Apple Warnings of Government Spyware a “game-changer”

Jimmyjames said:
As someone from the UK, is difficult to overstate how disappointed I am in this government. The last lot were grossly incompetent and nasty. These are no better so far.
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This article from the guardian goes into some of the detail, and includes that Apple’s "submission related to amendments to the IPA passed last year under Rishi Sunak’s government" so it’s possible the home office has proceeded with an initiative already in the works, rather than it coming from Labour as such? The article doesn’t address this point.
 
ArgoDuck said:
This article from the guardian goes into some of the detail, and includes that Apple’s "submission related to amendments to the IPA passed last year under Rishi Sunak’s government" so it’s possible the home office has proceeded with an initiative already in the works, rather than it coming from Labour as such? The article doesn’t address this point.
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It doesn’t surprise either that the initiative came from the Tories, or that this government will simply continue the last governments awful decisions.
 
Citysnaps said:
What I was thinking... is that by having the above UK demand leak out as it has, that could possibly encourage many all over the world to believe Apple's encryption is 100% secure, and can't be broken. And encourage its use worldwide. All the while MI5/6 have already found a way in.

Perhaps a long shot. But you'd never know.
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Doesn’t matter how unbreakable the encryption is if the keys are synchronised and divulged.
 
Everyone has to comply with "lawful access" - or they can put your executive in stylish pumpkin jumpsuits.

I can't even remember what the project codename was for the system we created for Homeland Security at BlackBerry. There are secret courts that are never made public. The agency attains a subpoena and the network provider has to comply.

If Apple hasn't caved yet, I'm sure under this administration it might get a lot more uncomfortable very soon. Of course, president poopie-pants would abuse the hell out of it and use it for nefarious purposes....
 
Apple is pulling Advanced Data Protection from the UK rather than implement a backdoor. Makes sense to me. Brits: elect yourselves some smarter politicians.
 
Nycturne said:
Short of just pulling out of the UK market, this is about the best “compromise”.
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of course, the original reporting was that the UK was insisting that apple give it access to foreign (non-UK) data as well. If so, this doesn’t seem to resolve the issue.
 
Cmaier said:
of course, the original reporting was that the UK was insisting that apple give it access to foreign (non-UK) data as well. If so, this doesn’t seem to resolve the issue.
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Which is true, but I don't know how jurisdiction would even work there to demand access to data stored outside the UK. From my perspective, this is an olive branch to say "Take what you can get and back down on the clear overreach before this escalates".

I was more thinking that this at least "complies" with the order by simply dropping the E2E, since this also drops the claim that Apple can't read your data. So we shouldn't wind up in a situation where someone thinks that their E2E is secure, when it isn't.

For my part, I mostly only use iCloud/Dropbox/etc for files to share with other people. For example, having to share raw data with customer support to show an issue with an astronomy camera I purchased. I'm debating even moving that to ownCloud, but it does mean exposing my NAS to the internet, even if though a proxy.
 
Citysnaps said:
Hmmm... I guess the post above might speak to the robustness of Apple's encryption.
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Unfortunately as always; you can have all the unbreakable encryption you want - the question is who has the keys!

Second question being what level of control over the end point does company X have?

If you own the endpoint you can just see the data before and after crypto when the endpoint processes it.
 
Cmaier said:
Looks like Americans are safe. Not clear whether they can restore end-to-end encryption for UK citizens or for people from other countries, though.

9to5mac.com

Apple won’t have to build backdoor for UK access to American data - 9to5Mac

The UK has retreated from a controversial order that would have forced Apple to provide a backdoor to American users’ data.
9to5mac.com 9to5mac.com
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USA (at some level) has leverage over Apple to provide access for the devices, device backups and potentially keys.

Whether or not Apple can comply right now is a dicsussion point, but assuming you’re safe in country X from government of country X using software from corp based in company X is… a stretch.

I think Apple do a better job than others but I’d still not make that bet. I feel they perhaps just demand more hoops to jump through before handing things over.
 
Irony is that if you're worried about surveillance and are a "normal person" (not military, working in critical infrastructure, etc.), using a device from a hostile country is probably the safer thing to do :D
 
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