The next time you're thinking about buying a new smartphone, there's one more spec you might want to consider. If the FBI or the IRS wants to read your texts, will Apple hand them over? Would it require the feds to get a warrant first? And would it even bother to let you know that federal agents made the request in the first place?

If you're looking at a shiny new iPhone, the answers are not comforting. 

The Electronic Frontier Foundation's latest digital privacy report, Who's Got Your Back?, awards Apple its secondthe Electronic Frontier Foundation gives Apple a paltry one out of six stars. While Apple got credit for supporting efforts to defend users by modernizing electronic privacy laws, its apparent willingness to hand over your personal information to the government without a warrant and its failure to tell its users how it handles such requests put it in the dock.

Worse Than Comcast: Apple's Privacy Black Box

Apple came off much, much worse than most of its peers — here defined as major non-ISP mobile-computing players. Apple fared worse than Amazon (two stars), Facebook (three), Microsoft (four) and Google (five). Even Comcast, the cable conglomerate consumers love to hate, scored one star higher than Apple. 

The EFF chides Apple for not publishing a transparency report as companies like Google and Twitter do. Without that, users have no idea what kinds of information the government asks for, because Apple won't tell them, nor does it let them know what its guidelines are for dealing with law enforcement data requests. 

(See also: EFF: Twitter Scores, Verizon Fails At Protecting User Privacy)

Apple certainly wasn't the worst-ranked company overall. The major telcos and ISPs almost always get raked over coals on privacy. In this report, Verizon got no stars, while AT&T racked up a grand total of one. MySpace also got no stars and Yahoo only got one. Amazon's showing is also pretty disappointing, especially considering its vast storehouse of consumer-purchase data and its rumored plans to enter the smartphone market. 

But Apple dominates mobile computing in a way few other companies do. And as the proprietor of a mobile operating system that runs on more than half a billion devices, Apple has its hands on a lot of data. Its approach to privacy matters to an awful lot of people — and its lousy performance is a big deal considering how deeply its devices are embedded into our lives.

That integration is only getting deeper as Apple prototypes wearable devices and dreams up more screens to dominate. 

Not Just A Computer Company Anymore 

It's not all together shocking that Apple has some catching up to do in the privacy realm. Until recently, it didn't deal with all that much information about its customers. For most of its history, the company was called Apple Computer, because that's what it sold: computers.

In the early days, the only way for the government to snoop through your MacIntosh was to get a warrant to search your apartment. Today's Apple's computers are smaller, constantly connected to the Internet and, increasingly reliant on iCloud to sync and share data across devices.

Whereas Google has been handling (and profiting from) user data since day one, Apple is only just getting started. If you use iCloud, its servers house your calendars, email, photos, notes and any other data you choose to feed it. If you're using iOS 5 or higher, you're also entrusting Apple with whatever percentage of your personal text messages go through its iMessage protocol.

To its credit, Apple built iMessage using end-to-end encryption that makes its harder for others to snoop on the contents of messages. Of course, if the FBI — or the local cops — really want to know what you're iMessaging back and forth, they can go directly to Apple, with or without a warrant. 

Of course, if the texts in question aren't iMessages, the authorities could just do what they've always done: Ask the mobile data provider to see them. Such requests have seen a dramatic uptick in recent years, and the major ISPs don't approach them with the same level of transparency that a company like Twitter or Sonic.net would. 

Why Consumers Should Care

Apple has never been lauded for having a forward-thinking and open approach to user privacy issues. That hasn't stopped millions of people from trying to predict the company's next gadget and then eagerly standing in line to purchase it. 

Part of that may have to do with awareness. Digital privacy reports excite a certain breed of data nerd (OK, guilty as charged), but they don't approach the media attention lavished on Apple product announcements. Nor is the EFF's chart plastered all over billboards, bus stops and television sets. 

Even for those of you who already knew that Apple doesn't treat your privacy with kid gloves, the risk of the government peeking into law-abiding texts and calendars is too remote to worry about. To some, this is just a side effect of the hyper-connected, digitally-immersed society we're becoming. Even if they don't particularly like it, it's just not their battle to fight. 

Trouble is, that sort of complacency puts no pressure on Apple to get more proactive about keeping your digital life safe from prying eyes.

If you fall in this category, you might still luck out, of course. Even if there's some major privacy gaffe down the line, it might not affect you. And if you're fortunate, IRS agents aren't currently reading your Apple email or iMessages, looking for possible evidence of tax evasion.

But given Apple's current practices in this regard, if they are, you'd never know. Maybe ignorance really is bliss.

Good news: If you're running a local crime syndicate from your iPhone, the authorities are going to have a hard time reading your texts. That's because, as the DEA recently complained, the company's iMessage protocol is encrypted end-to-end, which prevents law enforcement from spying on users' messages, even with a court order.

This is good news for iOS-loving drug lords, but, more importantly, it's a big win for digital privacy. And from Apple, no less. 

With government requests for personal data on the rise, there are few guarantees in place that you or I won't have our private communications snooped through. Since the Fourth Amendment hasn't yet caught up with the lightning fast pace of technological change, some of the best privacy protections are often the ones implemented by tech companies themselves. 

A Rare Privacy Win For Apple 

Apple isn't exactly known as a champion of consumer privacy. It's not reckless either, but few people expect the company to defend users' privacy any more than they the law or consumer sentiment requires. 

For a company like Twitter, it's different. Principles like user privacy and free speech have become important enough to the service's core functionality that the company has no choice but to value and protect them. As a result, Twitter gets pretty high marks from privacy advocates.

Even Google, which has had its share of privacy snafus, is pretty good at being transparent and safeguarding its users' privacy generally. Apple? It's as mindful about privacy as it needs to be, but it's not a chief motivator for the company.

By architecting iMessage the way it did, Apple created a messaging protocol more secure and private than standard text messages, which is how millions of people communicate every day. As we fire those texts back and forth, we're all creating a digital trail that can be snooped upon or hacked more easily than we care to think about. But if they're being and sent and received from iPhones running iOS 5 or later, those messages are invisible to wiretaps by law enforcement or other prying eyes. 

Apple didn't have to build iMessage with end-to-end encryption. Gmail isn't encrypted this way, nor are the Facebook messages that are increasingly used like texts on mobile devices. Clearly, SMS text messages aren't particularly well-secured either. Whether winning privacy points was its motivation or not, Apple definitely racks up a few for this. 

Of course, Apple has had its own share of privacy controversies. Locationgate and Carrier IQ come to mind. Then there was the iMessage bug that accidentally exposed some users' private messages, an embarrassing screwup was fixed in iOS 6.  

Critics were rightfully quick to pounce on Apple for those things, but we need to be every bit as eager to applaud big tech companies when they get it right.

I was wondering when this was going to happen. As soon as Apple launched iOS 5 last year, many of us in the tech press took one look at its iMessage feature and thought the same thing: The carriers are screwed. This week, we saw the first sign that that prediction may be coming true. 

For years, mobile carriers have gotten fat on phone-users desire to send each other short, text-based messages. Carriers are still getting a hefty chunk of revenue from texting, but this week they saw the first-ever decline in SMS text messaging, according to a new report by independent mobile analyst Chetan Sharma. In the third quarter of this year, the number of text messages people sent to one another in the U.S. dropped by about 2%. 

That may not sound like much, but considering how fast texting had been growing - especially among young people - the fact that the number declined at all is significant. 

It's not that people are any less connected or firing off any fewer messages. They're just doing it in different ways. One of the biggest culprits is indeed iMessage, which operates exactly as text messages do, but bypasses the carrier entirely for Apple to Apple communications. Another culprit is Facebook's Messenger app. It turns Facebook's desktop IM feature into a very SMS-like communication method, again without having to route messages through the mobile provider. 

The Rise Of Texting Alternatives

I can totally see how this would be the case. Not long after iOS 5 launched, I personally found that a huge percentage of texts I was receiving were actually iMessages, something iOS designates using labels within its Messages app on the iPhone. It just so happened that enough of my friends and people I texted with on a regular basis were using iPhones, so our exchanges were converted into iMessages. It was enough to allow me to eliminate my ultimate texting plan for a cheaper option. Exactly what the carriers didn't want. 

Facebook Messenger wasn't originally something I intended on using much, but enough of my friends were using Facebook's mobile messaging feature that I soon found myself opening the app pretty regularly. Once again, this was one less thing I was using SMS texts for. To a lesser extent, other mobile chat apps like imo, Beejive and Skype also decrease our need to use traditional texts. 

In the long run, Facebook Messenger's cross-platform capabilities may actually give it a leg up on becoming the top texting alternative. Unlike iMessage, it's cross-platform, running on iOS, Android and Blackberry. Apple's messaging protocol spans its own devices - iPads, iPhones, iPods and with Mountain Lion, Mac computers. But Facebook's approach is far more platform agnostic, extending browser-based instant messages to mobile devices and allowing those conversations to continue on without interruption, regardless of which mobile platform one is using. 

Texting is still huge. It may be quite some time before we see it go away. And to be sure, carriers will be aggressively creative about finding new revenue streams if this one ever drops off. In the meantime, the range of texting alternatives that are available for smartphone can save real money for even the most avid texters.