Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

9to5mac.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

691–700 of 785 posts

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

#691

Post by viraptor »

lostlogin wrote: post #283
Larrikin wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Signing into your personal accounts on a work machine is a terrible idea, as it opens up your personal accounts to search if there is a lawsuit (against you or against the company). That's assuming it's not already strictly forbidden by the company rules to prevent you from sending yourself confidential data. Also outside of programmers, IT, and designers, you rarely get a choice in the company issued laptop. It neve…

> Signing into your personal accounts on a work machine is a terrible idea, as it opens up your personal accounts to search if there is a lawsuit The machine is mine and I do work on it. Thanks for the concern but I’m not worried about getting sued. I’m sure it’s happened here previously, but it’s not like the US. > Also outside of programmers, IT, and designers, you rarely get a choice in the company issued laptop.…

> The machine is mine and I do work on it.

> My employer doesn’t dictate how I get things done and paid for the machine I want.

That is very much not your machine. If your employer ever gets sued, or runs into some investigation, or some internal dispute escalates enough, all the data on it is now likely available for them for review.

Given large enough company and enough people, you'll get that "preserve documents for discovery" email one day. It happens outside of the US too.

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

#692

Post by Gigachad »

urbandw311er wrote: post #672

Potentially going against the grain of HN opinion: It strikes me as odd that people are now suddenly condemning the UK gov for trying to maintain its ability to keep its people safe, particularly when spying is not an unusual or a new power per se. The UK government has had the means and the right to spy on its citizens for hundreds of years, via phone taps, espionage, bugs, steaming open letters and all sorts. It’s…

The problem is that for hundreds of years, the vast majority of your communication was in person, or it was not recorded. Now almost every thought you have is permanently recorded. I have no problem with actively suspected criminals having their current communications intercepted. What I have an issue with is having everyone's historical communications stored and open for taking

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

#693

Post by Gigachad »

hot_gril wrote: post #611
jdiez17 wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

E2EE iCloud backup is generally available since January this year. I have been using it since then with 0 issues. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303

Yeah but I'm not sure if that's going to be available in China.

Should they withhold the feature entirely because they can't deliver it to China?

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

#694

Post by xp84 »

jjav wrote: post #627
datalus wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah... the crux is should electronic conversations be afforded the same rights, and by extension are they assumed rights for all communication? Where to draw the line? It's definitely murky.

> Where to draw the line? It's definitely murky. It shouldn't be murky at all. For all of the history of humanity, privacy has been the default state. I could talk to people face to face (what used to be the only way) and it was by default private. I could keep written notes and records and they were by default private. There were special-case mechanisms to violate that privacy (e.g. search warrants, targeted spying)…

> special-case mechanisms to violate that privacy (e.g. search warrants, targeted spying)… go through a process with some checks and balances. I don't have any objection to this type of spying

I think this is why it’s such a hot issue though. E2E Encryption is a “get out of all surveillance free card.” Even a mildly trained criminal or terrorist can easily guarantee that his communications will never be intercepted. This has never existed before.

I share with people in the pro-Encryption camp the acknowledgments that you can’t un-invent encryption, so you’ll only be catching the most dim-witted criminals by nerfing the mainstream messengers. Anybody can use the ‘OpenSSL” cli to make unbreakable encryption no matter what laws say.

But I also acknowledge how frustrating it is that a truly bad person can simply bypass all the “just” exceptions to privacy, like a search warrant, if they’re even a little savvy.

TL;DR nerfing iMessage (etc) ain’t it, but I can see how non-evil people in law enforcement wish something could be done about the root problem, which is somewhat new.

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

#695

Post by netheril96 »

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…

They don't mandate every keys to every door because they CAN break almost every door with force. The police can do it with a warrant and some "special forces" can do it clandestinely.

They can't break most encryption with force.

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

#697

Post by nonethewiser »

hot_gril wrote: post #612
nonethewiser wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the CCP is just content to leave this encrypted form of communication controlled by an American company while simultaneously locking down every other avenue of electronic communication? Because “no one uses it?” If no one uses it why not block it then? I mean, I hope so. Im not convinced though.

People do use it, just not Chinese nationals, so blocking it would only inconvenience visitors. Or because Apple has some special kind of leverage. Can only speculate.

But they can. Easily. And many people have iphones. Just doesn't seem likely that the CCP would be fine with it.

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

#698

Post by cvwright »

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…

The most amazing psy op I’ve ever seen is this convincing the public that it’s people who use encryption who are the perverts, and not the people who literally want to creep on other people’s private photos of their kids / spouses / romantic partners.

This is exactly the opposite of how it works in the real world.

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

#699

Post by zarzavat »

abigail95 wrote: post #631
zarzavat wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK and China are not comparable. China is the worlds most populous country (for now). The UK has a population of under 70m. China is a totalitarian regime where even an imperfect freedom is preferable to no freedom at all. The UK is a democratic country which should be upholding the right to privacy. If Apple weakens crypto for the UK, it affects people in other countries as well. iMessage is not exactly popular…

No, the UK is a democratic country that is voting to reduce privacy. A massive company in a foreign country affecting the laws of your own is anti-democratic. Democracy doesn't mean privacy.

Apple is clearly entitled to not provide iMessage in the UK if they feel that the extraterritoriality of a UK law will hurt their interests in other jurisdictions. That’s not anti-democratic, unless you think the UK rules the world.

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

#700

Post by defrost »

smolder wrote: post #343
defrost wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest that sounds like both an idealised slogan and a sophism empty of logic. Can you expand upon how the advancements in western society since (say) WWII have been neccesarily dependant upon privacy?

I think, in theory, a society with much less privacy could work, as long as there is information symmetry, not a panopticon controlled by a few. We're not building an open society, though. The asymmetry is the point. If we ignore the open society angle and assume surveillance would be one sided: Competition is needed for healthy capitalist economies. Competition doesn't work well with great power imbalances. To the e…

> I think, in theory, a society with much less privacy could work...

I suspect what many forget or were perhaps unaware of is the in practice society with near zero privacy existed for the vast bulk of actual human history.

Before the car and the radical change in individual human movement that came about for those parts of the world privileged enough to have a car for every family the majority of people lived within a small radius surrounded by people who effectivel knew every detail of each others lives .. if not as it happened then almost certainly by the next quarter as word spread.

Again, as I mentioned above, I like privacy .. but it remains true that the greatest expansions of modern western economies; mass production, feeding quantitively more with less land and labour, etc .. all happened without any essential dependance upon privacy to bring these changes about.

It is the upstream grandparent claim that privacy is fundemental and essential for any advancement in a society that doesn't pass the smell test and certainly hasn't yet been well argued for.

I absolutely do agree that it is desirable .. but essential (in a strict sense) for the continuation of human society .. that needs better argument to pass muster.

Post reply on HN