The real issue that Apple is trying to address is not really privacy, but rather security. Though Google has all of my data, it is still private. Google does not sell access to my data; it sells access to my attention. Advertisers do not get my information from Google. So as long as I trust Google’s employees, the only two potential breaches of my privacy are from the government or from a hacker. If we accept this as a fact, the fundamental privacy question changes from, “Do you respect my privacy?” to “Is the user experience improvement worth the security risk to my private information?”
Dustin Curtis hits the nail on the head so hard the nail’s on its way to Fiji.
“the only two potential breaches of my privacy are from the government or from a hacker”
– Yourself by providing too much info (facebook, 4chan, …)
– Your friends
– Your haters
The question should have never been “Do you respect my privacy?”, that is a squishy softball question… It should be “Can I trust you with my privacy?”. I think that in reality the answer to that question is no, pretty much universally, irrespective of the company.
As for the second question, instead of ^aEURoeIs the user experience improvement worth the security risk to my private information?^aEUR, it should be “Is the user experience improvement worth giving up my privacy?”, because since we don’t trust them there simply isn’t any real privacy to begin with.
I’m not knocking Google. I even think that the gist of the article is right – Apple is missing out in a big way by giving up on the opportunities that arise from collecting user data. Thing is Google and Facebook and whatnot have already won imo – Apple taking a hard line stance on privacy is too little way too late.
My point isn’t to pick on Google’s business model, I just think we should recognize that no one really trusts them. No one really should trust them.
We are simply trading information for goodies. Its not private information anymore, its just information. It stopped being private the minute we stopped trusting them… Did we even ever start trusting them?
I agree with most of what Dustin Curtis says. However there is a fallacy in his argument: the false dichotomy that we must choose between privacy and great personalized services. This is based on the assumption that great services must be cloud based. That is generally true today, and it’s certainly Google’s business model, but it doesn’t have to be that way. There should be no reason why private intelligent agents (running on your private smartphone or PC) can’t provide great personalized services too. I’m hoping that is Apple’s long term plan.
That can only go so far though, unless you plan to run an email server and everything else on your local machine(s).
No, this is not true.
I just want to choose where I run my personal assistant.
That can be at the home or some hosting provider (public cloud computing, IaaS, is also just a hosting).
As the word says it’s: personal
That personal assistant probably has hooks into several dozen different services to get the data it needs. I imagine trying to make it ‘host-agnostic’ would be a bit of a mess …
I don’t know why you think host-agnostic is difficult.
Let’s take a simple example of an airline flight:
– I want to tell the assistant to get me a list of flights to place X within some time frame with a flight back in some other time frame. -> basically talking to public websites/-services
– I’ll choose from the list so the assistant can book the flight -> basically talking to public websites/-services
– get confirmations -> the webservice should confirm this, but let’s say access to my email account is needed.
– same thing for a hotel and maybe renting a car
– I want to be notified a day or 2 before that I need to start packing -> access to my agenda
– I want to be notified at the day before when I need to go to bed
– I want to be notified at the day when to get out of bed or leave my home
– I would want to know what the best way is to get to the airport
– etc.
Maybe I don’t understand you but: where is the problem ?
The problem is that all that stuff you want to know about is online, so I guess I’m not sure exactly what you want on your local device.
I want to personal assistant which handles all that personal information to run on a server of my choice.
That is all I said.
That is exactly what we should be doing. There is no reason why we should have to give away our privacy. We need to start demanding services that are user owned. Box still stores peoples info, yet they have enabled the end user to encrypt the data without Box being able to access it. So you can have your cloud service AND security. It just has to become a wanted feature.
You mean Apple, who don’t even bother to have basic local voice recognition? Siri does’n work at all without an internet connection you know, even for simple local tasks. Google Now, funnily enough, does.
More like Privacy vs. the Google (style) Experience.
This author’s false choices imply that with the absence of Google/Apple/Microsoft/Some other outside entity being at the hub of our existences, knowing all about us, that none of us would/could ever have any of the conveniences they now provide.
As if a resident client program on all our phones (which are equivalent of early 1990’s super computers), couldn’t be so sophisticated as to be able to poll our airline schedules, poll the online maps of our choice, or poll a data base for the cheapest gasoline in our current location, etc…etc…, then notify us accordingly, without first checking into Google’s servers first.
The real choice/question is who will be at the hub of your personal existence and privacy, you or third parties such as Google?
Next, to develop the tools that will enable facilitating that real choice.
We may very well benefit greatly by user tracking, but we should all be tracking ourselves “in private”.
We just need to move away from the wrongheadedness of allowing third parties to be tracking us. Targeted advertising based on user tracking is not an absolute necessity of an ad based business model. Certainly not any legitimate ones.
Generic advertising is private and yet still effective, unless of course all of your ad revenue is coming from the NSA.
Knowledge is power.
Knowledge gathered specific to you,
is power over you.
This article’s author sounds like an Apple Fanboy lamenting the fact that Apple doesn’t “yet” have as comprehensive an all intrusive user tracking system as Google’s. And is trying to make a case for why they should so to salve his feelings of inferiority towards his chosen platform.
When are people going to realize we are living in the digital age. We are living in a highly connected surveillance society. Privacy has become nothing more than an illusion. That’s the price we’ve paid for the world of convenience we live in.
I’m not saying you should willingly & openly broadcast all your personal details. I’m just saying it’s foolish to think you can protect that information from people who want it.
Dustin is wrong, Apple is right. I’m just awaiting the first inevitable and major Google everyone-can-read-your-mail fuck-up, because that’s what happens when you leave security to trust. Apple is exactly right in encryption-by-default, even though it makes for some inconvenience.
I think Dustin will reconsider his stance on privacy vs security when this eventually happens.
Required reading. http://blog.eiqnetworks.com/blog/bid/313892/The-Difference-Between-…
” The truth is that collecting information about people allows you to make significantly better products, and the more information you collect, the better products you can build.”
No it doesn’t. Understanding how people use things, what problems they face, and what solutions will work for them, does not require the collection of personal data.
Not that these companies and the government have proven to be completely devoid of ties in latest times.