I’ve been a loyal apple user since they came out with the iphone 4 in 2010. Since then, I’ve never used an android as my primary phone. I have used android tablets and had android burner phones, mostly due to the low price and great features. The reason I stayed with Apple for so long was because of their long standing commitment to privacy. Over the years I’ve come to trust Apple less and less. Initially it was when I found out that they enrolled in the Prism program, the government’s warrantless mass surveillance program revealed by a certain exiled government contractor. Apple suspiciously enrolled in prism shortly after Steve Jobs death. While I did find that troubling, I believed that the options to encrypt data on the device and in the cloud would protect my data. Additionally I believed that since I don’t have anything to hide, I didn’t need to worry about it.
Then came Apple’s failed CSAM scanning, the idea was sold to consumers as a way to cut down on child abuse. The phone would scan the files on your phone to look for known images of CSAM and then report the user to the authorities. While everyone wants to “save the children”, there was pushback from privacy watchdogs. The reason being that CSAM scanning is the boot that gets this type of invasive surveillance in the door. Once in, they can change the criteria for what they scan for with a few keystrokes. How about Hate speech? Most people wouldn’t object to scanning for that too, and how about misinformation? How about scanning for memes that make fun of the government? It’s a slippery slope. Apple finally came to their senses and decided to shelve the program, except, they didn’t at all. While they claim to have dropped it, the reality is that the phone still scans photos for context and since Apple’s software isn’t open source, we have no idea if they’re logging what they find in your photos stored on your phone.
Users cannot disable photo scanning by iOS and cannot choose another default photo album to store images in. It’s not just images in the photos app that are scanned. As you have noticed, every image in the browser can be clicked on and you’ll see that the phone analyzes it. While I don’t know if this is happening before the click, iOS is likely analyzing the context of all of the text on your screen and if it is not doing it automatically yet, I have no doubts that it will be doing that soon. Despite Apple’s claim they they intended to do CSAM scanning in a “privacy preserving” way, I disagree completely that any company who wishes to pursue government surveillance in this way respects user privacy at all. In fact, this was a real wake up call for me, I realized that Apple’s view of privacy and my own were not in the same solar system.
Obviously CSAM is a problem, and one that is being scanned for when files are uploaded to Apple’s servers, and I do not challenge or disagree with that practice. Once a file is uploaded to the cloud, the cloud provider has the right to check it, since it is being stored on and shared through their service. I still believe that user data belongs to users, not corporations, I understand the shared interest in the information stored in a provider’s hardware. However, running file scanning on a users device specifically for legal compliance and reporting to authorities raises some serious questions about the 4th amendment, and about personal property rights.
I am also troubled by Apple’s airtag. Airtags use Ultra Wide Band technology. This technology allows a phone to determine within a few millimeters, it’s distance from the airtag. Airtags are sold to consumers as a way to track objects, but the inverse of that is that it has the potential to tracks devices that have an ultra wide band sensor. I have an airtag in my wallet, it is being seen by every iPhone within 20 feet of it. Therefore, Apple knows not only where my tag is, but who is around the tag, which is creating a real world social graph. They claim they have built it in a way that prevents that, but again, their software is closed source so you just have to trust them.
I’m also further bothered by Apple’s abuse of Bluetooth. Bluetooth is used to connect our phones to speakers, car stereos, and to fitness trackers, but it is quite insidious. Bluetooth is used to track people in conjunction w/ wifi, cell phone towers, and ultra wide band. Together, all of these technologies can provide pinpoint physical location. Bluetooth can be disabled from the iphone using the control panel when a user swipes down from the top of the phone, except that this doesn’t actually turn the Bluetooth radio off. What this does instead is it disconnects the phone from known Bluetooth devices, but it keeps broadcasting Bluetooth IDs and scanning the room for the Bluetooth IDs of nearby devices. These Bluetooth IDs are commonly used for marketing, but they may also be used for tracking and social graph discovery. To me, it makes no sense to have a phone appear to disable radios when it really doesn’t, unless the software is attempting to fool the user. The only way to actually shut off Bluetooth scanning is to go into settings and slide the toggle off. Both iOS and Android mislead users into believing that the radios are off when they’re simply disconnected, but in Android, you can enter the settings and disable Bluetooth scanning entirely and then switch the radios off in the settings.
I am further bothered by the inability to disable the microphones and cameras on the iPhone. In Android, this is a simple toggle. When done, even the Android system will not use the camera to unlock the user’s phone. A few years ago it became popular to use a modified headphone jack to disable the microphones on cellphones, the response from the industry was to kill the headphone jack across most Android and apple devices. However, with Android, you can still kill the mic using the software features. In iOS you cannot disable the OS from accessing the mic at all.
Finally I am bothered by Apple’s new integration w/ ChatGPT. Open AI is a Sam Altman joint. Sam Altman is the guy behind WorldCoin. WorldCoin uses eye scanning as a way to initiate the creation of their crypto identity product. ChatGPT will be able to read your messages, emails, etc. This is not what I signed up for when I signed up for privacy. All of the assurances that things only happen on your device is meaningless if you do not trust them and can’t take their word for it. In fact, they can be telling the truth but leaving much unsaid. The data never has to leave your device if it’s being analyzed, and meta data is being logged and analyzed by an AI that shares those logs with Apple or the government.
So my answer to the privacy situation with Apple is to actually use a Google product. Google does all of the same stuff Apple does and worse, it actually sells that data to advertisers. Apple has disclosed that they have 6 requests for geo warrant data, basically location data for iCloud users, and they have refused to provide information to law enforcement based on the fact that they claim they cannot. Google, has probably handed over data on tens of thousands of users. Geo warrants are used to help solve crimes but cast a wide net by requesting the identities of users who happened to be anywhere near a crime.
So Google’s pretty much as bad as they get, but guess what? If you have a single Google app on your phone, like gmail or youtube, Google gets alerted any time you pass a wifi router anyway.
The solution is to use Google’s software without giving Google the keys to the Kingdom. That’s possible because Google’s Android is open source. That means that the community can analyze the code and determine what the software is doing. In fact, they can make changes to it and re-compile it. This is called a ROM, it’s an alternative version of Android that is created by other users. I plan to use a well known ROM called GrapheneOS which is security hardened to prevent Google from eaves dropping. You can still run google play, the required software to run Google apps like the Camera app, google messages, etc, but it sandboxes it to make sure it’s not collecting data from every app on your phone. Additionally you can create multiple profiles on an android phone, so while running Graphene, I can install Google play on one profile and have another profile which is completely de-googled.
At the end of the day, I hear people say all the time, “Why should I care about privacy when I have nothing to hide?” While going to prison isn’t at the top of my concerns list, during Covid, I learned that whoever is running the government can start labeling things as hate speech or misinformation and that can result in getting fired from your job, facing legal consequences, and yes, even in places like the UK and Australia, jail time. My biggest concern however is that the information that we give up is being used to train algorithms which are getting more intelligent every day, to influence us. This technology works, and it’s affecting people’s minds.
But it’s not just the fact that Apple is as rotten as they come, the devices have been virtually unchanged since the iPhone 11. The AI implementation feels sloppy, and they continually underspec their devices and overcharge for them. They don’t excite me.
I have a $299 Pixel 6a and the camera blew my iphone camera out of the water.
I’ve decided to switch to the Google Pixel 9 Pro XL. There are faster, more powerful, and more expensive android flagship phones but none that run Graphene OS. I decided to go big or go home to get 512gb of storage, the telephoto camera, macro mode, gigantic battery and gargantuan screen.
Overall I am a little nervous about the switch. I use imessage and group messaging a lot, but I can probably move those convos to Whatsapp, which is probably about as private as imessage.
On top of that, I have to install Graphene onto my Pixel and may potentially brick it, although I hear that it is unlikely. If I don’t like Graphene then I’m stuck with a Google phone with undisputed worse privacy than an Apple product.
At the end of the day, I think it was time for a change and I’m glad I am pulling the trigger. I may do another post about the change in the near future.