David Kendall

Computer Scientist, Socialist, Magpie (@nufc)

[Barry Malone @malonebarry]

Everyone can see that Labour MPs have been fed a line tonight and here they come, the sheep that they are, to make accusations of antisemitism. The pathetic cynicism of it says so much about who they are. There was a time when Labour politicians genuinely believed in something.

[Mehdi Hasan @mehdirhasan]

My entire Twitter timeline is full of UK politicians and media politicians angrily and passionately condemning a Green Party motion about Zionism. Meanwhile, over in Gaza…

“At least six Palestinians were killed in Israeli air strikes on Gaza at the weekend, medics have said. At least five people, including four women, were killed on Saturday when an apartment building was struck. Two of the dead were Christian women – a mother and daughter”

Crickets from UK political and media elites.

Palestinians, as ever, are unpeople in the eyes of much of the British press.

https://t.co/zhTRunwWeB

[Muhammad Shehada @muhammadshehad2]

🚨I checked every single name on Israel's list of 170 Gazan "terrorist" journalists. It's the most sloppy shameless fraud possible🧵

In the overwhelming majority of those listed, the IDF presents ZERO credible evidence. In most of them, their pages are literally blank.

[Jeremy Loffredo @loffredojeremy]

When you search “NAZA” on X, looking for information or clips from the widely acclaimed documentary which is 80 minutes of IDF soldiers admitting to war crimes and likening themselves to Nazis, the search result gives you the Israeli state produced film of the same exact name name, also shot “anonymously” on Tel Aviv rooftops in a similar style of the actually NAZA film, but instead, it’s IDF soldiers regurgitating every propaganda-line you’ve heard from the Israeli government post-October 7th.

[Double Down News @DoubleDownNews]

Green Party members pass 'Zionism is racism' motion at conference.

Mainstream media & Zionists meltdown but, Zionism IS Racism:

[Paul Walsh @Paul__Walsh]

Apple announced stricter macOS Full Disk Access controls following reports that Muse accessed a journalist’s private Messages. Apple’s decision has nothing to do with privacy or safety.

Apple recently warned that Full Disk Access can expose an entire Mac, including files, email, messages and browsing history, and that communication apps can compromise private data belonging to other people.

These are legitimate security and privacy concerns, but Apple’s new restrictions give it tighter control over which third parties can access local Mac data, making it harder for competitors to build assistants with the same depth of access as Apple’s own software and chosen partners.

Last month, Inc. columnist Jason Aten said Muse had synced data from his local Messages database despite his belief that he had never authorised that access, and said Full Disk Access was switched off when he checked.

Meta disputes his account and says Muse can’t read Messages unless someone enables Full Disk Access and separately enables the Messages connector. Full Disk Access by itself makes any non root file readable, including the Messages database, so the Messages connector isn’t a technical limitation.

Apple announced its new restrictions on 2 October, 13 days after Aten’s column. Meta can’t be trusted when it comes to what it says about customer data and its approach to privacy, so readers should assume the worst possible risks when it comes to Muse. But pointing the finger at Meta isn’t the purpose of this post.

💡 Apple had already been warned about this privacy risk.

In August, I published a technical analysis of OpenAI's Messages integration, which handles iMessage, RCS, and SMS, comparing it to spyware. I warned it gives the US government a side entrance to access private communications, so the FBI can stop pressuring Apple to build a "safe" backdoor for iMessage, which is protected by end-to-end encryption.

Proton cited my analysis. On 26 August, Fortune interviewed me about it, put my concerns directly to OpenAI and asked Apple if it had anticipated existing macOS permissions being used to let AI software read and search Messages.

🚨 Apple didn’t respond.

I don’t think my analysis, Fortune’s reporting or Proton citing my work caused Apple to act. Muse is different because Meta competes directly with Apple, and restricting Full Disk Access makes it harder for rival AI assistants to access and analyse local Mac data.

In August, I argued that iMessage encryption doesn’t protect a conversation once another company is given access to the readable messages on the Mac. ChatGPT can search, summarise and draft from those conversations, while the other participants are never told their private messages have been opened up to third-party software.

Some security professionals from companies like Palo Alto Networks claimed giving ChatGPT or another third party access to Messages is no different from taking a screenshot. That comparison is technically ridiculous. A screenshot exposes selected information chosen by one person.

Giving a tech company access to messages that are supposed to be protected by end-to-end encryption creates persistent, automated and searchable access to years of private communications at scale. It can expose relationships, locations, medical information, legal discussions, financial details, attachments and everything else stored in those conversations.

OpenAI told Fortune the integration is optional, requires permission, runs locally by default and doesn’t automatically index an entire Messages history. OpenAI ignored all of my concerns, which shows irresponsible design and dishonest marketing. Building a consumer product for private messages without explaining risks or trade offs is unacceptable, especially when the person granting permission isn’t the only individual inside those conversations.

Since Meta launched Muse, Apple has finally admitted that communication apps using Full Disk Access can compromise the privacy of non consenting participants. That was the core of my analysis before Apple announced these new restrictions. So what changed?

Apple tolerated OpenAI’s Messages integration but panicked when Meta launched a product that requires the same permissions. Apple didn’t mind ChatGPT exposing customers and their contacts to grave privacy risks because OpenAI was already a close partner, built into its products.

Remember, they refused to respond to Fortune’s questions. Apple integrated ChatGPT into Siri, Writing Tools and Apple Intelligence in 2024, giving itself complete control over data transmissions, consent displays and software execution.

Meta’s Muse is a competing personal AI agent built to connect with apps, services and local data. Meta wants Muse built into daily life, and people downloaded it more than 2.5 million times in its first 13 days. On 18 September, Muse became the top free US iPhone app, passing ChatGPT. That rank gives Apple an anticompetitive motive to restrict it.

Apple controls what third parties can access on a Mac, which allows it to cut competing AI assistants off from local data in the name of security.

@TimSweeneyEpic warned me about this after I published my ChatGPT analysis. He told me to be careful because Apple could use privacy arguments like mine to "block or kneecap competing AI assistants in order to favor its own".

I still don’t believe Apple should allow any third party application to have persistent access to iMessage communications that end to end encryption is supposed to protect. OpenAI’s Messages integration remains one of the most dangerous consumer software designs I’ve analysed, because people are giving a tech company searchable access to private communications involving everyone they talk to. That includes the US government, which only has to ask OpenAI in the name of national security or any other excuse it makes up.

But the answer should be a specific technical safeguard around Messages and similarly sensitive data, not a broad restriction that gives Apple even more control over what competing AI software can do on a Mac. That safeguard has to cover Meta, which can’t be trusted to tell the truth about what it does with customer data.

If Apple’s true concern was customer privacy, it would have responded to OpenAI’s Messages integration in August when Fortune asked for comment, 6 weeks before the Muse "controversy".

Apple Intelligence is deeply integrated into macOS, and Apple says most of that processing happens on the device or through Private Cloud Compute, so Apple’s own software doesn’t need to compete on equal technical terms with a third party assistant asking for broad local access.

I now question anything Apple says about customer privacy and what it can and can’t see. On 3 October, @jack said Apple had removed Bitchat from its India App Store on a demand from India’s IT ministry.

That was 10 weeks after India’s cybercrime agency ordered GitHub to remove Bitchat’s code because its design impedes lawful interception. Apple also removed Bitchat from its China App Store in February at the request of China’s internet regulator. Apple claims it stands by its principles under government pressure, yet it removed a private messaging app from 2 countries because their governments sent a request without legal justification.

Restrict Full Disk Access broadly enough and Apple can say it’s protecting privacy while making it harder for Meta, OpenAI’s competitors and independent developers to build third party software with the same depth of local context available to Apple’s close partners, so I believe this is about protectionism, not customer security.

I believe Muse has just given Apple the excuse Tim Sweeney warned me about.

You can find this and other articles on my Substack - link in my bio and everything is free.

[Sangita Myska @SangitaMyska]

Very unwise for Sagal Abdi-Wali, Labour’s candidate in Holborn & St Pancras, to campaign with Steve Reed MP. His rabid anger at critics of Israel’s genocide was reprehensible. Listen to actor @nadiasawalha discuss how Reed publicly humiliated her husband was a racist - with NO evidence - for his criticism of Israel in my interview on @zeteouk here: https://t.co/kU8ZZeo9Wv

[Farrukh @implausibleblog]

Helen Lewis suggests that renationalising the water industry will spook the bond markets

Baroness Jones explains that "several are close to insolvency if not bankrupt, so taking them over makes sense"

My view: England is the only country in the world to have fully privatised its water and sewerage system. Most countries decided something as fundamental as water should remain publicly owned or controlled.

So when Helen Lewis warns that renationalisation could “spook the bond markets”, Baroness Jones has an obvious response: several water companies are already financially distressed. Thames Water alone has accumulated enormous debts.

That is where public frustration comes from. Customers cannot switch supplier, yet they have endured rising bills, sewage pollution and years of financial engineering.

Investors are supposed to take risk. If a monopoly providing an essential service becomes financially unsustainable, “the bond markets might not like it” cannot be an excuse for government never to intervene.

Public ownership isn’t some global experiment. England’s model is the experiment.

[Andrew Feinstein @andrewfeinstein]

The Greens have an anti-Zionist leader & believe Zionism is racism. They have the support of many anti & non-Zionist Jews, who constitute 1/3 of British Jewry.
Anti-Zionism is a Jewish ideology, developed by Jews, which suggests that Jewish & global safety & security is best served by diverse, vibrant Jewish communities across the world rather than by an ethno-nationalist, racist Jewish state. And if you doubt Israel is a racist apartheid state, remind yourself that it & apartheid SA are the only countries identified as such by the world’s highest court. And that Archbishop Desmond Tutu & Nelson Mandela believed that Israeli apartheid was more brutal than South Africa’s.

[Defend Our Juries @DefendOurJuries]

DEFEND OUR JURIES

We’ve stood against David Lammy’s attack on trial by jury since it was first proposed. We believe it to have been a direct attempt to block acquittals of people of conscience in protest trials.

This is a step in the right direction:

https://t.co/4c7PLe2FOy

[Reclaim The Net @ReclaimTheNetHQ]

India has now pulled BitChat from the App Store through Apple.

BitChat works over Bluetooth with no internet, no phone number and no account. That is exactly why Delhi wants it gone. In July the government shut down the network around Jantar Mantar, and protesters used BitChat to keep talking.

The government has now gone after the network, then the code on GitHub, and now the app store. Each step has been aimed at the same target, which is leaving people with no way to communicate when the internet is cut off.

Apple's notice says the app "includes content that is illegal in India" and never names any content. Apple simply complied.

https://t.co/HzoJ7s3blS

[Richard Sanders @PulaRJS]

The Greens have voted comfortably in favour of the motion Zionism is racism.

Given the ferocity of the backlash it will provoke I’m sympathetic to anti-Zionist Greens who feel that, tactically, they could have done without it at this time.

The problem is Zionism IS racism. If you can work out a way to create an ethnically defined political entity in a territory that, at the start of the process, was almost entirely populated by people of a different ethnicity, without resorting to ethnic cleansing and Apartheid, then you need to tell the Israelis. Because they’ve certainly never worked it out.

Zionists’ key weapon is their ability to obfuscate and complicate. This cuts through that and provides the moral clarity they dread.

We will live in a time of genocide. If not now, when?

[Good Law Project @GoodLawProject]

The Department for Health and Social Care has written to us demanding we take down our video criticising Palantir’s NHS contract – we won’t
https://t.co/QlfqhsUtlS

[Greens4Palestine @Greens4P]

Palestinian Lecturer in International Law and Legal Theory Dr Shahd Hammouri endorse the motion Zionism is Racism.

Today we make history.
Today is the day we build the Western world's first, major, Anti-Zionist Party.

[Michael Rosen 💙💙🎓🎓 NICE 爷爷 @MichaelRosenYes]

Here is part of a post on Facebook, which I think goes some way to replying to Laura Marcus's tweet below.

[We Own It @We_OwnIt]

Many water companies are near insolvency, so they want to hike our water bills again

The government must say NO. If they can't survive, let them go bust and take them into public ownership FOR NOTHING

Sign up to support our campaign for public ownership of water: https://t.co/Ic3uRlhwyG

[Dan Sheehan @danpjsheehan]

“Netanyahu says” is not journalism.
“The IDF says” is not journalism.
“Israel says” is not journalism.

[Steve Howell @QuaeroBooks]

The Mandela statue in Glasgow will not just honour a great leader, it also symbolises the power of solidarity and should inspire action now to isolate Israel.

When Thatcher opposed sanctions, Local Authorities Against Apartheid (of which Glasgow was a member and I was secretary) co-ordinated the efforts of 200 cities, districts and counties in imposing them locally.

Its resources were limited (it was only part of my brief as Sheffield City Council's international officer), but the energy and commitment of councillors and staff across the UK made it an effective component of the international solidarity movement.

My first task after being appointed (from my office seen here) was to organise LAAA's annual conference in Glasgow in February 1987. I look forward to seeing some old friends from those days as well as younger activists when attending the statue unveiling on Friday.

For me, the hot topic will be how we can use the past to guide us today in bringing closer the equivalent goal - ending the Apartheid system in Palestine.

As Mandela himself said: "Our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians."

[Greens4Palestine @Greens4P]

Ilan Pappé endorses Zionism is Racism!

Tomorrow we make history.

We are building an Anti-Zionist Green Party.

[Zack Polanski @ZackPolanski]

Labour defends the arrests of pensioners for holding up a sign opposing genocide. Justice Minister says ‘it’s the rule of law’

Vote Green on Thursday in Holborn and St Pancras to end this absurd stain on our country.