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Apple Adds Push Notification Data to Law Enforcement Guidelines
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That was nearly 8 years ago.
We are in the here and now. US legislation has caught up big time, not so sure about the behaviors and awareness of the public, but yes, as I've highlighted already, it is considered safe.
I haven't heard of a government yet that has ruined people's life in an instant, at least not where I live here in Europe. Prerequisite for this is of course that it is a democratic state (= one that "belongs" to all people). When you live under the rule of a dictator, that is a completely different story of course.
So when I was talking about governments, I was thinking of modern 21st century European governments with a certain culture of rationalism, under the rule of democracy and human rights.
The reason I'd prefer the government (or a big company) to have my data is that it is more secure than if a small company (or a small town government) had it. In reality, the difference is not government vs. company, but big organisation vs. small organisation.
Small organisations most of the time just do not have the infrastructure, resources or knowledge to protect your data from being abused. On the other hand, it's much more unlikely that Apple or the European Union will be hacked.
This however has another downside, which is big monopolies and the power and knowledge concentrated in the hands of a few. Ideally, information should be public (anonymised) and everyone should be allowed to access it equally. When companies collect primary data, they could receive (research) funds for example, meaning they would be paid to get this data, but the data would be public, and other individuals or organisations could use it.
This way, everyone could have equal access to information and knowledge and they would be distributed more evenly. In fact we are already on this way and not that far from it in some sense, but it's also very complicated of course.
Still I am very sceptical of these plans and that governments read our push notifications and other Apple data. I think politicians should be subjected to much, much stronger controls. More people need to go into politics and it needs to be a field not only reserved to those who become full-time politicians, but it needs to be like voluntary work and there needs to be more movement (more people who go in and out of politics spontaneously) in there, with a peaceful, humanist and rationalist culture.
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You can provide sources if they existYou may want to fact-check that statement
LOL, Is that how it works? You make a statement without providing resources, but those suggesting you fact-check that then needs to provide the evidence. Hmm, nope, you better check your facts if you truly think Google (or any other company) doesn't have to act upon a subpoena and only complies with court-orders.
It’s sad if that’s your world view. I’m not saying you don’t need to careful, but throwing all the governments in the world on one big pile is just wrong.
In case of the EU: why did they just now reach an agreement for an EU law to protect journalists and human right defenders.
Why did they bother with GDPR which was exactly targeted and guaranteeing privacy?
To be fair, "the EU" doesn't exist as a single, whole something. It's an extremely decentralised supranational organisation with many different institutions. The European Parliament (which we all voted for, and which we'll vote again 2024 - it's the people's representation) doesn't necessarily have the same interests as the two European Councils (heads of states and ministries of each member state - the "government" arm of each member if you will) or the European Commission (the actual government of the EU).
These actors have a different basis that drives them (governments, people, businesses ...) and they are all in an interdependence with each other, and pull and push each other.
The Parliament would like to have more power from the Commission for example, and in the past decades, it has managed to get this power (it can now block laws from the commission and more people are taking part in the elections than ever before) and I believe its power will further increase in the decades to come (to it receiving the right to actually propose laws and bills).
Lol. You have no idea how governments operate