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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

#181

Post by wkat4242 »

scarface_74 wrote: post #153
wkat4242 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess not no, but we don't need those, really. We definitely don't want carbon copies of those companies because they are causing a lot of what's wrong with this world. What we need is more ethical companies that understand the EU market. No paying with our data, no manipulative algorithms. We've been pushing for that for years but Trump has been the turning point, now people are really on board with the idea that…

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…

> I agree that no one needs Facebook and if it disappeared off of the face of the earth, nothing of value would be lost.

Well yes and no. Facebook, no. The concept of facebook as it was when it was first released was an interesting one to me. Staying in touch with your friends, I've lived in several countries so I have friends all over the world. This is nice. However they perverted it when they dropped the old timeline and moved to the algorithmic feed. It became useless to me then.

I do see a benefit to facebook-like services though, just ethical ones.

But what I do like about facebook, or rather meta now, is the investment they have done in VR. It's still full of data collection I'm sure, but to me VR is a very interesting tech and it really needed that to get off the ground. Right now it's not really moving along because "AI" stole all the hype limelight but it will come again, just like AI has had some false starts itself.

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

#182

Post by AnnikaL »

cryptoegorophy wrote: post #178
HPsquared wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The population of East Germany in 1990 was 16 million, while the population of the UK today is over 4 times larger at 68 million.

(I still don't think the UK should jail people for being hateful online, though.)

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

#183

Post by slater »

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)

> 12k a year?!? That is a staggering number.

(i think OP might be speedrunning a "what opinions, mfer?" goose meme thing. i bet the reason is "for posting right-wing nationalistic garbage likely to incite hatred", or similar)

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

#184

Post by wkat4242 »

ascorbic wrote: post #144
wkat4242 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course because the UK isn't even in the EU anymore. They're no longer any part of EU policy.

Still European though.

Geographically, yes. But they've made it clear they don't want anything to do with us. Also, the 3-year period after brexit with all the whining about their 'deal' (knowing that what they wanted was legally impossible) was so annoying I'm kinda done with them. Too much drama for too long.

So I've stopped buying UK products and services (eg raspberry pi) and don't consider traveling there anymore. Just like I'm doing now with the US although the latter is more difficult to do.

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

#185

Post by mtmail »

rpledge wrote: post #179
HPsquared wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nobody was online. TLD .dd was registered but no domains registered. Two universities had a small intranet.

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

#186

Post by philg_jr »

Silhouette wrote: post #128
reactordev wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To point out that your data isn't safe from law enforcement. Quite the contrary. I think everyone should be aware of the state we are in. And while I can't go into detail about how I know, I want others to be aware that anything on their devices is fair game. Now a day's with or without a warrant. Three letter agencies are operating with impunity. Using this very tech.

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…

I'm going to assume they are referring to any cloud backups of said devices. Since they are stored on servers managed by not you and are unencrypted, able to be accessed for "national security reasons".

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

#188

Post by gtirloni »

jonplackett wrote: post #6

I assumed they’d only have asked for it if they’d already OKed it with the US, and that it was probably part of a plan to give US access too via 5-eyes sharing. Turns out it was not 4D chess after all…

> Turns out it was not 4D chess after all…

It never is. I'm guilty of thinking there's a secret master plan sometimes and there never is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor

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

#189

Post by scarface_74 »

wkat4242 wrote: post #172
dvtkrlbs wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-effectiv…

Netflix as the canonical example would beg to differ as would Apple who hosts plenty of its services between AWS, GCP and I believe Azure. I only know first hand about AWS since Apple talked about it during ReInvent.

There are plenty of large private corporations and governments who host on AWS. Maybe they didn’t do it naively?

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

#190

Post by crmd »

bobthepanda wrote: post #161
crmd wrote: post #160

I’m struggling to square Vance and the administration’s position here with the fact that the US IC uses GCHQ to collect on US persons since they’re not allowed to do so directly. Why wouldn’t they want it to be easier for NSA to spy on Americans?

They probably already have a backdoor, and making one known and easy to access by UK provides an opening for other adversaries to spy on American iPhones.

Thanks, that makes sense.
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