[shadowgovt]

Very true. Of course, that's always been true since they manufacture the hardware and the OS for the hardware. They're optimally positioned to hide any type of behavior they want in the full stack of the product.

The only thing stopping your phone from keylogging your password to a server in the NSA somewhere if it recognizes a specific trigger pattern is Apple's willingness and ability to resist pressure from the US, etc.

[ianmiers]

>The only thing stopping your phone from keylogging your password to a server in the NSA somewhere if it recognizes a specific trigger pattern is Apple's willingness and ability to resist pressure from the US, etc.

Think of what would happen if you tried to make your average Silicon Valley dev team design, implement, and test a surveillance system they didn't want to build and that was immoral. They'd resit in an infinite number of ways that would delay the project virtually for ever. Short of summary executions, I bet you could not get a nice, efficient, effective system.

On the other hand, once the dev team has enthusiastically built the system that scans for any image, it's entirely easy to say "Now, make it look for these images." They have no avenue for resistance other and a up front no. And a government that wants to do totalitarian things knows many ways to force a yes.

[shadowgovt]

Apple (and the other FAANGs) do not employ average Silicon Valley dev teams.

In general, a company at that size would approach this problem by figuring out who in the company is willing to take on an unsavory challenge like this and then forming a skunkworks out of them, slightly sequestered from the rest of the company.

I'm not saying Apple has done it, or that they're incentivized to. But it's trust-turtles all the way down. Either we trust them to say "No, you can't use our tech to harm our users," or we don't.

[McFlummoxed]

> Think of what would happen if you tried to make your average Silicon Valley dev team design, implement, and test a surveillance system they didn't want to build and that was immoral.

It wouldn't be that. It would be defense contractors sitting at Lockheed or a few blocks from DARPA whose daily bread is making a Tech Sandwich whenever the Broad Agency Announcement for one shows up on sam.gov, or on the DARPA page, or the variety of procurement sites that the government doesn't expose to the internet. If they want it, they can get it -- no persuasion of liberal tech-bros needed.