_______ __ _______ | | |.---.-..----.| |--..-----..----. | | |.-----..--.--.--..-----. | || _ || __|| < | -__|| _| | || -__|| | | ||__ --| |___|___||___._||____||__|__||_____||__| |__|____||_____||________||_____| on Gopher (inofficial) URI Visit Hacker News on the Web COMMENT PAGE FOR: URI Apple pulls data protection tool after UK government security row justinclift wrote 1 hour 3 min ago: > "Apple saw this as a point of principle - if they were going to concede this to the UK then every other government around the world would want this." How is withdrawing the full encryption capability from UK users not condeding to the UK government? vednig wrote 1 day ago: we need something that's quantum safe mrkramer wrote 2 days ago: I always thought that metadata and circumstantial evidence is enough to incriminate someone. Do you really need plaintext data and communication to put criminals behind bars? holoduke wrote 2 days ago: Reading all the comments here makes me sick. I really need to move to a remote place where people are not constantly bashing each other. ej1 wrote 2 days ago: This is a great article! quitit wrote 2 days ago: What's stopping Apple from launching an AppleTV-esque device that functions as personal iCloud storage? The design of ADP is that even taking control of the data centre won't allow access to the information held within. Decentralising the service makes it significantly harder to write ham-fisted legislation that aims to prevent tech companies from offering secure products. Additionally there isn't a technical need for ADP to interface with iCloud. Apple could feasibly release free software for DIY ADP. My expectation is that either the UK will alter the law, or Apple will work around it. I don't think we're looking at the end of this. arccy wrote 2 days ago: > Apple > freely release If Apple can't get you to pay for it, it won't happen. They only pay as much lip service to privacy as they need for marketing purposes nobankai wrote 2 days ago: Commercial security is pure theatre at the end of the day. Apple could pretend to make a big stink, release a new encrypted Time Machine or leave the UK... but why? None of that makes them money. It's a band-aid for the user freedom that was amputated decades ago. I don't expect Apple to fight this like, say, the EU regulations. Without a profit incentive, it's hard to mobilize Apple to seek a solution. quitit wrote 2 days ago: >release a new encrypted Time Machine or leave the UK... but why? None of that makes them money. Would this device be free? UnreachableCode wrote 2 days ago: What is stopping me from using something like Proton in the same way? Why does the UK government simply make an example out of Apple on this one? giorgioz wrote 2 days ago: > Caro Robson said she believed it was "unprecedented" for a company "simply to withdraw a product rather than cooperate with a government". She believes wrong. Google retreated from the Chinese market to not give in. Apple stayed in China and also banned VPNs on App Stores for Chinese customers. Kudos to Apple to not giving in to a backdoor in this case but some there companies took a even higher moral stand in some other situations, so there is precedent indeed. MrCroxx wrote 2 days ago: I'm drunk. No offense. Why our world ends up like this. Ylpertnodi wrote 1 day ago: Well, it usually starts with one...socially, like. oddb0d wrote 2 days ago: Hopefully it'll spur growth of decentralised, distributed peer to peer mobiles like the new Holochain-based Volla Phone URI [1]: https://volla.online/en/ rhubarbtree wrote 2 days ago: As a British citizen I am amazed at how much the government has invaded our privacy. I think it started after 9/11 when they first introduced terrorism laws and saw they could get away with it. I wonder if the ruling classes are nervous, given the state and direction of our economy and the inequality, as well as the iron grip a small part of the country has maintained on society. They are perhaps making preparations for a class revolt. Having said that, in practice to date the extraordinary powers the government has acquired are rarely used, eg to quell the race riots last year. It feels more like a risk for the future and that makes it harder to argue against now. One day this will hit the fan. Iâm very curious, however, to see Americans criticise our government for its (mostly theoretical) overreach, whilst simultaneously the constitution of America is being torn to shreds by the actions of Musk and Trump, with some in the tech community even cheering on DOGE. yew wrote 2 days ago: Hm. I see them as connected - "we must confront our problems domestically before we fight them abroad." rhubarbtree wrote 2 days ago: Please could you expand? I'm very confused by what's going on in the states, particular the attitude in the tech community, so any clarity would be appreciated! yew wrote 2 days ago: Not particularly. The matter is no longer up for discussion. Silence and action are best. yew wrote 2 days ago: (Unsafety and fear always motivate silence and action. You might expect certain people to understand that better than most.) uni_baconcat wrote 2 days ago: Write to local MP and Home Office. This is totally unacceptable. MagicMoonlight wrote 2 days ago: They keep asking for more and more ridiculous powers, but then someone on a terrorist watchlist will go and stab a bunch of toddlers. They donât need more powers, they need to just do their jobs. QuiEgo wrote 2 days ago: The cloud is just someone elseâs computer. If you really, really care about privacy, self host. AlgebraFox wrote 2 days ago: That works for nerds like us. But my sister or my non tech friends don't have knowledge to self host. It is like asking a person to do a surgery on themselves when they don't have medical knowledge. E2E services are very crucial for such normal people. How long do you think for governments to make it illegal to self host or backdoor Linux builds? They have already went too far by just asking backdoor to data of every single person on the planet. We should oppose such unethical laws rather than finding workarounds. QuiEgo wrote 2 days ago: > How long do you think for governments to make it illegal to self host or backdoor Linux builds? Probably never, it won't be worth the trouble because it's always going to be a fringe thing for the reasons you say :). One can hope anyways. Also, if the government decides I'm a baddie, they can always just show probable cause to a judge and come physically get my hardware, so they have a more traditional path there to handle weirdos like me already :). FWIW, I agree completely strong encryption in SAAS is necessary for privacy. But pragmatically, there's little hope laws like this won't eventually take root in more places. So the statement stands irregardless of the challenges: the cloud is just someone else's computer. One final note: I don't think E2E means what most people think it means unfortunately - lots of companies imply that you're the only one with access to the encryption keys when E2E is on, but if you read the fine print, it often really just says is the data is encrypted in flight, not what the policy is for protecting the data on the other "end." This is the awesome thing about ADP - they spell out the full policy in glorious detail. Aachen wrote 2 days ago: For those to whom that sounds scary: buy a regular consumer NAS. They run quite a few applications nowadays (besides being file storage as a base feature) and are meant to be setuppable by an average person vegabook wrote 2 days ago: I live between France and the UK. How do I move my iCloud account out of Britain? retinaros wrote 2 days ago: concessions afer concessions we gave away our freedom. the axis of good is mostly responsible for this but the opposition also wanted to remove anonymity and freedom from the web. no one fought when the democrats called snowden or assange russian spys for revealing clinton corruption. they just blindly sided with their own corrupt political party and gave away freedom. just like previous govs censored trump, banned political opponents they created a precedent and opened the door to the end of freedom. its now beyond politics, we should fight for the last moments of freedom we have before its too late. Ylpertnodi wrote 2 days ago: ...you go first. I'll applaud, and call everyone else over, if anything interesting happens. blufish wrote 2 days ago: its a shame aryan14 wrote 2 days ago: Absolutely mental the kind of people that have power. Dealing with this like immature children. âWe donât get what we want? We ruin it for everyone.â Trying to backdoor a privacy feature for no real reason, just for the sake of having a backdoor. Pathetic sholladay wrote 2 days ago: So many questions around this that need answering, such as: 1. What happens if I have ADP enabled and then visit the UK? Will photos I take there still be E2E encrypted? If not, will I be notified? I realize that at the moment the answer is yes, that for now, they are only disabling ADP enrollment. But they are planning to turn it off for everyone in the UK in the future. So what happens then? 2. If they make an exception for visitors, such as by checking the account region, then obviously anyone in the UK who cares about security will just change their account region - a small inconvenience. Maybe this will be a small enough group that the UK government doesnât really care, but it could catch on. 3. Is this going to be retroactive? Itâs one thing to disallow E2E encryption for new content going forward, where people can at least start making different decisions about what they store in the cloud. Itâs an entirely different thing for them to remove the protection from existing content that was previously promised to be E2E encrypted. When they turn off ADP for people who were already enrolled, how is their existing data going to be handled? This is bad news and it is going to be messy. sureIy wrote 2 days ago: These are important questions, particularly 2 because even a layover in London or Dublin puts you under UK jurisdiction. So now you have to put that into account when traveling. The precedent here is China. I spent a few days in China and, as far as I know, my region is still and ADP is still active. biztos wrote 2 days ago: How does a layover in Dublin put you in UK jurisdiction? I have seen advice in big companies to only take a burner phone when going to China on business. Perhaps the same will apply to the UK. sureIy wrote 1 day ago: > How does a layover in Dublin put you in UK jurisdiction? Heh that's embarrassing. Scratch that part. 6510 wrote 2 days ago: Being locked into an ecosystem seems really nice. The problem is that you don't really know your future jailer. codedokode wrote 2 days ago: This is a good reminder that the one who cares about privacy and security cannot rely on closed-source products from commercial companies; don't be deceived by marketing slogans. bigfatkitten wrote 2 days ago: It's just a shame that Apple didn't include the contact details for the Home Office officials responsible as the place for inquires regarding the matter. LAC-Tech wrote 2 days ago: At some point, we need to stop being surprised at authoritarian countries doing authoritarian things. Here's hoping the inevitable regime change will be a peaceful one. willtemperley wrote 2 days ago: What the UK government achieved: Lowering the data protection of it's citizens in comparison to the rest of the world. I was under the impression governments were supposed to protect their citizens. arccy wrote 2 days ago: the government's monopoly on force just means they're thugs most people tolerate... bruce511 wrote 2 days ago: >> Lowering the data protection of it's citizens in comparison to the rest of the world. I was under the impression governments were supposed to protect their citizens. This depends on whether you see "citizens" as individuals or as a group. In other words it's possible that to improve the security (and thus protect) the majority, the rights of individual citizens need to be eroded. For example, to protect vulnerable citizens from crime (the cliche of child porn is useful here, but it extends to most-all crime) it's useful for prosecutors to be able to collect evidence against guilty parties. This means that the erosion of some privacy of those parties. Thus the govt balances "group security" with "individual privacy". It has always been so. So to return to your original hypothesis; >> Lowering the data protection of it's citizens in comparison to the rest of the world. ... and also, making it easier to detect and prosecute criminals, and thus protect the citizens from physical harm. Now, of course, whenever it comes to balancing one thing against another, there's no easy way to make everyone happy. We all want perfect privacy, coupled with perfect security. Some will say that they'll take more privacy, less security - others will take more security and less privacy. Where you stand on this issue of course depends on which side you lean. More fundamentally though there's a trust issue. Citizens (currently) do not trust governments. They assume that these tools can be used to harm more than just criminals. (They're not wrong.) If you don't trust the govt to act in good faith then naturally you choose privacy over security. willtemperley wrote 1 day ago: You restate my hypothesis adding your own words: "also, making it easier to detect and prosecute criminals, and thus protect the citizens from physical harm." Did this happen though? Whilst I agree with your philosophy, in reality the UK government are no closer to lawfully accessing our data, but our data are less protected from potential other threats (e.g. unlawful access to a data centre, rogue Apple employees). It's what actually happened as opposed to the government intention that matters to the people affected. So my statement "Lowering the data protection of it's citizens in comparison to the rest of the world" still stands, and I'd add "whilst the UK government achieved absolutely zero in its quest to lawfully access individual's data". ajdude wrote 3 days ago: Related discussion: U.K. orders Apple to let it spy on usersâ encrypted accounts (washingtonpost.com) 762 points by Despegar 14 days ago | 1070 comments URI [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42970412 dk1138 wrote 3 days ago: The more I live Iâm less concerned about what are often described as âbad actorsâ. The bad actors are often the state, and this kind of information is collected without thought to the risk of future politicians who donât follow the rules or who donât have any respect for the laws. IceHegel wrote 2 days ago: Through all history state security has been a thing. The Stasi and KGB are transparently state security forces to the West, but the CIA and MI5/6 are... what exactly? The primary purpose of these agencies, despite what has been written down on paper, is NOT to protect the citizens of the countries that fund them. It is to protect the system that taxes those citizens. wcerfgba wrote 3 days ago: States are not inherently good, they are just large organisations with a monopoly on certain social functions. All large organisations have the capacity to inflict terrible harm. nisten wrote 3 days ago: ok so while being AI safety concerned.. uk politicians go ahead and remove humanity's single logical control tool that they have to keep AI in check.. encryption maths. gg sneak wrote 3 days ago: This is almost the status quo in the USA, given that nobody turns on the optional e2ee anyway. reader9274 wrote 3 days ago: "Existing users' access will be disabled at a later date." Hmmm how? How can they decrypt your already end-to-end encrypted and uploaded data without you entering the passphrase to do so? I can understand them removing the data from iCloud completely, or asking you to send the keys to Apple, but I don't understand how they can disable the feature for already uploaded data. Aloisius wrote 3 days ago: They will lock UK users out of iCloud until they manually disable ADP. When a user turns off ADP in settings, their device uploads the encryption keys to Apple servers. reader9274 wrote 2 days ago: What if the users don't agree to disable ADP? So if one pays for iCloud+, they'll be refunded? And what happens to their already uploaded data? Is it deleted? Aloisius wrote 2 days ago: I imagine if you choose to ignore the warning that iCloud syncing will cease to work unless you disable ADP, then at some point, the warning turns into an error and iCloud syncing will cease to work. I can't imagine they'll cancel your iCloud+ subscription. ADP is not a feature of iCloud+ and iCloud+ has features beyond extra storage space. Nor can I imagine they'll delete your data preemptively as long as there's space to store it. Hopefully they'll provide instructions on how to manually delete your iCloud data in case you don't want to use it any longer (I think you just turn off iCloud on all your devices). mu53 wrote 3 days ago: I am going to say something a bit controversial around here, but all of this E2E and security stuff is just lip service for marketing to consumers. These companies have to comply with so many laws and want cozy relationships with governments, so they play both sides. It likely does things differently, but if the keys are not secure, then its not secured keepamovin wrote 3 days ago: They are not the first country to do this. Apples advanced security features are rolled out non-uniformly across global markets. You get different capabilities, depending on where you are and where your account is resident, it would be great if there was a website that listed the countries and the security protections Apple provides in those countries. 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote 3 days ago: This provides an incentive for Apple computer users to do the right thing: Stop storing sensitive data on Apple servers. Unfortunately, due to Apple's pre-installed proprietary operating systems that phone home incessantly, that may be more challenging than it should be. sensanaty wrote 3 days ago: Lol so much for the privacy-first Apple BS everyone keeps touting If they had any balls whatsoever they would've rejected this and pulled out of the UK, but of course money comes before anything else. EGreg wrote 3 days ago: Why can't governments simply compel every software developer to create a backdoor, or go to jail? If even one government does it, then the backdoors exist globally. Here is an overview of the global situation: URI [1]: https://community.qbix.com/t/the-global-war-on-end-to-end-encr... ein0p wrote 3 days ago: How do you like your "liberal democracy", UK-ians? Is that democratic enough for you yet? Do you feel in control? mattfrommars wrote 3 days ago: Could this be the catalyst for the rise of third party encryption companies that operate in UK? Or perhaps, rise to third party self host E2E cloud solution? Only time will tell. I've already invested in USB storage :) edge17 wrote 3 days ago: Are there non-icloud backup options? There used to be local encrypted backups through itunes, but I can't tell if that feature is still around. commandersaki wrote 2 days ago: Still exists but now backup is integrated into Finder. You can also do encrypted backup on Windows but I forgot what the app is called (from Apple). aqueueaqueue wrote 3 days ago: ITunes but it is a PITA. Do a test backup restore too. It may not restore if the phone was nearly full (maybe 80%) when backed up. Zufriedenheit wrote 3 days ago: Does Apple offer this type of encryption in China? ancorevard wrote 3 days ago: Deep betrayal by Apple. "privacy is a fundamental human right" - Tim Cook. mmaunder wrote 3 days ago: Not relevant to the Apple story but as a general comment on UK surveillance/search/detainment laws: Five Eyes means the US just needs to get their citizen into the UK for their partner to gain access that the US doesn't have to their citizen. The reciprocity possibilities are endless. SirMaster wrote 3 days ago: Well this is double plus ungood... AutistiCoder wrote 3 days ago: How many UK people who haven't heard of ADP will now enable it? anoncow wrote 3 days ago: >Online privacy expert Caro Robson said she believed it was "unprecedented" for a company "simply to withdraw a product rather than cooperate with a government. That is such a self serving comment. If Apple provides UK a backdoor, it weakens all users globally. With this they are following the local law and the country deserves what the rulers of the country want. These experts are a bit much. In the next paragraph they say something ominous. >"It would be a very, very worrying precedent if other communications operators felt they simply could withdraw products and not be held accountable by governments," she told the BBC. rapjr9 wrote 2 days ago: This is actually an increasing concern, that large multinational companies are so powerful that they don't have to obey governments any more, and can instead blackmail them by withdrawing products. Pornhub has done this in US states. Meta has threatened to do it in various countries. There has always been pushback to regulation from powerful companies, but punishing countries by withdrawing products seems to be used as a tactic more often recently. There are other tools of power companies use as well, like deciding where to create jobs and build facilities. Musk has used that, moving from California to Texas. Defence and oil companies use these tactics also. anoncow wrote 2 days ago: I disagree but respect your opinion. Companies have the right to free speech. In the tussle between regulators and companies, companies are disadvantaged. If we can force companies to do the regulators bidding and not allow them to use free speech to act in their best interests, we would have global tyranny. The regulators and companies both acting towards their own goals with freedom allows us to have a world with balance. I believe in this however I think we are testing limits of this approach with scenarios like the one with encryption. Ideally privacy needs E2E encryption. But concerns on misuse of such technology that governments raise are also not without merit. I wonder if this tussle between regulators and companies can end in any way in which privacy is not compromised. Mathematically it doesn't seem that there is a way to be safe and private. rhaksw wrote 2 days ago: > In the tussle between regulators and companies, companies are disadvantaged. When society once again properly separates governmental powers, it will restore balance, and then companies will no longer need to fear "regulators." In the US, businesses are supposed to be regulated by Congress. That way, if Congress does something foolish, we can vote them out. But in the last 100 years or so, "administrative law"â that is, binding regulations created by the Executive branchâ has become a huge part of law-making [1]. Widespread use of Administrative Law allows Congress to wash its hands of any real decision making. It isn't supposed to be this way, and I think we will find our way out of it. Your statement that companies are disadvantaged only rings true because Executive-branch regulators are not held to account. Lower-level staff generally do not rotate from administration to administration, and so they make tons of binding rules without oversight. Fortunately, SCOTUS recently overturned some of this [2]. The fundamental problem is that the separation of powers, which is where America's strength comes from, has been upended. Power has been collected, by parties on all sides, within the Executive branch. It's supposed to be, Congress writes law, Judiciary interprets law, and the Executive enforces law. The Administrative State, however, combines all three powers into one under the Executive. It gives itself executive agencies that can bind citizens, and its own courts (ALJs) to determine their fate. See [1] for a comprehensive review. [1] URI [1]: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/I/bo17... URI [2]: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/22-451_7m58.... adultSwim wrote 2 days ago: Google News pulling out of Spain.. throwaway106382 wrote 3 days ago: >"It would be a very, very worrying precedent if other communications operators felt they simply could withdraw products and not be held accountable by governments," This would actually be a very very very very VERY GOOD precedent if you ask me. Facebook pulled something similar when Canada passed the Online News Act and instead of extorting facebook to pay the media companies for providing a service to them (completely backasswards way to do things), they just pulled news out of Canada. I despise Meta as a company, but I had to give them credit for not just letting the government shake them down. Good riddance. Governments need to be reminded from time to time that they are, in fact, not Gods. We can and should, just take our ball and go play in a different park or just go home rather than obey insane unjust laws. donbox wrote 2 days ago: I love their products: whatsapp and facebook sandblast wrote 2 days ago: Why? StanislavPetrov wrote 3 days ago: >Online privacy expert Caro Robson Ironic to refer to her as a "privacy expert" given her open hostility to privacy. aqueueaqueue wrote 3 days ago: "a product" and "cooperate" are doing so much work in that statement that they collapsed and look like ________ and ________ They re-emerged as "security feature" "add vulns to security features to make it an insecurity feature" kelnos wrote 3 days ago: It's also just false. Google pulled out of China many years ago because they didn't want to bow to the Chinese government's demands. And they didn't just withdraw a product, they withdraw their entire business. kshacker wrote 3 days ago: I wonder what the impact of Apple withdrawing from China will be. I know we are talking about UK, but this made me think. Not only their sales will reduce, but hey Chinese manufacturing cuts down. By how much? Will it be impactful? I would think so but wonder if it is quantifiable. sneak wrote 3 days ago: Almost all iPhones are made in China. They cannot pull out without shutting down. They make on average 60,000 ios devices there every hour, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. mianos wrote 2 days ago: Google pulled out but their phones are made in China. When push comes to shove money always wins still in China. aswegs8 wrote 1 day ago: Classic communism am I right? samldev wrote 2 days ago: Your math adds up to 525,600,000 iOS devices per year. That can't possibly be right helloplanets wrote 2 days ago: > In 2023, Apple shipped 234.6 million iPhones, capturing 20.1% market share and growing 3.7% year over year, according to IDC data. [0] So, probably not 525.6 million iOS devices a year, but safe to assume it's going to be 300+ million for 2025. 35k devices an hour, give or take. [0]: URI [1]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2024/01/16... sneak wrote 1 day ago: As medwezys pointed out, you forgot iPads. Thatâs another 40-70M units per year. My numbers are a rough estimate from memory, but theyâre not wildly off. 300M or 500M, the point remains: itâs an absolutely staggering scale and cannot be moved elsewhere in any short period of time. Setting up comparable production would take many years, just as it did the first time. I imagine Apple/Foxconn have already begun this work. The unexpected shutdown or impediment of US/CN trade is a risk that must be accounted for, given the situation with Taiwan. medwezys wrote 2 days ago: Apple has more devices than iPhones, so the OPs numbers are not unbelievable boxed wrote 3 days ago: Governments forcing companies from other countries to do business in their country seems like the worrying precedent to me. yunesj wrote 3 days ago: Fake privacy experts like Caro Robson need to be held accountable. Aachen wrote 2 days ago: I often notice journalistic pieces interview people and then use maybe 30 seconds' worth of material from a 20-minute interview. The "expert" could have condemned it in any number of ways until the topic of applying data protection laws came up and she said that companies need to be held accountable (could be about GDPR, could be about snooping laws) which the journalist then quoted, not out of malice but because everyone already condemns it and this is the most interesting statement of the interview Anyway, so while I don't think we should condemn people based on such a single quoted sentence... I took a look at her website and the latest video reveals at 00:38 that she worked for the UK crime agency, which does sound like the one of the greatest possible conflicts of interest for someone called upon for privacy matters rather than crime fighting. Watching the rest of that interview, she approaches it fairly objectively but (my interpretation of) her point of view seems to be on the side of "even with this backdoor, a warrant needs issuing every time they use it and so there's adequate safeguards and the UK crime fighters and national security people should just get access to anything they can get a warrant for" mistercow wrote 2 days ago: Assuming youâve framed it fairly, thatâs a pretty atrocious point of view for someone calling themselves a privacy expert to hold. A privacy expert should know that backdoors are dangerous to privacy even if you trust the people who are supposed to have the keys. cluckindan wrote 3 days ago: The UK backdoor means US and other FVEY states are able to freely request any personâs private data from GCHQ. ianopolous wrote 3 days ago: If anyoneâs looking for open-source, self-hostable, E2EE storage then checkout Peergos (disclaimer: lead here): URI [1]: https://peergos.org -__---____-ZXyw wrote 3 days ago: Workers in tech jobs over the past few decades are the ones who are primarily to blame for the total degradation of the very notion of privacy, and our societies are, I think, reaping the consequences of this now in many ways. This story didn't spring up out of nowhere, like a monster from under the bed. It's been a gradual decline since, let's say, the 90s or so. I don't want to be vulgar, but the people who understood the best what was happening were mostly too busy taking large paychecks to get too upset about the whole thing. It got explained away, rationalised, joked about, and here we are. mihaaly wrote 3 days ago: Easier to push away the blame for a foot soldier, claiming to do things on orders or claiming to be absolutely f clueless where it leads, one is worse than the other. Thousands had to make this work and function as it is. Still, this is a different topic than the government use of law enforcement for preserving the shity situation that was built by the industry and its actors just when the trend becomes of fixing what was made to be crap, just when people want to correct the f up of the ignorant collaborants. butterknife wrote 3 days ago: If you're in the UK, please consider signing the below petition. Thanks. URI [1]: https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/keep-our-apple-data-enc... wrboyce wrote 2 days ago: I never understand why people create petitions (targeted at the gov) on a non-official site. Aachen wrote 2 days ago: I'm not familiar with UK law, but what's the matter? They're equally valid in jurisdictions that I know of, a signature is a signature no matter where it was put I'd personally just trust the government variant more with my government ID data than a third party but that's up to the petitioners to weigh and decide ljn wrote 1 day ago: In the UK, there's an official gov site for petitions, such that when a petition has >10k signatures, a government minister is required to write a response, and >100k triggers a parliamentary debate, iirc. Whether the responses/parliamentary debates the person triggers end up being useful is up for debate. fdb345 wrote 3 days ago: Are anyone of you lot getting the realisation onto why they are pushing Passkeys so hard? They know they access 8 out of 10 phones they seize. DONT USE PASSKEYS AlanYx wrote 3 days ago: Many people might not be aware of it, but Apple publishes a breakdown of the number of government requests for data that it receives, broken down by country. The number of UK requests has ballooned in recent years: [1] Much of this is likely related to the implementation and automation of the US-UK data access agreement pursuant to the CLOUD Act, which has streamlined this type of request by UK law enforcement and national security agencies. URI [1]: https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/gb.html#:~:text=77%25... EasyMark wrote 2 days ago: Sad to see the home of the magna carta slowly spiraling down into fascism and 1984. The government should be required to have a specific warrant to get at your personal data. HaZeust wrote 3 days ago: I don't share your findings, EVERY six-month period between January 2014 - June 2017 shows bigger requests than any six-month period in the last 5 years. dvtkrlbs wrote 3 days ago: The problem is AFAIK this act is a lot different and Apple or any party that gets this order is completely forbidden to talk about it. So these kind of requests would not show up in this transparency requests. It is IMHO fair to assume Apple will UK this backdoor given they chose to disable Advanced Data Encryption and public would have no insight to amount and reasons to the backdoor usage. It is really troubling. sva_ wrote 3 days ago: Looking at the ones for Germany, those seem like rookie numbers URI [1]: https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/de.html#:~:text=77%... AlanYx wrote 3 days ago: It's also comparatively worse than the raw numbers suggest because the customer base of Apple phones in Germany is much smaller than in the UK. crossroadsguy wrote 2 days ago: I see numbers for USA and China very low as well. Maybe they don't have/need to request? ;-) Just saying. Synaesthesia wrote 1 day ago: In the UK and Germany people get arrested for social media posts. This doesn't really happen in the USA (or China, to my knowledge) mrandish wrote 3 days ago: > Online privacy expert Caro Robson said she believed it was "unprecedented" for a company "simply to withdraw a product rather than cooperate with a government". > "It would be a very, very worrying precedent if other communications operators felt they simply could withdraw products and not be held accountable by governments," she told the BBC. Attributing this shockingly pro-UK-spy-agencies quote to an "online privacy expert" without pointing out she consults for the UN, EU and international military agencies is typical BBC pro-government spin. In fact, Caro, it would be "very, very worrying" if communications operators didn't withdraw a product rather than be forced to make it deceptive and defective by design. als0 wrote 3 days ago: Is there a way for a UK iPhone to circumvent the warning and enable ADP? Like connecting through a VPN? IceHegel wrote 3 days ago: I'm sympathetic to the J.D. Vance angle, which is that European governments are increasingly scared of their own people. This is not doing a lot to change my mind. retinaros wrote 2 days ago: lol. ask JD Vance what he thinks about Assange or Snowden. blitzar wrote 2 days ago: I am unsympathetic to those that lecture others on not doing the very thing they are doing. randunel wrote 2 days ago: You might be unaware of FATCA, then. odiroot wrote 3 days ago: On our continent, the obvious solution to every problem under the sun is "more state". bongodongobob wrote 3 days ago: What the fuck? They should be. They absolutely aren't right now and that's a major problem. dtquad wrote 3 days ago: J.D. Vance's problem with Europe is that we have too many brown people. As a very privacy-oriented European I don't need American alt-right populists to concern troll about surveillance and privacy in Europe. gnfargbl wrote 3 days ago: To give you a counterpoint: from this side of the pond it is extremely surprising to see how effective Vance's speech has been in distracting a good proportion of the American public. Which, I have to suspect, was the real point. kelnos wrote 3 days ago: Governments should be scared of their people, though not in the way that I expect Vance means. It's certainly better than the opposite, where citizens and residents are scared of their government, which wields the power to deprive them of their freedom, possessions, and life. dennis_jeeves2 wrote 3 days ago: >Governments should be scared of their people, though not in the way that I expect Vance means. A guillotine once in a while for some politicians/bureaucrats will do some good. There is a rich history of the French doing it. I'm not even trying to be funny. mihaaly wrote 3 days ago: Very wrong conclusions. They are not scared of people, but of working, doing their job, especially when it is difficult (catching criminals). They expect the job to be done for them by others, on the expense of everyone, while they collecting all the praise. On sympathetic to Vance I did not really found a presentable reaction, would not find on any other accidentally agreeable sentence leaving his mouth (very low chance btw.). Talking a lot about all kind of things sooner or later will hit something acceptable, which will not yield an unacceptable and destructive to society figure sympathetic. You also should be aware of practices and conducts the various US security services practice (and probably all governemnts out there), if not from news or law but at least from the movies. When we come to the topic of who is afraid of their own. rdm_blackhole wrote 3 days ago: Exactly, it's the same thing with the Chat Control law in the EU and it reminds me of the scene in the movie Office Space where the consultants are trying to figure out who is doing what in the company. Basically instead of doing their jobs, the cops expect Apple, Meta et al to intercept all the data, then feed it into some kind of AI black box (not done by them but contracted out to someone else at the taxpayer's expense) that will then decide if you get arrested within the next 48H (I am exaggerating but only slightly) What are the cops doing instead of doing their jobs? That's my question. Aren't they paid to go out and catch the criminals or do they simply expect to get the identity of people each day that need to be investigated? RIMR wrote 3 days ago: Well put. It's pretty much impossible to sympathize with Vance saying this when the administration he is a part of is scaremongering about "the enemy within". deelowe wrote 3 days ago: Then Vance should do something about the 5 eyes which is likely the source of this sort of thing. duxup wrote 3 days ago: I think the US government has made these kinds of requests too, similar tactics such as mass data collection without a warrant and so on. I don't think it is "scared" as much as just the usual human desire to do whatever the task is ... without thinking of the consequences. Cornbilly wrote 3 days ago: The unspoken part of that is Vance likely thinks that the people should fear their government. bilbo0s wrote 3 days ago: True. It's a very unwise position Vance takes. The world would clearly be better run if all governments feared their people, than it would if all people fear their governments. The UK can pull this kind of stuff precisely because they do not fear any consequences from their people. pathless wrote 3 days ago: This unexpected news really cemented that point for him. leonewton253 wrote 3 days ago: They should of forced ADP on by default and this would of never happened. int_19h wrote 3 days ago: The problem with that is that if the user loses their key, their account is no longer recoverable. As things are with ADP, enabling it comes with a bunch of warnings about that, and IIRC it also forces you to print out the recovery key for safe storage. commandersaki wrote 3 days ago: That would alienate users due to key management complexity. Apple is about having a smooth user experience. blitzar wrote 2 days ago: Apple processes multiple orders of magnitude more account recoveries for customers each day than receive government requests. adfm wrote 3 days ago: It's a drag that we're seeing this crap happen, but authoritarians will be authoritarians. What's the general opinion of tools like Cryptomator? [^1] [^1]: URI [1]: https://cryptomator.org cynicalsecurity wrote 3 days ago: Could this have been a reason UK pushed to separation from the EU? EU is all for privacy while UK is slowly drifting towards becoming a Stasi state. rdm_blackhole wrote 3 days ago: This is blatantly false. The EU has been pushing to pass the Chat Control law for the last 3 years which is even worse because at least in the UK the government would still need to get a warrant for the data they want whereas the EU wants to analyze your chat messages, emails and pictures in real time without cause or need to justify themselves. dumbledoren wrote 2 days ago: > Again and again, 'Eu' is not pushing anything like that. A few Euparl MPs backed by those like Ashton Kutcher did. rdm_blackhole wrote 2 days ago: The EU is pushing for this. The EU "Going Dark" group is pushing for this as well as per [1] The fact of the matter is that if the EU was, as it's been said, for privacy this proposal would not have been on the table in the first place. It should have been stopped 3 years ago but here we are again fighting for our rights and our privacy. And it doesn't matter how many times it gets shot down by some of the countries in the EU, the commission changes a few words and starts the process all over again because they know that sooner or later they will get it through. You can't have it both ways. You either are for privacy or you are not. If you are then this proposal should never have seen the light of the day and the people pushing for it should have been given a warning that this was off-limits. Instead they are biding their time so that when the time is right they can come back with a slightly altered but still incredibly damaging proposal hoping that it will pass. The EU pro-privacy stance is joke. They want access to the same data as the US except they don't have the courage to come out and say it so they wrap it in a nice little gift bag with the words "protect the children" on it. This is hypocrisy in it's purest form. Then some governments in the EU have the gall to call out authoritarians regimes around the world when they crack down on dissent and free speech? Give me a break! URI [1]: https://edri.org/our-work/high-level-group-going-dark-ou... dumbledoren wrote 1 day ago: > The EU is pushing for this. The EU "Going Dark" There is no official effort from the Eu related to this. Where are you pulling that out from. A proposal by a few MPs in the Euparl is not 'Eu pushing someting'. And that "Eu Going dark" group is not an official Eu organ. izacus wrote 3 days ago: The Chat Control law was voted down and it would not apply for UK if they'd still be in EU. nickslaughter02 wrote 2 days ago: It has been voted down twice now. Guess what? That doesn't mean it's dead. It's being worked on as we speak. The last meeting was just a few weeks ago. URI [1]: https://www.parlament.gv.at/dokument/XXVIII/EU/9693/imfn... rdm_blackhole wrote 2 days ago: See my comment above, it doesn't matter that it was voted down. The point is that it was allowed to go to a vote in the first place. How do you square being pro privacy but at the same time demanding to have unlimited access to all chat messages, emails, pictures and so on of all your citizens without the need for a warrant, without justification and without the citizens having any say on the matter? The answer is that you can't. You either are for privacy or you are not. As for not applying to the UK, that is a moot point because as soon as the EU gets it's wish then the UK will demand the same kind of access. Why would the UK government turn down such an opportunity? nickslaughter02 wrote 3 days ago: No, EU is NOT "all for privacy". I don't know where this myth comes from but I see it repeated here often. 1. EU is pushing for mandatory on-device scanning of all your messages (chat control). The current proposal includes scanning of all videos and images all the time for all citizens. The proposal started with analyzing all text too. The discussions are happening behind close doors. EU Ombudsman has accused EU commission of "maladministration", no response. 2. EU is allowing US companies to scan your emails and messages (ePrivacy Derogation). Extended for 2025. 3. EU is pushing for expansion of data retention and to undermine encryption security (EU GoingDark). "The plan includes the reintroduction and expansion of the retention of citizensâ communications data as well as specific proposals to undermine the secure encryption of data on all connected devices, ranging from cars to smartphones, as well as data processed by service providers and data in transit." [1] 4. EU is pushing for mandatory age verification to use email, messengers and web applications. Citizens will be required to use EU approved verification providers. All accounts will be linked back to your real identity. 5. "Anonymity is not a fundamental right": experts disagree with Europol chief's request for encryption back door (January 22, 2025) [2] ----- Do you still believe EU is all for privacy? EU's privacy is deteriorating faster than in any other developed country / bloc. Some of these proposals have been blocked by Germany for now but that is expected to change after the upcoming elections. URI [1]: https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/eugoingdark-surveillance-pl... URI [2]: https://www.techradar.com/computing/cyber-security/anonymity... dumbledoren wrote 2 days ago: < EU is pushing for mandatory on-device scanning of all your messages (chat control) Again and again, 'Eu' is not pushing anything like that. A few Euparl MPs backed by those like Ashton Kutcher did. > Eu isnt 'planning' anything like that. Some Euparl MPs backed by people like Ashton Kutcher tried to push a law to spy on all chat apps. Then when the dirty web of American-style regulatory manipulation was exposed, they backed off. It was a proposal for a law by some MPs. Not something 'Eu' did. nickslaughter02 wrote 2 days ago: How can you say EU isn't planning anything like that when the last meeting to introduce just that was a few weeks ago? [1] Nobody backed off, it's still on the agenda. You are right however that the main lobby comes from US NGOs as exposed by documents coming from EU Commission. URI [1]: https://www.parlament.gv.at/dokument/XXVIII/EU/9693/imfn... dumbledoren wrote 1 day ago: > How can you say EU isn't planning anything like that when the last meeting to introduce just that was a few weeks ago? I can say that because that PROPOSAL at the European PARLIAMENT was brought by a number of MPs. Its not an official Eu thing, it is not pushed by any official Eu organ. Any MP can bring ANY proposal to Euparl. It does not mean that Eu is 'pushing something'. > Nobody backed off, it's still on the agenda Its not on 'the agenda'. The MPs who pushed it backed off after their links to the American 'NGOs' were exposed. They said that they would bring it up again at a later time. That doesn't mean that its on 'the agenda'. Any MP in the Euparl can bring any proposal at any time. That does not mean that Euparl is doing it and there is notable support behind it. Kim_Bruning wrote 3 days ago: The current EU-UK adequacy decision[1] is up for review this 27 June [2] . Aspects of the UK investigatory powers act is close enough to US FISA [2] that I think this might have some influence, if brought up. IPA 2016 was known at the time of the original adequacy decision, but IPA was amended in 2024 . While some things might be improvements, the changes to Technical Capability Notices warrant new scrutiny. Especially seeing this example where IPA leads to reduced security is of some concern, I should think. The fact that security can be subverted in secret might make it a bit tricky for the EU to monitor at all. [1] [2] ibid. Article 4 [3] FISA section 702 URI [1]: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX... URI [2]: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/BILLS-110hr6304pcs/html/BI... smashah wrote 3 days ago: Notice all the undemocratic dictatorships that did not require this of apple. The UK is in decline completely. nomilk wrote 3 days ago: Wonder what the cost/benefit looks like from Apple's perspective. If this requirement increases the proportion of data on Apple's servers that is now unencrypted (or encrypted but which can be trivially unencrypted), that could be a huge plus to Apple; more data to use for ad targeting (or to sell to third parties), and more data to train AI models on. freedomben wrote 3 days ago: Devil's Advocate (meaning I don't agree with this, in fact I disagree with it, but I don't see this argument being made anywhere and think it would be interesting. If you're one of the people who are offended by this practice of people steel-manning "the other side" and only want to read comments that affirm your position, please don't read this comment). Question: Wouldn't it be better for Apple to build a UK-only encryption that is backdoored but is at least better than nothing? If Apple really cared about people's privacy, why just abandon them? My position: No because this is a war, not a battle. Creating a backdoored encryption would immediately trigger every government on the planet passing laws banning use of non-back-doored encryption, which would ultimately lead us to a much, much worse world. Refusing to do it is the right thing IMHO. everfree wrote 3 days ago: Without Advanced Data Protection, your data is still encrypted at rest, it's just that Apple safeguards the encryption key. The purpose of ADP is to remove control of this key from Apple, so that it's impossible for Apple to leak your data to any third party, even if they are compelled to. So to me, backdoor encryption seems like it defeats the whole point of ADP, no? But if not - even if there is some tiny marginal benefit - cryptography is extremely expensive to get right. It's doubtful that it makes financial sense to Apple to develop a new encryption workflow for a single country for very slight security benefits. And it still wouldn't be complying with the UK's demands anyways. The UK demanded access to accounts worldwide. If Apple is going to be non-compliant, then they might as well be non-compliant the easy way. cat_meowpspsps wrote 3 days ago: The UK's law here is specifically targetting encrypted data globally. > The UK government's demand came through a "technical capability notice" under the Investigatory Powers Act (IPA), requiring Apple to create a backdoor that would allow British security officials to access encrypted user data globally. ljm wrote 3 days ago: Fundamentally, I think the issue is more about technical literacy amongst the political establishment who consistently rely on the fallacy that having nothing to hide means you have nothing to fear. Especially in the UK which operates as a paternalistic state and enjoys authoritarian support across all parties. On the authoritarianism: these laws are always worded in such a way that they can be applied or targeted vaguely, basically to work around other legislation. They will stop thinking of the children as soon as the law is put into play, and it's hardly likely that pedo rings or rape gangs will be top of the list of priorities. On the technical literacy: the government has the mistaken belief that their back door will know the difference between the good guys (presumably them) and the bad guys, and the bad guys will be locked out. However, the only real protection is security by obscurity: it's illegal to reveal that this backdoor exists or was even requested. Any bad guy can make a reasonable assumption that a multinational tech company offering cloud services has been compromised, so this just paints another target on their backs. I've said it before, but I guarantee that the monkey's paw has been infinitely curling with this, and it's a dream come true for any black or grey hat hacker who wants to try and compromise the government through a backdoor like this. elAhmo wrote 2 days ago: > the government has the mistaken belief that their back door will know the difference between the good guys (presumably them) and the bad guys This is a very good point, and in the recent months we have been witnessing that people in government, or aiming to become the government, are definitely not the good guys. So, even if what they are asking would be limited to just governments (which it wouldn't), they can't claim they are the good guys anymore. gerdesj wrote 3 days ago: "Especially in the UK which operates as a paternalistic state and enjoys authoritarian support across all parties." What is a "paternalistic state". I studied Latin so obviously I understand pater == father but what is a father-like state? What on earth is: "authoritarian support across all parties". The UK has one Parliament, four Executives (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales) and a Monarch (he's actually quite a few Monarchs). Anyway, I do agree with you that destroying routine encryption is a bloody daft idea. It's a bit sad that Apple sold it as an extra add on. It does not cost much to run openssl - its proper open source. switch007 wrote 1 day ago: Are you trying to disagree with them by pretending that they're speaking rubbish? As a Brit, their comment made complete sense to me. By the way, there is no 'England' executive; it's the government of the United Kingdom, which handles all matters not devolved, in England and the rest of the UK. ljm wrote 2 days ago: Government knows whatâs best for the people (colloquially we call it the nanny state). All our main political parties have an authoritarian slant so these policies have rarely received long-lasting opposition. Literally every government in office for the past 30-odd years has presented legislation like this. walthamstow wrote 2 days ago: Paternalism, unless I'm mistaken, is a belief among those in power that they what's best for you, better than you do, and will exercise power on your behalf in that manner. Just like your parents do when you're a child. catlikesshrimp wrote 3 days ago: In medicine, a paternalistic attitude towards the patient from a point of authority (like a father) The doctor acts as if he knows more and knows what is better. The patient has his own preferences and priorities, but they don't necessarily match with what the doctor does. I suppose a paternalistic state functions to satisfy the needs of the people, and to define those needs. The people get what the state says is best for them. EchoReflection wrote 3 days ago: "it's hardly likely that pedo rings or rape gangs will be top of the list of priorities".... is this not one of the most disturbing, disgusting, psychologically troubling and damning ideas ever to be put to words/brought to awareness? . Right up there "let's meticulously plan out this horrific, atrocious, dehumanizing act and meditate upon the consequences, and then choose the most brutal and villainous option". Dear Lord.... dsign wrote 2 days ago: > is this not one of the most disturbing, disgusting, psychologically troubling and damning ideas ever to be put to words/brought to awareness? . Hmm? Hell has depths. Your yard might be a little too short to measure them? In that case, just think about this: rape is probably most common in prisons, where you will send innocents the moment this dragnet thing glitches. AnthonyMouse wrote 3 days ago: People are extremely opposed to pedos, so they're a primary rationalization for oppressive technology. But then you have two problems. First, pedos know everybody hates them, so they take measures normal people wouldn't in order to avoid detection, and then backdooring the tech used by everybody else doesn't work against them because they'll use something else. But it does impair the security of normal people. Second, there aren't actually that many pedos and the easy to catch ones get caught regardless and the hard to catch ones get away with it regardless, which leaves the intersection of "easy enough to catch but wouldn't have been caught without this" as a set plausibly containing zero suspects. Not that they won't use it against the ones who would have been caught anyway and then declare victory, but it's the sort of thing that's pretty useless against the ones it's claimed to exist in order to catch, and therefore not something it can be used effectively in order to do. Whereas industrial espionage or LOVEINT or draining grandma's retirement account or manipulating ordinary people who don't realize they should be taking countermeasures -- the abuses of the system -- those are the things it's effective at bringing about, because ordinary people don't expect themselves to be targets. smsm42 wrote 3 days ago: It's not literacy. They don't care. They need control, and if establishing control means increased risks for you, it's not something they see as a negative factor. It's your problem, not theirs. kypro wrote 3 days ago: Agreed. I used to think it was illiteracy, but when you hear politicians talk about this you realise more often than not they're not completely naive and can speak to the concerns people have, but fundamentally their calculation here is that privacy doesn't really matter that much and when your argument for not breaking encryption based around the right to privacy you're not going to convince them to care. You see a similar thing in the UK (and Europe generally) with freedom of speech. Politicians here understand why freedom of speech is important and why people some oppose blasphemy laws, but that doesn't mean you can just burn a bible in the UK without being arrested for a hate crime because fundamentally our politicians (and most people in the UK) believe freedom from offence is more important than freedom of speech. When values are misaligned (safety > privacy) you can't win arguments by simply appealing to the importance of privacy or freedom of speech. UK values are very authoritarian these days. cryptonector wrote 3 days ago: They don't even need control. They want control. Why? Either they're idiots who think they need control or they are tyrants who know they'll need control later on when they start doing seriously tyrannical things. jamil7 wrote 2 days ago: > Why? Either they're idiots who think they need control or they are tyrants Many politicians are individuals without any talent who desire power and control, politics is the only avenue open to people like that. cryptonector wrote 2 days ago: And many are sociopaths and psychopaths who love to wield power over others. Some of those sociopaths and psychopaths are very very smart. smsm42 wrote 2 days ago: It's natural for the government to want control. It's literally what it is optimized for - control. More control is always better than less control. More data about subjects always better than less data. What if they do something that we don't want them doing and we don't know? It's scary. We need more control. > they'll need control later on when they start doing seriously tyrannical things. You mean like when they start jailing people for social media posts? Or when they are going to ban kitchen knives? Or when they're going to hide a massive gang rape scandal because it makes them look bad? Or when they would convict 900+ people on false charges of fraud because they couldn't admit their computer system was broken? Come on, we all know this is not possible. zarathustreal wrote 1 day ago: Iâd upvote this a thousand times if I could, so many people holding opinions on purely selfish grounds hackernoops wrote 3 days ago: It's the latter. cryptonector wrote 3 days ago: Of course it is. redeeman wrote 3 days ago: opinion: any government that "needs" such control, is an enemy of the people and must be abolished, and anyone can morally and ethically do so jbjbjbjb wrote 3 days ago: Well itâs important that the argument is correct. They view ending end-to-end encryption as a way to restore the effectiveness of traditional warrants. It isnât necessarily about mass surveillance and the implementation could prevent mass surveillance but allow warrants. I oppose that because end to end encryption is still possible by anyone with something to hide, it is trivial to implement. I think governments should just take the L in the interest of freedom. staplers wrote 3 days ago: governments should just take the L in the interest of freedom This was written into the US constitution. Unfortunately, most either don't know or care that it's all but ignored in practice. AnthonyMouse wrote 3 days ago: > They view ending end-to-end encryption as a way to restore the effectiveness of traditional warrants. Traditional warrants couldn't retroactively capture historical realtime communications because that stuff wasn't traditionally recorded to begin with. > It isnât necessarily about mass surveillance and the implementation could prevent mass surveillance but allow warrants. The implementation that allows this is the one where executing a warrant has a high inherent cost, e.g. because they have to physically plant a bug on the device. If you can tap any device from the server then you can tap every device from the server (and so can anyone who can compromise the server). jbjbjbjb wrote 3 days ago: They shouldnât be able to tap any device from a server. Iâm guessing they would have to apply for a warrant and serve the warrant to Apple who review the warrant and provide the data. AnthonyMouse wrote 3 days ago: Putting the panopticon server in a building that says Apple or Microsoft at the entrance hasn't solved anything. Corporations are hardly more trustworthy than the government, can be coerced into doing the mass surveillance under gag orders, could be doing it for themselves without telling anyone, and would still be maintaining servers with access to everything that could be compromised by organized crime or foreign governments. Which is why the clients have to be doing the encryption themselves in a documented way that establishes the server can't be doing that. ben_w wrote 3 days ago: The government put in restrictions against using certain powers in the Investigatory Powers Act to spy on members of parliament (unless the Prime Minister says so, section 26), so I think they're just oblivious to the risk model of "when hackers are involved, the computer isn't capable of knowing the order wasn't legal". URI [1]: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2016/25/section/26 tehwebguy wrote 2 days ago: Absolutely not, MPs are not too stupid to process the concept of âa back door is a back doorâ they simply want this power and do not care about security or privacy if non-MPs. Everyone who voted for this needs to be thrown out of politics, but that will obviously not happen. lozenge wrote 3 days ago: That actually shows they understand and care because they don't want the law to apply to them. They don't care about its effects on other people. ben_w wrote 3 days ago: No, it shows they're thinking of computers like they think of police officers. Computer literacy 101: to err is human, to really foul up requires a computer. They don't understand that by requiring the capability for going after domestic criminals, they've given a huge gift to their international adversaries' intelligence agencies. (And given this is about a computer vulnerability, "international adversaries" includes terrorists, and possibly disgruntled teenagers, not just governments). soulofmischief wrote 2 days ago: They understand. Signal Foundation's president, Meredith Whittaker, among many other tech leaders, have made it abundantly clear to both the UK and the EU. [1] If politicians don't understand after such campaigning, it's a choice in willful ignorance, not bad computer literacy. URI [1]: https://techcrunch.com/2023/09/21/meredith-whittaker... ben_w wrote 2 days ago: I personally campaigned at the time the law was being debated. Met my local MP, even. If I'd known about the idea of "inferential gap" at the time, my own effort might not have been completely ignored⦠though probably still wouldn't have changed the end result as I still don't know how to show lawmakers that their model of how computers and software functions has led to a law that exposed them, personally, to hostile actors. How even do you explain to people with zero computer lessons that adding a new access mechanism increases the attack surface and makes hacking easier? The politicians seem to see computers as magic boxes, presumably in much the same way and for much the same reason that I see Westminster debates and PMQs as 650 people who never grew out of tipsy university debating society life. (And regardless of if it is fair for me to see them that way, that makes it hard to find the right combination of words to change their minds). soulofmischief wrote 2 days ago: > How even do you explain to people with zero computer lessons that adding a new access mechanism increases the attack surface and makes hacking easier? You literally tell them that. That's it. As prominent tech leaders have been doing. They either choose to believe experts, or disbelieve them. Or they could get a CS major. They chose option #2. They ostensibly disbelieve experts because what they're hearing does not mesh with what they want. But let's be honest with ourselves; it's not that they disbelieve them, or don't understand. It's that they don't care. You are giving these people way too much of a benefit of the doubt. They have the tools at their disposal to remove any ignorance. ben_w wrote 2 days ago: > You literally tell them that. That's it. As prominent tech leaders have been doing. As it's not working, QED not "that's it". > You are giving these people way too much of a benefit of the doubt. They're hurting their own interests in the process. If they were just hurting my interests, I'd agree with you. But this stuff increases the risk to themselves, directly. I may have even told them about [1] given the timing. URI [1]: https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name... soulofmischief wrote 1 day ago: > As it's not working, QED not "that's it". Neither is underestimating your enemy or making excuses for their behavior. newdee wrote 2 days ago: I think it could be for both reasons yubblegum wrote 3 days ago: > technical literacy amongst the political establishment who consistently rely on the fallacy that having nothing to hide means you have nothing to fear. That's an awfully generous assessment on your part. Kindly explain just what "technical literacy" has to do with the formulation you note. From here it reads like you are misdirecting and clouding the -intent- by the powerful here. Also does ERIC SCHMIDT an accomplished geek (who is an official member of MIC since (during?) his departure from Sun Microsystems) suffers from "technical literacy" issues: [1] Thank you in advance for clarifying your thought process here. Tech illiteracy -> what you got to hide there buddy? URI [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=983717 bunderbunder wrote 3 days ago: Let me offer a possible example that might be more in line with the HN commenting guideline about interpreting people's comments as charitably as reasonably possible: My password manager vault isn't exactly something to hide in the political sense, but it's definitely something I would fear is exposed to heightened risk of compromise if there were a backdoor, even one for government surveillance purposes. And it's a reasonable concern that I think a lot of people aren't taking seriously enough due, in part, to a lack of technical literacy. Both in terms of not realizing how it materially impacts everyday people regardless of whether they're up to no good, and in terms of not realizing just how juicy a target this would be for agents up to and including state-level adversaries. As for Eric Schmidt, he's something of a peculiar case. I don't doubt his technical literacy, but the dude is still the head of one of the world's largest surveillance capitalist enterprises, and, as the saying goes, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." stavros wrote 3 days ago: I feel like the comment was clear, technical illiteracy leads politicians to believe that they'll be the only ones with access to this backdoor, which isn't true. yubblegum wrote 3 days ago: The comment's clarity was not questioned. You are passing around the same tired line that because politicians do not understand technology and how it can be used against anyone. Sure computers are new but communication technology is not. All a politician needs to understand is "capability". That is it. "We can read their communications", no degree in CS required. Also, they have power geeks advising them left and right. They know "capabilities" can be misused. They know this. Is this clear? stavros wrote 3 days ago: >> Kindly explain just what "technical literacy" has to do with the formulation you note. >> Thank you in advance for clarifying your thought process here. > The comment's clarity was not questioned. trinsic2 wrote 3 days ago: Yeah. Not buying it. They know, or someone smart enough told them that backdoors can be accessed by anyone with enough skill. They just don't care because the people that are asking for this are criminals already and wanting profit off of other people's data. ninalanyon wrote 3 days ago: It isn't necessarily the case that they all care if criminals can get in to the average person's data so long as the authorities also can. miohtama wrote 3 days ago: Furthermore, one UK head of state call everyone supporting encryption pedophiles URI [1]: https://x.com/BenWallace70/status/1892972120818299199 hackernoops wrote 3 days ago: Ironic. GJim wrote 3 days ago: > one UK head of state What on earth are you talking about? Charles III is head of state, and before that, Liz II. The monarch absolutely does not get involved in politics. sib wrote 2 days ago: >> The monarch absolutely does not get involved in politics. The monarch picks the Prime Minister, no? That seems pretty involved. GJim wrote 17 hours 30 min ago: Good Lord man! Where are you finding this rubbish! The Members of Parliament choose the Prime Minister. The role of the monarch in confining them is purely ceremonial. polshaw wrote 2 days ago: No, the monarch does not pick the Prime Minister. At all. They have a ceremonial role in confirming them. Like they do with every law that Parliament creates. If they ever actually practically exercised this theoretical power it would be the end of the monarchy. mschuster91 wrote 3 days ago: And that's why it is so important to nip this "pedo" / "think of the children" crap right in the bud. Obviously pedos on the interwebs are bad, but hey as long as it's just anime they're whacking off to I don't care too much. But the real abuse, that's done by - especially in the UK - rich and famous people like Jimmy Savile. And you're not gonna catch these pedos with banning encryption, that's a fucking smokescreen if I ever saw one, you're gonna catch them with police legwork and by actually teaching young children about their bodies! worik wrote 3 days ago: > But the real abuse, that's done by - especially in the UK - rich and famous people like Jimmy Savile Jimmy Savile was a vile predator. He was protected by the inane customs of the British ruling class. He was not alone among the toffs of England. But do not be mistaken. It is not just the rich and powerful where you find sexual predators. They exist at all levels of society, all genders, most ages (I will except infants and the aged infirm....) Jimmy Savile was a symptom of something much darker, much worse and widespread. kypro wrote 3 days ago: Honestly if the UK wants to reduce sexual crimes against children and adults one of the easiest ways to achieve that would be to reform UK liable law. In the UK if you're raped by someone famous you'd be an utter idiot to say anything unless you're loaded or have a massive amount of hard evidence. You couldn't have a me to movement in the UK because everyone who came forward would be sued into bankruptcy. This is why so many people knew about Savile but no one said anything. worik wrote 3 days ago: The rules of evidence in court are important too. It is the victim on trial, many times. bigfudge wrote 3 days ago: Jimmy Saville was many things, but I donât think he was a toff. His ability to abuse was about power, and perhaps gender, but not class. mschuster91 wrote 3 days ago: Yeah but if you sell the populace on the idea that pedos are only something that's a threat on the interwebs the populace won't care about all the other pedos, and if there is a pedo scandal like the next Savile the government can just go and shrug and say "we did all we could". And that is the point behind all that pedo scare. ThePowerOfFuet wrote 3 days ago: URI [1]: https://xcancel.com/BenWallace70/status/189297212081829919... doublerabbit wrote 3 days ago: Thank you. scott_w wrote 3 days ago: Just to be clear: Wallace is not a head of state, or even an MP any more. At one point, he was Secretary of State for Defence, a Cabinet position, however he resigned this in 2023. This doesnât justify his position (itâs stupid) but he doesnât speak for the current government. onei wrote 3 days ago: To clarify a bit further, the UK head of state is King Charles III, as he is for a bunch of other countries in the Commonwealth. Head of state in the UK is a bit weird compared to countries that abolished or never had a monarchy. ttepasse wrote 3 days ago: The vast majority of democracies separated the roles of head of state and head of government. ojhp wrote 3 days ago: Technically we did abolish the monarchy back in the 17th century, but the replacement was so bad we brought them back about 10 years later, which I think makes us a minority of one and even more weird. Anyway, back on topic: this is a ridiculous law that is forcing services to erode their security while smart criminals can just use some nice free open-source software somewhere else for E2E communication. And a lot of this is definitely down to lawmakers not understanding technology. scott_w wrote 3 days ago: Youâre correct, however I gave GP the benefit of the doubt and assumed they meant Secretary of State ;-) And, to be fair, while Iâm generally a small r republican, Iâm seeing benefits of having a non politically aligned head of state after J6. While the monarch has limited power, booting out a PM that canât command the confidence of Parliament is one of them. The question of whether Johnson would accept being dethroned a la Trump was always silly given his consent was never needed. worik wrote 3 days ago: > And, to be fair, while Iâm generally a small r republican, Iâm seeing benefits of having a non politically aligned head of state One of the benefits of a constitutional monarchy is the head of state did not campaign for the position. c0ndu17 wrote 2 days ago: Iâve become a bit of fan of it over the last few years. That said, I donât think the UK can be replicated. It wraps ultimate power up in a contradiction, you have it but you canât use it. Sure, technically you could but it would be your last act. Another important aspect, the for and against is currently split between parties, so thereâs somewhat of unification factor between parties on that divide as well. It gets a lot of hate, because it is imperfect, but I donât think it gets its fair shake. My views more of, if it ainât broke is it really worth the risk changing it. worik wrote 2 days ago: > Sure, technically you could but it would be your last act. It was used in Australia in the 1970s onei wrote 3 days ago: The UK monarch's power is largely based on convention more than active decision making. For example, a government is formed at the invitation of the monarch, but that's long reflected the results of an election. Getting rid of a PM generally happens when they run out of luck. That sometimes coincides with the ruling party/coalition imploding. The next PM is then shortlisted by MPs and selected by a minority of the electorate. I guess the US equivalent is the leader of the house being unable to hold their majority together. In some ways the presidential election feels more democratic if a relative outsider (like Trump was) can win. But a 2 year lead up is crazy. exe34 wrote 3 days ago: > that having nothing to hide means you have nothing to fear hopefully the US turning from leader of the free world to Russia's tool will give them the kick they need to realise that just because you trust the government now doesn't mean you trust the next government or the one after it. isaacremuant wrote 3 days ago: > hopefully the US turning from leader of the free world to Russia's tool So much humour in one short phrase. Do you really believe your propaganda or is it just absentmindedly parroting pro permanent war talking points? bspammer wrote 2 days ago: What would you call the ridiculous claim that Ukraine started the war? Who else does that serve but Russia? exe34 wrote 2 days ago: "your honour, they repeatedly hit my fist with their face". exe34 wrote 3 days ago: He demands $500bn of rare earth minerals, insists that Ukraine started the war by getting invaded and wants Zelensky to be replaced by a Russian puppet. It's amazing how the US went from the defender of the free world to just another thug. isaacremuant wrote 2 days ago: "defender of the free world" is just so funny to me. I'm sorry to burst your bubble of jingoism and US imperialism excepcionalism. exe34 wrote 2 days ago: what do you call US nukes in Europe? that's exactly what it was - Pax Americana, 70 years of peace and prosperity has come to an end for most countries. Now Russia has an ally in their old enemy. GeekyBear wrote 3 days ago: You probably don't want to look up which US President tried to force Apple to insert an encryption back door into iPhones back in 2015. However, Google did only start moving to protect location data from subpoenas after people started to worry that location data could be used as a legal weapon against women who went to an abortion clinic, so your larger point stands. dguest wrote 2 days ago: Points about Russia or partisan politics aside, there are now at least 10M people living in the US who have a very strong incentive to hide all their data from the executive branch. That's to say nothing of the countless millions who might want to help them. The demand for encryption just exploded, in a legal gray area (city, state, and federal laws seem to be in conflict here) it's just a question of whether governments allows the supply to follow. jshier wrote 3 days ago: That would be none, as it was the FBI, operating independently (as it's supposed to), which tried to force the issue. They even tried to go to Congress but found little support for their stunt. I'm not even sure Obama ever spoke in support of the backdoor, much less used any political power to make it a reality. GeekyBear wrote 3 days ago: Sorry, but the FBI is part of the executive branch. This is exactly like saying that President Trump has nothing to do with the actions of the executive branch agencies today. exe34 wrote 3 days ago: it's true that the honour system only works when there's honour in the people in charge. when a clown moves into a palace, the clown doesn't become the king - the palace becomes a circus. GeekyBear wrote 3 days ago: Haven't we already learned that gaslighting the public is counterproductive? President Obama sold himself as a Constitutional scholar who would set right the civil liberties overreach of his predecessor. You aren't going to convince sane people that his executive branch agencies sought to gut the fourth amendment without his being aware of it, despite months of extensive press coverage. exe34 wrote 3 days ago: "the other side is just as bad" isn't the justification that a lot of people seem to think it is. if you don't like what the other side has done, don't just copy them. do better. GeekyBear wrote 3 days ago: It's simpler. If you claim that a particular action would be bad if the other political team were to perform it, don't suddenly make excuses for that very same action if it turns out that your favored political team has previously performed it. exe34 wrote 2 days ago: you're still doing it. kingkongjaffa wrote 3 days ago: > Especially in the UK which operates as a paternalistic state and enjoys authoritarian support across all parties. This seemed strange to point out. Itâs not really any more or less âpaternalisticâ than most western nations including the US. gleenn wrote 3 days ago: If you see a red car driving down the street do you not call it red because there are many other red cars? They're adding color (pun intended) to their description of the general bias of the UK government. What you're doing is called Whataboutism - the argument that others are doing something similar or as bad in different contexts. It doesn't make what the UK is doing any less bad for citizens (and non-citizens) privacy or data sovereignty. polshaw wrote 2 days ago: You don't say it's "especially" red then do you. The comparison was started by the GP. 15155 wrote 3 days ago: Folks in the United States aren't routinely arrested for Facebook posts. cmdli wrote 2 days ago: The AP News was just kicked out of press conferences for not using the government-preferred term for the Gulf of Mexico. The new director of the FBI is pledging to go after members of the press that he doesn't like. The US is jumping headfirst in the "bad speech isn't free" direction in the past month. twixfel wrote 3 days ago: There are limits to speech in every country, including the US. What I always find baffling is the sheer arrogance of Americans, that the only way to be a free and democratic country is their way, to the extent that they send their elected representatives to Germany of all places to implicitly argue for the legalisation of the Hitler salute. Meanwhile their country has slid into fascism. Sad and tragic. jirf_dev wrote 3 days ago: Of course they are. Violent threats and admitting illegal activity on social media can lead to arrests in the US. By being so unspecific your comment does not really foster good discussion on the topic. You should describe what kind of posts they are being arrested for and which laws/protections in the UK you are specifically criticizing. 4ndrewl wrote 3 days ago: They're not arrested for posting on Facebook. They're arrested for _what_ they're posting on Facebook. JBSay wrote 3 days ago: Just like any other authoritarian state 4ndrewl wrote 3 days ago: Hardly. There are limits to speech in most jurisdictions. That hardly crosses the threshold for "authoritarian". The high profile cases in the UK have been around incitement to violence and contempt of court. pb7 wrote 3 days ago: Yes, people in the US don't get arrested for that. maccard wrote 3 days ago: Yes, they do. [1] [2] [3] URI [1]: https://www.justice.gov/usao-az/pr/page-man-charged-... URI [2]: https://edition.cnn.com/2015/04/30/us/georgia-woman-... URI [3]: https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2023/10/19/influencer-gets-... URI [4]: https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndal/pr/birmingham-man-... fencepost wrote 3 days ago: No, they get arrested for conduct that would be criminal no matter where they did it. Facebook (2x) and Twitter (2x) were the (virtual) venues where the crimes were committed, but the crimes were attempting to organize a mob to burn down a courthouse, inciting and threatening to murder police, conspiracy to suppress votes and threatening to kill the President. The crimes would be just as criminal had they been done in person at a local bar (or any other physical location). maccard wrote 3 days ago: Which is exactly the same as in the UK. > The crimes would be just as criminal had they been done in person at a local bar (or any other physical location). I agree. Where the US differs is that because of the US's 1st amendment it's _not_ a crime to say those things even in a bar. Anyway, all of that to say that americans are arrested for posting things on the internet, despite what people claim. 4ndrewl wrote 3 days ago: Stop it. We don't deal in "facts" any more. kmeisthax wrote 3 days ago: What the politicians want is partial security: something they can crack but criminals can't. That is achievable in physical security, but not in cybersecurity. I have a feeling the politicians already know partial cybersecurity isn't an option, and don't care. Certainly, the intelligence community advising them absolutely does know. We don't even have to be conspiratorial about it: their jobs are easier in the world where secrets are illegal than in the world where hackers actually get stopped. eterm wrote 2 days ago: > That is achievable in physical security, but not in cybersecurity This isn't accurate though, and leads us down the path of trying to prevent these bad laws from a technical perspective when we should be fighting the principle of the bad law not just decrying it for being "unworkable". It is possible to construct encryption schemes with a "backdoor key" while still being provably secure against anyone else. This creates precisely the "partial security" you describe: Criminals can't crack the encryption, but the government can use their backdoor-key. But like those who argue online age-consent schemes can't work, it doesn't help to argue against the technical aspects of such bad laws. The law, particularly UK law, doesn't care for what's technically possible. The bad laws can sit on the books regardless of the technical feasibility of enforcement. Eventually technology can catch up, or the law can simply be applied on a best endeavours / selective enforcement approach. kmeisthax wrote 1 day ago: You are correct that we can engineer a cryptosystem with two sets of keys. However, nothing prevents keys from being stolen by someone else. In a normal cryptosystem the security of the key is entirely up to you; but in a "law enforcement accessible" system now you have to worry about the feds getting hacked, too. And since the feds will have backdoor keys for many, many users; there is much more interest in stealing those keys. Physical security has a different set of tradeoffs. Notably, you have to actually be physically present to manipulate and defeat a physical lock, which is what I was alluding to. Even then, it provides an example of how easily a backdoor can be compromised. The Travel Sentry system exists to allow TSA employees to unlock and inspect luggage. There are seven master keys in total; copies of which are spread around thousands of airports with tens to hundreds of TSA employees each. Suffice it to say, the master keys leaked decades ago and you can buy them off Amazon for a few bucks. Any such backdoor key will need similar levels of access to government employees and will likely leak for the same reasons as the TSA keys. Except that the consequence of an encryption backdoor key leaking will be much higher than someone being able to open luggage locks. Politically, there is also an argument that we should be able to keep secrets from the state. Certainly, there is a reason why we have a 4th Amendment, and it is not because searches and seizures just so happen to be inconvenient. As for age-of-consent checking, the problem is that existing age verification services would be able to track everyone who accesses an age-verified site. Which, given today's legal climate basically demanding age verification for everything[0], would give the verifier access to your whole browsing history. Physical age verification is relatively privacy-preserving: I present my ID and that's that. The government that issued that ID does not learn where I presented it, because it's an offline credential. The people I'm doing business with do learn my identity, and they could sell that information, but that's something they didn't need an ID to do (so we should pass a law to prohibit that). [0] There is also a political argument that the 1st Amendment precludes age verification on social media - aka "don't censor kids" jmholla wrote 2 days ago: > This creates precisely the "partial security" you describe: Criminals can't crack the encryption, but the government can use their backdoor-key. No, it doesn't. Now criminals just have to get the key. These schemes have been tried many times. They've been discovered by actors that shouldn't have access to them. Please don't go around advising government leaders and organizations. This is exactly the problem solving capabilities of governmental leaders that security experts are decrying here in this thread. I honestly though get you're comment was going to go along the lines of perfect physical security can only be perfectly secure from everyone, including the people it shouldn't be. We constantly see the hacking oh physical locations. The big things keeping some orgs from being attacked: redundancy, observability, and ENCRYPTION WITHOUT BACKDOORS! jliptzin wrote 2 days ago: And what happens when someone in the government inevitably leaks the key either intentionally or because of a hack? joncp wrote 3 days ago: > That is achievable in physical security, but not in cybersecurity. Not with physical security either, I'm afraid. kmeisthax wrote 1 day ago: Any physical lock can be manipulated, even the particularly high-security ones. But in practice, most locks are not even challenged because doing so requires actually walking up to the lock and trying. You can't try every physical lock in existence; but you can try every digital lock. So the effects of, say, an encryption backdoor key compromise would be far greater and far more immediate than, say, the compromise of the Travel Sentry master keys. cryptonector wrote 3 days ago: With physical security the state apparatus can provide physical security in the form of police and what not, as well as deterrence and punishment. In the world of cryptography it's... a bit harder to do something similar. In the best case they can come up with a key escrow system that doesn't suck too much, force you to use it, and hopefully they don't ever get the master keys hacked and stolen or leaked. But they're not asking for key escrow. They're asking for providers to be the escrow agents or whatever worse thing they come up with. nomilk wrote 3 days ago: Wow - how sad. To think the 2nd highest scoring post ever on hacker news is Apple's 2016 A Message to Our Customers. A display of intelligence, morality and courage under great pressure: [1] How things have changed. > In a statement Apple said it was "gravely disappointed" So are we, Apple. So are we. URI [1]: https://hn.algolia.com okeuro49 wrote 3 days ago: Apple did the right thing. I would much rather they were transparent, so that people can move services, rather than build a backdoor in secret, to appease the far-left Labour government. stoobs wrote 3 days ago: Oh stop with "far left" nonsense, none of our main political parties are much further than slightly left or right of centrist. nomilk wrote 3 days ago: Building a backdoor and telling us is better than building a backdoor and not telling us, but not building a backdoor at all is ideal. CodeWriter23 wrote 3 days ago: If Apple was a real American Company they would solve this issue by withdrawing their devices from the UK. int_19h wrote 3 days ago: Is Palantir a Real American Company? sumuyuda wrote 3 days ago: Apple could have disabled iCloud completely for UK users. This would protect both UK users and other users whoâs data would also been captured in an iCloud backup. They would lose some money on services, but would have been the better choice to stand up to the UK government and protect the UK users. jdminhbg wrote 3 days ago: It's fine to continue providing the service as long as people know it's not encrypted. I am not worried about my photos being subpoenaed; I am worried about losing them. I'd rather have the service. j-bos wrote 3 days ago: This law raises serious concerns about being a non UK resident using British software, like Linux Mint. nobankai wrote 3 days ago: No, it really does not. Ylpertnodi wrote 3 days ago: How can you definitively know? nobankai wrote 3 days ago: In the case of Linux Mint, I can check the commit history, build the software myself and even validate it against public checksums. It is expressly defended against these types of attacks, making it an odd choice to single out. mihaaly wrote 3 days ago: Isn't it already a law violation using it in certain scenarios? Or will be soon? Aachen wrote 2 days ago: No? Instead of speaking in question marks, why not link or reference the law or scenarios you're talking about? mihaaly wrote 2 days ago: You seriously need to re-learn what the concept of asking a question means! It looks like you were using it so long for passive agressive arguing that it lost its original meaning for you completely! I was asking. Aachen wrote 2 days ago: So was I, because I have no idea what you're talking about so I'm curious about any more details to be able to look up why Linux Mint would be illegal in the UK. There's a myriad of laws it could fall under so undirected keyword searches won't let me find it and I'm also not sure if anyone can even read all laws that exist to see if there's anything related to what Linux Mint is/does, the question seems unanswerable but hints towards a certain thing being potentially illegal without saying what it is xyst wrote 3 days ago: If you care about privacy and security of your data, you arenât using public services from Apple or Google, or âbig techâ anyways. I always thought of âcloudâ services to be a sham. I only trust them with transient data or junk data anyways (glorified temp storage, at best). Ruq wrote 3 days ago: Honestly I'm surprised that rather than trying to build stupid backdoors and such, tyrannical governments don't just try to make a encryption key database. They hold ALL the keys and can get into anything they want, anytime they want. If you get caught with keys or encrypted data they can't access, punishment ensues. Like if you're gonna try to eliminate privacy and freedom, just be honest and open about your intentions. santiagobasulto wrote 3 days ago: What happens if a British citizen/resident buys an iPhone in the USA? Btw, as a European citizen, I always buy my devices in the USA. We can complain about the US as much as we want, but Europe is on another level. commandersaki wrote 3 days ago: I think the iCloud services is based on the region of your Apple Account. So you could theoretically use a US region Apple Account and enjoy iCloud services. But that means you won't get UK region apps, except in the app store you can switch to different Apple Accounts as you please, so you can have multiple accounts for different regions (which is what I do). Ylpertnodi wrote 3 days ago: As an EU citizen, the US* (govts) can stay way from my stuff. I won't even vpn through the *or any other gubments. Of course, when the rubber truncheon comes out, I'd be happy to show my encrypted stuff. But until then, or without a warrant, I'd prefer not to. andyjohnson0 wrote 3 days ago: Presumably this applies to the iPhones owned by UK government ministers, civil servants, personal devices of military personnel, UK businesses, etc. As a brit, I find that my government's stupidity is almost its only reliable attribute. mrweasel wrote 3 days ago: Presumably not, politicians have a way of excepting themselves in these types of laws. It's almost as if they understand the need for privacy, they just fail to apply that understanding to any scenarios beyond their own. fdb345 wrote 3 days ago: "Presumably not" Rubbish. Give me one example? They will have to abide as well. 8fingerlouie wrote 3 days ago: Not a UK example, but Chat Control (2.0) explicitly exempts various politicians and government officials from being spied on. andyjohnson0 wrote 3 days ago: I meant that Apple's decision to withdraw ADP applies to them, not the Investigatory Powers Act. Or are you saying that Apple will give them a free exemption? kouru225 wrote 3 days ago: Iâm at the point where Iâm ready to get a pixel and install graphene wishfish wrote 3 days ago: I'm in a similar position. Strongly considering replacing my iPhone with a Pixel. But I realize I'm vulnerable via cloud services. GrapheneOS won't save me from someone poking through my Dropbox. I'll have to find another option for that too. AlgebraFox wrote 2 days ago: Nextcloud works great on GrapheneOS if you are willing to self host. noescgchq wrote 3 days ago: Right but then you are jailed at Heathrow for not unlocking your phone. The UK has made it clear that Counter Terrorism legislation has no limits in UK law even if that means compromising all systems and leaving them vulnerable to state actor attacks. MPs will continue to use encrypted messaging systems that disappear messages during any inquiries of course. aqueueaqueue wrote 3 days ago: Take a dumb phone (or none)? fdb345 wrote 3 days ago: Except no one has ever been jailed for simply refusing to unlock a phone unless there was heavy evidence there was something on the phone. Stop spreading incorrect FUD okasaki wrote 3 days ago: You're an ignorant fool: URI [1]: https://www.theregister.com/Print/2009/11/24/ripa_jfl/ fdb345 wrote 2 days ago: LOL literally a suspected terrorsit. Aachen wrote 2 days ago: Being in court for something doesn't make you guilty of said thing. What's the "heavy evidence" you say they had before jailing this person? timc3 wrote 3 days ago: No one that we have heard of yet. shaky-carrousel wrote 3 days ago: You can provide a self destroy PIN with GrapheneOS. runjake wrote 3 days ago: And that certainly wouldn't raise their suspicion. Surely, they'd immediately let you go after that stunt. shaky-carrousel wrote 2 days ago: Of course they could throw a tantrum, but it wouldn't be nothing but that, and they will have to release you once they cool down. What are they going to say? That they won't release you until you magically unerase the phone? There's nothing to wait for. Aachen wrote 2 days ago: I agree there is nothing to coerce out of you anymore and so you'd not be held on this forced decryption law... but not complying with such a court order probably results in another offence for which you can then get punished (not sure if a fine, community service, or jail time would be most likely for this), on top of that it doesn't look good to the judge who presides over the original case in which they de demanded the decryption in the first place dclowd9901 wrote 3 days ago: But it would be up to him, wouldn't it? I think that's the main deal here: cart blanche access to your data, or giving into someone's bullshit fishing attempt because it's inconvenient. sangnoir wrote 3 days ago: Schiphol was already the superior airport for connections anyway, not being arrested just sweetens the deal. varispeed wrote 3 days ago: Until it will be illegal to do so. perdomon wrote 3 days ago: Can someone explain what's changed in the UK that they would consider requesting unfettered access to all Apple customer data (including outside their own borders)? I get that the NSA is infamous for warrant-less surveillance, but this seems a step further. drak0n1c wrote 3 days ago: Labour Party was elected six months ago. It is doubling down on existing government surveillance policy as a cure-all weapon to investigate and chill opposition, and to humble foreign tech companies. guccihat wrote 3 days ago: It is "just" the domestic intelligence agency ordering Apple to backdoor their own system be able to supply data for lawful interception. As I read the article, it's not a UK backdoor in the sense they can roam around in every users data. The domestic agencies still need to follow the rules of lawful interception, namely they need a warrant, and it is targeted at UK nationals only. At least that is how I read the article. crimsoneer wrote 3 days ago: This isn't warrant-less, it's with a warrant. This isn't really a change the UK, it's the UK trying to adapt to the proliferation of E2E encryption - ten years ago, law enforcement could always access your messages, now the default if you're on whatsapp/iMessage is they can't because E2E is on by default. UK lawmakers aren't happy with a default position of the state being totally incapable of reading messages, no matter what the law says. It might not be cryptographically sensible, but it is responding to a real change in the strength of the state. r00fus wrote 3 days ago: This is part and parcel of the collapse of western capitalism (aka American empire). You get two main choices when capitalism fails - fascism or communism/socialism. It's clear that the UK has chosen fascism (either liberals like Labor or extreme right like Reform). dumbledoren wrote 2 days ago: That choice exists only in cases in which the people can effect a revolution. The UK elite is too strongly in control of the country through its establishment, so, it will be a loud tumble down the hillside towards fascism... chippiewill wrote 3 days ago: Nothing's changed, they just want the same access to people's data they've always had. They loved completely unencrypted text messages. The rise of first-party end-to-end encryption has made life difficult for the security services so they just want to get rid of it. Also historically the US government loved the UK doing all this spying because the US wasn't allowed to do a lot of it on their own citizens. varispeed wrote 3 days ago: Uncontrolled immigration and terrorist threat, but also probably they want to look at people's nudes. Jolly lot. fdb345 wrote 3 days ago: How will they enforce this? They will have to send out messages 'You have 32465 hours before you account is deleted unless you decrypt' This is NOT a good look. tene80i wrote 3 days ago: I have a naive question, and it's genuine curiosity, not a defence of what's happening here. This ADP feature has only existed for a couple of years, right? I understand people are mad that it's now gone, but why weren't people mad _before_ it existed? For like, a decade? Why do people treat iCloud as immediately dangerous now, if they didn't before? Did they think it was fully encrypted when it wasn't? Did people not care about E2E encryption and now they do? Is it that E2E wasn't possible before? If it's such a huge deal to people now, why would they have ever used iCloud or anything like it, and now feel betrayed? aqueueaqueue wrote 3 days ago: People learn stuff over time. If you are not living like RMS you probably are allowing something to spy on you. If that spying gets removed you become aware. You don't want it back. It is like anything that gets better. Fight for the better. It is like aviation safety: who cares about a few crashes this year when people didn't complain in the 70s. saljam wrote 3 days ago: i mainly use apple devices, but never put anything on icloud before adp came out. mihaaly wrote 3 days ago: The situation was not something existed since the beginning of time, it evolved gradually. Long ago not that much and not that many critically private data was circulating the net, it increased and got essential living online by time, in some instances forced in an increasing portion of situations. Worry then had no grounds yet. As exposure of the population grew, so did the benefit for adverse elements breaking online data stores, growing in numbers fast, not all made properly in the headless chase of success. Damage and hence awareness grew gradually. But basically yes, people are stupid and gave no shit but believed all f nonsense, the marketing frauds made them eating up their crap happy if it had pretty words and pictures, promising something halfway to Paradise. Like the Cloud mirage. Those of careful personality were cautious since the first time Apple and alike pushed on people giving up control over their own data for tiny comfort (or no comfort eventually due to all hostile patterns in the full picture) not putting all and every precious or slightly valuable stuff to some unknown server on the internet protected only by hundreds of years old method: password (so not protected at all essentially). Memories, contacts, schedules, communications, documents, clone of their devices in full, putting all into 'cloud' (much before secure online storage became a thing)? Many times to the very same one? Who are that much idiots, really?! deelowe wrote 3 days ago: Apple has been advertising security and privacy as a top feature for years now. It would make sense for people to get upset if those features were removed. LeoPanthera wrote 3 days ago: iCloud did a lot less, in the past. Disabling it now gives you access to more data than it did a few years ago. And I also suspect it has far more users today than it did a few years ago. procaryote wrote 3 days ago: An E2E encrypted thing that later gets a special backdoor added is obviously much worse than a not E2E encrypted thing. It's like when google suddenly decided that their on-device-only 2FA app Google Authenticator should get an opt-out unencrypted cloud backup. It means people who don't pay a lot of attention can suddenly have much less protection than they were originally sold on. TradingPlaces wrote 3 days ago: Apple and the FBI were squabbling over this for a few years, and then Apple decided to end the conversation one day and implement ADP AzzyHN wrote 3 days ago: Hacker News is a small subsection of the internet. I think the majority of people, probably 90% or more, simply do not care that much. nikisweeting wrote 3 days ago: I was mad for years that ADP didn't exist / was being witheld due to Apple+FBI negotiations for years. I 100% treated iCloud as dangerous until they released it, and I cheered in the streets when they finally did. fauigerzigerk wrote 3 days ago: I think it makes sense for the services we rely on to get more secure as the world gets more dangerous. It's an arms race. You don't want to go back. GeekyBear wrote 3 days ago: You've always been able to perform encrypted backups to your own local PC or Mac out of the box, so people who do care about privacy have always had that option. One thing I've found concerning is that Apple had encrypted cloud backups ready to roll out years ago, but delayed releasing the feature when the US government objected. > After years of delay under government pressure, Apple said Wednesday that it will offer fully encrypted backups of photos, chat histories and most other sensitive user data in its cloud storage system worldwide, putting them out of reach of most hackers, spies and law enforcement. [1] So the UK government isn't the only government that has objected to users having real privacy protections. URI [1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/12/07/icloud-... xyst wrote 3 days ago: People were mad. Remember the Snowden leaks and PRISM program from NSA? [1] In fact, Apple began to adopt âprivacyâ first marketing due to this fallout. Apple even doubled down on this by not assisting FBI with unlocking a terrorist suspects Apple device in 2016. [2] It was around that time I actually had _some_ respect for Apple. I was even a âApple fanboyâ for some time. But that respect and fanboi-ism was lost between 2019 and now. Between the deterioration of the Apple ecosystem (shitty macOS updates), pushing scanning of photos and uploading to central server (CSAM scanning scandal?), the god awful âApple wallâ, very poor interoperability, and very anti-repair stance of devices. [1] URI [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants... URI [2]: https://money.cnn.com/2016/03/28/news/companies/fbi-apple-ip... post_break wrote 3 days ago: Yes, I was mad before it existed and didn't use icloud backups. With the E2E and ADP I turned it on. If it gets nuked in the US I'll go back to encrypted local backups only. matthewdgreen wrote 3 days ago: Many of us were very upset about Apple's slow-rolling this feature. There were many claims that they delayed the rollout due to government pressure [1] (note: that story is by the same reporter who broke today's news a couple of weeks ago.) Rolling out encryption takes time, so the best I can say is "finally it arrived," and then it was immediately attacked by the U.K. government and has now been disabled over there. I imagine that Apple is also now intimidated to further advertise the feature even here in the U.S. To me this indicates we (technical folks) should be making a much bigger deal about this feature to our non-technical friends. URI [1]: https://www.reuters.com/article/world/exclusive-apple-droppe... jahewson wrote 3 days ago: The problem here is not with iCloud but with the U.K. government. People like to tell themselves the government isnât actually trampling their rights but events like this make it impossible to ignore. ziddoap wrote 3 days ago: At one point in time, the entirety of web communication was completely unencrypted. Why were people not mad then? Do you think people would be angrier now, if HTTPS were suddenly outlawed? Among other valid answers, removing rights and privileges generally makes people angrier than not having those rights or privileges in the first place. muyuu wrote 3 days ago: always used my own encryption and cyphered any sensitive data/communications, but the problem is that most people won't and you're often compromised by them simple solutions like Whatsapp, Signal and ADP brought this to the masses - which some governments have issues about - and this makes a massive difference to everybody including those who wouldn't be caught dead using an iphone anyway if we could go back to the early 1990s when only professionals, Uni students, techies and enthusiasts used the internet I'd go in a heartbeat but that's not the world we're living in bostik wrote 3 days ago: > Why were people not mad then? Oh, we were. I am in the crowd who had been asking for generally used encryption since 1995. After all, we were already using SSH for our shell connections. The first introduction to SSL outside of internet banking and Amazon was for many online services to use encryption only for their login (and user preferences) page. The session token was then happily sent in the clear for all subsequent page loads. It took a while for always-on encryption to take hold, and many of the online services complained that enabling SSL for all their page loads was too expensive. Both computationally and in required hardware resources. When I wrote for an ICT magazine, I once did some easy benchmarking around the impact of public key size for connection handshakes. Back then a single 1024-bit RSA key encryption operation took 2ms. Doubling it to 2048 bits bumped that up to 8ms. (GMP operations have O(n^2) complexity in terms of keysize.) aqueueaqueue wrote 3 days ago: "We" is an special group. I am technical but never thought much about it back then. There is a boiling frog. The 90s internet was used for searching and silly emails. Now it has you life in the cloud. But that didn't happen in a day. viciousvoxel wrote 3 days ago: Counterpoint: when web communication was unencrypted it was before we did our banking, tax filing, sent medical records, and sent all other kinds of sensitive information over the internet. The risks today are not remotely the same as they once were. hirako2000 wrote 3 days ago: A few factors - e2e encryption is not ubiquitous yet, but awareness is ascending. - distrust for government also is on the uptrend. - more organized dissent to preserve privacy. No people didn't assume data was encrypted. Yes E2E has been possible for many decades, but businesses don't have privacy as a priority, sometimes even counter incentives to protect it. Personal data sells well. Things have changed because more people are getting to understand why it matters, forcing the hand of companies having to choice but at least feign to secure privacy. freeone3000 wrote 3 days ago: iCloud and iPhones have traditionally resisted US governmental overreach, only giving data to iCloud in cases of actual criminal prosecution against specific individuals. As well, iPhone backups in iCloud is relatively new, as are many other arbitrary storage features â it used to just be your songs and your photos! Now itâs data from all of your apps and a full phone backup. Hence the resistance: the stories of police being unable to recover data from a locked iPhone may now be over Shank wrote 3 days ago: I guess I'm one of the people who was upset that it didn't exist before, and I didn't enable iCloud Backup as a result. I didn't use iCloud Photos. I had everything stored on a NAS (which was in-fact encrypted properly) and used a rube goldberg-esque setup to move data to it periodically. I used iMazing and local encrypted backups on a schedule. Lots of people called for E2EE on this stuff, but let's be real about one thing: encryption as a feature being more accessible means more people can be exposed to it. Not everyone can afford a rube goldberg machine to backup their data to a NAS and not make it easily lost if that NAS dies or loses power. It takes immense time, skill, and energy to do that. And my fear isn't the government, either, mind you. I simply don't trust any cloud service provider to not be hacked or compromised (e.g., due to software vulnerability, like log4j) on a relatively long timescale. It's a pain to think about software security in that context. For me, ADP solves this and enables a lot of people who wouldn't otherwise be protected from cloud-based attacks to be protected. Sure, protection against crazy stuff like government requests is a bonus, but we've seen with Salt Typhoon that any backdoor can be found and exploited. We've seen major exploits in embedded software (log4j) that turn out to break massive providers. So, there were people upset, their concerns were definitely voiced on independent blogs and random publications, and now, we're back in the limelight because of the removal of the feature for people in the UK. But, speaking as a user of ADP outside of the UK, I am happy that ADP is standing up for it, and thankful that it exists. (To be clear: government backdoors, and government requests also scare me, but they aren't a direct threat to myself as much as a vulnerability that enables all user data to be viewed or downloaded by a random third-party). RenThraysk wrote 3 days ago: Think most people had no idea how it worked, it was magic to them. iCloud hacks (like in 2014) have raised awareness for the need for E2EE. writtenAnswer wrote 3 days ago: I think it is more about going backwards. It is often difficult to remove laws than to add them. This is a similar situation. In this situation, I agree that it is bad day for personal privacy/security fjjjrjj wrote 3 days ago: Does this mean I should treat travel to the UK the same way as China and only bring a burner device with no information on it or on cloud backup accounts? gnfargbl wrote 3 days ago: Border control agents in all countries -- including the US -- have fairly extensive powers to search your devices or deny you entry. I'm not sure this decision should change your calculus on that point. See also URI [1]: https://medium.com/@thegrugq/stop-fabricating-travel-securit... fjjjrjj wrote 3 days ago: Company trade secrets probably shouldn't be on the device? Edit - or the device's cloud backups? jcarrano wrote 3 days ago: The smartphone is a terrible platform. Something like this could never happen on the PC, where you can install any encryption and backup software that you want. While Apple did the right thing by refusing to give the UK government a backdoor, they are responsible for getting users in this situation in the first place. I'm not familiar with the iPhone and maybe there is already an alternative to iCloud ADP, although that would make this whole situation completely nonsensical. jahewson wrote 3 days ago: Given that the most popular software of this kind is Dropbox Iâm quite confident that nothing youâve said is true. jcarrano wrote 2 days ago: My point is that if someone wants e2e encrypted backup, it is not difficult to set up on a PC even for non power-users. shuckles wrote 3 days ago: The smartphone platform is the most secure by default personal computer most people own, largely because of the control enforced by Apple. globular-toast wrote 2 days ago: Secure for Apple, not for the users. devsda wrote 3 days ago: If we are saying "secure", we should talk about what we are securing and against whom. A smartphone may be secure against malicious individual actors but its certainly not the most secure when it comes to your private data. Modern day smartphone is designed to maximize capturing your private information like location, communication patterns, activity and (sometimes) health information and pass it on to as many private players(a.k.a apps) as possible, even to governments without your knowledge. You don't have much control over it. In that aspect it is less secure than your typical PC. A PC doesn't have that level of private information in the first place and whatever information it has will leak only if you opt-in or get infected by malware.(recent Windows versions without necessary tweaks may be considered a malware by some). shuckles wrote 3 days ago: Plenty of people access their health records, etc. on a PC via files downloaded to random places on their computer. Are you trying to just say smartphones have a lot of sensors and are carried around in intimate places? sunshowers wrote 3 days ago: But along with that also comes a massive pressure point for rogue states to take advantage of. With a diversity of services this would not be nearly as possible. inetknght wrote 3 days ago: > Something like this could never happen on the PC, where you can install any encryption and backup software that you want. Microsoft wants to have a word with you regarding their Windows operating system that's installed on their device that you're renting. itscrush wrote 2 days ago: Veracrypt works just fine on M$ Windows 11 for FDE. jcarrano wrote 2 days ago: I'm on arch. Still, while I agree that Windows is becoming more closed, you are still free to create and distribute Windows app without asking anyone for permissions. snowwrestler wrote 3 days ago: I havenât checked lately but since it launched the iPhone has allowed the owner to choose whether to back up to Appleâs servers (which would be affected by the UK order) or back up to their local computer. int_19h wrote 3 days ago: It's not an either-or, actually, even though the setting is worded like it is. But even if you have cloud backups enabled, you can still manually trigger a local backup. inetknght wrote 3 days ago: > or back up to their local computer. You mean back up to their Apple computer, yes? I certainly can't back up an iPhone to my Linux computer. sumuyuda wrote 3 days ago: Actually I think you can backup and restore your iPhone on Linux using libimobiledevice. They reverse engineered the protocols for the backup and restore service running on your iPhone. URI [1]: https://libimobiledevice.org/ throwaway77385 wrote 3 days ago: The nightmare continues. For now I am using 3rd party backup services that are (currently) promising me that my backups are encrypted by a key they do not have access to, or control over. But can this even be believed in an age where these secret notices are being served to any number of companies? I suppose the next step would be to ensure that files don't ever arrive in the cloud unencrypted, but I have yet to see a service that allows me to do this with the same level of convenience as, say, my current backup solution, which seamlessly backs up all my phones, my family members' phones, my laptops, their laptops etc. I depend on having an offsite backup of my data. Which inevitably includes my clients' data also. Which I am supposedly keeping secret from outside access. So how does that work once everything becomes backdoored? jahewson wrote 3 days ago: In the case of the U.K., they can throw you in jail for not handing over your encryption key, so itâs a moot point. Theyâve been slowly expanding this power for twenty years now. fdb345 wrote 3 days ago: ive been through all this with the law. no one ever got jailed for not handing over encryption keys unless they were a definitive criminal and theres strong evidence there is criminal data on the device. they tried this with me (NCA) but the judge wouldnt sign off as they had nothning on me or my device. this did however REALLY want to access it! fuck them. pricks kiratp wrote 2 days ago: URI [1]: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/10/25/tommy-robins... fdb345 wrote 2 days ago: you just gave an example of a man who was highly likely to have something of interest on his phone. (as signed by a judge) infinitifall wrote 2 days ago: It is likely there is something of interest on your phone (as signed by my friend Joe). Now unlock your phone or you will be jailed. fdb345 wrote 2 days ago: Except that doesnt happen. NCA wanted DESPERATELY to access mine. They couldnt do it. No Judge would sign off with evidence their was likely to be something on my phone. See how real life destroys your oPiNioN? pinoy420 wrote 1 day ago: Why where did you do callc wrote 3 days ago: Ah yes, the âwe have all the power but pinky promise to only use it on the bad guysâ playbook. I have complete confidence and trust in that promise. /s bloqs wrote 3 days ago: Not for content in the cloud, as far as I understand. Someone will correct me, but you can be arrested and threatened with terror charges if you dont unlock your device, but this does not give them permission to access other computers via the internet. commandersaki wrote 3 days ago: Tommy Robinson trial for refusing to provide his unlock credentials when ingressing UK is happening in March this year. globular-toast wrote 3 days ago: Convenience usually comes at a cost. You shouldn't have to trust anyone. Just use a generic storage service and only upload encrypted files to it. Syncthing + Rclone will probably get you a similar setup that you control. grahamj wrote 3 days ago: IMO the only thing you can have a high level of trust in is your own *nix server. Backup those devices to it then encrypt there before being sent to the cloud. acuozzo wrote 3 days ago: > your own *nix server Just be sure it's pre-Intel Management Engine / pre-AMD Platform Security Processor! JohnFen wrote 3 days ago: Handling the encryption yourself is the way to go, but for maximum security, don't send that encrypted data to the cloud. Keep it all on your own server(s). That doesn't help people who aren't technically capable, of course. But at least those who are can protect themselves. cg5280 wrote 2 days ago: Why couldn't the government just get a warrant and take your local servers? At that point there doesn't seem to be much of a difference with respect to this threat model, at least cloud is convenient. derkades wrote 1 day ago: It is much more effort than sending a data request to a cloud provider, and it can't be done without you knowing. grahamj wrote 3 days ago: Depends what kind of security. Local doesn't help if your house burns down or is robbed. nemomarx wrote 3 days ago: security and convenience are ever at war. mynameyeff wrote 3 days ago: Yikes... looks like Apple sun is setting. This cannot be allowed to happen. HPsquared wrote 3 days ago: It's not just an Apple thing. It's not even just a UK thing. DataOverload wrote 3 days ago: This was predictable vs creating a backdoor yapyap wrote 3 days ago: yikes ComputerGuru wrote 3 days ago: Note that this doesnât satisfy the governmentâs original request, which was for worldwide backdoor access into E2E-encrypted cloud accounts. But I have a more pertinent question: how can you âpullâ E2E encryption without data loss? What happens to those that had this enabled? Edit: Part of my concern is that you have to keep in mind Apple's defense against backdooring E2E is the (US) doctrine that work cannot be compelled. Any solution Apple develops that enables "disable E2E for this account" makes it harder for them to claim that implementing that would be compelling work (or speech, if you prefer) if that capability already exists. ckcheng wrote 3 days ago: > Any solution Apple develops that enables "disable E2E for this account" makes it harder for them to claim that implementing that would be compelling work (or speech, if you prefer) I think itâs really speech [0], which is why itâs important to user privacy and security that Apple widely advertises their entire product line and business as valuing privacy. That way, itâs a higher bar for a court to cross, on balance, when weighing whether to compel speech/code (& signing) to break E2EE. After all, if the CEO says privacy is unimportant [1], maybe compelling a code update to break E2EE is no big deal? (âThe court is just asking you, Google, to say/code what you already believeâ). Whereas if the company says they value privacy, then does the opposite without so much as a fight and then the stock price drops, maybe thatâd be securities fraud? [2]. And so maybe thatâd be harder to compel. [0]: [1]: [2]: URI [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43134235 URI [2]: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/12/google-ceo-eric-schmid... URI [3]: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-26/everyt... kelnos wrote 3 days ago: > the (US) doctrine that work cannot be compelled Is this actually a thing? Telecoms in the US are compelled to provide wiretap facilities to the US and state and local governments. ckcheng wrote 3 days ago: >> Apple's defense against backdooring E2E is the (US) doctrine that [government canât] be compelling work (or speech, if you prefer) Itâs really not "workâ but speech. Thatâs why telecoms can be compelled to wiretap. But code is speech [2], signing that code is also speech, and speech is constitutionally protected (US). The tension is between the All Writs Act (requiring âthird partiesâ assistance to execute a prior order of the courtâ) and the First Amendment. [1] So Apple may be compelled to produce the iCloud drives the data is stored on. But they canât be made to write and sign code to run locally in your iPhone to decrypt that E2EE data (even though obviously they technologically could). [1] URI [1]: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/10/judge-doj-not-all-wr... URI [2]: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/remembering-case-est... codedokode wrote 2 days ago: It's weird bending of law. Code, especially closed-source code, is not a speech; it's a mechanism and the government may mandate what features a mechanism must have (for example, a safety belt in a car). TeaBrain wrote 3 days ago: I think Prof Woodward's quote in the article will likely hold true for Apple's response to the original UK government request: "It was naïve of the UK government to think they could tell a US technology company what to do globally" mtrovo wrote 3 days ago: Apple is in a really tough position. I don't know if there's any way they could fulfil the original request without it effectively becoming a backdoor. Disabling E2E for the UK market is just kicking the can down the road. Even simply developing a tool to coerce users out of E2E without their explicit consent to comply with local laws could be abused in the future to obtain E2E messages with a warrant on different countries. A very difficult position to be in. MetaWhirledPeas wrote 3 days ago: > Apple is in a really tough position. You mean Apple is in a unique position to make a statement. No more Apple products in the UK. Mic drop. Exit stage left. sureIy wrote 3 days ago: But⦠money musictubes wrote 2 days ago: But customers. People keep saying they should just not be in that country. It is far better to have the choice of using an iPhone even if particular features are no longer available. replete wrote 3 days ago: Or, this is how they save face with their customers having complied with the request rather than stop trading with the UK. wrs wrote 3 days ago: > how can you âpullâ E2E encryption without data loss You canât. The article says if you donât disable it (which you have to do yourself, they canât do it for you, because itâs E2E), your iCloud account will be canceled. nashashmi wrote 3 days ago: At this point, the right thing to do is allow for an alt-service. jmb99 wrote 2 days ago: How would an alt service help this situation? Youâd just end up with backdoored services advertising E2EE, no? Appleâs move here is definitely the right one, introduce as much friction as possible to hopefully get the user pissed off at their government for writing such stupid laws. nashashmi wrote 2 days ago: An alt service located in another country could provide e2ee for a fee and not be under UK law. NitpickLawyer wrote 2 days ago: > introduce as much friction as possible to hopefully get the user pissed off at their government for writing such stupid laws. I'm actually surprised that they didn't add more direct text in that screen. "We are unable to provide this service... BECAUSE OF YOUR GOVERNMENT 1984 STYLE REQUESTS. Contact your MPs here and here and oh, here's their unlocked icloud data, might want to add some choice pictures to their stash..." would have been a tad more on the nose... sneak wrote 3 days ago: Apple has an organization-wide mandate for services revenue. Every product must make money on an ongoing basis, every month. That's why you get constantly spammed to subscribe to things on iOS. Apple will never drop this anticompetitive practice of favoring their services until they are legally compelled to. nashashmi wrote 2 days ago: If they want to protest the government mandate, they should provide an alternative solution for the residents of this country bryan_w wrote 3 days ago: > you get constantly spammed to subscribe to things on iOS. Ad companies are the worst globular-toast wrote 3 days ago: > But I have a more pertinent question: how can you âpullâ E2E encryption without data loss? What happens to those that had this enabled? Well exactly. The UK just showed the whole thing is a joke and that Apple can do this worldwide. tripdout wrote 3 days ago: The iOS screenshot displays a message saying it's no longer available for new users. rdtsc wrote 3 days ago: > how can you âpullâ E2E encryption without data loss? What happens to those that had this enabled? They'll keep your data hostage and disable your iCloud account. Clever, huh? So they are not deleting it, just disabling your account. "If you don't like it, make your own hardware and cloud storage company" kind of a thing. lynx97 wrote 3 days ago: More like "If you don't like it, talk to your local politicians", which is, IMO, a totally valid approach. rdtsc wrote 3 days ago: > "If you don't like it, talk to your local politicians", Indeed people only noticed this because Apple tried to do the right thing and now it's somehow also Apple's fault. No good deed goes unpunished, I guess. I think there is a feeling the government power is so overwhelming that they are hoping maybe some trillion dollar corporation would help them out somehow. jl6 wrote 3 days ago: We are told the encryption keys reside only on your device. But Apple control âyourâ device so they can just issue an update that causes your device to decrypt data and upload it. sneak wrote 3 days ago: Apple do not remotely control devices, and automatic updates are not mandatory. GeekyBear wrote 3 days ago: Apple has already fought US government demands that they push an update that would allow the US governmrnt to break encryption on a user's device. > In 2015 and 2016, Apple Inc. received and objected to or challenged at least 11 orders issued by United States district courts under the All Writs Act of 1789. Most of these seek to compel Apple "to use its existing capabilities to extract data like contacts, photos and calls from locked iPhones running on operating systems iOS 7 and older" in order to assist in criminal investigations and prosecutions. A few requests, however, involve phones with more extensive security protections, which Apple has no current ability to break. These orders would compel Apple to write new software that would let the government bypass these devices' security and unlock the phones. URI [1]: https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%E2%80%93FBI_encryptio... RenThraysk wrote 3 days ago: Would just upload the keys drexlspivey wrote 3 days ago: Presumably these keys live in a hardware security module on your phone called âsecure enclaveâ and cannot be extracted kevincox wrote 3 days ago: Apple can push firmware updates to the HSM just like the device. So if they really wanted they could add an operation that extracted the keys (likely by encrypting them to a key that lives in Apple's cloud). watusername wrote 3 days ago: From the Advanced Data Protection whitepaper [0], it appears the keys are stored in the iCloud Keychain domain, so not the Secure Enclave: > Conceptually, Advanced Data Protection is simple: All CloudKit Service keys that were generated on device and later uploaded to the available-after-authentication iCloud Hardware Security Modules (HSMs) in Apple data centers are deleted from those HSMs and instead kept entirely within the accountâs iCloud Keychain protection domain. They are handled like the existing end-to-end encrypted service keys, which means Apple can no longer read or access these keys. [0]: URI [1]: https://support.apple.com/guide/security/advanced-data... jiveturkey wrote 3 days ago: wrapped by a key hierarchy ultimately rooted by a key stored in the secure enclave. watusername wrote 3 days ago: Well yes, the entire storage is. I was trying to explain how it's extractable. jiveturkey wrote 3 days ago: fair! fsflover wrote 3 days ago: Is this module auditable though, or is "just trust us", like everything in the Apple world? jmb99 wrote 2 days ago: An HSM bypass (extracting keys, performing unauthenticated crypto ops) on any recent iOS device is worth 10s of millions, easily. Especially if combined with a one-click/no click. In that sense, itâs auditable, because itâs one of the biggest targets for any colour hat, and the people smart enough to find a bug/backdoor would only be slightly aided by a spec/firmware source, and a bit more by the verilog. This is true for pretty much every ârealâ hsm on the planet btw. No one is sharing cutting edge enclave details, Apple isnât unique in this regard. theshrike79 wrote 3 days ago: If someone has a reliable and workable secure enclave hack they can become a multi-millionaire for selling to state actors or become one of the most famous hackers in the world overnight (and possibly get a life changing amount of bounty from Apple) Basically it's not a hack someone just throws on the internet for everyone to use, it's WAY too valuable to burn like that. LPisGood wrote 3 days ago: Itâs auditable in the sense that there is a very high potential for reward (both reputationally and financially) for security researchers to break it. fsflover wrote 1 day ago: The same reward exists with FLOSS, but it's much easier to audit, making findings more likely. Also, security through obscurity doesn't work. RenThraysk wrote 3 days ago: Ah yes, good point. madeofpalk wrote 3 days ago: When you disable ADP, your local encryption keys are uploaded to Apple's servers to be read by them. Apple could just lock you out of iCloud until you do this. kbolino wrote 3 days ago: The hardware will not allow this, at least not without modifications. The encryption keys are not exportable from the Secure Enclave, not even to Apple's own servers. QuiEgo wrote 2 days ago: Behind the scenes, it'd probably decrypt it locally piece-by-piece with the key in the Secure Enclave, and then reencrypt it with a new key that Apple has a copy of when you disable ADP. Twisell wrote 2 days ago: The Apple security paper describe how to disable ADP through a key rotation sequence. This will be a "forced rotation", they just need to decide how to communicate to users and work out what happens to those who don't comply. Lockout until key rotation look like an option as someone said. biggc wrote 2 days ago: Naive question: what prevents Apple from pushing a malicious software update that automatically disables ADP to UK users? kbolino wrote 2 days ago: Yeah, this seems the most likely thing to happen here. You'll be forced to disable ADP to continue using iCloud in the UK. This still leaves the question of tourists and other visitors, but it at least fits within the parameters of the system without changing its fundamentals. sureIy wrote 3 days ago: Are you gonna unlock that phone anytime soon? Thanks for opening the enclave, don't mind if I ship these keys back home. No notification needed, Apple has root access. jkbbwr wrote 2 days ago: Unless I am making a mistake here, you still can't extract keys of an opened enclave. You can just run operations against those keys. kbolino wrote 2 days ago: Assuming the enclave can receive OTA firmware updates and those updates can completely compromise it, which are not actually proven facts, there's no way to target this to the UK alone without either exempting tourists and creating a black market for loophole phones or else turning all of Britain into a "set foot here and ruin your iPhone forever" zone. oakesm9 wrote 3 days ago: Thatâs exactly the plan. Anyone with this enabled in the UK will need to manually disable it or theyâll get locked out of their iCloud account after a deadline. pacifika wrote 2 days ago: And I guess Apple gets fined for not allowing government approved alternatives to these services not long after. Goleniewski wrote 3 days ago: Think about it.. You don't even have to be an Apple user to be affected by this issue. If someone backs up their conversations with you to apple cloud, your exchange is now fair game. You get no say in it either. We all lose. globular-toast wrote 3 days ago: Security hinges on trust. The only real privacy tool is PGP which uses a web of trust model. But it only works if people own their own computers and storage devices. What they've done is got everyone to rent their computers and storage instead. There's no security model that works for the users here. Vaslo wrote 3 days ago: Scary - I try to use signal as much as possible now for this reason. IshKebab wrote 3 days ago: Signal can't evade this law either. blfr wrote 3 days ago: Why not? Signal was willing to run all kinds crazy setups to evade foreign laws, like domain fronting. URI [1]: https://signal.org/blog/doodles-stickers-censorship/ botanical76 wrote 3 days ago: If Signal can do it, then why doesn't Apple make a stand? buzzerbetrayed wrote 2 days ago: If signal doesnât make a stand, the entire value prop of signal collapses and they cease to be a thing. For Apple, privacy is one value prop. But seemingly smaller one than the UK market. freeqaz wrote 3 days ago: That's why it's important to use apps like Signal where you can set the retention of your messages. I've got everybody I know using it now! sneak wrote 3 days ago: I use a patched Signal client that disables retention deletion and remote delete messages. ruined wrote 3 days ago: and that's awfully rude of you, but if you were concerned about message retention you wouldn't do that. so what's your point? spopejoy wrote 2 days ago: Nothing rude about it -- if the protocol depends on client-side s/w to pinky-swear it respects message retention, then it's an insecure protocol. I like signal and use it, but I already thought message retention was pointless. It seems at best a trusted informal protocol you can use with known parties but not something you can really rely on. fdb345 wrote 3 days ago: In a world where they cancel encryption they can't access... doesn't Signal and its CIA funded origins concern you? HumblyTossed wrote 3 days ago: Nope. I actually think that would bring more scrutiny and so I feel safer knowing it's not be cracked. fdb345 wrote 3 days ago: interesting and illogical reply HumblyTossed wrote 3 days ago: No more illogical than trusting Apple's security because it is ... Apple. fdb345 wrote 2 days ago: Well, here you are discussing why UK law needed a pass because they are literally blocked by Apples security. Talk about Low IQ HumblyTossed wrote 2 days ago: Thanks for the attack on my IQ. I see I have nothing to worry about. hugh-avherald wrote 3 days ago: Setting a retention time out is playing with fire. If the police get ahold of the other party's device, and present an exhibit which they say contains the true conversation, you could be worse off than if you retained the conversation. The fact that you have since deleted it could be incriminating. In some jurisdiction, yes, legally, such evidence might not be probative, but you might still convicted because of it. nickburns wrote 3 days ago: Ephemeral messaging is not a crime. vuln wrote 3 days ago: The retention time can be set by individual conversation not just the whole app. fdb345 wrote 3 days ago: message retention has literally NEVER been used as incrimination in a court of law. So you are wrong. sangeeth96 wrote 3 days ago: Umm, isnât this related? URI [1]: https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/26/24141801/ftc-amazon... the_other wrote 3 days ago: Yes, but if Iâm reading it right, Amazon staff were already inder instruxtion to retain and share data relevant to an ongoing investigation. They were aware of the process and, if the article is to be believed, worked against the instructions. Thatâs quite different from turning disappearing messages on when youâre not explicitly under insteuctions to keep records. bunderbunder wrote 3 days ago: This isn't Amazon getting in trouble for implementation of a routine records retention policy. It's Amazon getting in trouble for violating a document retention mandate related to an ongoing lawsuit. dvtkrlbs wrote 3 days ago: I don't think so. Corporate communication is bound by different laws and you have way higher burden of evidence in case of legal requests. I don't think this creates a precedent for personal communications. nickburns wrote 3 days ago: No. That's a civil discovery matter. fdb345 wrote 2 days ago: Its also a private business directive not a law madeofpalk wrote 3 days ago: Given historical backups are the norm here, retention only does so much. Really, apps should encrypt their own storage with keys that aren't stored in the backups. That's how you get security/privacy back. buran77 wrote 3 days ago: > That's how you get security/privacy back. Nothing an app does on a device guarantees you security or privacy if you don't trust or fully control the device. Aachen wrote 2 days ago: Yes, but they'd have to issue another one of these snooping demands to either the app's developer (there's loads of developers so this would get out of hand quickly) or to Apple to patch the build or read the memory or something to get the unencrypted data This current demand isn't blanket access to your device, it's access to things uploaded to Apple's online storage service. Having to get a backdoor that works with every app's encryption takes a lot more work while running the data through an authenticated encryption algorithm is relatively trivial for a developer cma wrote 3 days ago: Many people want control over whether they back up conversations with others, and think it would be crazy for sender to control the retention policy instead of receiver. I think sender should just be able to send a recommended preference hint on retention and you could have an option to respect it or not. noahjk wrote 3 days ago: Very similar to sites like LinkedIn, which ask you to share your personal info & contact list. I don't want to share my contact details, but the second someone I know decides to opt in, I lose all rights to my own data as they've shared it on my behalf. Maybe they have other info, such as birthday, home address, other emails or phone #s, etc. stored for me, which is all fair game, as well. folmar wrote 2 days ago: If you are in EU, request your data be redacted. tw600040 wrote 3 days ago: Ok, I am not very technical. Can someone help me understand this. I don't have Advanced data Protection on. Does that mean UK Gov can see my data now? tene80i wrote 3 days ago: It means Apple has the encryption keys to your backed-up data. So they can, in theory, access it, if the UK Gov demands that they do. That might never happen to you, but with ADP it would have been impossible, because even Apple can't access it. See URI [1]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102651 frizlab wrote 3 days ago: They always could. With advanced data protection they could not. The law mandated to add a backdoor to allow the government to also see encrypted data (which made the encryption insecure by definition). Apple refused to comply so you donât even have the option to encrypt your backups now. itishappy wrote 3 days ago: Potentially. It really just means your data is stored unencrypted, so anybody that has access to Apple's servers can access your data. I don't believe any government has open access to Apple's servers, but they can get a warrant. tw600040 wrote 3 days ago: I just realized ADP is not same as Lockdown mode. which Apple mentioned that only people that are likely to be targets need to turn on. Now I don't see any reason why I shouldn't turn ADP on. Turning on now. dsmurrell wrote 3 days ago: disables apple cloud sync Jackknife9 wrote 3 days ago: I'm going to start purging anything I store on the cloud. I'm not doing anything illegal, but why does the government want to treat me like I am. docmars wrote 3 days ago: Indeed. Time to leave the panopticon! ilumanty wrote 3 days ago: What exactly can UK users do now? Turn off "backup iPhone to iCloud" and stop syncing notes? greatgib wrote 1 day ago: Time to leave Apple, to buy and use hardware and solutions that you really own and have control. GeekyBear wrote 3 days ago: UK users can still perform an encrypted backup to their local PC or Mac. buildbot wrote 3 days ago: If you have ADP, Leave it on and have them automatically delete it at some point? Otherwise yes. âCustomers who are already using Advanced Data Protection, or ADP, will need to manually disable it during an unspecified grace period to keep their iCloud accounts, according to the report. Apple said it will issue additional guidance in the future to affected users and that it "does not have the ability to automatically disable it on their behalf." ohnoitsahuman wrote 3 days ago: Let's vote Labor and Liberal to keep the UK from going fascist on our data. Oh wait....shit. JansjoFromIkea wrote 3 days ago: The Blairite wing of that party has always been extremely bad with this kind of thing (see Tony Blair's obsession with ID cards over the decades) so it's unsurprising they'd push something like this. rvz wrote 3 days ago: They got what they voted for and now that those voters are surprised? It's really hilarious to try to blame previous governments for such unpopular moves like this one. If Labour was any better, then they would never have used the Investigatory Powers Act to force Apple to take actions such as this. For those who thought Labour would never do this, should just admit that this move was done under Labour and they are no better than the Tories. b800h wrote 3 days ago: The party most likely to cut this stuff out is Reform, although they'd probably be closer to ambivalent about it. JansjoFromIkea wrote 3 days ago: UKIP/Brexit/Reform as a vehicle to hold large influence over politics from outside Westminster might. I would imagine the party's attitudes on a myriad of things would shift if they were in power though. spacebanana7 wrote 3 days ago: Iâm pretty sure Reform would scrap this stuff, given the belief their part of politics has been a victim of these laws. Also worth considering Lib Dem if youâre not into right wing politics- they did vote against the relevant investigatory powers act back in 2016. switch007 wrote 3 days ago: Labour are not anti authoritarian. Often quite pro basisword wrote 3 days ago: This was done under the Investigatory Powers Act which was brought in in 2016. Saying that Labour weren't exactly against it at the time. Point being snooping isn't left or right - they all love it. ta8645 wrote 3 days ago: Free speech already under threat and now y'all are giving up the right of private communication too? For anyone cheering this on, do you honestly think this will only affect the "bad people", and you'll never have your own neck under the government's boot? Even if you trust the government today, what happens when your neighbors elect a government you disagree with ideologically? multimoon wrote 3 days ago: I donât think anyone is cheering this on. Funes- wrote 3 days ago: Most politicians are. int_19h wrote 3 days ago: Many people do, unfortunately, so long as it's framed as "only terrorists and pedophiles need encryption that cops can't break". botanical76 wrote 3 days ago: How do we actually beat this narrative? I've been proposing a E2EE-based chat application to my friend, and they asked me a similar question: won't it just be rife with pedophiles? How can you make a platform that will be used to that means? I have strong views about privacy as a fundamental human right, but I don't know how to answer that question. I certainly don't want to make the world worse, but this feels like a lesser of two evils type of deal: either make it even harder to catch bad actors, such as child abusers, or make it plausible that your government take away your freedom forever. pacifika wrote 2 days ago: I suppose it is conflating lack of trust in government / law enforcement with criminal matters. Donât give power over yourself to people with a proven history of misusing it, according to your values. You donât have to look hard for examples. mihaaly wrote 3 days ago: Instead of the word cheering we could use letting. Bad people flourish over the inaction of good people. (but yes, there are always several who protect and argue for things risking their own and everyone's livelihood, exposing themselves to shady elements, along singled out and elevated thin aspects, cannot understood why) wonderwonder wrote 3 days ago: The UK wanted access to anyone's data. Not just UK citizens and then additionally added regulations forbidding apple to disclose this. UK is ~3-4% of apples income. While I appreciate Apples actions here, I wish they would make a real stand here and pull completely out of the UK. mtrovo wrote 3 days ago: I really wish they would sit down and negotiate this more openly. The silence from the other players is what really makes me uncomfortable. The fact that only Apple is making a stand against this ask is really scary. wonderwonder wrote 3 days ago: Agreed, the UK is speed running 1984 right in front of us. kobieps wrote 2 days ago: Only three (well, now four) mentions of 1984 in the comments tells you all you need to know wonderwonder wrote 2 days ago: sorry friend, I am actually not sure what you mean by this comment. Not sure if you are agreeing or disagreeing :) Apologies, probably my fault. Eavolution wrote 3 days ago: What are you actually supposed to do in the UK if you oppose this sort of thing to stop laws like this coming in? It feels like the government has been incredibly out of touch for the last number of years. maeil wrote 3 days ago: > It feels like the government has been incredibly out of touch for the last number of years. Did you vote for any single one of them? If you did, then what you're supposed to do is stop voting for Tory-lite governments (such as the current one). If you didn't vote for any of these governments (including this one), everything else that you could do would be dangerous nowadays. i2km wrote 3 days ago: You get the hell out and emigrate. I did so last year. It's not going to get better chap globular-toast wrote 2 days ago: Where did you go? IneffablePigeon wrote 3 days ago: Join the ORG for starters. Contact your MP. But yes, the number of people who care is small and so things will not change until it is large. redox99 wrote 3 days ago: I would guess you'd vote a libertarian party. Apfel wrote 3 days ago: Probably the best on the civil liberties front are the Liberal Democrats (they were pretty good at quashing mandatory national ID cards back in the day, at least). That being said, they still have a lot of folk angry at them for allowing university fees to be introduced 15 years ago when they were in coalition government (a Tory policy!). wackget wrote 3 days ago: So instead of building a back door they're just completely removing the option to use E2E encryption altogether, thus making everything freely available to government by default? How is that not worse or at least equivalent to a back door? varispeed wrote 3 days ago: Many departments use iphones. I wonder how it will affect government security or government employees will be exempt? incorrecthorse wrote 3 days ago: It _is_ equivalent to a back door, that's the point. The UK demand can be accessed more rapidly and properly by disabling the feature than by implementing a backdoor, since it is the same thing. poisonborz wrote 3 days ago: Much better than a false sense of security. Customers know what they get, and can choose other products instead of being confused or cheated. ziddoap wrote 3 days ago: >How is that not worse or at least equivalent to a back door? It's bad for the citizens of the UK and better for everyone else on the planet with an iPhone. UK citizens should be angry with their government, not Apple. roughly wrote 3 days ago: Theyâre just pulling the feature in the UK. If they put in a back door, theyâre pulling the feature for everyone. mholt wrote 3 days ago: No illusion of privacy. wonderwonder wrote 3 days ago: The UK requested the backdoor for all users, not just UK citizens. drcongo wrote 3 days ago: Could any hackers on here now please hack the fuck out of UK government ministers please? alecco wrote 3 days ago: I doubt it would play out like you think. chatmasta wrote 3 days ago: Ugh. Is this by App Store country? Anyone know what happens if I already have it configured? Iâm actually in US App Store region and sometimes switch to UK⦠I wonder if that would disable it. bArray wrote 3 days ago: Too right, it was far more problematic than they ever made out. > The UK government's demand came through a "technical capability notice" under the Investigatory Powers Act (IPA), requiring Apple to create a backdoor that would allow British security officials to access encrypted user data globally. The order would have compromised Apple's Advanced Data Protection feature, which provides end-to-end encryption for iCloud data including Photos, Notes, Messages backups, and device backups. One scenario would be somebody in an airport and security officials are searching your device under the Counter Terrorism Act (where you don't even have the right to legal advice, or the right to remain silent). You maybe a British person, but you could also be a foreign person moving through the airport. There's no time limit on when you may be searched, so all people who ever travelled through British territory could be searched by officials. Let that sink in for a moment. We're talking about the largest back door I've ever heard of. What concerns me more is that Apple is the only company audibly making a stand. I have an Android device beside me that regularly asks me to back my device up to the cloud (and make it difficult to opt out), you think Google didn't already sign up to this? You think Microsoft didn't? Then think for a moment that most 2FA directly goes via a large tech company or to your mobile. We're just outright handing over the keys to all of our accounts. Your accounts have never been less protected. The battle is being lost for privacy and security. SoftTalker wrote 2 days ago: Your smartphone cannot be considered a private device. You as the owner donât have sufficient control over its operating system and applications to ever make that claim. bArray wrote 13 hours 49 min ago: In theory you have the likes of the PinePhone where you can run a full Linux kernel [1]. You could then use something like Waydroid to run Android apps [2]. I think the biggest concern is that many of the important apps are anti-emulation, for example banking apps and authentication apps. [1] URI [1]: https://pine64.org/devices/pinephone_pro/ URI [2]: https://waydro.id/ neop1x wrote 2 days ago: For photos, it's probably best to use an open-source (also self-hostable) service like Ente. For files it's best to self-host Nextcloud or similar. And rely on other people's computers as little as possible. Sadly, operating systems are very complex and mostly composed of proprietary blobs nowadays so there is still a risk of it leaking data but people can still do at least something. prmoustache wrote 2 days ago: > What concerns me more is that Apple is the only company audibly making a stand. Dropping the functionality for a particular market hardly equals to making a stand. Sure they haven't added a backdoor that would give all user's data access to UK icloud user's data so in the end UK residents didn't win anything. And who knows if they simply have an agreement with US gov to have a backdoor only available to them and not the other govs. abalone wrote 2 days ago: > One scenario would be somebody in an airport and security officials are searching your device under the Counter Terrorism Act No, it's much broader than that. The UK is asking for a backdoor to your data and backups in the cloud, not on your device. Why bother with searching physical devices when they can just issue a secret subpoena to any account they want? It's actually pretty amazing that Apple made ADP possible for the general public. This is the culmination of a major breakthrough in privacy architecture about ten years ago. Traditionally you had to make a choice between end-to-end encryption and data recoverability. If you went with E2EE, it's only useful if you use a strong password, but if you forget it then Apple can't help you recover your account (no password reset possible). So that was totally unsuitable for precious memories like photos for the average user. Apple's first attempt to make this feasible was a recovery key that you print out and stuff in a drawer somewhere. But you might lose this. The trusted contact feature is also not totally reliable either, because chances are it's your spouse and they might also lose their device at that same time as you (for example in a house fire). So while recovery keys and trusted contacts help, the solution that really made the breakthrough for ADP was iCloud Keychain Backup. This thing is low-key so cool and kind of rips up the previous assumptions about E2EE. iCloud Keychain Backup makes it possible to recover your data with a simple, weak 6 digit passcode that you are virtually guaranteed never to forget, yet you are also protected from brute force attacks on the server. It is specifically designed to work on "adversarial clouds" that are being actively attacked. This is... sort of not supposed to be possible in the traditional thinking. But they added something called hardware security modules to limit the number of guesses an attacker can make before it wipes your key. And crucially it ensures you don't forget this passcode because it's your device passcode which the OS keeps in sync with the backup key. This is part of the reason your iPhone asks you to enter your passcode now and then even though your biometrics work just fine. It is a true secret that only you know and can keep in your brain even when your house burns down and nobody (hopefully) can derive from something they can research about you. This didn't really exist for the general populace until smartphones came along. And that ultimately was the breakthrough that allowed for changing the conventional wisdom on E2EE. iCloud Keychain Backup came out about a decade ago and it has taken this long to gradually test the feasibility of going 100% E2EE without significantly risking customer data loss. The UK is kind of panicking but when people see how well ADP protects their most personal data from breaches, I think they will demand it. It just wasn't practical before. bArray wrote 15 hours 52 min ago: > No, it's much broader than that. The UK is asking for a backdoor to your data and backups in the cloud, not on your device. Why bother with searching physical devices when they can just issue a secret subpoena to any account they want? My point was that there was already a clear chain in place that would give them access to the data of foreign nationals. It's not just a "UK problem", but actually the ramifications are further reaching. Another thing to consider is that these cookie alerts on sites were for EU countries only, but ended up everywhere. If Apple were to comply, this cloud backdoor could end up in other countries too, with the keys sitting there ready for collection. To make things more complex still, they would need to support dual/multi nationality. It probably ends up looking like a dual key E2E system where there is a unique key for the end-user and then a third party. Key revocation would likely be difficult, so it would likely be the cloud provided decrypting and re-encrypting the files per request, throwing E2E out the window entirely. HenryBemis wrote 2 days ago: What I fund 'amusing' is the swap between Left vs Right. 'Back in the day' it was the "Right" that wanted have total access/total control over everything. So people turned a bit "left". Now the "Left" government is seeking totalitarian-style control ('because paedophiles/drugs/etc.). As a reminder, both Right and Left extremes went from 'liberal/conservatives' to "we don't need elections ever again - trust me!". I saw this happening in the US, in Saudi (e.g. Blackberry 'keys'). Now I see it in the UK. So I interpret this in two ways: 1) The "Left is the new Right" (or "Right is the new Left") 2) Left and Right are irrelevant terms when it comes down to "we need to exert control over people/knowledge/data/information/etc. And the 'guise' of Left/Right is just on the fiscal policies. So UK has been playing around with 'snooper charter' but at 'that' time Apple's encryption was not on the table. Apple (I don't blame them - very much - just a little) does what a company does. Makes money. And they prefer to sell-out the data of their clients and keep their money, than lose that money. So... yeah.. if your data is in someone else's server, that happens. bArray wrote 16 hours 0 min ago: If you go too far right or left, both types of authoritarianism are difficult to distinguish. I think this just makes the case that every election you need to be a swing voter, make sure your politicians still overlap with your ideals. Apple today appear to be on the 'correct side of history', but even then you need to be swing consumer. sib wrote 2 days ago: >> 'Back in the day' it was the "Right" that wanted have total access/total control over everything. It was the Clinton administration that pushed for the Clipper chip. Are you talking about a 'day' before that time? bboygravity wrote 2 days ago: And now imagine for a second that the only thing the UK is doing here is getting the same direct access that the US (NSA) has already had for decades. dunham wrote 2 days ago: > the largest back door I've ever heard of. Do you know of the clipper chip? [1] From what I recall, we were only spared from it by someone hacking it before it was deployed. URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip bustling-noose wrote 2 days ago: You have no laws when traveling through immigration. Thats true in US too. There was an article (trying to look for it could be arstechnica verge I dont remember where) once where a US citizen journalist was detained at the border for hours while traveling into the US and questioned. You can be in the immigration for hours or even decades until you give out what they demand which can involve your unlocked phone and password. There are no laws protecting you. firecall wrote 3 days ago: Also, I wondered if by complying with British law that they may somehow be breaking laws of another country? Hypothetically, if Apple just provide a back door to the data they have on US Senators for instance, then providing that information may be considered treason by the US. That's a totally made up example, and I have no idea, but it seems like it's possibly an issue. Which is all about the issues around data sovereignty I suppose! wkat4242 wrote 2 days ago: Treason is a very heavy charge and as far as I know it applies more to individuals. Can a company be prosecuted for treason? I guess it depends on the country and I don't know US law well (never even visited there) But I'm sure local laws conflict heavily between countries yes. I'm often wondering how multinationals manage to navigate this maze. This is why we have such a big legal department I guess :) And the company I work for is a pretty honest one, I've never seen any skullduggery going on with eg privacy or media manipulation. In fact employees are urged to report such things and I have to do a course on responsible behaviour yearly. Probably a result of being purely B2B. But anyway I digress, just wanted to say that getting away with stuff does not seem to be the reason for us having a big legal dept. But just look at the laws of e.g. the EU and Iran. Pretty diametrically opposed on many topics. There's no way to satisfy them both. I think what helps to make this happen is that most countries don't try to push their laws outside of their jurisdiction. Which the UK is trying to do here. Zamiel_Snawley wrote 3 days ago: That would not be treason, by a long shot. Treason is the only crime defined in the constitution, and it is quite a high bar. thaumasiotes wrote 2 days ago: > Treason is the only crime defined in the constitution, and it is quite a high bar. Well, it's defined, or bounded above, in the constitution. It's not exactly a high bar: > Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. So, if you happened to know Nicolas Maduro, thought he was looking stressed, and bought him some food, that would qualify as treason. There's no requirement that you act against the interests of the United States. The constitution will stop you from being prosecuted for treason for sleeping with Melania Trump. It won't stop you from being prosecuted for treason for completely spurious reasons. Zamiel_Snawley wrote 1 day ago: No. The Supreme Court has laid out well defined meanings for all the components of that phrase[0], and it is quite a high bar. [0] URI [1]: https://constitution.findlaw.com/article3/annotation24... Spooky23 wrote 2 days ago: The king is a strict constitutionalist, who may disagree with you/ Pray he doesnât. osigurdson wrote 3 days ago: What is going on in the UK? How do they stand for this? vixen99 wrote 2 days ago: Irrespective of political leanings, a lot of British people are saying this. They stand for it because they have to. It's a government that was voted in by a large margin only six months ago. Disquiet, if that's the word, is pretty much universal and I am not sure we've been quite in this position before. Keir Starmer's decline in approval ratings 'marks the most substantial post-election fall for any British prime minister in recent history'. URI [1]: https://politicalpulse.net/uk-polls/keir-starmer-approval-... JansjoFromIkea wrote 2 days ago: By a large margin with their seat count doubling off a 1.6% swing in their favour. The decline in approval ratings should have been entirely predictable to them. osigurdson wrote 2 days ago: Did Starmer run on this big brother type platform? jamiek88 wrote 2 days ago: This is a law enacted by the previous government. nomdep wrote 3 days ago: When âmisinformationâ or âhate speechâ are illegal, and the government decides what those are, you cannot risk complaining endgame wrote 3 days ago: "technical capability notice" under the Investigatory Powers Act (IPA) Sounds a lot like the godawful "assistance and access" laws that were rushed through in Australia a couple of years ago, right down to the name of the secret instrument sent to the entity who gets forced into to building the intercept capability. Now that Apple has caved once, I expect to see other providers strongarmed in the same way, as well as the same move tried in other countries. zahllos wrote 3 days ago: I don't really understand your comment to be honest. Section 3 of the Regulation of Regulatory Powers Act 2000 allows for compelled key disclosure (disclosure of the information sought instead of the key is also possible). Schedule 7 of the Counter-Terrorism Act allows 9 hour detention, questioning and device search at the border. With these powers it isn't necessary to get access to iCloud backups, as you can get the device and/or the data. I don't think the e2e icloud backup is problematic under existing legislation / before the TCN. While you can't disclose the key because it lives in the secure enclave, you can disclose the information that is requested because you can log into your apple account and retrieve it. IANAL, but I believe this to be sufficient (and refusing would mean jail). The Investigatory Powers Act allows for technical capability notices, and the TCN in this case says (as far as we know) "allow us a method to be able to get the contents of any iCloud backup that is protected by E2EE for any user worldwide". This means that there is no need to ask the target to disclose information and if implemented as asked, also means that any user worldwide could be a target of the order, even if they'd never been to the UK. Relevant info: - URI [1]: https://wiki.openrightsgroup.org/wiki/Regulation_of_Investig... Aloisius wrote 3 days ago: I imagine they want the ability to look at someone's iCloud backups without notifying the owner that they are doing so or they want to do it when the owner is unwilling or unable to provide keys. For the latter, there are a lot of cases where jail isn't much a threat (e.g. the person is dead or not in the country). zahllos wrote 2 days ago: Also given automatic iPhone backup it might contain information they want as part of an investigation that they'd otherwise have to demand key disclosure for (if cloud backup didn't exist)... Absolutely. The jail time for failure to comply with key disclosure is 2 years unless it is national security, then it is 5. But if you're organised crime and facing who knows what for being a snitch it might be better simply to do the time. I can see why they want it. I just don't understand why the person I'm replying to said the feature (I think) was problematic. Not really a criticism, I'm just struggling to identify the tone and why 'too right' and 'more problematic than they let on'. j-krieger wrote 3 days ago: Even more shocking that Germany - my country - leads the leaderboard with over ten times as much requests as the second place. marcprux wrote 3 days ago: > you think Google didn't already sign up to this? My understanding is that Android's Google Drive backup has had an E2E encryption option for many years (they blogged about it at [1] ), and that the key is only stored locally in the Titan Security Module. If they are complying with the IPA, wouldn't that mean that they must build a mechanism into Android to exfiltrate the key? And wouldn't this breach be discoverable by security research, which tends to be much simpler on Android than it is on iOS? URI [1]: https://security.googleblog.com/2018/10/google-and-android-h... EduardoBautista wrote 2 days ago: Apple's ADP is not E2E for only its backups, it's E2E for _everything_ in iCloud Drive and a few other iCloud services. thelittleone wrote 3 days ago: Could that be true and at the same time a 'vulnerability' exists that megacorp is party to? nomel wrote 3 days ago: My assumption is that Google has keys to everything in its kingdom [1] URI [1]: https://qz.com/1145669/googles-true-origin-partly-lies-in-... tim333 wrote 2 days ago: I doubt it. Much to my annoyance they moved Google Maps Timeline from their database to an encrypted copy on my phone specifically so if law enforcement asks for the records of where you were at a given time and place they can say dunno, can't tell. If they had the keys it would wreck their legal strategy not to get hassled every time law enforcement are trying to track someone. skybrian wrote 2 days ago: The linked article makes a lot of assumptions about the "Massive Digital Data Systems Program". It seems this program existed. For example, here is a 1996 paper [1] about research funded by the "Massive Digital Data Systems (MDDS) Program, through the Department of Defense." But it's not clear that funding for early research into data warehousing (back when a terabyte was a lot of data) has anything to do with whether or not Google uses end-to-end encryption? Lots of research got funded through the Department of Defense. Without having relevant evidence, this is just "let's assume X is true, therefore X is true." URI [1]: https://papers.rgrossman.com/proc-047.htm GeekyBear wrote 2 days ago: Google didn't announce that they could no longer process geofence warrants because they no longer stored a copy of user location data on their servers until last October. How much good does an encrypted device backup do when harvesting user data and storing it on your servers (to make ad sales more profitable) is your entire business model? foota wrote 2 days ago: That's a bit silly seeing as e.g., URI [1]: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/03/20/29195... yellow_lead wrote 3 days ago: This would mean no independent security researcher has ever taken a look at Google Drive's E2EE on Android. Or those that did missed the part where the key is uploaded. It's possible to decrypt this network traffic and see if the key is sent. It may be obfuscated though. autoexec wrote 3 days ago: My assumption is that the NSA does too. marcprux wrote 3 days ago: > My assumption is that Google has keys to everything in its kingdom If that were true, then their claims to support E2E encrypted backups are simply false, and they would have been subject to warrants to unlock backups, just like Apple had been until they implemented their "Advanced Data Protection" in 2022. Wouldn't there have been be some evidence of that in the past 7 years, either through security research, or through convictions that hinged on information that was gotten from a supposedly E2E-protected backup? dietr1ch wrote 4 hours 49 min ago: They are so used to bend reality that could easily call it e2e encryption even if the key was generated by Google or had a skew that made it vulnerable with some extra knowledge that they have or will have in the next sync. ajb wrote 2 days ago: It's worth noting that what the security services don't have access to is as secret as what they do have access to. According to the late Ross Anderson, for many years the police were unable to trace calls (or was it internet access?) on one of the major UK mobile networks, because it had been designed without that and in such a way that it was hard to retrofit. This was considered highly confidential, lest all the drug dealers etc switch to that network. autoexec wrote 3 days ago: > Wouldn't there have been be some evidence of that in the past 7 years, either through security research, or through convictions that hinged on information that was gotten from a supposedly E2E-protected backup? I wouldn't count on it. The main way we'd know about it would be a whistleblower at Google, and whistleblowers are extremely rare. Evidence and court records that might expose a secret backdoor or that the government was getting data from Google that was supposed to be private could easily be kept hidden from the public by sealing it all away for "national security reasons" or by obscuring it though parallel construction. catlifeonmars wrote 2 days ago: People are incredibly bad at keeping secrets. And there are a LOT of people at Google. I donât buy it. jsjohnst wrote 1 day ago: Until Yahoo! broke the news, did you know anything about Googleâs involvement with PRISM? autoexec wrote 2 days ago: There were a lot of people working for the NSA besides snowden, but none of them blew the whistle even though some of the programs he exposed had been around for 12 years. There were a whole lot of people working at AT&T but employees weren't lining up to tell us about Room 641A ( [1] ) before Mark Klein. How did everyone else manage to be kept quiet? The details about MKUltra and the Manhattan Project were successfully kept a secret for decades before eventually being declassified. It'd be a huge mistake to look at the instances where somebody did come forward and spill a secret and assume that it means secrets aren't possible to keep or that there are no secrets being kept right now. It's may not be easy to keep a secret, but governments and corporations are extremely well practiced and have many documented successes. URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A catlifeonmars wrote 2 days ago: You have a point, but a major reason that the examples you cited above were kept secret was because knowledge about them was compartmentalized. As knowledge leaks, so does the possibility of whistleblowers. Itâs an unstable equilibrium. My argument (which admittedly is based on an anecdata about how undisciplined large tech corporations are) is that itâs uniquely hard to keep secrets in modern tech companies because by design, knowledge is not compartmentalized. Modern large tech companies have replaced fiefdoms of knowledge with fiefdoms of operational expertise, if that makes sense. Anyway, there have been hundreds, perhaps thousands of whistleblowers in the past and the examples you picked I think are representative of the upper bound, rather than the lower bound of the secret keeping capacity of organizations. GoblinSlayer wrote 2 days ago: Google can just borrow a certified encryption library elsewhere. ChrisMarshallNY wrote 2 days ago: Thatâs why Rule #1 of Security, is limit access; regardless of clearance. Which explains why thereâs all these security levels above âTop Secret,â which is really just a baseline. jiggawatts wrote 3 days ago: A trivial method for circumventing code review is to simply push a targeted update of the firmware to devices subject to a government search order. There are no practical end-user protections against this vector. PS: I strongly suspect that at least a few public package distribution services are run by security agencies to enable this kind of attack. They can distribute clean packages 99.999% of the time, except for a handful of targeted servers in countries being spied upon. A good example is Chocolatey, which popped up out of nowhere, had no visible source of funding, no mention of their ownership structure anywhere, and was incorporated along with hundreds of other companies in a small building in the middle of nowhere. It just screams of being a CIA front, but obviously that's hard to prove. nomel wrote 1 hour 15 min ago: Telegram author claims this is the case [1]: > They were curious to learn which open source libraries are integrated to the Telegram app. You know, on the client side," Durov said. "And they were trying to persuade him to use certain open source tools that he would then integrate into the Telegram code URI [1]: https://www.newsweek.com/telegram-tucker-carlson-gov... brookst wrote 2 days ago: The end user protection is to sign updates and publish the fingerprints. It should not be possible for one device to get a different binary than everyone else. jiggawatts wrote 1 day ago: How exactly do you plan on implementing this as an end user? Even if you somehow manage to ensure 100% consistency with other users for updates you manually âpullâ from the vendor, the vendor could simply have your device automatically reach out and update itself with a stealth update. Or everyone can get the same exact binary, but it has a hash code check on it that activates the evil bits only on your device. Etc⦠jen20 wrote 3 days ago: > Chocolatey, which popped up out of nowhere Chocolatey assuredly did not "pop up out of nowhere" - it was a labour of love from Rob Reynolds to make Windows even barely usable. It likely existed for years before you ever heard of it. > had no visible source of funding Rob was employed by Puppet Labs to develop it until he started the commercial entity which now backs it. > a small building in the middle of nowhere. As I recall, Rob lives in Topeka, Kansas. It follows that his business would be incorporated there, no? jiggawatts wrote 2 days ago: There was no evidence of any of this on the website until recently (maybe 2 or 3 years ago?), and I did look at every page on there. Similarly, I searched on Google for a while and raised the question in more than a few forums. I dug through the business registration records, etc... and found none of the above. Sure, now, they have staff photos and the actual names of people on their about page, but just a few years ago it was almost completely devoid of information: [1] Look at it from the perspective of a paranoid sysadmin half way around the world raising a quizzical eyebrow when random Reddit posts mention how convenient it is, but it's distributing binaries to servers with absolutely no obvious links back to any organisations, people, or even a legitimate looking business building. URI [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20190906125729/https:/... dylan604 wrote 3 days ago: Would it be possible that they feel that the revelation of this backdoor would be too big of a loss so that any of these theoretical cases of the past 7 years have used parallel construction to avoid revealing the encrypted data was viewed? catlifeonmars wrote 2 days ago: Thatâs a big and brittle conspiracy. You have to have little to no defectors. Itâs not a stable equilibrium reshlo wrote 3 days ago: Is the source code for every binary blob present on an Android device available for inspection, and is the code running on every Android device verifiable as having been built from that source? > or through convictions If they wanted to use this evidence for a normal criminal case, they would just do parallel construction. menacingly wrote 3 days ago: I don't know the particulars, but in general, silence around a massive tech company on warrants does not mean "they said no and the feds decided to leave them alone" scripturial wrote 3 days ago: It is possible to set up end to end encryption where two different keys unlock your data. Your key, and a government key. I assume google does this. 1. encrypt data with special key 2. encrypt special key with users key, and 3. encrypt special key with government key Anyone with the special key can read the data.the user key or the government key can be used to get special key. This two step process can be done for good or bad purposes. A user can have their key on their device, and a second backup key could be in a usb stick locked in a safe, so if you loose your phone you can get your data back using the second key. hilbert42 wrote 2 days ago: "â¦two different keysâ¦. Your key, and a government key. I assume google does this." With the present state of politicsâlack of both government and corporate ethics, deception, availability of much fake news, etc.âthere's no guarantee that you could be certain of the accuracy of any information about this no matter what its source or apparent authenticity. I'd thus suggest it'd be foolhardy to assume that total privacy is assured on any of these services. BTW, I don't have need of these E2E services and don't use them, nor would I ever use them intentionally to send encrypted information. That said, occasionally, I'll send a PDF or such to say a relative containing some personal info and to minimize it being skimmed off by all-and-sundryâdata brokers, etc. I'll encrypt it, but I always do so on the assumption that government can read it (that's if it's bothered to do so). Only fools ought to think otherwise. Clearly, those in the know who actually require unbreakable encryption use other systems that are able to be better audited. If I were ever in their position, then I'd still be suspicious and only out of sheer necessity/desperation would I send an absolute minimum of information. KronisLV wrote 2 days ago: > â¦there's no guarantee that you could be certain of the accuracy of any information about this no matter what its source or apparent authenticity. In any case like this, the only thing you could truly trust would be the source code and even then youâd have to be on the lookout for backdoors, which would definitely be beyond my own capability to spot. In other words, the best bet is to probably only use open source solutions that have been audited and have a good track record, wherever available. Not that there are that many options when it comes to mobile OSes, although at least there are some for file storage and encryption. hilbert42 wrote 2 days ago: Obviously, that's the ideal course of action but I'd reckon that in practice those who would have both a good understanding of the code as well as the intricacies/strengths of encryption algorithms and who also have need to send encrypted messages is vanishing smallâexcept perhaps for some well-known government agencies. anakaine wrote 2 days ago: Just because something you do today is legal and not a cause for scrutiny does not mean the same will be true tomorrow. We have seen this many times throughout history, where people like academics, researchers, teachers, people of particular faith, etc are targeted and each of them has some sort of âevidenceâ produced as to some sort of crime they have committed either in the present or past to justify their arrest. The group who needs it today may be small, but having it on and secure by default for all is a far better protection than any justification that the current need is small. pinoy420 wrote 2 days ago: > I donât care for encryption or need it > encrypts a pdf sent to tech illiterate family members hilbert42 wrote 2 days ago: From where did you get both 'care' and 'illiterate' â words that I never used? Not only have you misquoted me, but also you've attempted to distort what I actually said by changing its inference. scripturial wrote 2 days ago: Yes. There is no ability to know one way or the other if Google, and similar services retain a secondary way to access decryption key. In light of this the only option is to _assume_ they have the capability. Given the carefully crafted way companies describe their encryption services, it seems more likely than not they have master keys of some sort. DarkmSparks wrote 2 days ago: I expect this is what they are all doing tbh, although isnt google open source? should be checkable, if the binaries the distribute match the source... oh... "a special key" afaik is where instead of using 2 large primes for a public key, it uses 1 large prime and the other is a factor of 2 biggish primes, where 1 of the biggish is known, knowing one of the factors lets you factor any public key with a not insignificant but still more compute than most people have access to. UK has also invested in some serious compute that would appear dedicated to exactly this task. basically if you dont have full control over the key generation mechansim and enc/dec mechansim it is relatively trivial for states to backdoor anything they want. barsonme wrote 3 days ago: E2EE means only your intended recipients can access the plaintext. Unless you intend to give the government access to your plaintext, what you described isnât E2EE. immibis wrote 2 days ago: Sure is - three ends - you, the intended recipient, and the government. hot_gril wrote 2 days ago: Yes, but going by that, most messaging services advertised as "E2EE" are already not E2EE by default. You trust them to give you the correct public keys for peer users, unless you verify your peers in-person. Some like iMessage didn't even have that feature until recently. GoblinSlayer wrote 2 days ago: Google intends you and the government as recipients of data here. tredre3 wrote 2 days ago: Manufacturers have lied about E2EE since the beginning. Some claim that having the key doesn't change that it's e2ee. Others claim that using https = e2ee, because it's encrypted from one end to the other, you see? (A recent example is Anker Eufy) The point is that the dictionary definition of E2EE really doesn't matter. Being pedantic about it doesn't help. The only thing that matters is that the vendor describes what they call E2EE. fc417fc802 wrote 3 days ago: > E2EE means only your intended recipients can access the plaintext. No, it does not. It means that only endpoints - not intermediaries - handle plaintext. It says nothing about who those endpoints are or who the software is working for. Key escrow and E2EE are fully compatible. prophesi wrote 2 days ago: > Key escrow and E2EE are fully compatible. Wild to see someone on HN even entertain this idea. baq wrote 2 days ago: Wild to think otherwise. fc417fc802 wrote 2 days ago: It's literally the point of key escrow. My views on a given practice are entirely irrelevant to the definition of the relevant terminology. prophesi wrote 2 days ago: With key escrow, by definition you can only implement end-to-many-ends encryption. fc417fc802 wrote 2 days ago: TIL group chats can't be considered E2EE. /s prophesi wrote 2 days ago: Those would be end-to-end encrypted x how many recipients you intend for. Very different from (end-to-end-encrypted x how many recipients you intend for) + an arbitrary amount of recipients you don't intend for. fc417fc802 wrote 2 days ago: > an arbitrary amount Presumably there are a finite number of escrow agents who are known to you. Worrying that they will pass your messages along to others is the same as worrying that the people you're chatting with do the same. It's always on you to assess the trustworthiness of the other parties; key escrow is no exception to that. To be clear I'm not a fan of large scale key escrow schemes and am not going to willingly use one outside of a corporate setting. But lets have accurate use of terminology while discussing these things. Surely a company with auditing requirements running their own key escrow would still be considered E2EE? If not E2EE then what would you suppose to call that and where would you draw the line? barsonme wrote 2 days ago: No, it is not. This is precisely why we have the term E2EE. An escrow agent having your keys but pinky promising not to touch them is indistinguishable from the escrow agent simply having your plaintext. Unless youâre fine with the escrow agent and anybody theyâre willing to share the keys with being a member of your group chat, in which case my original point still stands. fc417fc802 wrote 2 days ago: Edit: I think you might be confusing your personal intention (ie I wanted this to be private but didn't realize the service provider retained a copy of the keys) with the intention of the protocol (ie what the system is designed to send where). Key escrow is "by design" whereas E2EE protects against both system intrusions (very much not by design) as well as things like bugs in server software or human error when handling data. > is indistinguishable Technically correct (with respect to the escrow agent specifically) but rather misleading. With E2EE intermediary nodes serving or routing a request do not have access to it. This protects you against compromise of those systems. That's the point of E2EE - only authorized endpoints have access. The entire point of key escrow is that the escrow agent is authorized. So, yes, the escrow agent has access to your stuff. That doesn't somehow make it "not E2EE". The point of E2EE is that you don't have to trust the infra. You do of course have to trust anyone who has the keys, which includes any escrow agents. If we used the definition "only your intended recipients can access the plaintext" ... well let's be clear here, an escrow agent is very much an "intended recipient", so there's no issue. But lets extrapolate that definition. That would make E2EE a property of the session rather than the implementation. For example if my device is compromised and my (E2EE) chat history leaks suddenly that history would no longer be considered E2EE ... even though the software and protocol haven't changed. It's utterly nonsensical. KronisLV wrote 2 days ago: > I think you might be confusing your personal intention with the intention of the protocol So what would be the name for a mechanism where escrow is deliberately not a part of the design and nobody aside from the sender and recipient can access the plaintext data, no 3rd parties whatsoever, as long as those two participants arenât compromised. Iâm not disagreeing with you but Iâve heard people talk about E2EE while actually thinking itâs more like the above. There is probably a term for truly private communication but Iâm sleepy and it eludes me. fc417fc802 wrote 2 days ago: The literal answer to your question would be "E2EE without key escrow" I guess. Or E2EE between just me and this single party. However I don't think that's so much a technical mechanism as it is a statement of preference or understanding about who you intend to have access to something. To that end, you'll need to define "intended recipient" pretty carefully. After all, your intended recipient could take a screenshot and share it. Or there could be someone in a group chat who isn't participating and you forgot was there. Etc. > There is probably a term for truly private communication I'd argue that E2EE is "truly private" between the intended recipients, and that understanding who exactly those are is entirely the responsibility of the user. Of course I recognize that we're talking past each other at that point. Your concern seems to be users not realizing an escrow agent is present. To the extent they might have been deceived about the implementation I'd point out that "snuck in an escrow agent" is just the tip of the security iceberg. They could also have been deceived about the implementation itself. And even if they weren't deceived initially, a binary or web app could be intentionally updated with a malicious version. Does it count as "truly private" if you didn't compile it yourself? KronisLV wrote 1 day ago: > Of course I recognize that we're talking past each other at that point. Your concern seems to be users not realizing an escrow agent is present. To the extent they might have been deceived about the implementation I'd point out that "snuck in an escrow agent" is just the tip of the security iceberg. They could also have been deceived about the implementation itself. And even if they weren't deceived initially, a binary or web app could be intentionally updated with a malicious version. Does it count as "truly private" if you didn't compile it yourself? All of these are good points, thanks for taking the time to respond! I think that to a certain degree this means that, for the average layperson and someone with more skills and knowledge, there are still a bunch of challenges and attack vectors to contend with. It probably involves more of something in the category of OpenPGP (or just Signal, I guess) where you yourselves are in control of the keys, and less of counting on various web apps to do right by the users. That said, E2EE with escrow is still helpful against certain risks and is a net positive, even if I've seen a lot of that misunderstanding about what it actually does. fc417fc802 wrote 1 day ago: No problem! The more people conscious of this stuff the better off we all are in the long run. Anything that you can either audit or compile yourself is generally a good bet. You might add Matrix, XMPP with OMEMO, Briar, and Cwtch to your list. Proprietary stuff isn't an entirely bad deal though. If you assume they aren't blatantly fraudulent then presumably your data is better protected than it would have been without even an attempt at E2EE. Same for key escrow schemes. Even if the agent was literally the NSA you'd still most likely be better off than the much more vulnerable alternative. The fewer entities with access and the more deliberate that access is the better. zxcvgm wrote 2 days ago: Well, WhatsApp backups claim they are E2E encrypted, but thereâs a flow that uses their HSM for the encryption key, which still feels like some escrow system. URI [1]: https://engineering.fb.com/2021/09/10/security... wkat4242 wrote 2 days ago: True but you can choose to store the key completely yourself. That fixes a big backdoor that's been around for ages. The biggest problem remaining to me is that you don't chat alone. You're always chatting with one or more people. Right now there's no way of knowing how they handle their backups and thus the complete history of your chats with them. It's the same thing as trying to avoid big tech reading your emails by setting up your own mailserver. Technically you can do it but in practice it's pointless because 95% of your emails go to users of Microsoft or Google anyway these days. mu53 wrote 3 days ago: Is that google's definition or your definition? not being rude, but its pretty easy to get tricky about this. Since you are sending the data to google, isn't google an intended recipient? Google has to comply with a variety of laws, and it is likely that they are doing the best they can under the legal constraints. The law just doesn't allow systems like this. brookst wrote 2 days ago: If Google is employing this âone simple trickâ, they will get sued into the ground for securities fraud and false advertising. 1oooqooq wrote 2 days ago: history already proved you wrong. companies offering backdoor to abusive law enforcement are never sued. they also employ things like exempt cases. for example, Whatsapp advertise E2E... but connect for the first time with a business account to see all the caveats that in plain text just means "meta will sign your messages from this point on with a dozen keys" wkat4242 wrote 2 days ago: Oh thanks. I've never done that before. I'll try that, it'll be very interesting to see those disclaimers. I guess for consumer use all that stuff is hidden in the T&C legalese which is unreadable for normal people. I know the EU was trying to enforce that there must be a TL;DR in normal language but I haven't seen much effect of that yet. 1oooqooq wrote 2 days ago: the whatsapp business account is pretty plain text... and public as the founder quit meta (billions on the table) because of this with an open letter brookst wrote 2 days ago: Itâs the lying that gets companies in trouble. The claim is that Google has implemented a security weakness and lied about it in claims to customers and investors. Show me another company that did this, was exposed, and was not sued. 1oooqooq wrote 2 days ago: yahoo sued the govt and was able to go public almost a decade later. as i said, history already proved that argument wrong. alt227 wrote 2 days ago: > Itâs the lying that gets companies in trouble. It isnt if the government have asked them to lie. tsimionescu wrote 2 days ago: You are extremely naive if you think a company the size of Google or Microsoft or Apple will face any serious consequence from lying about E2EE actually being open to various governments. They have lawyers aplenty, governments would file amicus briefs "explaining" E2EE and so on. Worse case they'll settle for a pittance. brookst wrote 1 day ago: So all youâve got is hypotheticals that coincidentally confirm your biases? These are giant companies. Show me where a civil suit for lying about a productâs security was defended by this kind of claim. ipaddr wrote 2 days ago: Those companies never get sued? Never face class action lawsuits either? gtirloni wrote 2 days ago: What's the intended recipient of your message? It's not Google, right? You're discussing encryption in transit vs encryption at rest in this thread. mu53 wrote 2 days ago: I agree with you, but these abstract technical systems have enough wiggle room for lawyers and marketers to bend the rules to get what they want echoangle wrote 3 days ago: Would that still count as E2E-encrypted if another party has access? That would still count as lying to me. dtpro20 wrote 3 days ago: To call it lying is just arguing about the meanings of words. This is literally what lawyers are paid to do. The data payload can be called end to end encrypted. You can easily say to the user that "your emails are encrypted from end to end, they are encrypted before it leaves your computer and decrypted on the receivers computer" without talking about how your key server works. Systems that incorporate a method to allow unlocking using multiple keys don't usually advertise the fact that this is happening. People may even be legally obligated to not tell you. echoangle wrote 2 days ago: Well Wikipedia says this about E2E: âEnd-to-end encryption (E2EE) is a method of implementing a secure communication system where only communicating users can participate. No one else, including the system provider, telecom providers, Internet providers or malicious actors, can access the cryptographic keys needed to read or send messages.â So if you send another set of keys to someone else, itâs obviously not E2E. ptero wrote 2 days ago: This is a high level description of intent (by a third party), not a legal promise. This is not enforceable and promises that are not enforceable are usually seen by BigCos of today as optional. My 2c. echoangle wrote 2 days ago: Well I wasnât saying I would sue them, I was arguing this: > It is possible to set up end to end encryption where two different keys unlock your data. Your key, and a government key. I assume google does this. Which by definition is wrong (unless the government is a party in the communication you want to E2E-Encrypt). ptero wrote 1 day ago: I agree completely that it is wrong in spirit. But wikipedia's text is a definition, not the only existing one. And for practical use even the most obvious definitions have legal caveats. For example, asking for 10 gallons of soda at a restaurant advertising unlimited refills will not fly, even though virtually everyone will agree on the definition of the term "unlimited". My 2c. dwaite wrote 1 day ago: I believe the point being made here is that some governments legally mandate that they are a party in communication. catlifeonmars wrote 2 days ago: > To call it lying is just arguing about the meanings of words. Or, as us lowly laypeople call it, lying. mirekrusin wrote 2 days ago: TIL man in the middle = e2e encryption. scripturial wrote 2 days ago: E2E encryption is not the same as MITM. Youâre not adding anything useful to the conversation. E2E encryption is not vulnerable to MITM. E2E encryption is vulnerable only to how many keys there are and who has access to them. echoangle wrote 2 days ago: If someone except the communicating parties has access to the keys, itâs not E2E encrypted anymore though. At least according to this definition: URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_enc... chii wrote 2 days ago: SO if google still has access in an E2E system, but you didnt know, is it still E2E? What if google told you they also have a key? Does that change the above answer to the question? lttlrck wrote 3 days ago: That depends on the definition of "end". tbihl wrote 3 days ago: To say nothing of the definition of "definition", or at least a common understanding. URI [1]: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gRelVFm7iJE blitzar wrote 2 days ago: It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is h4ck_th3_pl4n3t wrote 3 days ago: Remember that the last fiasco was related to 2FA stores being stored unencrypted on google's backup cloud, namely google authenticator. And yes, it's still pwnable this way, and happens regularly. Everything in the cloud is not yours anymore, and you should always treat it like that. martin_a wrote 3 days ago: > We're talking about the largest back door I've ever heard of. Meh, I don't know. I can still decide to not go the UK and be fine. I think the CLOUD Act is much worse because it's independent from where I am. Fnoord wrote 3 days ago: > There's no time limit on when you may be searched, so all people who ever travelled through British territory could be searched by officials. > Let that sink in for a moment. We're talking about the largest back door I've ever heard of. Codename 'Krasnov' is the largest backdoor I have ever heard of. And, we only need to look at his behavior. These E2EE from USA can be tainted in so many ways, and FAMAG sits on so much data, that codename 'Krasnov' can abuse such to target whoever he wants in West. Because everyone you know is or has been in ecosystem of Apple, Google, or Microsoft. Whataboutism! Fair. From my PoV, as European, the UK government is (still) one of the good guys who will protect Europe from adversaries such as those who pwn codename 'Krasnov'. Such protection may come with a huge price. JumpCrisscross wrote 3 days ago: > One scenario would be somebody in an airport and security officials are searching your device No Heathrow connection necessary. âThe law has extraterritorial powers, meaning UK law enforcement would have been able to access the encrypted iCloud data of Apple customers anywhere in the world, including in the USâ [1] URI [1]: https://www.ft.com/content/bc20274f-f352-457c-8f86-32c6d4df8... kimixa wrote 3 days ago: The US claims the same [1] Lots of Americans in this thread seem to be talking down to other countries laws while being completely unaware of their own URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act maeil wrote 3 days ago: Spot on, 727 comments, most probably by Americans, and only 2 (including yours) bringing up the CLOUD Act, the much worse US equivalent. Incredible ignorance. bustling-noose wrote 2 days ago: Providing encrypted data and not providing encryption are two different things. The CLOUD act requires you to hand over data. It could be encrypted. The UK government is asking to hand over data that is also not encrypted. The two are not the same. Note : Not American. tholdem wrote 3 days ago: > What concerns me more is that Apple is the only company audibly making a stand. But still Apple operates in China and Google does not. This is weird to me. Google left China when the government wanted all keys to the citizens data. Apple is making a stand when it's visible and does not threaten their business too much. Apple is not really in the business of protecting your data, they are just good at marketing and keeping their image. timewizard wrote 2 days ago: I want to buy my phone from a phone manufacturer. I want to backup my data with a managed service. I do NOT want these to be the same company. The government, with anti trust laws, could easily force this issue. On the other hand, they really love how few places they have to go with FISA warrants to just take anyones data. This is the long tail of the American security state. So it's really ironic that China takes most of the blame. Spooky23 wrote 2 days ago: Itâs different. Apple follows Chinese law to operate their services in China, just like Microsoft. With Google, their services are way broader. Operating a hunk of their search business with a third party Chinese firm just isnât viable for their services, which are way more complex. GeekyBear wrote 3 days ago: > Google left China when the government wanted all keys to the citizens data. Google left China after China started hacking into Google's servers. > In January, Google said it would no longer cooperate with government censors after hackers based in China stole some of the companyâs source code and even broke into the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights advocates. [1] They were working to reenter the China market on China's terms many years later, when Google employees leaked the effort to the press. Google eventually backed down. URI [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/23/technology/23google.htm... spoaceman7777 wrote 2 days ago: I'd imagine there were multiple factors that went into that business decision. Even if this was portrayed as the final straw. wrsh07 wrote 3 days ago: Eh Google had pretty good reasons to not operate in China (not seeing them in this thread, don't recall the details precisely enough to relate here) Apple is deeply embedded in China (manufacturing) and benefits from a decent (but shrinking) userbase in the country. China isn't asking for the keys to all iphone user data, just data stored in China. WhyNotHugo wrote 3 days ago: iCloud in China is operated by a local subsidiary. There is a dedicated screen explaining this when you set up an iCloud account in this region. They adapt to the local rules of each region, much like theyâre doing here in the UK. fauigerzigerk wrote 1 day ago: >iCloud in China is operated by a local subsidiary It's not operated by an Apple subsidiary. It's operated by a government owned company. I'm not aware of any local laws that require this particular arrangement. noirbot wrote 3 days ago: China feels like an important difference here though. Google leaving China doesn't protect Chinese citizen's data any more than Apple turning off ADP in the UK does. As far as I know, Apple isn't pretending that the data of Chinese users is encrypted from their government, and the way they're complying with the Chinese laws shouldn't impact the security of users outside of China. Apple pulling ADP from UK users is similar - the UK has passed an ill-considered law that Apple doesn't think it can win a court case over, so they're complying in a way that minimally effects the security of people outside the UK. If, as someone outside the UK, I travel to the UK with ADP turned on, my understanding is it won't disable itself. Would you have been more satisfied if Apple just pulled out of the UK entirely? Bricked every iPhone ever purchased there? Google doesn't seem to have made any stand for security ever - them pulling out of China feels more to do with it meaning they wouldn't have had access to Chinese users' data, which is what they really want. viraptor wrote 2 days ago: > Would you have been more satisfied if Apple just pulled out of the UK entirely? Bricked every iPhone ever purchased there? The request/law would be rolled back in minutes in that case. They wouldn't dare though. (wouldn't even have to be bricking - just disable services like icloud) madeofpalk wrote 2 days ago: Apple has 40 retail stores in the UK with thousands of employees. They have a big new HQ in London where they have engineering, etc there. I cannot see Apple completely shutting down in the UK, firing thousands of staff, selling off any property, and cancelling leases, just for a week long bargaining chip. dclowd9901 wrote 3 days ago: Perhaps Apple has a greater leverage in China due to its outsized manufacturing presence. And it's likely they already dont offer ADP to Chinese citizens. vineyardmike wrote 2 days ago: > Perhaps Apple has a greater leverage in China due to its outsized manufacturing presence. Perhaps china has greater leverage over apple in this case... China had been an important area of growth for many companies during the 2010s. Apple bent over backwards to cater to that market. It was discussed in every financial release, and they obviously made tons of concessions for iCloud. The UK just comparatively isn't that much revenue, and not worth the fallout. chii wrote 2 days ago: > China had been an important area of growth for many companies during the 2010s. Apple bent over backwards to cater to that market and it is the same with european car companies (like volkswagon). Look at where they are now. I don't believe for a second, that china will not oust apple the moment there's a good reason to. vineyardmike wrote 2 days ago: > Look at where they are now. Apples revenue from china has been super dependent on new iPhone looking different, and has been steadily declining or flat for years, except for a few quarters when Huawei was sanctioned. Chinese money was absolutely the forbidden temptress that continues to screw businesses. Luxury goods, cars, electronics, etc were all banking on chinaâs economic rise to grow their revenue, and post covid recovery saw all that money stay domestic. China wonât oust Apple because twisting Tim Cookâs arm is way more useful. Same with Tesla and any other company that makes a big bet there. But they absolutely wonât be giving American companies an equal chance at success. SXX wrote 2 days ago: > And it's likely they already dont offer ADP to Chinese citizens. AFAIK before UK only region with ADP was China. bitpush wrote 3 days ago: lol you think Apple has more leverage than China? What world are you living in? raincole wrote 3 days ago: A world where HN commentators can read English. alt227 wrote 3 days ago: > Apple is the only company audibly making a stand Apples stand is false, they take with one hand and give with the other. There have been many times that Apple have been caught giving user data to governments at their request, lied about it, then later on admitted it once it had leaked from another source. This whole 'we will never make a backdoor' is a complete whitewash marketing stunt, why do they need to make a backdoor when they are providing any and all metadata to any government on request. URI [1]: https://www.macrumors.com/2023/12/06/apple-governments-surve... lilyball wrote 3 days ago: > There have been many times that Apple have been caught giving user data to governments at their request, lied about it, then later on admitted it once it had leaked from another source. In other words, Apple complies with legal government orders, as they are required to. The government can compel them with a warrant to hand over data that they have, and can prohibit them from talking about it. That's the whole reason for the push towards end-to-end encryption and for not collecting any data Apple doesn't need to operate the products. This also ties into things like photo landmark identification, where Apple designed it such that they don't get any information about the requests and so they don't have any information that they could be compelled to hand to the government. jonhohle wrote 3 days ago: I think thatâs the whole point of their push to E2E encrypt as much as possible. Saying they canât unencrypted something worked for a while. troupo wrote 3 days ago: > What concerns me more is that Apple is the only company audibly making a stand. They are not making a stand. They roll over without a peep. And this is concerning users' privacy which they say is the core of the company. Compare it to fighting every government tooth and nail over every single little thing concerning the "we don't know if it's profitable and we don't keep meeting records" AppStore immibis wrote 2 days ago: "Not making a stand" would be leaving everything as is, and handing your encryption keys over to the government. By loudly disabling ADP and saying this feature is illegal in the UK (they really should have said "illegal" instead of "unavailable" so people would know it was the government), they are at least making half a stand. By leaving it enabled in other regions and for visitors from other regions to the UK, they're making three quarters of a stand. troupo wrote 2 days ago: > By loudly disabling ADP and saying this feature is illegal in the UK They didn't say anything loudly, or said it was illegal in the UK. All they had was a single comment to a single (or perhaps a handful at most) comment to a media outlet that they disabled it. They didn't even bother with a press release, or notify their users. It's not even half a stand. It's a rollover exodust wrote 1 day ago: Is the UK law broadly against encrypted files? For example if I encrypt a file locally, a zip file containing images, am I not permitted to upload that zip file to a cloud service in the UK? Even if the UK's demands were "access to encrypted cloud services", does that also mean encrypted files within encrypted storage? It all seems so messy. Anyone who really wants to hide their files, can do so regardless of demands for backdoors. troupo wrote 1 day ago: > Anyone who really wants to hide their files, can do so regardless of demands for backdoors. The question isn't about "anyone who wants". It's about "anyone, regardless of their technical skill" givinguflac wrote 3 days ago: â They roll over without a peep.â What are you talking about? This is literally them doing the opposite, and there are multiple other public instances of them making a stand, not to mention in the design of their systems. Truly curious how you see this that way. troupo wrote 3 days ago: "Literally doing the opposite" would be keeping encryption on. Removing encryption for everyone is literally doing the opposite of making a stand coaksford wrote 3 days ago: They had two paths to comply with the law. Silently backdoor the worldwide cloud serving every Apple device, or loudly tell people in the UK they don't get to have security because their government prohibits them. Between these two options, this is clearly "making a stand". It's not as much "making a stand" as telling a major government that you have substantial seizable assets under their jurisdiction who is a major market you want to be in, that you're not going to do the thing that their laws say you are required to do, but it's hardly simple compliance either, instead of doing what the government wants them to do, they are making sure there is blowback. Whether to try to fight it in court likely depends on details of case law and the wording of the laws they'd be contesting, I imagine much of the delay in their response to the demand was asking their lawyers how well they think they would fare in court. dumbledoren wrote 2 days ago: > tell people in the UK This doesn't affect only people in the UK. It allows access to all Apple users' data globally: > No Heathrow connection necessary. âThe law has extraterritorial powers, meaning UK law enforcement would have been able to access the encrypted iCloud data of Apple customers anywhere in the world, including in the USâ [1]. > [1] [2] So they can spy on you regardless of where you live even in violation of your own country's privacy laws. URI [1]: https://www.ft.com/content/bc20274f-f352-457c-8f86-3... URI [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43132160 Krasnol wrote 3 days ago: It's always hilarious to see how far people here are ready to go to twist some bad Apple news into something which might be considered good. I mean seriously. Apple making a stand? What stand? They are ripping security out of their customers hands. Customers which are already dependent on the company's decision in their locked in environment. There is absolutely nothing good about it, and you dragging Android into it and making it look like it's even worse is suspicious. You can have full control over your Android device. Something impossible on an Apple phone. You can make your Android device safer than your iPhone. yunwal wrote 3 days ago: The government forced them to pull the feature. Would you rather they left a toggle-switch that doesn't actually do anything? Or are you thinking they should just pull out of the EU altogether? Krasnol wrote 3 days ago: Making a stand would be leaving UK (UK is not in the EU) altogether. This is almost as bad as building a backdoor. This is leaving your customer in the rain. Fortunately for Apple, most of them won't even know or realize it. musictubes wrote 2 days ago: No, this tells the customer that backups to iCloud are not secure from the government. Adding the back door would make people think that there was more security than there was. Transparency is always better than deception. Dropping the feature that the UK was targeting allows their customers to use all the other ways that Apple does things. Leaving the UK altogether is the nuclear option denying their customers of everything. âApple should just leave the UK/Chinaâ never takes into consideration the millions of customers that bought or might want to buy in the future. Nobody would better off if Apple withdraws from a country. Krasnol wrote 2 days ago: I don't think we both have the same concept of "making a stand". Yes, it would have been the nuclear option, but this is Apple. Probably most of the most influential people in the UK have an Apple phone. Just saying that you leave would cause an avalanche of influence targeted at this law. Maybe other companies would have joined them. This, this is just cover dance and I wish they'd pay for this, but they won't and they know it. People locked into the Apple bubble only change if it REALLY hurts. This doesn't hurt the average Apple user, and those who really care moved onto a system they can control themselves. codedokode wrote 2 days ago: Making a stand would be displaying a full-screen notification about why they cannot provide protection for British users' data and which party voted for this. Krasnol wrote 2 days ago: No. Making a stand would be to threaten to leave and watch all those influential iPhone users scramble to get this law rolled back. Everything else is marketing and cowardice. yunwal wrote 3 days ago: > This is leaving your customer in the rain. vs. taking their phone away??? Idk if you're trolling or what but I would be incredibly pissed at Apple if they deprecated my phone over something like this. Krasnol wrote 2 days ago: Yes, imagine the outrage in the rich and influential in the UK if Apple would seriously threaten to leave the country about this. They would cause the law to be fixed which would help everybody. But instead. They run away. Selling this as "making a stand" is ridiculous. Nothing more. amatecha wrote 3 days ago: There is an upside (if you trust them) -- they're pulling a feature rather than adding a back door to it. Supposedly, anyway. Krasnol wrote 3 days ago: Well, sure it could be worse. Doesn't make that one good, though. fdb345 wrote 3 days ago: Your Android and Microsoft backup aren't encrypted. They are already fair game for a warrant. dustingetz wrote 3 days ago: how much distance between 1) tech monopoly strong enough to stand up to G7 nation state demands 2) tech monopoly strong enough to remove itself from G7 nation state jurisdiction? edit: s/monopoly/empire, apologies stalfosknight wrote 3 days ago: Apple is not a monopoly. r00fus wrote 3 days ago: It's amusing to think of Apple as a "monopoly" (if anything they have a monopsony on TSMC production) but let's just replace that with "giant" for purposes of discussion. Tech giants typically devolve local operations to small companies to avoid liability - think petroleum suppliers not owning gas stations (because those typically end up as superfund sites). Not sure if this analogy this works for Google Android and all the manufacturers that deploy it for their smartphones too. So corporations have been doing this forever, trying to find legal loopholes where they can have their cake and eat it too. j-bos wrote 3 days ago: > (where you don't even have the right to legal advice, or the right to remain silent) A lot is posted about LEO's lying in the US, this seems worse. IshKebab wrote 3 days ago: > What concerns me more is that Apple is the only company audibly making a stand. Meta also said they would make a stand if a similar request comes for WhatsApp. I'm not going to hold my breath though. AutistiCoder wrote 3 days ago: They wouldn't even be able to. WA is end-to-end encrypted. figmert wrote 1 day ago: It's all lip service, because the UK Govt wouldn't ask them that. WhatsApp messages are EE2E. They probably already handover all the metadata surrounding those messages. kali_00 wrote 3 days ago: With almost everyones backups stored in plain-text, making it all a little silly. Think about it for a second: you can re-establish your WA account on a new device using only the SIM card from your old device. SIM cards don't have a storage area for random applications' encryption keys, and even if they did, a SIM card cannot count as "end-to-end" anymore. Same goes for whatever mobile cloud platform those backups might be stored on. And you'd hope Apple or Google aren't happily sending off your cloud decryption keys to any app that wants them. Though maybe they are? acka wrote 3 days ago: Reestablishing your WhatsApp account on a new device doesn't give access to your old chat messages, you need to restore a WhatsApp backup for that. The backup doesn't need to be stored in the cloud, you can choose to create a local file and manually transfer that to your new device. In any case, as soon as you start using WhatsApp on a new device, users in the chats you participate in will receive a message informing them that your encryption keys have changed. alex-robbins wrote 3 days ago: WhatsApp is closed source. They could backdoor it if they wanted to (or were forced to). bitpush wrote 3 days ago: And so in Apple and iOS. What is your point? IshKebab wrote 3 days ago: His point was that it is technically possible for WhatsApp to add a backdoor. Apple could too. grahamj wrote 3 days ago: This is why, while I applaud what Apple is doing here, they need to allow us to supply our own E2E encryption keys. vandahm wrote 2 days ago: But if you don't trust Apple, how to you get the key into the Secure Enclave to begin with? Doesn't Apple control the software on your device that provides the interface into the Secure Enclave from outside of it? grahamj wrote 2 days ago: Yes Apple controls the device so you're right, you can never be sure what it's doing. My thinking is that an encryption backdoor means the key generation algo is compromised. In that case you want to bypass that by generating the key yourself. If the backdoor is some other method of getting your key off the device then all bets are off. shuckles wrote 3 days ago: Thatâs literally what the feature theyâre removing did. kbolino wrote 3 days ago: Not exactly. It generates the keys for you and stores them on device in the Secure Enclave. You cannot "bring your own" encryption key, but the primary benefit of doing so--that Apple does not have access to it--is intentionally accomplished anyway by the implementation. shuckles wrote 3 days ago: Iâm not sure I appreciate the value of literally bringing your own keys. My device generating them on my behalf as part of a setup process seems sufficient. Youâd use openssl or something and defer to software to actually do keygen no matter what. rkagerer wrote 3 days ago: I agree it seems sort of academic at first blush, but I'm going to venture a guess it's the idea that you own them, instead of Apple. So you can eg. keep a backup on your own (secure) infrastructure. Transfer them when switching devices or even mirror on two different ones*. Extract your own secret enclave contents. Improve confidence they were generated securely. And depending on implementation, perhaps reduce the ease with which Apple might "accidentally" vacuum the keys up as a result of an update / order. *Not sure how much these two make sense in the iOS ecosystem. I know on the Android side I'd absolutely love to maintain a "hot standby" phone that is an exact duplicate of my daily driver, so if I drop it in the ocean I can be up and running again in a heartbeat with zero friction (without need to restore backups, reliance on nerfed backup API's outside the ones Google uses, having to re-setup 2FA, etc. and without ever touching Google's creepy-feeling cloud). kbolino wrote 3 days ago: You would need to have a completely trusted software and hardware stack to actually own the keys. And that is already hard enough to get on a PC where ownership still means something, it is not going to happen on most mobile devices. To whatever extent you trust any of the stack already, the Secure Enclave is a better bet than BYOK. The real risk, as you imply, is if Apple is able to compromise the security coprocessor with an OTA firmware update, but they can definitely already push a regular OS update that exfiltrates any key you type in. codedokode wrote 2 days ago: Just make an airgapped Linux device on a DYI FPGA CPU. This part is not that difficult comparing to persuading commercial vendors let you use your own cloud and your own encryption/backup mechanisms. rkagerer wrote 2 days ago: Yeah... unfortunately it ought to be the other way around. They should have a hard time pursuading us to trust them enough to use theirs. If your phone company asked you to give them the key to your house, in perpetuity, how would you feel about that? (Particularly if they insisted you sign a 15 page Terms of Use first that disclaims all their liability if anything goes missing). grahamj wrote 3 days ago: It depends what kind of backdoor the UK is asking for but "encryption backdoor" sounds like cryptographic compromise. I don't know if that's what it means but either way the only way to be sure your keys are secure is to generate them yourself. kbolino wrote 3 days ago: BYOK does not provide any additional security over the Secure Enclave (and similar security coprocessors). In fact, unless the Secure Enclave were to directly accept your input and bypass the OS, BYOK is worse because the software can just upload your key to a server as soon as you type it in. Whereas, a key generated on the Secure Enclave stays there, because there exists no operation to export it. grahamj wrote 2 days ago: I don't believe it's the SE itself that encrypts user data so it must already be the case that the key is generated outside the SE, sent to it for storage, and is retrieved if the user is authenticated. So the difference between Apple generating the key on device and storing it in the SE and the user generating it and storing it in the SE is that the user can use a known-secure key generation algo. If Apple generates the key you can't be sure it's cryptographically secure and doesn't have a backdoor. shuckles wrote 2 days ago: The SEâs AES engine line encrypts and decrypts data to flash, and the SEP is responsible for generating all keys. At this point, the people who claim they canât trust Appleâs key generation should also distrust Intel or AMD or any other vendorâs key generation as well. Might as well generate keys by hand. nottorp wrote 3 days ago: > have an Android device beside me that regularly asks me to back my device up to the cloud But is that backup encrypted? If it's not, all they need is to access your data. This is about having access to backups that are theoretically encrypted with a key Apple doesn't have? > We're talking about the largest back door I've ever heard of. Doesn't the US have access to all the data of non US citizens whose data is stored in the US without any oversight? 93po wrote 3 days ago: i think people focus on whether backups are encrypted too much. it really doesn't matter when the government has remote access equivalent to your live phone when it's in an unencrypted state, which they almost certainly do. noinsight wrote 3 days ago: > non US citizens whose data is stored in the US They don't even care where it's stored... See: CLOUD Act [1] URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act autoexec wrote 3 days ago: I honestly doubt they even limit themselves to the data of non-US citizens. They have no respect at all for the fourth amendment. crimsoneer wrote 3 days ago: Android data isn't encrypted at rest (or at least not in a way Google doesn't have the key). If the uk gov has a warrant, they can ask Google to provide your Google Drive content. The whole point of this issue is Apple specifically designed ADP so they couldn't do that. Gatorguy wrote 2 days ago: Wrong. Google Android user cloud backups are E2EE by default.There is no option to opt out. Use Google's backup service and your data is encrypted at rest, in transit, and on device. aka end-to-end. It's not just Google saying it. Google Cloud encryption is independently verified sunshowers wrote 3 days ago: Android backups are encrypted at rest using the lockscreen PIN or passphrase: [1] So not hugely secure for most people if they use 4-6 decimal digits, but possible to make secure if you set a longer passphrase. I don't know what Google's going to do about this UK business. edit: Ah it looks like they have a Titan HSM involved as well. Have to take Google's word for it, but an HSM would let you do rate limits and lockouts. If that's in place, it seems all right to me. URI [1]: https://developer.android.com/privacy-and-security/risks... autoexec wrote 3 days ago: I wonder how hard it would be for the US government to force Google to just get the lockscreen pin off of your device or for them to just infect your device with something to capture it themselves. squeaky-clean wrote 3 days ago: > But is that backup encrypted? If it's not, all they need is to access your data. Based on them mentioning the difficulty of opting out, I presume OOP does not use Google's cloud backup. mtrovo wrote 3 days ago: > Doesn't the US have access to all the data of non US citizens whose data is stored in the US without any oversight? Totally agree. Having this discussion so US centred just makes us miss the forest for the trees. Apart from data owned by US citizens, my impression is that data stored in the US is fair game for three letter agencies, and I really doubt most companies would spend more than five minutes agreeing with law enforcement if asked for full access to their database on non-US nationals. Also, remember that WhatsApp is the go-to app for communication in most of the world outside the US. And although it's end-to-end encrypted, it's always nudging you to back up your data to Google or Apple storage. I can't think of a better target for US intelligence to get a glimpse of conversations about their targets in real time, without needing to hack each individual phone. If WhatsApp were a Chinese app, this conversation about E2E and backup restrictions would have happened a long time ago. It's the same on how TikTok algorithm suddenly had a strong influence on steering public opinion and instead of fixing the game we banned the player. wkat4242 wrote 2 days ago: This is different IMO. When you buy Apple you buy an American product and you know the company is beholden to US law. Snowden has made perfectly clear how much they can be trusted. When you buy it anyway it's an informed choice. Here a country that has no ties with most of apple's customers is just butting in and claiming access to all of them. So what's next. Are we also giving access to everyone's data to Russia? Iran? SJC_Hacker wrote 3 days ago: > Totally agree. Having this discussion so US centred just makes us miss the forest for the trees. Apart from data owned by US citizens, my impression is that data stored in the US is fair game for three letter agencies, and I really doubt most companies would spend more than five minutes agreeing with law enforcement if asked for full access to their database on ̶n̶o̶n̶-̶U̶S̶ ̶n̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶a̶l̶s̶ anyone. mox1 wrote 3 days ago: International users that have Advanced Protection enabled would in theory be safe from all of the 3-letter agencies (like safe from those agencies getting the data from Apple...not safe generally). Realistically we are talking about FISA here, so in theory if the FBI gets a FISA court order to gather "All of the Apple account data" for a non-us person, Apple would either hand over the encrypted data OR just omit that.... Based on the stance Apple is taking here, its reasonable to assume they would do the same in the US (disable the feature if USG asked for a backdoor or attempted to compel them to decrypt) nickburns wrote 3 days ago: > its reasonable to assume they would do the same in the US (disable the feature if USG asked for a backdoor or attempted to compel them to decrypt) I think it's more likely that Apple would challenge it in US courts and prevail. Certainly a legal battle worth waging, unlike in the UK. GeekyBear wrote 3 days ago: This has already happened, and Apple did fight it in the US courts. Eventually the US government withdrew their demand. URI [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%E2%80%93FBI_en... autoexec wrote 3 days ago: It's worth pointing out that just because the FBI didn't have the access they wanted, it doesn't mean that other agencies don't, or that the FBI couldn't get the data they wanted by other means (which was exactly what they ended up doing in that specific case). It just means that they wanted Apple to make it easier for them to get the data. It's good that Apple refused them, but I wouldn't count that as evidence that the data is secure from the US government. GeekyBear wrote 2 days ago: It's also worth noting that the US courts have long held that computer code is speech. Apple's legal argument that the government's demand that they insert a backdoor into iOS was tantamount to compelled speech (in violation of the first amendment) was going over a little too well in court. The Feds will often find an excuse to drop cases that would set a precedent they want to avoid. nickburns wrote 3 days ago: Exactly. URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%E2%80%93FBI_en... mtrovo wrote 3 days ago: Would your answer be the same if this encrypted data was stored in China instead of US? I don't think messages should ever leave the device, if you want to migrate to a different device this could be covered by that user flow directly. Maybe you want to sync media like photos or videos shared on a group chat and I'm fine with that compromise but I see more risks than benefits on backing up messages on the cloud, no matter if it's encrypted or not. r3trohack3r wrote 3 days ago: I think the average human will disagree with you. They want to preserve their data and aren't technically competent and organized enough to maintain their own backups with locally hosted hardware. Even the technically literate encourage _offsite_ backups of your data. Know your threat model and what actions your trying to defend against. Typical humans need trusted vendors that put in actual effort to make themselves blind to your personal data. causal wrote 3 days ago: Agree in principle, though WhatsApp backups are encrypted with a user provided password, so ostensibly inaccessible to Google or whoever you use as backup scripturial wrote 2 days ago: What makes you think WhatsApp backups donât have a secondary way to unlock the encryption key? Wouldnât it be more logical to assume the encryption key for whatsapp backups can also be unlocked by an alternate âpasswordâ If the US is willing to build an entire data center in Outback Australia to allow warrantless access to US citizen data, why wouldnât they be forcing WhatsApp backups to be unlockable? burnerthrow008 wrote 3 days ago: > Doesn't the US have access to all the data of non US citizens whose data is stored in the US without any oversight? Er, no...? I'm not sure where you get that idea. Access requires a warrant, and companies are not compelled to build systems which enable them to decrypt all data covered by the warrant. See, for example, the Las Vegas shooter case, where Apple refused to create an iOS build that would bypass iCloud security. nottorp wrote 3 days ago: I asked if your Android backup is encrypted. Implies I'm talking about unencrypted data. > See, for example, the Las Vegas shooter case I am not in Las Vegas or anywhere else in the US. So as far as i know all the data about me that is stored in the US is easily accessible without a warrant unless it's encrypted with a key that's not available with the storage. > companies are not compelled to build systems which enable them to decrypt all data covered by the warrant Again, not what I was talking about. I'm merely pointing out that your data is not necessarily encrypted, and that the "rest of the world" was already unprotected vs at least one state. The UK joining in would just add another. spankalee wrote 3 days ago: > all the data about me that is stored in the US is easily accessible without a warrant No, law enforcement needs a warrant to legally access any data. This is why Prism was illegal, and why companies like Google are pushing back against overly broad geofence search warrants. fdb345 wrote 3 days ago: All Encrochat evidence was illegal in at least three different ways. UK Law enforcement didn't care. They just lied. multjoy wrote 3 days ago: No it wasn't. The Dutch cracked and wiretapped it. It has been held not to be intercept evidence per RIPA so capable of being used in evidence. Most went guilty because they caught red-handed in the most egregious criminality you've seen. Encro was designed to enable and protect criminal communications. It had no redeeming public value. alt227 wrote 3 days ago: > This is why Prism was illegal Yet it still existed, and was used for surveillance by 3 letter agencies. Why do you think this is any different? somenameforme wrote 3 days ago: No idea why the two of you are using past tense. PRISM is still very much alive and well. GeekyBear wrote 3 days ago: This is why Apple, and more recently Google, create systems where they don't have access to your unencrypted data on their servers. > Google Maps is changing the way it handles your location data. Instead of backing up your data to the cloud, Google will soon store it locally on your device. [1] You can't be forced to hand over data on your servers that you don't have access to, warrant or no. The UK wants to make this workaround illegal on an international basis. URI [1]: https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/5/24172204/google-maps... Gatorguy wrote 2 days ago: Small correction. Google had "created a system where they don't have access to your data on their servers" a couple of years BEFORE Apple. Android 10 introduced it in 2019. GeekyBear wrote 2 days ago: Google didn't announce plans to stop storing a copy of user location data on their servers until the middle of last year. See the story linked above. They didn't announce that they could no longer access user location data on their servers to respond to geofence warrants until the last quarter of 2024. Gatorguy wrote 2 days ago: We're talking iCloud and data encryption compared to Google's Android Cloud E2EE, and you're doing maps. GeekyBear wrote 2 days ago: Were talking about protecting your personal data from government overreach, and Google's entire business model is to collect as much of your personal data as possible and store it on their servers to make ad sales more profitable. Apple does its best not to collect personal data in the first place. pmontra wrote 3 days ago: > You can't be forced to hand over data on your servers that you don't have access to, warrant or no. But you can be forced to record and store that data even if you don't want to. GeekyBear wrote 3 days ago: Which is why Apple takes the stance that the users device shouldn't be sending data to the mothership at all, if it isn't absolutely necessary. Compare Apple Maps and Google Maps. Google initially hoovered up all your location data and kept it forever. They learned from Waze that one use case for location data was keeping your map data updated. Apple figured out how to accomplish the goal of keeping map data updated without storing private user data that could be subject to a subpoena. > âWe specifically donât collect data, even from point A to point B,â notes Cue. âWe collect data â when we do it â in an anonymous fashion, in subsections of the whole, so we couldnât even say that there is a person that went from point A to point B. The segments that he is referring to are sliced out of any given personâs navigation session. Neither the beginning or the end of any trip is ever transmitted to Apple. Rotating identifiers, not personal information, are assigned to any data sent to Apple... Apple is working very hard here to not know anything about its users. URI [1]: https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/29/apple-is-rebuild... acka wrote 2 days ago: Google or Apple could be forced by authorities to perform correlation on the map tiles being requested by users under investigation. Not as accurate as GPS coordinates but probably useful nonetheless. One more reason to prefer offline maps for those who value privacy. GeekyBear wrote 2 days ago: Given that you can browse map data for any location, not just where you happen to be, I'm betting that triangulation data from your carrier would be more accurate. acka wrote 2 days ago: Sure, triangulation of carrier signals could lead to more accurate position estimates, but if the carrier isn't based in the US they are under no obligation to make this data available to US authorities. Apple and Google are based in the US so are bound by the CLOUD Act to provide any and all data they have upon request, no matter where in the world it is being collected or stored. skydhash wrote 3 days ago: People always overestimate how much companies will defy their government for you, legally or otherwise. sameermanek wrote 3 days ago: Feels like marvel was onto something with captain america and winter soldier. dmonitor wrote 3 days ago: The real prescient threat in that movie was the predictive AI algorithm that tracked individual behaviors and identified potential threats to the regime. In the movie they had a big airship with guns that would kill them on sight, but a more realistic threat is the AI deciding to feed them individualized propaganda to curtail their behavior. This is the villain's plot in Metal Gear Solid 2, which is another great story. This got me thinking about MGS2 again and rewatching the colonel's dialogue at the end of the game: [1] > Your persona, experiences, triumphs, and defeats are nothing but byproducts. The real objective was ensuring that we could generate and manipulate them. It's really brilliant to use a video game to deliver the message of the effectiveness of propaganda. 'Game design' as a concept is just about manipulation and hijacking dopamine responses. I don't think another medium can as effectively demonstrate how systems can manipulate people's behavior. URI [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKl6WjfDqYA pplante wrote 3 days ago: Life is imitating too many dystopian books, movies, etc these days. I think we need to put an end to all creative works before the timeline becomes irrecoverably destroyed. dingdingdang wrote 3 days ago: The /s is strong with this one. Arubis wrote 3 days ago: I suspect youâre being flippant, but destruction of and restrictions on creative works as an _antidote_ to dystopia is a take I havenât seen before. pplante wrote 3 days ago: Yes, I am being very flippant. Sometimes we need to jest in order to digest reality. ekm2 wrote 3 days ago: Banning art? immibis wrote 2 days ago: Burning books, more specifically. Can't be a dystopia if nobody knows what the word "dystopia" means *taps forehead* Jigsy wrote 3 days ago: I don't like Apple, nor do I use any of their products, but as someone from the UK, I do respect them for doing this. Now if only the other companies who said they'd leave would grow a backbone... ranger_danger wrote 3 days ago: The beginning of the end. A sad day for Brits cgcrob wrote 3 days ago: Removed all my stuff from iCloud about a month ago in preparation for this. pyuser583 wrote 3 days ago: How does this affect me if I travel to the UK with an E2E encrypted IThing? bananapub wrote 3 days ago: not at all tome wrote 3 days ago: I'm confused. I thought iCloud was end-to-end encrypted anyway, and I've never heard of ADP before. Is ADP encryption at rest, whereas normal iCloud storage is only encrypted from the device to the server? jamesmotherway wrote 3 days ago: See the "Data categories and encryption" section: "The table below provides more detail on how iCloud protects your data when using standard data protection or Advanced Data Protection." URI [1]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102651 dmix wrote 3 days ago: The only difference is Apple doesn't hold the encryption keys when you use ADP. In both cases it's encrypted in transit and at rest. tome wrote 3 days ago: TIL that Apple holds the keys to my iCloud encrypted data! burnerthrow008 wrote 3 days ago: Yes, otherwise, how would the web interface (iCloud.com) work? blitzar wrote 2 days ago: Or account recovery AlanYx wrote 3 days ago: For most of it, yes. There are exceptions, e.g., Health and Keychain, for which Apple does not have the keys even without ADP enabled. b800h wrote 3 days ago: What happens if you're an international traveller? SXX wrote 3 days ago: This will likely depend on your primary account region. Apple can't just turn off E2EE on existing account nilly willy. A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote 3 days ago: << Apple can't just turn off E2EE on existing account nilly willy. If they are able to, then then can be compelled. Do you mean won't/wouldn't? buildbot wrote 3 days ago: âApple said it will issue additional guidance in the future to affected users and that it "does not have the ability to automatically disable it on their behalf."â From URI [1]: https://www.macrumors.com/2025/02/21/apple-pulls-encrypt... SXX wrote 3 days ago: They can break a sync on server-side for your account. They can't disable it on device though. int_19h wrote 3 days ago: They control the software running on your device, and said software ultimately has access to the encryption keys stored there (subject to the usual hoops; e.g. it might need you to do a FaceID unlock first, but it's not like you aren't already doing that many times every day). v3xro wrote 3 days ago: Very disappointed with this, but I think will be finding alternatives. Family sharing especially of Reminders is a hard one - we use lists for grocery shopping and it is extremely convenient. Has anyone tried out Ente [1] for photos? URI [1]: https://ente.io/ vroomvroomboom wrote 3 days ago: It's the right decision. Don't bow to the government, let the people demand it from their leaders, and vote in new ones. v3xro wrote 3 days ago: Yes, countries lacking in proportional representation and having obscure procedures like proroguing parliament are the best at listening to important but fairly obscure issues from their voters. vroomvroomboom wrote 3 days ago: It's the right choice: don't bow to government pressure, let the people pressure the government. madeofpalk wrote 3 days ago: This is Apple condeeding. Apple lost. UK Government got (almost) what they wanted - a backdoor into iCloud accounts. Apple's only consolation prize is that its limited to UK users for now. But it seems inevitable that ADP will gradually be made illegal all around the world. jahewson wrote 3 days ago: Given that theyâve only prevented new signups it looks to me more like Apple is trying to apply pressure to the U.K. government to get them to back down. The law that permits this was passed in 2016 so the situation was default lost already. alt227 wrote 3 days ago: They have said all existing ADP enabled accounts will be disabled or deleted in time. They need to give people time to migrate their data out before they nuke it. Molitor5901 wrote 3 days ago: NO, it's the wrong choice. Most people do not understand this stuff enough to truly care about, and they just want their devices to work. This is an awful decision by Apple. There's really nothing consumers can do to pressure the British government. afthonos wrote 3 days ago: Consumers being unable to pressure government, even if true, does not imply this is a bad decision. Molitor5901 wrote 3 days ago: It's a terrible decision that will have grave ramifications. I see no positive to this action. miroljub wrote 3 days ago: How? In the UK, there's no right to bear arms, so people are pretty helpless against their oppressing government. blitzar wrote 2 days ago: We could try the American way, bear our arms and shoot up a school, but I don't see how that will help. mr_toad wrote 3 days ago: > In the UK, there's no right to bear arms, so people are pretty helpless against their oppressing government. When people want to revolt it doesnât seem like the right to bear arms has much to do with it. Not having the right to bear arms certainly hasnât stopped countless rebellions and revolutions across the world. Itâs not like the French of the Russians had a right to bear arms before their successful revolutions. Even in the UK, the lack of a right to bear arms didnât stop Cromwell using firearms to defeat Charles II at the Battle of Worcester. fdb345 wrote 3 days ago: I just dont interact with the government or British society at all. I have turned my back on it. If they ever come to my door I'll either go postal or leave the country. Its so bad here now. pinoy420 wrote 1 day ago: Cool LARP bro emorning3 wrote 3 days ago: Guns are an inefficient/stupid way to kill people anyway. Just ask Russia and Ukraine. Look around, human beings are quite clever. quickthrowman wrote 3 days ago: Small arms are no match for drones and a fully armed military, a successful rebellion by any populace against a first world military is impossible unless the military lays their arms down voluntarily, full stop. filoleg wrote 3 days ago: Every time this argument comes up, I just feel like rolling eyes, it is so overplayed. Yes, in a direct confrontation and an all out war, the populace stands no chance against the US military (assuming the military will unwaveringly side against the populace), no argument there. But an all out war is not an option, the government wouldnât be trying to pulverize an entire nation and leave a rubble in place. If you completely destroy your populace and your cities in an all-out direct war, you got no country and people left to govern. It is all about subjugation and populace control. You canât achieve this with air strikes that level whole towns. Similarly, if the US wanted to âwinâ in Afganistan by just glassing the whole region and capturing it, that would be rather quick and easy (from a technical perspective, not from the perspective of political consequences that would follow). Turns out, populace control and compliance are way more tricky to achieve than just capturing land. And while having overwhelming firepower and technological advantage helps with that, it isnât enough. quickthrowman wrote 3 days ago: A first world military that has remotely piloted drones with IR cameras and other surveillance tools will have no problem crushing any form of resistance. They donât even need to field any troops, they can remotely kill the rebels. How on earth do you wage a rebellion against such a force? bloqs wrote 3 days ago: I roll my eyes when I see this blissfully naive LARP/mallninja imagined scenario, but I do have to remind myself that the US was founded on the basis of forming a milita etc. and I would probably say the same thing if I had that upbringing. You forget that the vast majority of people are stupid and easily scared (this is not a solvable problem) Help me out - how can policing possibly work if no one is legally required to be policed? You just end up with murderers, rapists etc. expressing their right to "resist" with arms like in spaghetti westerns. It is totally symbolic, and would crumble at the first instance of serious government interest of arresting 'troublemakers', which would of course start with a well crafted PR campaign to get the rest of the public on their side. I think it's naive. jahewson wrote 3 days ago: This feels like a strawman because youâre only hypothesizing a situation in which it wouldnât work well. Imagine a dark future with a sudden military coup by a small faction of extreme radicals that 85% of the population opposes. could enough citizens rise up and stop them? Could the calculus of being that coup leader be changed by the likelihood that they will be assassinated in short order, by one of millions of potential assassins? Quite possibly. These are not everyday concerns, of course, but the concerns of dark and dangerous times. Itâs a bit like buying life insurance: hopefully I never need it. protonbob wrote 3 days ago: Rebels are able to use techniques that a government never could or would. I think you underestimate the usefulness of small arms in guerilla warfare. quickthrowman wrote 3 days ago: I think you underestimate the lethality of remotely piloted drones with missiles and IR cameras and the futility of fighting against them. protonbob wrote 2 days ago: You can pretty easily build / buy these. Look at Ukraine. Lots of their drones were just off the shelf. Jamming is super directional and easy to spot so fighting forces use it sparingly. sillywalk wrote 3 days ago: The Taliban would argue otherwise. gus_massa wrote 3 days ago: You underestimate the nasty things goverments have done. Molitor5901 wrote 3 days ago: Technically I guess you're right, but one hopes that the foundations of British democracy provide its citizens with the tools to fight against an oppressive government. The only rub is getting them to stand up and do that. jahewson wrote 3 days ago: Like what? Britain is a constitutional monarchy. Its foundations anticipated an oppressive king, not an oppressive parliament. Britain never had a revolution, it never had free speech to begin with. It seems to me that what made Britain successful in the past is maladaptive to its current situation. ornornor wrote 3 days ago: Because thatâs working so well for the US cupcakecommons wrote 3 days ago: it's working really well, we don't get arrested for social media posts as far as I can tell ornornor wrote 3 days ago: If thatâs the bar then I guess yes itâs a resounding success for freedom. cupcakecommons wrote 3 days ago: The UK seems to be actively covering up the mass rape of little girls and throwing dissidents in prison. They've sustained mass immigration for decades against their own peoples' will. The US just shook off, at least in part, the same mass immigration and the same clamping down of free speech in the US. It's not the only bar, but I would definitely consider it a resounding success. I can't help but think the 1st and 2nd amendment play a part because the 1st is obviously implicated and the 2nd is required to maintain the 1st. defrost wrote 3 days ago: > The UK seems to be actively covering up the mass rape of little girls They're doing the worst cover up ever given grooming gangs and where they operate have been headlines in the UK for decades. What they're not very good at is keeping the UK citizens at large well informed with a realistic sense of proportion given the scale of child sexual abuse far exceeds the activities of grooming gangs. philipwhiuk wrote 3 days ago: [1] [2] [3] Yes you do URI [1]: https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/social-media-infl... URI [2]: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c86l4p583y6o URI [3]: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/1/19/holdindigenou... jahewson wrote 3 days ago: Thatâs not the same thing. You know what he means. basisword wrote 3 days ago: >> In the UK, there's no right to bear arms, so people are pretty helpless against their oppressing government. There's a right to bear arms in the US and it doesn't seem to be helping them with their oppressive government. grahamj wrote 3 days ago: It only works when the gun nuts arenât on the side of the oppressors. cupcakecommons wrote 3 days ago: I feel like it's working pretty great protonbob wrote 3 days ago: Look into the Black Panthers. It actually does work quite effectively. throw16180339 wrote 2 days ago: The Mulford Act ( [1] ), a California gun control act that prohibits open carry, was originally passed back in the 60s to disarm the Black Panthers. URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulford_Act bloqs wrote 3 days ago: You people cannot seriously be this poorly educated jahewson wrote 3 days ago: The fact that I canât tell if this is a joke speaks volumes. ch4s3 wrote 3 days ago: Ahh yes the murders of Alex Rackley and Betty Van Patter, truly brave and revolutionary acts! krapp wrote 3 days ago: How? the Black Panthers were infiltrated and undermined by COINTELPRO and effectively destroyed from within, meanwhile the white supremacist capitalist system they fought against persists. Their biggest success as far as I know is starting free school lunches in the US, but that wasn't at gunpoint. krapp wrote 3 days ago: Weird. In the US there is a right to bear arms, yet people are also pretty helpless against their oppressing government. cupcakecommons wrote 3 days ago: Who do you know that's been arrested for posting on social media? I don't know of anyone. krapp wrote 3 days ago: True. American police will shoot people dead in the streets with impunity, the military industrial complex engages in constant wars regardless of popular sentiment and the American government is currently being carved up by neo-nazis and oligarchs but you can legally be racist on the internet. I guess it truly is the land of the free. Also... wait six months. cupcakecommons wrote 3 days ago: You're currently delusional in a very particular way and that's fine. I'm looking forward to you finding your way and things turning out much better than you expect (at least in the US) in six months. saintfire wrote 3 days ago: I'm sure shooting at the government would have solved this privacy issue. Tostino wrote 3 days ago: Surprisingly, the people in the government don't much like being shot. See the reaction to the UHC CEO for an example. FergusArgyll wrote 2 days ago: This is a decent point. They're now getting investigated by the DOJ and their stock tanked marknutter wrote 3 days ago: It solved the taxation issue spacedcowboy wrote 3 days ago: As a green-card holder, it really didn't. krapp wrote 3 days ago: As far as I know Americans are still required to pay taxes, so no. brink wrote 3 days ago: We're working on it. ethagnawl wrote 3 days ago: > let the people pressure the government. Hopefully they will. basisword wrote 3 days ago: There was a lot of campaigning against the Investigatory Powers bill when it was introduced. It didn't help much given the people in power want more power regardless of where they sit on the political spectrum. tmjwid wrote 3 days ago: I can't imagine many here (UK) will really care, we've had multiple breeches of privacy imposed on us by the powers that be. - Removed incorrect assumption of this not being reported. alt227 wrote 3 days ago: I agree, have an upvote. Even though its making the media headlines today, 99% of UK citizens will forget this tomorrow and it will fade into the mists of time. Just like evey other security infringement that any government has imposed on its citizens. darrenf wrote 3 days ago: It's literally the number one story on [1] as I type this comment. URI [1]: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/ gambiting wrote 3 days ago: And I guarantee that the reaction from most people will be "good, I have nothing to hide so I have nothing to worry about". The apathy around this stuff in the UK is unbelivable - I've been trying to point out that hey, for years now something like 17 government agencies(including DEFRA - department of agriculture lol) can access your internet browsing history WITHOUT A WARRANT and that's absolutely fine. ISPs are required to keep your browsing history for a year too. Again, nothing to hide, why would I worry about it. spwa4 wrote 3 days ago: The same is happening Europe-wide too. Everybody always points to the GPDR legislation. You know what is a feature of the GPDR too? Every European government (even some non-EU ones) can grant any exception to anyone to the GPDR for any reason. And, of course, every last one has granted an exception to the police, to courts, to the secret service, their equivalent of the IRS, and to government health care (which imho is a big problem when we're talking mental health care), and when I say government health care, note that this includes private providers of health care, in other words insurances. Note: these GPDR exclusions includes denying patients access to their own medical records. So if a hospital lies about "providing you" with mental health treatment (which they are incentivized to do, they get money for that), it can helpfully immediately be used in your divorce. For you yourself, however, it is conveniently impossible to verify if they've done this. Nor can you ask (despite GPDR explicitly granting you this right) to have your medical records just erased. In other words. GPDR was explicitly created to give people control over their own medical records, and to deny insurance providers and the IRS access. It does the exact opposite. Exactly the sort of information I would like to hide, exactly the people I would find it critical to hide it from. In other words: GPDR applies pretty much only to US FANG companies ... and no-one else. So: if you don't pay tax and use that money to pay for a cancer treatment, don't think for a second the GPDR will protect you. If you have cancer and would like to get insured, the insurance companies will know. Etc. genewitch wrote 3 days ago: Does and of the doh or other DNS stuff help with this at all? Is the only solution to VPN out of Europe? DeepSeaTortoise wrote 3 days ago: Only DNSCrypt provides any privacy. If you setup your relays properly. DIR <- back to front page