Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

U.K. orders Apple to let it spy on users’ encrypted accounts

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 1001 posts

Re: U.K. orders Apple to let it spy on users’ encrypted accounts

#211

Post by pjmlp »

elashri wrote: post #116
bilekas wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> prevent the UK authorities from interfering with their activities I'm still missing how this could be enforced ? To my layman understanding, this reads the same as if China said : "Meta, Tesla, Valve etc has entities in China therefore we get to see all data they store in the EU and the US. The UK has Zero jurisdiction in Ireland for example where a lot of EU data may be stored.

I have lived to the day that we give an example on china not doing something stupid a western democracy does about rights and freedom. Wild times to be alive. I am also surprised that they demand worldwide access and not just UK users data or all the data stored in UK jurisdiction. But this is going too far.

It is worse than that, I never expected that most democracies would go back to foregone days, because people get sold out on populism and decided to ignore history lessons.

As a child of Portuguese revolution, I am aware of plenty of stories, apparently many folks nowadays think those are stories to scare misbehaved kids.

Re: U.K. orders Apple to let it spy on users’ encrypted accounts

#213

Post by snapcaster »

captainbland wrote: post #184
snapcaster wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think maybe we're talking past each other. I'm saying that when advocating for privacy, an effective framing (if winning privacy rights battles is the goal) is to make it "us" vs. "them" instead of some kind of party based push. If it's associated too strongly with a specific party it alienates too many people to ever get mass support and become a fundamental value that "everyone" agrees on

I do see what you're trying to say. It's just that authoritarian supporters of privacy are a bit of an internal contradiction. Either they're fooled or are being disingenuous. It's no good having people arguing for "privacy for me but not for thee", which is what it will boil down to. Ultimately authoritarians will use anything which gives them influence and control, with digital privacy violations being one of the e…

Yeah that makes sense, can't really disagree. i'm just always wary of othering large swaths of the population as beyond hope. I think so many powerful groups are invested in making us all hate eachother and in my experience we're all a lot more similar than we think

Re: U.K. orders Apple to let it spy on users’ encrypted accounts

#214

Post by stranded22 »

cbeach wrote: post #47

I’m so ashamed to be a U.K. citizen and to have both legacy parties (Tories and Labour) staunchly supporting these horrendous breaches of privacy. We have had a number of bad laws over the last ten years that have entrenched state surveillance and presumption of guilt. The only party I can see taking a principled stance on civil liberties is Reform UK, whose policy document states: > A British Bill of Rights > Our fr…

[flagged]

Re: U.K. orders Apple to let it spy on users’ encrypted accounts

#215

Post by 77pt77 »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #178
Havoc wrote: post #113

UK tech laws seem to consistently be the worst of both worlds. Not rights centric like the EU and not business supportive like the US. Just old people making bad laws about stuff they don't understand - or are straight up citizen hostile, sometimes hard to tell which it is.

Successive UK governments consistently fail to understand the UK's place in the modern world. Insisting on access to encrypted data in all jurisdictions globally is just another example of them thinking small and acting big. Its the digital equivalent of sending a gunboat to put-down the troublesome "natives". Meanwhile its 2025, not 1925. (disclosure: brit)

This was even warranted in 1925, more like 1875.

Re: U.K. orders Apple to let it spy on users’ encrypted accounts

#217

Post by _yb2s »

sharpshadow wrote: post #105

Question: Would it be technically feasible to make an Apple app which encrypts/decrypts the files used in iCloud and is able to use iCloud itself? As a solution to never have unencrypted files in iCloud.

Apple basically already has this built into macos - you can create an encrypted disk image and mount it to access the files. I'm not sure if it is possible to open these on ios.

Re: U.K. orders Apple to let it spy on users’ encrypted accounts

#218

Post by GeekyBear »

jeroenhd wrote: post #99
reify wrote: post #71

I doubt very much if any terrorist, criminal or child abuser is going to use any google or apple cloud service to back up their files. Anyone with a fundamental understanding of online privacy and security would encrypt any files prior to uploading them to the cloud rendering any back doors and access to those files useless and toothless. I dont use any of these services. I have never understood the thinking around u…

Hamas switched from smartphones, with encrypted messengers to pagers, a communication device with encryption so weak it may as well not be there. Criminals get caught because they used plain phone calls and texts _all the time_. Hell, child abusers are regularly reported to the police because someone saw a suspicious picture on their phone when scrolling through the gallery. Crime and an understanding of cybersecurit…

> on platforms like iOS it's difficult to do automated backups using independent encryption.

iOS allows you to perform encrypted backups to your local PC or Mac out of the box.

https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/back-up-iphone-iph3ec...

Re: U.K. orders Apple to let it spy on users’ encrypted accounts

#219

Post by bluGill »

gambiting wrote: post #196
galangalalgol wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coupd protest on weekends and holidays as a hobby, bring a Bluetooth speaker and blast the kinks.

Well, in the UK just planning a non-violent protest can get you 5 years in prison as many people have already discovered. Protesting has been pretty much made illegal by a very broad legislation that defines any protest that causes "disruption" as illegal - what "disruption" means is up to interpretation of course.

Which just means you need a large group to protest. They can arrest 10,000 people no problem, but get several million together and you have an army. Best is to get some of the actually army/police with you so that when (not if!) they try to get violent you can make it clear this is a revolution they won't win.

I hope it never reaches the above level, but always remember that remains an option.

Re: U.K. orders Apple to let it spy on users’ encrypted accounts

#220

Post by [deleted] »

cesarb wrote: post #173
latexr wrote: post #89

> When asked by The Post whether any government had requested a backdoor, Google spokesman Ed Fernandez did not provide a direct answer but suggested none exist: "Google cannot access Android end-to-end encrypted backup data, even with a legal order," he stated. No, that does not suggest none exists, it only says they don’t have access to it. They could have chosen or have been ordered to give the keys to the governm…

> No, that does not suggest none exists, it only says they don’t have access to it. They could have chosen or have been ordered to give the keys to the government agency but not keep one themselves. The whole definition of "end-to-end encrypted" is that only the two ends have the keys. If anyone or anything other than the two ends (the one sending and the one receiving) has access to the keys, it's not end-to-end enc…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN