Bonum Certa Men Certa

Proprietary Software Increasingly Eliminates Freedom, Privacy, and Dignity

Summary: Apple's latest blunder is its practice -- either intentional or not -- of eavesdropping on users, which leaves people's entire travel history on any computer the "iDevices" synchronise with (even the police's)

Apple, the anti-Linux aggressor (e.g. with software patents), is in hot water right now. In response to its ridiculously pathetic lawsuit against Samsung it is now being sued itself:

Samsung Electronics Co. said it sued Apple Inc. (AAPL) claiming patent infringement, a week after the iPhone maker filed a complaint in U.S. federal court alleging the South Korean company copied its products.

Samsung submitted complaints to courts in Seoul, Tokyo and Mannheim, Germany, alleging Apple infringed patents related to mobile-communications technologies, Suwon-based Samsung said in an e-mailed statement today. Steve Dowling, a spokesman for Apple, declined to comment and referred back to the company’s complaint filed last week.


However, the very latest blunder Apple found itself in has a lot to do with privacy, or lack thereof. Groklaw has assembled some links that include self-explanatory quotes:



Separately, Groklaw posted a link to the following new item from Schneier, which ought to remind people of COFEE (Vista and other versions of Windows include surveillance bits):



Here again is the Jobs video that we posted last night. Listen to what he says about privacy at Apple. Considering how secretive the company is, privacy at Apple applies only to its members of staff. For everyone else, Apple is just Big Brother software. What we need now is a free (as in liberty) phone platform and independent carriers that do not log calls/locations using signal triangulation.

Steve Jobs on privacy, Steve Jobs at the D8 Conference (Video)



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For context, see the "Privacy" links at the top. How foolish he must look now.

Credit: TinyOgg

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