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Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained

reuters.com

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Re: Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained

#21

Post by parasubvert »

minikites wrote: post #8
panarky wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You vote every time you decide to buy or not to buy.

Tell me how I can choose to avoid buying fungible commodities from a particular source: suppose I want to avoid oil from BP because I disapprove of their handling of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Avoiding BP-branded filling stations doesn't actually mean I'm not buying oil that came from BP. Or suppose I want to avoid wheat from Archer Daniels Midland, or crops sprayed with Monsanto products. The idea that capitali…

The whole point of commodification (which arguably has little to do with capitalism - this process occurs in communism too) is to eliminate differentiation.

Pecunia non olet ("money doesn't smell") is the motto of any commodity market for thousands of years. You might not like who you're buying from, but the POINT is fungibility: to completely remove all distinguishing characteristics, allow interchangeability, separate the value of the good from the value of the producer or seller.

Early stage markets (usually aided by capitalism) on the other hand allows for disequilibrium, competition, and differentiation. At worst is how you get commodities repackaged as "artisanal bottled water" and "bone broth", and the like. But it would be the way to differentiate ethical oil (is there any?) from unethical. Also has been pretty successful at labelling GMO / non-GMO food. So, yeah, there are many cases where you do have meaningful choice.

Re: Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained

#22

Post by t4skf0rc3 »

Privacy? Who needs it, amirite?

I mean, I'm not up to anything illegal, and I don't actually care about people seeing my stuff, BUT... the concept as a whole of "government should have access to everything all the time, regardless of reasoning" does not sit well with me.

Re: Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained

#23

Post by coldtea »

celeritascelery wrote: post #14
inetknght wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how that works at all. You can buy something you need because you need it and that's not at all a vote saying you like the management of how it was produced.

It’s a vote whether you claim it is or not. If you need something but don’t want to support the company, buy it from someone else. And if you can’t find a company that you want to support, then you’ll see it’s just like real politics. You don’t get to only vote for the parts of a candidate you like, you vote for the whole package.

>then you’ll see it’s just like real politics. You don’t get to only vote for the parts of a candidate you like, you vote for the whole package.

Well, that's the problem with politics as well, and the reason that modern democracy is a sham (compared to ancient Athenian direct democracy [1]).

[1] obviously for those it included at the time. After all, modern democracy didn't include slaves, women, and even poor white folks (the extension of voting rights to non-property-owning white men happened in 1828, and it was hampered in the South until the early 20th century) until well into the 20th century.

Re: Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained

#24

Post by parasubvert »

metafunctor wrote: post #6

What the... I was under the impression that iCloud backups are end-to-end encrypted. This is a HUGE problem.

iPhone/iPad backups stored locally on iTunes (or Finder, in Catalina) are end-to-end encrypted.

iCloud backups always were encrypted based on a key derived from your iCloud account credentials, since the beginning...

Re: Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained

#25

Post by m-p-3 »

thrwaway69 wrote: post #19
shadowgovt wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And at the end of the day, these tools are powerful and it's unclear that it's in the best interests of humanity at large to make it easy for every individual to cipher their data in a way that no other human can ever access. Apple (and their peers in the big-cloud-data-storage world) may not even be in the wrong for not willing to hand the same tool to the just and the unjust for cheaper than those individuals rolli…

> it's unclear that it's in the best interests of humanity at large to make it easy for every individual to cipher their data in a way that no other human can ever access Unclear on what exactly? How much damage is done through encryption alone?

Arguably making it harder for enforcement agency to do their jobs. I believe this is their burden to bear and work with, since privacy for every citizens is also important.

Re: Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained

#26

Post by 5ersi »

metafunctor wrote: post #6

What the... I was under the impression that iCloud backups are end-to-end encrypted. This is a HUGE problem.

Why would you think it was end-to-end encrypted? Did you never use icloud.com where you can simply access all your icloud data with a usernam+password?

Re: Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained

#27

Post by sneak »

metafunctor wrote: post #6

What the... I was under the impression that iCloud backups are end-to-end encrypted. This is a HUGE problem.

They can’t be; users lose their devices, then forget their passwords and need to reset and restore.

Also, all your photos and notes and email and other stuff in iCloud are available to Apple (and by extension the FBI et al) as well. Even Apple CSRs have a ton of access to the contents of a lot of iCloud services.

The situation is a lot better if you have all recent devices and 2FA turned on, then it can use iCloud Keychain for some stuff which is trust-circle based. You can read more in Apple’s latest platform security doc released late last year.

Re: Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained

#28

Post by sneak »

WilTimSon wrote: post #17

Reminds me of WhatsApp claiming it had encryption everywhere and then this [0] dropped. Except, in this case, I'm actually surprised. Didn't Apple publicly claim that it wouldn't bow down to any demands from the agencies? [0]: https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/3061660/whatsapp-i...

That was a coordinated PR move between Apple and the government. The US administration went into heavy damage control mode with the large tech companies after the Snowden revelations about PRISM et c.

Re: Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained

#29

Post by shadowgovt »

m-p-3 wrote: post #25
thrwaway69 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's unclear that it's in the best interests of humanity at large to make it easy for every individual to cipher their data in a way that no other human can ever access Unclear on what exactly? How much damage is done through encryption alone?

Arguably making it harder for enforcement agency to do their jobs. I believe this is their burden to bear and work with, since privacy for every citizens is also important.

I agree that the resopnsibility is on the FBI to do investigation, but transitioning from a world where private documents are irretrievable without a warrant to one where they're structurally irretrievable because of mathematics and computational limitation would fundamentally alter the balance of power between society and individuals within that society in ways that society hasn't had to explore. It's something that's worth thinking deeply about before leaping upon it.

Part of the FBI's responsibility of investigation is to surface this concern to companies that have the power to make that world a reality, and it appears Apple has agreed with them on the risks.

Re: Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained

#30

Post by mkagenius »

parasubvert wrote: post #24
metafunctor wrote: post #6

What the... I was under the impression that iCloud backups are end-to-end encrypted. This is a HUGE problem.

iPhone/iPad backups stored locally on iTunes (or Finder, in Catalina) are end-to-end encrypted. iCloud backups always were encrypted based on a key derived from your iCloud account credentials, since the beginning...

Do they happen re-encrypt if I change my credentials a bunch of times or do they use my first ever password which was 123456?
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