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Apple says it'll remove iMessage and FaceTime in UK rather than break encryption

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Re: Apple says it'll remove iMessage and FaceTime in UK rather than break encryption

#561

Post by cmiles74 »

mihaaly wrote: post #123

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…

Because it is very easy for them to break down the door, or smash a nearby window, or simply wait for someone to go in or out and demand entry.

Re: Apple says it'll remove iMessage and FaceTime in UK rather than break encryption

#562

Post by osigurdson »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #320
mihaaly wrote: post #123

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…

I'll play Devil's Advocate (because I enjoy throwing myself into the fray — especially when arguing against a point I actually agree with). 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 n…

I suspect, as always, the bad guys would find ways around any such measures. Leaving, normal, law abiding, tax paying citizens with diminished rights and freedoms.

Re: Apple says it'll remove iMessage and FaceTime in UK rather than break encryption

#563

Post by slowmovintarget »

jboydyhacker wrote: post #514

Why not a similarly brave stance in China? In China Apple claims it "obeys all local laws" except in the UK it wants to be courageous? I guess it's a brave state unless the $$$ are good.

Perhaps the UK government is tractable and may adjust itself to the will of the people, unlike, say, the PRC.

Re: Apple says it'll remove iMessage and FaceTime in UK rather than break encryption

#564

Post by JohnFen »

vbo wrote: post #419

I feel we've been collectively losing the battle to keep our conversations private. The anti-encryption laws are likely vocally opposed only by a minority, while the majority believes they had no privacy to begin with and governments can read your messages at a whim. And perhaps that's true to some extent. But since most people believe the battle is lost, moreso that this has always been the status quo, then any batt…

> [...] any battle on the subject is lost before it has a chance to begin

"The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any." -- Alice Walker

Re: Apple says it'll remove iMessage and FaceTime in UK rather than break encryption

#565

Post by chfalck »

piva00 wrote: post #520
hellojesus wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that why we pay gov agents to hang out in the seedy parts of the web? If CP consumers are able to find each other with relative ease, I'm sure agents impersonating them can find them too. Then it's up to them to locate them, likely by exploiting an opsec failure along the way. I see no reason the give the gov eyes on everything when they have a perfectly valid route to investigations.

I'll also play Devil's advocate even though I'm a very vocal advocate for data privacy in real life. These government agents are people as well, and as people they'll suffer to wade through the dark corners of the web to locate a minuscule part of all the CP data available worldwide. These people will inevitably require mental care to deal with the trauma of looking at GiBs and GiBs of small kids being raped, that's…

I know LLMs aren’t a magic bullet for everything, but this seems like exactly the kind of problem they could solve well as they become more cost effective. Dramatically shrink the pool of real people required to keep an eye on this, and sub in virtual agents adept at detecting CP patterns.

Security back doors also carry the risk of having the opposite effect. We’ve seen many examples of powerful, nation state developed tools being leaked online.

There may be a rise in scenarios where people (including children) have their personal devices breached and are extorted for the exact thing the security backdoors were created to prevent.

Re: Apple says it'll remove iMessage and FaceTime in UK rather than break encryption

#566

Post by anigbrowl »

hellojesus wrote: post #547
anigbrowl wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and I specifically said I don't support the UK legislation so I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.

My point was that minimizing the csam issue isn't that relevant to the terribleness of a proposed law. Csam will likely always exist, unfortunately. It's too hard to prevent; the punishments seem to be nondeterrents. We already have mountains of awful laws that are passed via appeal to csam emotion. I see no reason to pass another one under the appeal of csam reduction when we all know how it will really be used.

Again, I'm not arguing in favor of this law, quite the opposite. I don't require you to persuade me of an opinion I already hold.

Re: Apple says it'll remove iMessage and FaceTime in UK rather than break encryption

#567

Post by eddieroger »

osigurdson wrote: post #562
JKCalhoun wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll play Devil's Advocate (because I enjoy throwing myself into the fray — especially when arguing against a point I actually agree with). 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 n…

I suspect, as always, the bad guys would find ways around any such measures. Leaving, normal, law abiding, tax paying citizens with diminished rights and freedoms.

When privacy is outlawed, only outlaws have privacy.

Re: Apple says it'll remove iMessage and FaceTime in UK rather than break encryption

#568

Post by cmiles74 »

supernova87a wrote: post #560

How is it supposed to work, if the UK laws were implemented? Only phones activated in the UK or with UK set as the activating country have to follow the rule? Only if there's a SIM card? What about iPods or MacBooks? What if you bring a US phone to the UK, does it have to magically detect and suddenly allow backdoors? If you leave the UK with your UK phone, is it allowed to be encrypted then, or the UK wants the abil…

My understanding is that there will be a new authority, Ofcom, that will regulate the community of messaging application vendors. One of there powers will be to enforce the scanning of messages for CSAM or terrorism related content and Ofcom can force them to use an "accredited" service to scan for the illegal content.

I suspect the scanning of this content will be handled solely by accredited services, these likely will have close communication with one or more government entities who supply information on what content is or is not illegal. At this point there isn't really end-to-end encryption anymore: every message will be submitted to one (or more) accredited services. Even if it's encrypted, each message now has the government's blessed service as a recipient.

It's important to remember that we're talking about text messages as well as images, a system that compares only hashes will not be sufficient. The bit about terrorism related information is also worrisome as we know the list of what is and isn't terrorism related is a very political debate.

https://techcrunch.com/2022/07/06/uk-osb-csam-scanning/

Re: Apple says it'll remove iMessage and FaceTime in UK rather than break encryption

#569

Post by obituary_latte »

sneak wrote: post #446
obituary_latte wrote: post #2

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).

Headline: Exclusive: Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained - sources https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud-exclusiv... Even with the new iCloud e2ee, which is not on by default, if you enable it, Apple and FBI/DHS/et al can still read all your messages (unless each and everyone you iMessage with also enables it), because iCloud still escrows iMessage sync keys in non-e2ee iCloud…

Thanks for the reply. So am I misunderstanding their data security overview page?[0]

>For additional privacy and security, 14 data categories — including Health and passwords in iCloud Keychain — are end-to-end encrypted. Apple doesn't have the encryption keys for these categories, and we can't help you recover this data if you lose access to your account. The table below includes a list of data categories that are always protected by end-to-end encryption.

The table includes Messages in iCloud with the caveat that the key is stored in iCloud backups if enabled, but the e2e key is still private, no?

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

Re: Apple says it'll remove iMessage and FaceTime in UK rather than break encryption

#570

Post by throwaway914 »

sbarre wrote: post #482
lynx23 wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, there is one big argument for privacy: You never know what your govewrnment will change into in the next few years. This basic argument for encryption is often raised in combination with countries which we already consider non-free. But, frankly, I have finally learned the true meaning of this message during COVID times. I would never have expected society deteriorating into this fear/hate driven, media induce…

Yes, this is something a lot of people don't think about: What is acceptable (even legal) today may not be tomorrow, or in X years (10, 15, or more).. If we allow all our private conversations and messages to be permanently archived (and you know they will be, disk space is effectively infinite), who is to say that wouldn't be used against us in the future when laws, or even social standards, have drastically changed…

You can demonstrate this to folks with a very recent change in government: Abortion and LGBT rights.

How much do you want to bet states like Texas or Florida will use government surveillance to prosecute folks seeking medical care?

I give it a month before we hear about someone being charged with some form of conspiracy to leave the state before their poor kids are taken. "Exhibit A will show the defendants intent to move their children across state lines..."

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