171–180 of 694 posts
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That only strengthens the parent point. Switch to an OS where this requirement doesn't come into play if you're worried about any governments having a backdoor into your own machine.
If you sync your Linux machines key in the cloud, police could subpoena it too. The solution is not to switch to Linux, but to stop storing it in plain text in the cloud.
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The "reasonable default" is to force the user to actually make the choice, probably after forcing the user to prove they understand the implications.
I don't think there's a good answer here. Users absolutely 100% will lose their password and recovery key and not understand that even if the bytes are on a desk physically next to you, they are gone. Gone baby gone. In university, I helped a friend set up encryption on a drive w/ his work after a pen drive with work on it was stolen. He insisted he would not lose the password. We went through the discussion of "this…
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If they say they don't, and they do, then that's fraud, and they could be held liable for any damages that result. And, if word got out that they were defrauding customers, that would result in serious reputational damage to Apple (who uses their security practices as an industry differentiator) and possibly a significant customer shift away from them. They don't want that.
The government would never prosecute a company for fraud where that fraud consists of cooperating with the government after promising to a suspected criminal that they wouldn't.
Besides, Apple's lawyers aren't stupid enough to forget to carve out a law-enforcement demand exception.
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Warrants are a mechanism by which speech is legally compelled. The 5th Amendment gives you the right to refuse speech that might implicate you in a crime. It doesn’t protect Microsoft from being compelled to provide information that may implicate one of its customers in a crime.
Indeed. Third Party Doctrine has undermined 4th/5th Amendment protections due to the hair brained power grab that was "if you share info with a third party as art of the only way of doing business, you waive 4th Amendment protections. I ironically, Boomers basically knee-capped Constitutional protections for the very data most critically in need of protection in a network state. Only fix is apparently waiting until e…
One of the reasons giving for (usually) now requiring a warrant to open your phone they grab from you is because of the amount of third-party data you can access through it, although IIRC they framed is a regular 4th Amend issue by saying if you had a security camera inside your house the police would be bypassing the warrant requirement by seeing directly into your abode.
It's interesting how many comments these days are like, "well of course". Back in the day hackernews had some fire and resistance. Too many tech workers decided to rollover for the government and that's why we are in this mess now. This isn't an argument about law, it's about designing secure systems. And lazy engineers build lazy key escrow the government can exploit.
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't forcing you to divulge your encryption password compelled speech? So the police can crack my phone but they can't force me to tell them my PIN.
They can't force you to tell them your PIN in some countries, but they can try all PINs, and they can search your desk drawer to find the post-it where you wrote your PIN.
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I can't believe it took this long. We have mandatory identification for all kinds of things that are illegal to purchase or engage in under a certain age. Nobody wants to prosecute 12 year old kids for lying when the clicked the "I am at least 13 years old" checkbox when registering an account. The only alternative is to do what we do with R-rated movies, alcohol, tobacco, firearms, risky physical activities (i.e. bu…
When I go buy a beer at the gas station, all I do is show my ID to the cashier. They look at it to verify DOB and then that's it. No information is stored permanently in some database that's going to get hacked and leaked.
We can't trust every private company that now has to verify age to not store that information with whatever questionable security.
If we aren't going to do a national registry that services can query to get back only a "yes or no" on whether a user is of age or not, then we need regulation to prevent the storage of ID information.
We should still be able to verify age while remaining psuedo-anonymous.
Based on the comments in the thread, I sense I will be in the minority, but for most consumers this is a reasonable default. Broadly speaking, the threat model most users are concerned with doesn't account for their government. The previous default is no encryption at rest, which doesn't protect from the most common threats, like theft or tampering. With BitLocker on, a new risk for users is created: loss of access t…
Will this make people care? Probably not, but you never know.
FYI BitLocker is on by default in Windows 11. The defaults will also upload the BitLocker key to a Microsoft Account if available. This is why the FBI can compel Microsoft to provide the keys. It's possible, perhaps even likely, that the suspect didn't even know they had an encrypted laptop. Journalists love the "Microsoft gave " framing because it makes Microsoft sound like they're handing these out because they lik…
> you have no choice but to give it to them Will they shoot me in head? What if I truly forgot the password to my encrypted drive? Will they also shoot me in the head?
What about your wife's head? Your kids' heads?
FYI BitLocker is on by default in Windows 11. The defaults will also upload the BitLocker key to a Microsoft Account if available. This is why the FBI can compel Microsoft to provide the keys. It's possible, perhaps even likely, that the suspect didn't even know they had an encrypted laptop. Journalists love the "Microsoft gave " framing because it makes Microsoft sound like they're handing these out because they lik…
Power users should stop bothering with Windows nonsense and install Linux instead so that they can actually have control over their system. It's 2026. The abuses of corporations are well documented. Anyone who still chooses Windows of their own volition is quite literally asking for it and they deserve everything that happens to them.
I'd already long since migrated away from Windows but if I'd been harbouring any lingering doubts, that was enough to remove them.