APPLE has quite a catastrophe in its hands. It's discrediting its own advertising campaign, which it needed to spend many millions if not billions of dollars on (convincing many fools that 'i' devices stand for privacy). In our next batch of Daily Links we shall show the accumulation of several new Apple scandals.

"The media has devoted a lot of space, time, and attention to Apple's plan to scan and extract hashes from people's private devices, not their communications, transmissions, or "online" ("clown") storage."Ryan Farmer, a longtime reader, doesn't think too highly of Tim Cook, Apple's CEO for about a decade now. Despite being gay, Ryan strongly dislikes Cook. To quote him: "He seems to be as much of an older white business criminal as the rest. Apple's behavior is extremely right-wing. They exploit slave labor, don't much care for human rights. They even delve into social issues with the software, like routing women seeking abortions to fake abortion clinics that are really Christians who hector women into keeping the pregnancy when they get there. And I don't really like abortion, but I think that your computer should do what you asked it to do. Apple is clearly taking a political stand on a lot of these issues, and it's squarely right-wing on social issues and in support of a corporate fascist state that doesn't tax them or get in their way with regulation. Much like the other "big tech" companies, honestly. They all shook hands with Trump and then dumped him as soon as he got the "tax law" passed. They were paying negative real rates on taxation to begin with and now it's worse yet. They got everything they were going to get from him and then cut him loose, and if Tim Cook cared about gay rights he'd have never been photographed in the same room, much less shaking hands."

"If homosexuality was a criminal offense and a scandal today, and the governments leaned on Apple to help turn people in for it, I doubt they would object or resist," Ryan continues. "They're a business and they do what the government wants most of the time, expecting things in return for it. The "CSAM" excuse is just a foot in the door. Nobody will go to bat for these people because what they do is disgusting and detestable and should qualify for hanging, honestly, in many cases. And that's the whole point. It will start there, but it will not end there."

"Move to Free software. People are presumed innocent, not guilty, and proper legal procedures are followed (such as judges authorising a search based on leads, testimonies, and bits of evidence)."The media has devoted a lot of space, time and attention to Apple's plan to scan and extract hashes from people's private devices, not their communications, transmissions, or "online" ("clown") storage. We have strong reasons to suspect that Apple isn't the first; it is the first to speak about it and that should mortify every innocent person. Move to Free software. People are presumed innocent, not guilty, and proper legal procedures are followed (such as judges authorising a search based on leads, testimonies, and bits of evidence).

In the video above I forgot to show what I had planned to show; it's my Palm PDA, which lacks a connection. It used Bluetooth back in the days; it still does IR, but without physical access nobody can see my personal notes on that device. And that used to be normal. That was, once upon a time, the expectation of device owners (about 2 decades ago, going back to their very genesis).

The problem isn't just Apple, but all those large and state-connected technology companies which prefer for everyone to think that only criminals would want or need privacy.

"The problem isn't just Apple, but all those large and state-connected technology companies which prefer for everyone to think that only criminals would want or need privacy.""Our system of laws has traditionally been set up to at least have the appearance of the presumption of innocence and the theory that it's better to accidentally let some guilty people go than to deprive others of their constitutional rights," Ryan asserts. "And what the iPhone is doing is really an end run around due process. Because you're a witness against yourself and you're not secure in your "papers and effects" from an unreasonable search. The government is using the iPhone as a "constitution condom".

"If the people who wrote the Bill of Rights were alive today they'd be horrified, I think, to see how many ways the government has nullified our rights and freedoms. There is literally nothing in the constitution that even gives them the right to do "COVID lockdowns". The whole exercise has been one of an unmitigated power grab. They keep doing things that are disproportional to the problem that we face in order to set precedent. They declare an emergency and then they give themselves emergency powers that don't end. Governor Pritzker in Illinois has used the Illinois Emergency Management Act to suspend laws, write up rules that conflict with laws, etc. and all of this says that he has that authority for 30 days. This emergency has been going on for 18 months and nobody has challenged it."

Some people do as they please and get away with it regardless. It's a multi-tiered society with official and unofficial 'royals'.

"Some people do as they please and get away with it regardless."There are many headlines this week about 'Prince' Andrew getting in trouble (lawsuit for sexual assault, coming from an underage sex abuse victim, obviously connected to the trafficker, Epstein) and lots of recycled crap about Bill Gates "regretting" his close connections to Epstein (even visiting him in prison to help him get out of there by reputation laundering). Gates obviously knew what he had done. It was not possible not to know at that stage.

Well, why did he "faint" as reported in the media (he was only concerned about the public finding out) if he is innocent? Why is his wife and his best friends among those distancing themselves from him? Why is he paying Twitter and fearing people who talk about him? One can only speculate, but remember that it wasn't Microsoft (MSN) that turned in his pedophile engineer, who got arrested for pedophila in Bill's very own home. The tip came from Google because the engineer had passed child pornography through GMail (he also had an MSN account) and then, upon request, Comcast provided additional logs. The nature of these depictions (photos and videos) was particularly disturbing and we'll refrain from explaining the severity. The amount of material was vast. It was spread among lots or devices, some of them portable.

Castles with keys held by respective governments to ensure anytime access

"There are many headlines this week about 'Prince' Andrew getting in trouble (lawsuit for sexual assault, coming from an underage sex abuse victim, obviously connected to the trafficker, Epstein) and lots of recycled crap about Bill Gates "regretting" his close connections to Epstein (even visiting him in prison to help him get out of there by reputation laundering).""Apple seriously underestimated the blowback that this would receive," Ryan has told us in IRC. "Many people who are aware of what they're doing have followed Apple's "policy evolution" from "We will absolutely never build a backdoor into our products." to "We're building a backdoor into our products and it breaks E2E encryption in everything, including iMessage, just like the governments requested, but it'll never be used for anything else. Trust us! Oh, and anyone who complains about where this is obviously going is a "screeching whiner". There are dark days ahead if people passively accept this, and Google is no doubt under the same pressure from the same governments to bake this into Android phones as well. For Apple to do this while advertising privacy, then calling people who want privacy the tinfoil hat club and sympathizers for child abusers is hypocrisy of the first order. Your platform, in this case Apple's products, are either secured or backdoored. There's no other state they're in. No partial backdoor. From here on out, they are backdoored government malware, in total. I predict that many people won't notice or will fall in line with the "Anyone who wants privacy is a criminal, but I use my iPhone because the billboard said Privacy." camp. Privacy for who? From what? Nothing that matters at this point. Perhaps if Apple is putting in a scanning program, they can do something about all that iPhone malware that manages to get along just fine even though their users are trapped in the crApp Store. Smartphones are a sewer, but Android is clearly the platform for people who prefer their bullshit out in the open where we can get a good whiff." ⬆