In the meantime, he's handed the decryption keys to all cloud data on every iDevice user in China. (source: common knowledge)

> "At the end of the day we'll be judged more on 'did we stand up for what we believed in,' not necessarily, 'do they agree with it.'"

Consider yourself judged.

With conspiracy hat on: maybe they were going after bigger fishes while working with the government or local law enforcement. So instead of targeting a possible suspect directly, they employed a kind of 6 degrees of separation.

The primary suspect (or suspicious person or one with a low "social credit": remember, even Apple reads emails now to determine a Trust Score[0]) would normally be more guarded.

> why take peoples' email passwords?

[0] https://www.independent.co.uk/...

Had no idea that MX Linux had become so well-known (or increasingly so). Thanks for pointing this out! I'm an ex-Mint user (still love what they've done with the distro and Cinnamon) not because there was anything wrong with it but because of performance issues on my admittedly lower-end (aged) laptop. Went through tons of Live CDs. anti-X drew me in (love lightweight OSes) and it was followed by MX Linux.

Been on it for about 6 months. I was just looking for a distro that would breathe new life into my laptop. I happened to get one that is a rolling release (so rare in the Linux world), running on top of debian (access to a rich assortment of programs). Did not really consider other aspects like systemd - was just looking for a performance boost.

Performance has been amazing (at the end of the day... this is the key). Firefox Quantum runs like a champ on a 10+ year old laptop where the chromes fail miserably. Added the FF extension named "h264ify" (plus the usual anti-trackers) and now Youtube Videos don't cause the laptop into meltdown.

At some point I'm going to have to replace my old non-kiosk laptop (with such a great keyboard, tons of ports, massive hard drive, 16:10 aspect ratio, replaceable components) but not today - all because of MX Linux. I think lots of Linux users are in a similar position as me (running older - tried and true - laptops).

The devil represents the compromises we're often forced to make. Having a BigTech's binary closed source driver (often working in the background) playing any role in an Open Source system is ludicrous when you think about it. Having a horned devil representing this compromise is brilliant! It's also an honest approach to the current state of things.

He was smart enough not to set up an account in Nigeria. That would have been a giveaway.

Seriously though, Google and Facebook can tell you what you had for breakfast three years ago, on any Wednesday: but they are clueless as to whom they do business with. Probably because it would involve "tracking" their own transactions in the same way...

We aren't just the product, we're the targets.

It's the same reason Windows Notepad is my fav "chat" application... when I log into someone else's Windows machine with Teamviewer. It isn't about students being clever (as some posts suggests), it's about finding the easiest solution to a problem. We work with what we have.

> THAT is the biggest reason why I see Google Docs as a chat application.

When will Google rain down hell and fury at this nonsense? When will our own government take action against this reckless and fraudulent activity? In the age where there is no accountability in tech or simply no accountability anywhere... this is just another example of the shitshow we're all living through.

Facebook is a big place. Estimates indicate 2.32 billion active users. That's 2,320,000,000 active users. One group may have 150,000 members, which translates to 150,000/2,320,000,000 - about 0.0065 percent. That's 0.000065 of the total number of active users.

In a city of 1,000,000 do we panic about what a small group of 65 people are doing? Does the opinion of the other 999,935 people in that city not matter? Or do we play with statistics to, once again, control the flow of all information - removing all input and discussion (from the other 999,935 too)?

How about in a smaller town of about 15,500 people - do we start censoring over what a single person does (this too is 0.000065 of 15.5k people)?

"one anti-vaccination group on Facebook has over 150,000 members."

Might as well censor the flat-earthers, astrology and phrenology. We will all miss a good laugh in the process

NASA's sudden interest... cause (China) and effect.

A website where you actively and publicly (within the site itself) profile yourself. Fav movies, geo location, pics, interests, etc... Plus you have lots of horny people spending countless hours on the site focused only on their sexual impulses, going on dates with strangers while being as open as they can, impulse texting, impulse phone calls.

Best security practices - the furthest thing from their minds.

Tons of attack vectors. The victims... too horny to care until they've lost accessed. Now they're forced to self-pleasure using their imagination or bing pr0n for a few days. Claw-like hands, blue balls... the signs of a hacked dating site.

I can't reconcile the two statements below, like I can't reconcile nearly everything Apple does. If you're so serious about privacy and an app (or apps) completely violated this in such a violent and litigious way - why wait to do something? Toss them off the store... for good!

What they captured without consent is so over the line, the response needs to be equally strong.

""Protecting user privacy is paramount in the Apple ecosystem."" ... ""and will take immediate action if necessary""

See? That wasn't so hard to figure out from a technical standpoint. It didn't even require the resources of a nation-state to determine what was happening with the data and how easy the spyware, data-harvesting device could be accessed (note: nearly everything nowadays is a spyware, data-harvesting machine).

Instead, we continue to get Smoke & Mirrors with lots of political grandstanding and a "news media" simply parroting the same message with click-baity headlines. The military-industrial-media complex... a hell of a mindtrip.

Now if the US could start a recall of all those IoT devices and routers that have proven backdoors and mesh-like security off the market, maybe we could take their "troll-concern" message more seriously.

Typing VPN into the form discloses that 'Lantern VPN' by Beijing Qimengjialu Technology Co., Ltd is NOT banned. Every other VPN is either banned or unavailable. Good way to test which apps/companies are direct extensions (or an integral arm) of the Chinese Government, although anyone doing business there (including Apple) is directly serving the government.

Apple, for example, provides unfettered access to their datacenters (phones, images, uploaded FaceID, messages, Geo Location, etc). They are probably serving the government much more than Beijing Qimengjialu Technology Co.