311–320 of 785 posts
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Both are very popular in the UK.
WhatsApp is used by 78% of the users in the UK, and iMessage is used by 25%. https://www.statista.com/forecasts/997945/most-used-messenge... (non-free link)
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As far as "We have never heard of PRISM", that could be true. When you receive a national security letter it isn't like they give you detailed info about the specific operation and why you are receiving it. It's more along the lines of "you're going to do this pursuant to US code section..."
What's more, a National Security Letter is not necessarily addressed to the company's executives and lawyers. A National Security Letter could be send to somebody lower in the organization, closer to the targeted data (for instance a sysadmin) with a clause threatening them with prison time if they tell anybody, even their boss or company lawyers about it. They can essentially conscript anybody in the company to work…
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>attacks upon his honour and reputation Yikes, seems like this is built to keep people from saying things about powerful people that they don't like.
It’s just that there was a time in Europe (about 80 years ago) when among other cruel things, the honor and reputation of a lot of people were actively destroyed for arbitrary reasons.
I wonder why the UK legislators not preparing a new regulation mandating every keys to every door and safe having a bypass mechanism for government officials. Behind every door and every locked place there could be child pornography and illicit materials hidden!! Every house, every hotel safe are suspects! Criminal oversight, criminal oversight! (and if they think their reasoning for backdoors into online chat and co…
Anecdotally, I've heard the argument made that police can knock in doors for raids, and they should have the same power over technology.
I think this is the big change people miss when it comes to police powers in the digital age. There's not been really been a culture shift from the police nor the citizens about police powers, just a increase in quantity of ability that has turned into a difference in quality. For decades agents of the state have had the theoretical ability to surveil people, and the people were generally OK with it because of the assumption that "well they won't bother doing it to a random guy like me", which was true, back when it required actual footwork, and even pulling up someone's file was a physical task
Assuming one does accept targeted surveillance in extreme cases, then I'm not sure how to solve this apart from the frustratingly "stupid" and probably unenforceable solution of requiring the police and intelligence agencies to be stuck on 90s tech. Theoretical legal sanctions against doing this appear to have no teeth, the only way to discourage surveillance abuse is to make each instance have a non-circumventable operational cost
So to use a concrete example: I actually like private CCTV in public spaces. I do feel safer knowing the police can use that footage if I'm a victim of crime. But I only accept it because most systems are just writing to a local device, meaning there's a cost to the police asking for it. Any scheme to automate access to these records over the internet, no matter how well-meaning and theoretically legally restricted they are, would inevitably be used to make those scenes from The Bourne Ultimatum seem quaint
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Anecdotally, I've heard the argument made that police can knock in doors for raids, and they should have the same power over technology.
Dunno how I feel about that metaphor. To me the current situation isn't just saying "police have the power to kick in doors". It's more like "citizens are banned from building houses with doors that make it hard for police to enter".
Stuff like this is why I'm an Apple fanboy. I'm happy to pay a premium and be locked into their walled garden for some things if it means supporting a company that has the power to shift policy in favor of human rights (privacy in this case).
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Yeah, ok, try harder than a Reddit thread where supposedly authoritative commenters can’t even spell encrypt. The idiot pmendes is wrong (if he was correct then no one knowledgeable on the subject would classify that system as E2EE - something more to read about). The encryption keys are not managed in iCloud which you can read yourself: https://support.apple.com/guide/security/how-imessage-sends-... https://www.appl…
> The idiot pmendes is wrong (if he was correct then no one knowledgeable on the subject would classify that system as E2EE What exactly is pmendes wrong about? Are you referring to this comment: > In iMessage the message contents are in fact end to end encripted. Each device encripts the message using the recipient keys and then sends the message. The problem is that iCloud manages the keys by itself so you have no…
If you’re going to classify every critical fact as a “nit” then nothing is ever wrong.
IDS vs iCloud is far more than a nit. They’re completely different services. iCloud is run by a 3rd party in China, this is well publicized, whereas IDS is not. So that’s like not a minor detail.
iMessage does not depend on iCloud. You don't need an iCloud account. These are unrelated.
Contact key verification is a more recent addition, and again not dependent on iCloud.
> How, specifically, does iCloud backup damage the affordance of E2E?
Just saying, you can sync your data to whatever encrypted or unencrypted service you want if you choose to. This may diminish the value to the end user of E2EE but it is unrelated. I'm not the one that brought up iCloud first. Take that up with the original commenter.
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WhatsApp is used by 78% of the users in the UK, and iMessage is used by 25%. https://www.statista.com/forecasts/997945/most-used-messenge... (non-free link)
25% of the entire population is a pretty popular application! Not “hardly anyone”. Also, I’d like to know the volume of messages shared, I have WhatsApp, but wouldn’t miss it it it disappeared. iMessage disappearing would be very inconvenient.
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Labour are even more in favour of this than the tories are. Lib Dems, too. No mainstream party in the UK values your privacy.
I wonder if the UK ever decides to have a written constitution. On one hand they've been doing fine without one for centuries. On the other if this law passes the parliament that's it. There is no "constitutional court" to strike it down. No "president" to "not sign it". Etc.
The UK courts are currently weak because the government threatens their independence. But the same thing is happening in other countries such as Israel, so it’s not something that a written constitution can prevent. Ultimately the only thing that can guarantee judicial independence is for people to believe in it, and for people to take to the streets. Most British people just don’t care, that is the problem.
I wonder why the UK legislators not preparing a new regulation mandating every keys to every door and safe having a bypass mechanism for government officials. Behind every door and every locked place there could be child pornography and illicit materials hidden!! Every house, every hotel safe are suspects! Criminal oversight, criminal oversight! (and if they think their reasoning for backdoors into online chat and co…
No one is mass-sharing their safe of child-porn worldwide with thousands of other child-porn voyeurs.
The internet and its ubiquitous accessibility combined with digital image file formats has changed the landscape for those that would fight these heinous crimes.
It is indeed a new and special case where a locked safe is not.