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Leaked Recording: Inside Apple's Global War On Leakers (theoutline.com)
Reader citadrianne writes: A recording of an internal briefing at Apple earlier this month obtained by The Outline sheds new light on how far the most valuable company in the world will go to prevent leaks about new products. The briefing, titled 'Stopping Leakers -- Keeping Confidential at Apple,' was led by Director of Global Security David Rice, Director of Worldwide Investigations Lee Freedman, and Jenny Hubbert, who works on the Global Security communications and training team. According to the hour-long presentation, Apple's Global Security team employs an undisclosed number of investigators around the world to prevent information from reaching competitors, counterfeiters, and the press, as well as hunt down the source when leaks do occur. Some of these investigators have previously worked at U.S. intelligence agencies like the National Security Administration (NSA), law enforcement agencies like the FBI and the U.S. Secret Service, and in the U.S. military. Top-notch reporting from The Outline, consider reading the full report. During the briefing, a company executive said they have been able to find two employees who leaked information to media.
Of course, the irony of a leak about leakers being leaked is amusing.
I heard you hate leakers, so we put a leak in your leak, so you can leak while you leak.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I fully agree on fair wages bro, but the shit after that is pure fucking insane.
You have to be retarded to think a rise in wages will prevent leaks. Obviously you are an ideologue and you can not help but being duped into thinking that the belief system you operate under is the fix for every problem you see.
Possibly if you opened your mind a bit you could operate intelligently on the facts around you instead of looking like a pathetic retard spouting crazy shit.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
I didn't say the approach will cure the problem. Of course leaks will happen no matter how high the salaries are but higher salaries would probably lower the incentives significantly.
sudo rm -r -f --no-preserve-root /
I think some of these leaks, are leaks "on purpose". Apple, for better or worse, is great at marketing. To built buzz/hype for an upcoming product, you have to know that most companies "leak" some things on purpose.
> Some of these investigators have previously worked at U.S. intelligence agencies like the National Security Administration (NSA)
Credentials check out
Those people you mention are not Apple employees, I'm not sure why you'd expect Apple is paying their wages at all.
The opposite is mostly true. You very rarely hear of leaks from Apple employees in the US, because those in engineering are in a job market that consists significantly of companies looking to outsource, offshore and H1B every possible thing they can. One does not intentionally jeopardize a top flight job by doing something like that, particularly since they are going to be blackballed and have trouble gaining employment anywhere similar. The cost to get someone to leak in this job market, assuming said person is not a total moron, is probably $5-$10M, depending on what he thinks he needs to retire at a quality of life acceptable to him.
In contrast if you live in China, or some other country that is mostly being outsourced TO, then the cost of leaking is whatever makes it worth your while to find another job. For someone who works in a factory, that's probably not a lot at all, and it's no big deal to them, they'll just find a new job (possibly by same employer, working on products for a different foreign company).
Treat the problem rather than the symptoms
Maybe they should start paying the chinese workers fair wages so the won't have an incentive to leak stuff
I didn't say the approach will cure the problem.
You stated quite clearly that the problem WAS the wages. The problem is not wages. The problem is that the incentives are many and huge. Also the newer Chinese culture is built around the idea of cheating and theft. They have entire regions dedicated to it.
In short, if you raised wages by 50%, it would not make more than a 1% difference in leaks.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
... "who later disappeared from public." :D
I don't know about you but my wife doesn't feel supported at all when I bring home the cache.
They do get paid fair wages. It's a much better job than similar jobs at other local companies. Or perhaps by "fair" you mean US wages? You might consider that to be fair, but the reality is they would be out of a job because doctors and teachers and educated professionals would be taking those jobs instead of what they trained to do. In the mean time all those professional jobs would be unfilled and you'd be doing serious damage to the community, all in the name of what you, as an outsider who knows nothing, considers "fair". Those pesky unintended consequences.
I'm getting tired with all the leaks. It's like looking at all the presents under the Christmas tree and knowing what is in each wrapped box. It takes all the fun out of it. Let me be surprised!
Whew! This water sure is cold!
AC talking shit.
Means as much as your life does. Nothing.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Most leaks that originate in Asia come from component suppliers. Apple has little control over wages deep in their supply line, even if there was some reason to believe that would stop leaks (it wouldn't).
Apple does not directly employ many people in China, but the people it does employ are pretty well paid by Chinese standards, and Apple is considered a prestigious company to work for. The contracting assembly companies also pay well by Chinese standards. A Foxconn worker in Shenzhen can take home about $600 per month, which is considered middle income in China. Workers in Chongqing take home less, but the cost of living there is also less, and it is much easier for migrant workers to visit their families back on the farm on weekends and holidays.
So Apple needs to start paying other company's employees fair wages? It would be very difficult for apple to enforce any terms where they set the wages.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
Are you saying that the Chinese do not currently have entire regions of their country dedicated to copyright and patent infringement?
No?
Just because a fact describes something happening within a culture that is negative does not make it wrong.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Other than the title and the content, you are correct.
Get a fact.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
I love the fact that our police and intelligence agencies provide a never-ending stream of corporate mercenaries for hire.
Wouldn't it make more sense for some of these people (FBI, NSA, etc) just to be barred from working in private intelligence jobs? Anyone above a certain level with 10+ years has a choice to either keep working to full pension age or get a partial pension, but in either case they are barred from working as private intelligence/enforcement mercenaries.
It's one thing for an ex-street cop to work as a security guard or a bouncer, but should we really be spending a bunch of taxpayer money training and educating FBI, NSA or other intelligence-type people just so they can take that knowledge and information and apply it to what amounts to private enforcement and intelligence gathering efforts?
Laugh at what you want. The fact that volodymyrbiryuk was very clear in his comment are not taken away by pathetic lies about intent.
The title and the content are clear.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Why should she be impressed when you bring home big bags of tag RAM you've pulled from old 486 motherboards at your job at the recycling center?
I guess they need to work harder on their strategy.
I tend to rant.
A better approach would be to bring the jobs back to the USA & Western countries.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
In order for the buzz/hype to be actually relevant, you need very precisely time the "leak".
If you release it too early/build too much anticipation, you risk being the victim of Osborne Effect, and you will be sitting on a huge pile of unsold older-generation hardware, as the (potential) userbase is holding and waiting to see the next-generation before buying it. (This supposedly killed the Osbone Executive & Vixen)
Apple needs specially to be careful with this as (at least from the outside, to a non-Apple user like me) it seems that they only have a limited span of generations selling at one point of time.
Basically, they are only selling "current gen" hardware.
At the conferences, when they announce officially newer hardware, it's usually with added comment "it's shipping now". Meaning that newer hardware in the new "only current one" that they are selling.
Meaning that by that point, they must have cleared the older hardware, and must be ready to ship the new one.
Also, in addition to that, Apple are a high profile target, meaning that asian-noname hardware cloner will try as much as possible to provide cheap knock-of s of their hardware. A too early leak also means that some no-name chinese cloner will have a longer lead time to try to produce a cheapo android clone with the same feature.
So basically : Apple needs to tighly control the leaks, so only what they decide to "leak on purpose" gets released - when it's at their most advantage e.g. for building anticipation. And so they avoid harmful leaks happening by genuine accident (employee leaking stuff too early, leading to Osborne Effect and un-shipped old-gen stock, or marked flood with cheap noname asian knock-ofs and the latest iGadget losing part of its elitists appeal).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
... but honestly, any company working with China has to employ EXTENSIVE measures to not be completely ripped off. One thing you never do is give them a complete design. You have two or three manufacturers and they each get a piece of the design--never the whole thing.
We live in an age were knowledge is MONEY. Our social security numbers. Our medical records. Our personal information is _valuable_ enough for hackers to spend the time to steal. Now, imagine having a patent or new design in one of the (if not THE) most watched tech companies in the world. Anything they do, has immediate ramifications. Any new API and the industry reacts and adapts, and/or competes. There's tons of interest (=money) in knowing what Apple does before the general public does.
The task of keeping Apple secret, even when an employee is disgruntled or fired, must be a monumental task.
Apple didn't do so bad when they weren't an intelligence service with a technology company attached to it.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Top-notch reporting from The Outline
Given that they couldn't even get the name of the NSA right, I'd say it's medium-notch reporting at best.
And.....que the rabid libertarians to fervently exclaim how the company and board members have an ABSOLUTE obligation to deliver continued increased profits, for ever and ever. Any other action is a betrayal of their sacred mission to procure massive wealth at all costs.
By the time the factory workers know, it matters very little. It's during design and development (read 6 figure salaries) that the leaks matter the most.