Apple's Chief Privacy Officer Jane Horvath to Depart Company

[MuppetGate]

It’s been a year, this still hasn’t (and more than likely won’t ever)happened.
They announced it, there was universal pushback, they erased all mention of it and said they’re re-thinking it.
That’s Apple speak for “it was canceled because we don’t wanna be stupid.”

The last thing they said was that they’re still planning to go ahead with it.

Apple scrubs controversial CSAM detection feature from webpage but says plans haven’t changed

The company’s position hasn’t changed since September.

www.theverge.com

They scrubbed it from their website, but the code is still present in the operating systems since late last year.

Sounds to me as if they’ve waiting for the fuss to die down before switching it on in a “security” update.

After all, promises have been made. The British government is practically drooling over its arrival. 🤷🏾

Now that their privacy spokesperson has jumped ship, I suspect activation is not too far away.

 

[Naraxus]

Your data is not stored in Chinese server. Apple must follow Chinese regulations if Apple wishes to do business in China, or any part of the world by follow respective regulation. What is so hard to understand?

Nice cop out.

So privacy matters.......except when you can make a buck. Then all bets are off.

 

[Naraxus]

That’s Apple speak for “it was canceled because we don’t wanna be stupid.”

No. That's corporate-speak for "we got caught and we need to cover our asses so we'll wait til the heat's off then go ahead and implement it anyway"

 

[emulator]

Sounds like lots of people in this forum should stop buying Apple products. Lol. If you don't like something just force it out of business and you won't have to deal with it again. So simple.

Right, the "don't like it then leave" approach. It's sheep thinking though.

 

[steve09090]

Nice cop out.

So privacy matters.......except when you can make a buck. Then all bets are off.

Based on what? Have you just made this up?

 

[Solomani]

Apple privacy chief Jane Horvath is set to leave the company to join a law firm, according to a new report from Bloomberg. Horvath has served as Apple's Chief Privacy Officer for the last couple of years, and before that, she was senior director of global privacy at the company.

Horvath has worked for Apple for more than a decade in total, and she has also worked at Google and was Chief Privacy Officer of the U.S. Department of Justice. Going forward, Horvath will be working at law firm Gibson, Dunn, and Crutcher LLP, which has worked with Apple in the past and handled Apple's recent legal battle against Epic Games.

During her time as Chief Privacy Officer, Horvath spoke about privacy publicly on behalf of Apple on several occasions, including CES in 2020 and the 2022 Computers, Privacy, and Data Protection conference in Brussels.

Bloomberg says that Horvath was also responsible for Apple's dealings with trade groups and Capitol Hill, as well as compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe.

Apple has been dealing with major potential privacy issues as of late, and is facing legislation that would weaken the protections the App Store offers the iPhone in multiple countries. The Digital Markets Act in Europe calls for the sideloading of apps, as does U.S. legislation that's being considered. Apple has not provided details on who will replace Horvath.

Article Link: Apple's Chief Privacy Officer Jane Horvath to Depart Company

I wish her well. Privacy is a moving target and a very salient issue. Apple often gets pressure from Government forces to relent on privacy, while consumers and defenders like the EFF want Apple to defend it even more. The company gets tugged in both directions. And let's not even start with the vast differences of privacy laws in foreign nations... from China to Europe, the laws are drastically different, and Apple is forced to comply.

So being in charge of privacy is a stressful job for an Apple executive. I hope her replacement is a strong and successful defender of privacy rights.

 

[J___o___h___n]

I’m not sold on iPhone privacy anymore and I bet she’s not too.

iPhone is private, well except your backups aren’t. iMessage is private but we can scan your messages and warn you your kids have received an inappropriate message. Nah. None of it’s private anymore and they know it.

 

[sdz]

Strangely virtually none of their Cloud Offerings are "private".

 

[laptech]

Apples stance on privacy has been taking some massive hits these past years with the introduction of CSAM and their further move into advertising on their products and with a number of countries looking into Apple's stance on privacy also it would not surprise me if Ms Horvath could see what is coming her way and decided to get out before the crap really hits the fan because as Chief Privacy Officer it would have all been dumped on her doorstep. More of a case of jump rather than be pushed.

 

[wanha]

Guessing she's going to have significantly less meetings and responsibilities at her new job

 

[russell_314]

Sounds to me as if they’ve waiting for the fuss to die down before switching it on in a “security” update.

I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re already doing it. I’m not sure if there’s a way to tell because with the original proposal it wasn’t going to give you any kind of notification that it was scanning so it’s just a background process.

It was weird the whole thing because they claimed it was just going to be for iCloud users but the scan would happen on the phone. They already do scanning of files in iCloud so why even bother with this? I think it was just to have a way to search someone’s iPhone upon a government request. I couldn’t imagine it would be very hard to set a search parameter for whatever they were looking for.

 

[Lioness~]

Sounds like lots of people in this forum should stop buying Apple products. Lol. If you don't like something just force it out of business and you won't have to deal with it again. So simple.

I still love my Apple products, I do.

But Apple have grown so large fast, after Steve died. Too much growth on some levels and not on others are not healthy. It takes time to grow for real, for people and for companies. Apple too often just feel shallow and contentless these days. Endless presentations with plenty of stuff, and more stuff with hours of boring little perfect Apple robots. The total opposite to everything Steve’s and Joni’s keynotes was. Craig is still himself though and break the pattern of the growing Apple robot.
Otherwise, perfectly planned, structured keynotes with all these people, and hardly ever anything that feel real.
Just stuff, more and more stuff from Tim's perfectly organized Apple in longer and longer more boring keynotes.

As more I hear I am detaching further and further away from the company. But that’s life. Most love stories doesn’t last forever either. I kind of have separated from my relationship from Apple.
That’s it.

 

[laptech]

I still love my Apple products, I do.

But Apple have grown so large fast, after Steve died. Too much growth on some levels and not on others are not healthy. It takes time to grow for real, for people and for companies. Apple too often just feel shallow and contentless these days. Endless presentations with plenty of stuff, and more stuff with hours of boring little perfect Apple robots. The total opposite to everything Steve’s and Joni’s keynotes was. Craig is still himself though and break the pattern of the growing Apple robot.
Otherwise, perfectly planned, structured keynotes with all these people, and hardly ever anything that feel real.
Just stuff, more and more stuff from Tim's perfectly organized Apple in longer and longer more boring keynotes.

As more I hear I am detaching further and further away from the company. But that’s life. Most love stories doesn’t last forever either. I kind of have separated from my relationship from Apple.
That’s it.

Implementation of CSAM and Apple wanting to increase it's advertising revenue (reported in MR a few weeks ago) is what I think will push many Apple users away from Apple. I've been a long time Apple customer and I am having thoughts about moving away from Apple.

 

[cyanite]

Is that why they've installed backdoors in iOS under guise of "for the children?

Baseless conspiracy claim.

They scrubbed it from their website, but the code is still present in the operating systems since late last year.

Evidence for this? The system wasn’t implemented at any point, as far as I know.

No. That's corporate-speak for "we got caught and we need to cover our asses so we'll wait til the heat's off then go ahead and implement it anyway"

Got caught? You mean after publicly announcing the system and documenting it in great detail even publishing a paper?

I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re already doing it. I’m not sure if there’s a way to tell because with the original proposal it wasn’t going to give you any kind of notification that it was scanning so it’s just a background process.

They might as well just do it in the cloud, in that case, which gives them even more information without this elaborate system.

They already do scanning of files in iCloud so why even bother with this?

Because doing it to is way means much less information is revealed to Apple. Of course most people don’t understand that, but instead exclusively focus on all the “what if in the future, this and that”.

I think it was just to have a way to search someone’s iPhone upon a government request.

You are entitled to believe in all sorts of conspiracy theories, of course. But it makes no sense and there is no evidence for it. Why publicly announce and excruciatingly detailing the system if the plan was to use it in secret? Also, this system is very much not ideal for what you are speculating.

If anyone bothered reading about how the crypto works, this system was designed to reveal as little as possible to both the client and server. Simply scanning on the server side is much easier and more efficient for Apple. But no, people want to immediately go with the worst possible what-ifs.

 

[Ashbash75]

Evidence???? You do know what site you are on? 🤣🤣🤣

Side note: I wonder what she will nick when she leaves? 🤪

 

[krspkbl]

Leaving before Apple goes in hard with adverts in all their apps.

 

[ian87w]

Leaving before Apple goes in hard with adverts in all their apps.

Or the other way around. Hopefully this means Apple didn't go through with the ads. I mean she was an ex Google....

 

[ian87w]

I’m not sold on iPhone privacy anymore and I bet she’s not too.

iPhone is private, well except your backups aren’t. iMessage is private but we can scan your messages and warn you your kids have received an inappropriate message. Nah. None of it’s private anymore and they know it.

The iMessage scan thing is opt in, aka it's optional. You can just not opt in if it bothers you. And I believe it's doing the scan locally using ML, not server side.

I'm still sold on iPhone privacy, as iOS still have less data being exposed to 3rd party apps compared to Android.

 

[Morgenland]

How many such completely useless departments are there at Apple?

Even if you can't imagine it: the world is more complex, a food service department alone is not enough for a global company that also wants to defend independent ideas. Especially with this division you should have thought before you write such non..
Macrumors wouldn't have written such article if they didn't also know there is a lot at stake.

 

[Expos of 1969]

Apple privacy chief Jane Horvath is set to leave the company to join a law firm, according to a new report from Bloomberg. Horvath has served as Apple's Chief Privacy Officer for the last couple of years, and before that, she was senior director of global privacy at the company.

Horvath has worked for Apple for more than a decade in total, and she has also worked at Google and was Chief Privacy Officer of the U.S. Department of Justice. Going forward, Horvath will be working at law firm Gibson, Dunn, and Crutcher LLP, which has worked with Apple in the past and handled Apple's recent legal battle against Epic Games.

During her time as Chief Privacy Officer, Horvath spoke about privacy publicly on behalf of Apple on several occasions, including CES in 2020 and the 2022 Computers, Privacy, and Data Protection conference in Brussels.

Bloomberg says that Horvath was also responsible for Apple's dealings with trade groups and Capitol Hill, as well as compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe.

Apple has been dealing with major potential privacy issues as of late, and is facing legislation that would weaken the protections the App Store offers the iPhone in multiple countries. The Digital Markets Act in Europe calls for the sideloading of apps, as does U.S. legislation that's being considered. Apple has not provided details on who will replace Horvath.

Article Link: Apple's Chief Privacy Officer Jane Horvath to Depart Company

That photo is a good example of why, if you must have an iMac, its back should be facing a wall. What a terrible looking mess of white cables.

 

[Bogstandard]

Dibs on the last flotation device,,,See ya Cap'n!

 

[ghanwani]

With a strategic change afoot on monetizing user data at Apple, they need someone that knows how to say the right words.

 

[krspkbl]

Or the other way around. Hopefully this means Apple didn't go through with the ads. I mean she was an ex Google....

Hopefully but I don't think so. Wasn't it Eddie Cue who was pushing for ads?

 

[ericwn]

How many such completely useless departments are there at Apple?

One for every corresponding silly comment here I guess.

 

[I7guy]

I'm a lawyer working in a law firm. She should've stayed at Apple.

Pearson Hardman?

Does't that say something about Apple, huh? 😉

Could be she wanted to just practice law and not corporate politics.

Implementation of CSAM and Apple wanting to increase it's advertising revenue (reported in MR a few weeks ago) is what I think will push many Apple users away from Apple. I've been a long time Apple customer and I am having thoughts about moving away from Apple.

CSAM is coming to most phones near you, imo. I’d rather have csam scanning than AI in real time trying to determine if your photos as csam. I don’t think this will push apple users away from apple. MR posters do not represent the way apple users think.

Apples stance on privacy has been taking some massive hits these past years with the introduction of CSAM and their further move into advertising on their products

No it hasn’t, imo.

and with a number of countries looking into Apple's stance on privacy also it would not surprise me if Ms Horvath could see what is coming her way and decided to get out before the crap really hits the fan

Could be she wanted to practice law differently and got a nice comp package to do so. Nah, she got out before the **** hit the fan. /s

because as Chief Privacy Officer it would have all been dumped on her doorstep. More of a case of jump rather than be pushed.

I don’t believe this is the case. It’s only one or so persons opinion.