The Justice Department calls Apple’s privacy justifications a “flexible shield” for financial gain

The US Department of Justice sued Apple on Thursday over monopolistic practices. The grievance accuses Apple of shaping its privacy and security practices in a way that advantages the corporate financially.

One quote specifically stands out, through which the Department of Justice calls Apple’s privacy and security justification a “flexible shield”:

“Apple uses privacy and security justifications as a flexible shield that can expand or contract to serve Apple’s financial and business interests,” it says.

“Apple cloaks itself in a cloak of privacy, security and consumer preference to justify its anticompetitive behavior. Indeed, it spends billions on marketing and branding to promote the self-serving assumption that only Apple can protect consumers’ privacy and security interests.”

That’s not all – there are several other cases where the Department of Justice believes Apple is flexing privacy to degrade customer satisfaction:

App Store and application distribution

It was also identified that Apple doesn’t allow the creation and use of different app stores. However, the grievance notes that it allows governments and enterprise customers to put in secure app stores. It also stated that developers are unable to supply a separate app store for children presently. It is value noting that a few of these have partially modified with the EU’s enforcement of the Digital Markets Act (DMA). (Some changes only apply to the EU region.)

The Department of Justice identified that Apple allows users to simply load applications on a Mac. The Department of Justice says developers can moreover distribute apps on the platform with fewer restrictions. The Justice Department also argued that Apple was restricting “super apps” that would provide a higher alternative to accessing services within the App Store.

The news

The Department of Justice also accused Apple of restricting third-party apps from receiving SMS messages from carriers. Apple is claimed to mark SMS as “private” in its API documentation so other developers cannot access them. Apple allows users to text anyone by entering their number within the “to:” field within the Messages app, but this is not possible with other messaging apps, the grievance says.

The plaintiff also argued that Apple reduces the safety of iPhones by failing to implement encryption protection when iPhone users send messages to Android users.

Data Sharing Practices

The grievance also accuses Apple of using “vast amounts of personal and sensitive data” to distribute apps by itself App Store. He also criticized the Cupertino company for using user data for promoting purposes.

Additionally, the lawsuit alleged that Apple entered into agreements with Google to make the service the default search engine for Safari, regardless that Apple knew there have been higher privacy-focused alternatives.

The Justice Department also argued that users must share information with Apple to make use of the digital wallet, not only share it with a bank or medical facility.

Essentially, the Justice Department argues that Apple’s privacy and security practices are pretextual and that the corporate is taking “alternative courses” to guard its monopoly.