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U.K. demand for a back door to Apple data threatens Americans, lawmakers say

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Re: U.K. demand for a back door to Apple data threatens Americans, lawmakers say

#241

Post by grvbck »

Nifty3929 wrote: post #128

I keep saying this, and nobody believes me, but I'm just going to keep trying: These things happen because so often we focus the privacy conversation on corporations, which is exactly where the governments want it to be. My controversial but strong opinion is that privacy from corporations matters very little, but privacy from governments matters very much. We need to stop allowing the conversation to get distracted…

> The worst thing a corporation is likely to do (other than giving your data to governments) is to sell you something. That's all they want.

That's not all they want.

Just look at some recent scandals, like Cambridge Analytica. Harvesting and analyzing the right data makes it possible to influence democratic elections and referendums.

Selling you stuff is great, but tricking you to vote for lower taxes for their trillion-dollar corporations or tariffs/other negative effects for their competitors is better.

Re: U.K. demand for a back door to Apple data threatens Americans, lawmakers say

#242

Post by HelloImSteven »

05 wrote: post #227
Angostura wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, Apple seem to try really quite hard to keep users data out of its hands

Non E2E encrypted on by default iCloud backups say otherwise.. And remember that enabling advanced data protection just means they'll get your conversations from the other partys' iCloud backups.

On one hand, I get the business reasons for not using E2E by default (it’d make data recovery more difficult for probably the vast majority of their users, which would be a customer service headache). Hell, even some experienced users would be more inconvenienced when something goes wrong. But if they won’t enable it by default, the option to enable it needs to be MUCH more clearly presented to users. The current implementation leads users to believe their data is more private than it is, which imo is just asking for trouble down the line.

Re: U.K. demand for a back door to Apple data threatens Americans, lawmakers say

#243

Post by jltsiren »

Nifty3929 wrote: post #128

I keep saying this, and nobody believes me, but I'm just going to keep trying: These things happen because so often we focus the privacy conversation on corporations, which is exactly where the governments want it to be. My controversial but strong opinion is that privacy from corporations matters very little, but privacy from governments matters very much. We need to stop allowing the conversation to get distracted…

Corporations can also kill you, enslave you, steal your property, start wars, and take over your country. Think of something like Pinkerton, United Fruit, Wagner, or the East India Company.

Governments, corporations, and criminal organizations are not disjoint categories. There is a lot of overlap near the boundaries. You should focus more on what the organization is actually doing than on its nominal classification.

Re: U.K. demand for a back door to Apple data threatens Americans, lawmakers say

#244

Post by impossiblefork »

scarface_74 wrote: post #171
impossiblefork wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corporations can steal your work, etc. and thereby cause enormous problems that do not fit governments. For me I think they're a much greater danger than at least my government. My government has no reason to care about what's on my computer. A company however, has an incentive to use every scrap.

Wait until you speak out against your government or try to organize a protest. More realistically, if you are a women trying to get an abortion in Texas and message someone to help you leave the state to get one see how much more you should be worried. https://www.texastribune.org/2024/02/09/texas-abortion-trans... The government has guns and policemen that can take away your freedom, your property without a trial (c…

Yes, but my government wouldn't care if I organized a protest. It's even likely that if I did, the police wouldn't even show up, and in the end, I have democratic control over it.

Meanwhile, I am in literal competition with basically all other people's companies.

Re: U.K. demand for a back door to Apple data threatens Americans, lawmakers say

#245

Post by scarface_74 »

impossiblefork wrote: post #244
scarface_74 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait until you speak out against your government or try to organize a protest. More realistically, if you are a women trying to get an abortion in Texas and message someone to help you leave the state to get one see how much more you should be worried. https://www.texastribune.org/2024/02/09/texas-abortion-trans... The government has guns and policemen that can take away your freedom, your property without a trial (c…

Yes, but my government wouldn't care if I organized a protest. It's even likely that if I did, the police wouldn't even show up, and in the end, I have democratic control over it. Meanwhile, I am in literal competition with basically all other people's companies.

You think you have control over what police do? In major cities not even the civilian government would dare piss off the police.

Besides, the police have qualified immunity according to the Supreme Court to do all sorts of nastiness.

Re: U.K. demand for a back door to Apple data threatens Americans, lawmakers say

#246

Post by gruez »

hnlmorg wrote: post #162
gruez wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>However this “thought police” and “arrested for posting memes” comment that often gets pointed on here is itself a nonsense meme. >What actually happened was people were arrested for instigating riots. This is no different to what happened in the US regarding the Capital Hill riots — people who helped organise it online were arrested too. According to: https://news.sky.com/story/jordan-parlour-facebook-user-jail...…

Did you actually read that article. In there it even stated there was a pattern of behaviour and that his comments on Facebook had been shared with thousands and directly resulted criminal damage. Not only that, that his comments were intended to cause criminal damage and result in physical attacks against immigrants. What you’ve done is selectively quoted a small subset of portions from that article to misrepresent…

>Did you actually read that article. In there it even stated there was a pattern of behaviour and that his comments on Facebook had been shared with thousands

Are you talking about this?

"The initial post received six likes. However, it was sent to your 1,500 Facebook friends and, because of your lack of privacy settings, will have been forwarded to friends of your friends."

"shared" is doing a lot of the heavy lifting here, and likely used in a misleading way. Given how facebook uses algorithmic timelines, and the wording (the judge was seemingly unwilling to use a stronger word like "seen" or "read"), my guess is that was the upper bound of people who could have seen his post, not how many people actually seen it. It certainly doesn't mean 1,500 people actually clicked the shared button next to his post (or otherwise make a conscious effort to disseminate the post), as "his comments on Facebook had been shared with thousands" implies.

> and directly resulted criminal damage.

Is there any evidence that people who has committed crimes even seen his post? Or are you simply claiming that because he made such tweets, such tweets called for riots, and riots happened, that those tweets "directly resulted criminal damage"?

>Not only that, that his comments were intended to cause criminal damage and result in physical attacks against immigrants.

This doesn't contradict my prior comment, which specifically admits his behavior is illegal under even US law. My complaint was with the characterization that his tweets counts as "organising".

Re: U.K. demand for a back door to Apple data threatens Americans, lawmakers say

#247

Post by sunshinerag »

Shank wrote: post #5

I think this is an unquestionable overreach on the UK's part. If you live in any country that isn't the UK, you should feel the threat from this: the UK government believes that it is entitled to a backdoor on your hardware, even if you've never stepped a foot on UK soil or intend to. Mass surveillance is a threat to everyone, but this is not an instance of that, which has guards against it, like encryption. This is…

Its for your safety and security /s

Re: U.K. demand for a back door to Apple data threatens Americans, lawmakers say

#248

Post by matt-p »

quesera wrote: post #237
matt-p wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Maybe it was their idea, maybe it was the US's. One thing's for sure though we wouldn't be pushing ahead with this without the tacit support of the US, particularly in the current environment.

Tenuous. The UK did not need US approval to make all of its existing privacy-violating laws. Nor did Australia, or parts of the EU. Don't get me wrong. The only thing holding the US government back from growing all the more monstrous is a patchwork of sketchy laws that might have teeth. But I don't see any reason to assume that the stupidity of Brits is the fault of Americans. This time.

So they have us intercept internet traffic and pass it on to them, but they wouldn't want access to data in iCloud? Right, ok sure.

I don't know, or care, if we initiated it or the US - but I find folks from the US acting like it's some shocking thing is quite galling.

Re: U.K. demand for a back door to Apple data threatens Americans, lawmakers say

#249

Post by quesera »

matt-p wrote: post #248
quesera wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tenuous. The UK did not need US approval to make all of its existing privacy-violating laws. Nor did Australia, or parts of the EU. Don't get me wrong. The only thing holding the US government back from growing all the more monstrous is a patchwork of sketchy laws that might have teeth. But I don't see any reason to assume that the stupidity of Brits is the fault of Americans. This time.

So they have us intercept internet traffic and pass it on to them, but they wouldn't want access to data in iCloud? Right, ok sure. I don't know, or care, if we initiated it or the US - but I find folks from the US acting like it's some shocking thing is quite galling.

FWIW, the US govt does not have a back door into the encrypted data held by US companies. A US company is not obligated to create a way to decrypt customer data to respond to a court order.

So this is different, and worse. Not everything stupid in the world can be blamed on the US, as it seems you're trying to do. Plenty can! But not everything. Some stupid is home grown. See also: Brexit.

Re: U.K. demand for a back door to Apple data threatens Americans, lawmakers say

#250

Post by lern_too_spel »

quesera wrote: post #123
giobox wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a gross simplification of the many factors that lead to the FBI dropping the demand against Apple, in my opinion.

But it is everything we know. The expectation was that FBI would lose in court. But that was not guaranteed, certainly. FBI had multiple reasons to abandon the effort, but one was that if legal precedent was established at that time, for that case, it would be harder to bypass in future cases.

I expected the FBI to win in court because the FBI had precedent on its side. The judge had asked Apple to provide reasonable technical assistance to access data on the phone, and modifying one line of code fits well within the judge's request.
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