How so? Any competent intelligence service will not just depend on the goodwill of a corporation to secure access to assets and intelligence.
If they cooperate that's good and convenient, but that does not mean the intelligence service will not set in place contingencies for if the other side suddenly decides not to play ball anymore.
I consider that plausible with Google due to Google's funding history [0], but Apple is afaik way less "influenced" and the way this pwn was pulled off could also have been done by compromising Apple's hardware supply chain and not Apple itself.
Particularly considering how in the past Apple has been very willing to be on the receiving end of negative headlines for not giving US agencies decrypted access to iCloud accounts of terrorist suspects, with Google I don't remember it ever having been the target of such controversy, meaning they willingly oblige with all incoming requests.
The centralization of the web through a for profit oligopoly is not the same as having a central respiratory of data by a non-profit.
One of those destroyed net neutrality and most online free speech, the other is a charity trying to be the last memorial of it.
> The only way you're getting anyone to host things from the past is for there to be an incentive. The only incentive possible is a centralized repository.
What about the incentive of keeping a somewhat thrustworthy and complete digital historical record? Is that worth nothing outside of its sheer monetization potential?
Try doing that outside of the FAANG dominance and you have some work cut out for you because they've spent the last decades either buying up any prospective "competition" or straight up marginalizing it into irrelevance.
Which is, to state it again, the antithesis to what the web was supposed to be, it started as a scientific venture [0], it inspired a whole new way of looking at the world and our minds in it [1].
Profit incentives came only later, they were not inherint to this space, they invaded it and took it over.
Yes, I'm romanitizing a lot of idealism here, but I think it's important to remember that era and mindset of the early web.
It's important to remind people that the current web was neither the goal nor has it still much to do with the web of the old, a place of counter-culture, not of corporate mainstream pushing overwhelming government messages while keeping more tabs on you than even the Stasi could ever dream about.
This ignores that such a breaking up of the US would very likely be based on similar dynamics as "balkanizations" that see smaller groups put their own identidy above that of the bigger group.
Sentiments that will be reinforced during a civil war when these groups keep trading violence and atrocities with each other, that creates a lot of bad blood and tends to make people identify in ways that differentiate them from "the enemy".
Not even Americans are immune to that, it's an issue latent to this day whenever state rights vs federal government comes up.
Then go right ahead and do that, there will be a myriad of official government instutions, from all over the world, that would be very interested in your findings.
Or MS could simply share the keys with those government institutions there have been literally asking for it, to see wether Windows is actually sending home privacy relevant data.
But the matter of fact is it's a very real issue and still on-going problem.
Just because investing a lot of effort could shed some further light on it does not really change anything about that or the non-compliant behavior MS engages in.
Security only being as good as the effort lobbed at it to break it, is not really a novel or useful insight in this scenario.
> I don't doubt that Windows collects and transmits telemetry data (hell, text editors do that nowadays), but if an analysis of that exists, it is not in this article.
Such an analysis does not exist because that traffic is encrypted. Which is also the reason why using Windows 10/11 is not fully compliant with EU privacy laws in places like Germany, as there is no telling what Windows is actually phoning home.
Officially Windows 10/11 can be used but only after jumping through a lot of hoops that involve turning off the telemtry and phoning home, but even then only with an "acceptable residual risk" [0]
The only reason this isn't a bigger topic is because there is no realistic alternative; Everything is tailored to MS, and MS spends absurd amounts of money and effort to prevent anything from changing that.
So the majority just goes with the "easiest" and most convenient solution, even when it might actullay be an "illegal" solution that enables a ton of industrial espionage.
> I don't share this opinion personally, it would be only two times worse, it could be considered but at 50 to 100 times worse than non fossil tech, it's just not worth investing.
This ain't about investments for the long term, it's about having a transition fuel into fully renewable, and that is needed for any realistic approach to the problem.
As the fossil fuel reliance doesn't only extend to the energy sector, but also manufacturing industries, where hydrocarbons, as a resource, are responsible for pretty much everything that defines modern life. [0]
> Additionally to these environmental problems, it's one of most expensive infrastructure-wise
The infrastructure is expensive, but it's also the only existing energy infrastructure which can realistically be retooled for renewable replacement through green hydrogen.
Now you can point out how hydrogen has also expensive infrastructure and even worse storage problems, which is true. But as of right now, green hydrogen is the only plausible way to wean ourselves off our fossil fuel dependence as a manufacturing resource [1].
It's a dimension to this way too few people have on their radar, as most of the public debate is solely centered on electricity generation from fossil fuels, when that's actually the easiest problem to fix with renewables.
But the dependencies on fossil fuels as manufacturing resource, fixing those is a much bigger and involved task than making electricity grids green and renewable.
Afaik on an international level there's been a somewhat universal consent that natural gas is the "transition fossil fuel of choice" [0], due to being the fossil fuel with the lowest emissions.
It also has the added bonus that gas infrastructure can realistically be retooled for green hydrogen, and related products.
If they cooperate that's good and convenient, but that does not mean the intelligence service will not set in place contingencies for if the other side suddenly decides not to play ball anymore.