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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

#401

Post by zaarn »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #398
zaarn wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But how do I trust the independent parties?

The same way you trust anybody? If you're so paranoid that you believe literally everyone is out to get you, then you're not going to be able to function in any society, let alone one as interconnected and interdependent as our own.

But this is about trust. With open source, anyone who understands even a little bit of code can atleast attempt to understand it.

You can hash the source code and verify that what you have is the same that the developer shipped.

There is no hash function for hardware.

Re: Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained

#402

Post by pbhjpbhj »

post_below wrote: post #357
vkou wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No company cares about anything. A company is not a person. You're splitting hairs over the definition of 'cares'. I think we all understand what that word means in this context.

Even at this late date in the advance of capitalism I think it's still a useful reminder. With all of the carefully crafted marketing aimed at bypassing the forebrain and making people feel as though corporations care, it doesn't hurt to keep the fact that they don't at the forefront of the conversation.

Corporations can care, they're groups of people; they choose not to on the whole.

Re: Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained

#403

Post by gettingsnarky »

brigade wrote: post #321
GeekyBear wrote: post #207

>there's no good and easy option to backup your phone other than iCloud. Turn off iCloud and do local encrypted backups to your PC or Mac. This works over your wifi network (if you prefer wireless charging at home) or via a cable connection.

It's also flakey as hell (just looked and my latest backup is over 3 weeks old), and relies on having a computer plugged into power at the same time as your iPhone, with enough free space. I've tried getting my family to use it (mainly because they didn't want to pay for iCloud storage), before giving up and just paying their storage for them.

> with enough free space.

You can move it to a network share.

iTunes->Preferences->Advanced

Re: Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained

#405

Post by Finnucane »

panarky wrote: post #387
_bxg1 wrote: post #206

> aboyt how much Apple cares about users No company cares about anything. A company is not a person. Apple, because of its privacy-marketing, is incentivized to be the privacy player in the market. But only so far as consumers keep them honest about it. They got away with this loophole because it stayed under the radar; if it gets enough attention and enough customers show that it matters to them, it could change. On…

> No company cares about anything It's a common misconception that corporations are amoral incentive-driven machines impervious to ethics, morals or mission. Corporations are run by leaders. Many leaders choose to pursue unethical and immoral activities to maximize profit. They justify their actions by saying "it's just business", or "we have a fiduciary duty to the stockholders to maximize earnings per share by what…

>t's a common misconception that corporations are amoral incentive-driven machines impervious to ethics, morals or mission.

Not really, those leaders are pretty quick to hide behind the corporate veil when it's convenient for dodging questions of moral (or even legal) responsibility.

The whole point of corporate legal structure is to create an entity that is _separate_ from the humans that occupy offices. That entity is not a person.

Re: Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained

#406

Post by Despegar »

natch wrote: post #391
matwood wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a plausible argument that Apple needed to give a little in order to avoid the creation of laws against any encryption. And/Or also avoid laws that required a backdoor to everything. I know I'm going to be called a fanboy or too generous to Apple, but given that the government has used every opportunity to call out Apple for not helping (when they have helped where they could) there is a line here that Apple…

What you say makes sense. Still, if that’s the case, then when they decided not to go down the user-is-in-full-and-absolute-control path for encryption of iCloud backups, they should have publicized it loudly and with extreme clarity on what exactly was happening and where the lines were. So that users could make informed choices.

They have never hidden how iCloud backups or anything else related to iOS security works. This support document spells out clearly what data is end-to-end encrypted [1]. No one was actually misled into thinking all iCloud data was E2E. For one, most of Apple's customers don't know or care about the technical architecture of their products and services. The people who do would have known better when you can go to icloud.com and access your photos and files from a web browser.

[1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303

Re: Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained

#407

Post by ken »

natch wrote: post #230
justapassenger wrote: post #191

Wonder if this will help to kill a meme, about how much Apple cares about users and what great values they have, how they're going to stand for the user, fight with governments, etc. While iPhone itself is pretty secure as a device phone (and Apple makes sure to remind you about that in each ad, public speaking, attacks on competitors, etc), as an ecosystem it's not secure. And it's like that on purpose - there's no…

As someone who has bought into that meme I will admit this feels like a pretty huge betrayal by Apple. So, yes, I think if Apple sticks with this, their whole privacy stance is going in the toilet now. And a very dirty toilet it is. Beyond just the facts of not protecting data, there is also the deception. This is some really very, very, nasty stuff for Apple's brand and the reputation of every person who works at Ap…

I don’t see how it’s a betrayal, as iCloud has never had E2EE, and Apple has never made any secret of this omission.

Did we really think that Apple was just so incompetent they could run online file services for 20+ years and have almost a billion users, and not have encryption only because they hadn’t figured it out yet?

Re: Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained

#408

Post by cheeze »

minton wrote: post #262
tomaskafka wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two things: 1) There is no way Apple would be allowed to sell iPhones in China, without China government having access to anything. So, I assume that Apple users in China have e2e encrypted exactly nothing. 2) I have a strong suspicion that those 'enter your Apple ID password because your account needs it' message really means 'a government has requested your data and even though it's encrypted, we will nag you about…

> 2) I have a strong suspicion that those 'enter your Apple ID password because your account needs it' message really means 'a government has requested your data and even though it's encrypted, we will nag you about entering a password, and if you give it, you're a free game'. Haha I hadn’t thought of that. If true, I must have every government requesting my data frequently as I constantly get bombarded to enter my i…

Seriously. It drives me nuts just how much my iPad asks me for my password. I'm not all in on Apple's ecosystem so maybe that is why? IDK.

Re: Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained

#409

Post by welder »

MereInterest wrote: post #79
judge2020 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's generally what "on the server" means, it's only encrypted so their storage provider (shown to be GCP https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/26/17053496/apple-google-clo... ) can't see their user data.

Maybe this is me being out of touch with modern deployment, but that is absolutely not what my impression of "on the server" means. My mental model is that of a client, whatever software is under my control, and a server, which is whatever my client connects to. "Encrypted on the server" then means that at no point is the plaintext data visible to any part of the server. If Apple splits up the server into a web serve…

There's a difference in encrypted data at rest vs. end-to-end client side encryption. Encrypted data at rest protects against stolen physical storage devices. Without access to decryption key stored on a separate machine, you're unable to read data on the storage device.

Encryption at rest doesn't protect users from the company, since the company has the decryption key. It protects your data if the company misplaces the storage drive.

It's common in corporate environments to check compliance boxes, which is why AWS offers encryption at rest:

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-amazon-s3-server-side-e...

Re: Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained

#410

Post by bergie »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #225
_bxg1 wrote: post #206

> aboyt how much Apple cares about users No company cares about anything. A company is not a person. Apple, because of its privacy-marketing, is incentivized to be the privacy player in the market. But only so far as consumers keep them honest about it. They got away with this loophole because it stayed under the radar; if it gets enough attention and enough customers show that it matters to them, it could change. On…

> On the other hand, it's possible that because we have a smartphones duopoly, Apple only needs to maintain a position where people will say "well at least it's not as bad as Google". I'm upset about this personally, but I'm not ditching my iPhone. Of course, this does cement my decision to never pay for iCloud, for what that's worth (much less, but not nothing). Agreed, and I am likely going away from Android and in…

> A Surface Phone would be kind of cool.

They've announced that they'll release a Surface phone this year. But it'll run Android.

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