Portside

Apple Computer is the current champion of privacy against U.S. government attempts to expand its spying on us. The company, a frequent NSA and FBI collaborator in the past, finds itself in the strange position of confronting a federal court order to dislodge its iPhone security system, an action Apple insists will cripple encryption as a privacy-protection measure.

Increasingly technology companies are aggressively gathering information on their unsuspecting customers even when they are not using a company’s app or software. The ride-hailing company Uber, for example, has changed its privacy policy to track its users through a “unique identifier,” even after they have arrived at their Uber destination. Yet these same tech execs are taking byzantine steps to keep their personal information out of the public domain.

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