoids Apple’s own cloud services and some of its apps, the data is not automatically filed beside your name.
That’s a huge difference.
But yes, one must consider what one puts into email. What is posted online, whether public or private should be considered to be public information as sooner or later it could resurface publicly.
That does not mean we should just roll over and give up all our data and our families data to the NSA by default. Doing so is not much different than becoming one of the hundreds of thousands of KGB informants who made the Soviet security state work. The more of us who resist the more difficult we make this mass data collection and more expensive to run this secret police state.
“It’s hard” to resist is a very poor excuse accepting slavery, where a citizen exists only at the whim of a gargantuan security apparatus.
It was an example. Of course, you’re not 22, nor am I. Unfortunately. Although it looks like we were fortunate to live through a golden age of relative peace and advancing prosperity. In any case, the “you” throughout the post could read “someone” or “one”.
