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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

#201

Post by tolien »

aunty_helen wrote: post #197
tolien wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[citation needed], your Economist article [0] quotes 30 a day (which would be > Under these laws, British police arrest more than 30 people a day for online posts, double the rate in 2017. Some are serious offenders, such as stalkers. How many of those 30 were for "online posts" (and of which nature - Lucy Connolly is a favourite example cited by the likes of Vance, but she was arrested for trying to stir up racial t…

Ridiculous thing to say when any number north of 0 is too many. But go ahead, muddy an otherwise extraordinarily simple argument.

Muddying the "simple argument" would be lumping stalkers in with people inciting violence against foreigners and posting nasty comments about the Prime Minister, to make some kind of point about the police. That would be ridiculous.

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

#202

Post by xorcist »

jrockway wrote: post #58
reactordev wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I don't think anyone's surprised by that. Our emails have literally been used to target ads at us since like 2006. Cell phone carriers are happy to mine voicemail, call logs, SMS, etc. in the hopes of finding a revenue stream that doesn't involve them having to do irritating work like running fiber to cell phone towers. This leaves contact mining as the odd one out, but given how many apps want to see your contacts,…

That's not a revenue stream at any cell phone carrier I've seen. They do what they are legally obliged to do, and while they do get paid for it, it's a fraction of the actual cost of providing the data. The state tends to drive the hell of a bargain. The service providers, such as Facebook, Google and Apple though, that's entirely different.

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

#203

Post by alexey-salmin »

tolien wrote: post #192
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…

[citation needed], your Economist article [0] quotes 30 a day (which would be > Under these laws, British police arrest more than 30 people a day for online posts, double the rate in 2017. Some are serious offenders, such as stalkers. How many of those 30 were for "online posts" (and of which nature - Lucy Connolly is a favourite example cited by the likes of Vance, but she was arrested for trying to stir up racial t…

> How many of those 30 were for "online posts" (and of which nature - Lucy Connolly is a favourite example cited by the likes of Vance, but she was arrested for trying to stir up racial tension when there were already race riots going on)? Who can tell, because the article didn't seem to bother asking.

I googled Lucy Connolly out of curiosity. It indeed appears that she got 31 month of jail for a single tweet? You don't think this counts as "arrested for online posts"?

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

#204

Post by ImJamal »

tacker2000 wrote: post #35
esafak wrote: post #3

tl,dr: "Vance argued that free speech and democracy were threatened by European elites." edit: Don't shoot the messenger.

To be clear in this case, this is not Europe or the EU, its solely the UK government wanting a backdoor for themselves.

Last I checked the UK was in Europe and what you are replying to only mentions Europe, not the EU.

Regardless, the EU is also pushing for the same stuff.

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

#205

Post by GeekyBear »

xorcist wrote: post #200
GeekyBear wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

To clarify: When you get an NSL, not only is it impossible to refuse and stay in business, it is also impossible to talk about it. That's the scary bit.

Certainly. At least with a normal warrant you can publicly speak out and notify the user(s) involved.

I would also point out that it was Senator Wyden who initially informed the public of how much the government was already spying on their unencrypted communications.

His record on civil liberties is excellent.

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

#206

Post by xorcist »

yalok wrote: post #180
bigyabai wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Those apps generally distribute keys, and E2E is if no help unless you validate those keys out of band. Do you, really?

Then there are all the ways, both white and varying shades of gray, of installing software in the end devices. That's your primary threat right there.

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

#207

Post by aunty_helen »

tolien wrote: post #201
aunty_helen wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ridiculous thing to say when any number north of 0 is too many. But go ahead, muddy an otherwise extraordinarily simple argument.

Muddying the "simple argument" would be lumping stalkers in with people inciting violence against foreigners and posting nasty comments about the Prime Minister, to make some kind of point about the police. That would be ridiculous.

Stalking: Already a Crime

Inciting Violence: Already a Crime

Posting nasty comments: Not a crime.

Glad I could clear things up for you.

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

#208

Post by Silhouette »

bigyabai wrote: post #196
yalok wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In the case of iMessage/iCloud, it seems like that already happens: https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21114562/jan-2021-fbi...

That document appears to be over 4 years old, predating the availability of Apple's Advanced Data Protection system that claims to provide proper E2EE on most iCloud back-ups. The latter was controversially the subject of a specific legal attack by the British government using the Investigatory Powers Act resulting in Apple withdrawing the feature entirely from the UK market rather than compromise the security of their system - according to public reports anyway. Before ADP much of the data stored in iCloud backups was not fully end-to-end encrypted and Apple itself did not claim otherwise.

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

#209

Post by basisword »

alexey-salmin wrote: post #203
tolien wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[citation needed], your Economist article [0] quotes 30 a day (which would be > Under these laws, British police arrest more than 30 people a day for online posts, double the rate in 2017. Some are serious offenders, such as stalkers. How many of those 30 were for "online posts" (and of which nature - Lucy Connolly is a favourite example cited by the likes of Vance, but she was arrested for trying to stir up racial t…

> How many of those 30 were for "online posts" (and of which nature - Lucy Connolly is a favourite example cited by the likes of Vance, but she was arrested for trying to stir up racial tension when there were already race riots going on)? Who can tell, because the article didn't seem to bother asking. I googled Lucy Connolly out of curiosity. It indeed appears that she got 31 month of jail for a single tweet? You do…

The fact it was a "single tweet" is completely irrelevant. It's the content of the tweet which is relevant.

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

#210

Post by tolien »

alexey-salmin wrote: post #203
tolien wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[citation needed], your Economist article [0] quotes 30 a day (which would be > Under these laws, British police arrest more than 30 people a day for online posts, double the rate in 2017. Some are serious offenders, such as stalkers. How many of those 30 were for "online posts" (and of which nature - Lucy Connolly is a favourite example cited by the likes of Vance, but she was arrested for trying to stir up racial t…

> How many of those 30 were for "online posts" (and of which nature - Lucy Connolly is a favourite example cited by the likes of Vance, but she was arrested for trying to stir up racial tension when there were already race riots going on)? Who can tell, because the article didn't seem to bother asking. I googled Lucy Connolly out of curiosity. It indeed appears that she got 31 month of jail for a single tweet? You do…

> You don't think this counts as "arrested for online posts"?

You've definitely missed some context. For example, and fairly significantly:

> Connolly previously admitted intending to stir up racial hatred.

If you plead guilty to a charge, there's not much defense left.

The offence she admitted to doesn't even take account of whether it's committed online - it's law that was passed in 1986. An aggravating factor that led to the sentence she got was that she had in fact posted multiple times in the same sort of way.

Details of her appealing the sentence as excessive, rejected by the appeals court https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Lucy-Con...

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