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UK backing down on Apple encryption backdoor after pressure from US

arstechnica.com

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Re: UK backing down on Apple encryption backdoor after pressure from US

#171

Post by wkat4242 »

terminalshort wrote: post #121
wkat4242 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a lot easier now because there's a huge demand all of a sudden for local services. Previously it was hard to compete with the US because the lack of regulation there and investors in the EU having more expectations rather than just throwing money at the wall and hoping it sticks. But with the exploitative business models like Google's consumer tracking and now with Trump and his trade wars the US is no longer vi…

You think that the EU, which is also pushing for a backdoor just like the UK, is somehow actually against tracking and data collection? You gotta pick one or the other.

This is not the same thing. They trust themselves to track and monitor us, but not commercial parties.

I of course trust neither, but I do have to say they are doing good stuff limiting bad actors like Google and Microsoft. I just wish they would do more (e.g. ban third party cookies and tracking outright rather than forcing us to choose every time).

Re: UK backing down on Apple encryption backdoor after pressure from US

#172

Post by wkat4242 »

dvtkrlbs wrote: post #159
scarface_74 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that no one needs Facebook and if it disappeared off of the face of the earth, nothing of value would be lost. And even a simplified version of AWS shouldn’t be impossible to build that’s “good enough” [1] or another search engine that’s good enough (Google) and Google search sucks these days anyway. But Europe is not going to be able to replicate the ecosystem of Android like China did and definitely not App…

What I am wondering is if the complexity of AWS is required for 99 percentile. There are a lot of niche services and duplicated ones on AWS and a targeted replacement for the most popular ones would be enough for most.

You only require AWS if you build something to run on AWS. That's the thing. You can easily run it on something else, just build it for that specifically. Now, AWS-style services have become somewhat of an industry standard (e.g. S3 offered by countless operators). But still, I think offering AWS style services is a weakness because you can never become better than the original.

And cloud is only really cost-effective when it comes to startups that have not much cash flow but expect/hope to explode rapidly by going viral. Cloud gives them that kind of infinite scaling and the ability to pay as they go (the uptick in clients will pay for the increased hosting when they do make it).

In Europe this kind of business model is very rare though. We don't just spin stuff up like a weather balloon and hope it floats.

Re: UK backing down on Apple encryption backdoor after pressure from US

#173

Post by wkat4242 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #163
scarface_74 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that no one needs Facebook and if it disappeared off of the face of the earth, nothing of value would be lost. And even a simplified version of AWS shouldn’t be impossible to build that’s “good enough” [1] or another search engine that’s good enough (Google) and Google search sucks these days anyway. But Europe is not going to be able to replicate the ecosystem of Android like China did and definitely not App…

Meta subsidizes a very large proportion of the world’s communication (in the form of Whatsapp/Instagram/Facebook). Even if 98% of it is unnecessary garbage, the functionality for that last 2% has provided a ton of utility to billions of people.

Except they make money so they don't subsidise it. They get paid for it but through our data. Which is what we don't want here in Europe anyway.

Re: UK backing down on Apple encryption backdoor after pressure from US

#174

Post by wkat4242 »

overstay8930 wrote: post #65
wkat4242 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump will do a lot more harm to US tech companies than Biden. A lot of us here in Europe are moving away from US tech, and as we are building more of our own it's very unlikely we will come back. Right now there aren't too many EU alternatives yet which is why you don't really notice yet. But the damaged trust in the US as a 'partner' will outlive Trump for decades. As they say "trust arrives on foot and leaves on h…

The US was never a trusted partner, Europeans just didn’t have a choice. No one company was able to spend the amount of money required to compete with American technology, so nobody did. Don’t anthropomorphize the lawnmower, the “friendship” is nothing more than economic interdependency. French aircraft carriers are not using Windows because they trust the US government, their diagnostic software just doesn’t work on…

Maybe not fully trusted but they were certainly fairly well aligned to our interests. Until trump obviously.

Re: UK backing down on Apple encryption backdoor after pressure from US

#175

Post by HPsquared »

miohtama wrote: post #164

What could go wrong? The UK is the same country that arrests 12,000 people a year for posting online. > Now every force in the country has a team sifting through people’s posts trying to determine what crosses an undefined threshold. “It is a complete nightmare,” one officer admits Britain’s police are restricting speech in worrying ways https://www.economist.com/britain/2025/05/15/britains-police... From The Economi…

12k a year?!? That is a staggering number. I wonder what the stats were in East Germany (though they may have had harsher punishments.. that can be ratcheted up later though once the system is in place)

Re: UK backing down on Apple encryption backdoor after pressure from US

#176

Post by GeekyBear »

bigyabai wrote: post #152
GeekyBear wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The U.S. also attempted to force Apple to add a back door just a decade ago. > Tim Cook, the C.E.O. of Apple, which has been ordered to help the F.B.I. get into the cell phone of the San Bernardino shooters, wrote in an angry open letter this week that "the U.S. government has asked us for something we simply do not have, and something we consider too dangerous to create." The second part of that formulation has righ…

The US succeeded, according to American lawmakers: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/apple-admits-to-... Apple has since confirmed in a statement provided to Ars that the US federal government "prohibited" the company "from sharing any information," but now that Wyden has outed the feds, Apple has updated its transparency reporting and will "detail these kinds of requests" in a separate section on push noti…

Apple and Google had no choice but to comply with the National Security Letters demanding access to user's push notification data.

They also can't refuse to comply with warrants demanding any such unencrypted data that is stored on their servers.

That's not the same thing as adding a back door to allow access to encrypted user data that is stored on the user's device.

It's also different than storing encrypted user data on your server, when you have purposefully designed a system where you don't have access to the user's encryption key.

Encrypted user data backup is the feature that Apple disabled access to in the UK rather than comply with the order to insert a back door in the OS.

Re: UK backing down on Apple encryption backdoor after pressure from US

#177

Post by elric »

mschuster91 wrote: post #86
inglor_cz wrote: post #63

The EU has similar nefarious plans as well, under the Orwellian name "ProtectEU". https://www.techradar.com/pro/security/the-european-commissi... I wonder how this clash is going to turn up. I would hate this development. This proposal is worthy of the Chinese Communist Party, and I am aghast just how many member states are fine with the concept of a preemptive surveillance state and breaking privacy left and right.…

> Of course, that is what we get for giving Ursula von der Leyen a second term (why??) To answer your question: because the Conservatives just couldn't be arsed to put up an alternative.

Also because the people aren't the ones doing the voting. I doubt most citizens even know who she is.

Re: UK backing down on Apple encryption backdoor after pressure from US

#178

Post by cryptoegorophy »

HPsquared wrote: post #175
miohtama wrote: post #164

What could go wrong? The UK is the same country that arrests 12,000 people a year for posting online. > Now every force in the country has a team sifting through people’s posts trying to determine what crosses an undefined threshold. “It is a complete nightmare,” one officer admits Britain’s police are restricting speech in worrying ways https://www.economist.com/britain/2025/05/15/britains-police... From The Economi…

12k a year?!? That is a staggering number. I wonder what the stats were in East Germany (though they may have had harsher punishments.. that can be ratcheted up later though once the system is in place)

Per gpt: Estimates vary, but roughly 250,000–300,000 people were imprisoned for political reasons over the GDR’s 41-year existence—an average of ~6,000–7,000 annually.

Just wow. I wonder if we will study this in history textbooks about downfall of UK

Re: UK backing down on Apple encryption backdoor after pressure from US

#179

Post by rpledge »

HPsquared wrote: post #175
miohtama wrote: post #164

What could go wrong? The UK is the same country that arrests 12,000 people a year for posting online. > Now every force in the country has a team sifting through people’s posts trying to determine what crosses an undefined threshold. “It is a complete nightmare,” one officer admits Britain’s police are restricting speech in worrying ways https://www.economist.com/britain/2025/05/15/britains-police... From The Economi…

12k a year?!? That is a staggering number. I wonder what the stats were in East Germany (though they may have had harsher punishments.. that can be ratcheted up later though once the system is in place)

East Germany fell in 1990 - I doubt there were even 12,000 people online in East Germany at that point in time.

Re: UK backing down on Apple encryption backdoor after pressure from US

#180

Post by yalok »

bigyabai wrote: post #155
Silhouette wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again - extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. It's no secret that there are groups actively looking for new exploits and that sometimes vulnerabilities are discovered that become zero days. It's a good bet that police and security services take an active interest in those vulnerabilities when they are found. But that's very different to claiming the police can easily unlock any device any time they wan…

It's not extraordinary at all. Ron Wyden, a US Senator subject to special briefings, basically repeated the same thing when asked about federal backdoors: "As with all of the other information these companies store for or about their users, because Apple and Google deliver push notification data, they can be secretly compelled by governments to hand over this information," Wyden wrote. https://arstechnica.com/tech-po…

Push notifications for e2e messaging apps carry e2e encrypted payload, which can’t be decrypted unless Apple reads the private keys from those apps sandboxes…
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