Apple is continuing to oppose existing antitrust laws in the United States that could bring major changes to the App Store. A letter sent by Apple to the Senate Judiciary Committee and received 9to5Mac specifically rebutted claims that Apple’s anti-circumvention stance is “baseless, dishonest, and dishonest.”
This letter from Apple to the Senate Judiciary Committee was signed on March 3 and signed by Timothy Powderly, the company’s senior director of government affairs. The letter was sent in response to allegations from cryptographer Bruce Schneier, who told lawmakers that Apple’s security concerns regarding the transmission were “baseless.”
In his own letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, sent in January, Schneier wrote:
I would like to address some of the unfounded security concerns raised about these bills. It is simply not true that this law poses a risk to users’ privacy and security. In fact, it’s more fair to say that the law puts those companies’ mining business models at risk. Their claims about risks to privacy and security are misleading and insignificant, and are motivated by their personal interests rather than the public interest.
Reuters was the first to report on Apple’s response to Schneier, and 9to5Mac A full copy of the document has now been obtained. Apple explains that Schneier’s accusations are “particularly disappointing” and demonstrates that “even talented engineering practitioners” can mess up the issues surrounding transfer:
Given our shared esteem for Mr. Schneier, these accusations are particularly disappointing. In our experience, delivering top-notch security and privacy to a modern computing platform at the scale of billions of devices is one of complex engineering and policy efforts and most challenging, and many things about this work are still easily misunderstood. Mr. Schneier’s letter emphasizes that even talented technicians, if they don’t work on the main problems in the field, can mess things up.
Throughout the letter, Apple points to a number of different examples of third-party app stores that house malware-infected apps and apps that steal user data. One of the examples cited by Apple centers around the Android ecosystem.
In the Android ecosystem, which has 50 times more malware than iOS, Nokia found that “the fact that Android apps can be downloaded from anywhere is still a big problem, as users have Apps can be freely downloaded from third-party app stores, many of which, while functioning, have been Trojanized.
The letter continued:
In Nokia’s 2021 threat intelligence report, Android devices accounted for 50.31% of all infected devices, followed by Windows devices with 23.1% and macOS devices with 9.2%. iOS devices make up such a small percentage that it’s not even detached, instead being transformed into “other”. We consider this a success in protecting our users, and it could never have been done without our industry-leading last line of defense, our device security controls. me, working in tandem with the leading security and privacy protections we make available to our users through the App Store and App Review.
As expected, Apple also pointed to some of the protections offered by the App Store, including the review process, App Tracking Transparency, and Nutrition Labels for Privacy. Apple says none of this is possible with third-party app stores.
The full letter is embedded below.
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