Live data from Hacker News

UK backing down on Apple encryption backdoor after pressure from US

arstechnica.com

271–280 of 438 posts

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

#271
post #4

I really sort of expected that by the time I reached my age that we'd have more policy makers that understood tech a little better. I feel like in the last say 25 or more years ... the needle hasn't moved.

It does seem to me like the US Vice President is advancing a pretty tech savvy policy. He's pushing for privacy. Am I missing something?

They're just against EU asserting any kind of control over American companies.

Reminder that he's funded by Thiel and friends with Curtis Yarvin, which goals include the end of democracy and the federal state and replace the system with tech CEO kings over feudal states.

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

#272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

For me it's not so much a conspiracy as the natural flow as a society becomes more fascist (as most Western government are leaning) and more "police state". It's inevitable, they want to be able to spy on every aspect of our lives and keep it recorded indefinitely as technology and public sentiment will allow. Cops want to make their jobs as easy as possible, politicians want to be able to get as much dirt on everyon…

That’s just run of the mill authoritarianism, calling it fascism glosses over how it has proponents in every political persuasion.

Authoritarianism has become very popular online these days for some reason. Giving in to fear and wanting total control are always going to be traits that pop up again and then humans have to relearn from history about why freedoms are important.

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

#273
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple stores Chinese users' iCloud data and encryption keys to that data in China in a datacenter run by a state owned firm [1]. [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/technology/apple-moves-to-st...

Basically, there is no backdoor. The front door is wide open, the government just needs to ask. Or not even that -- just take whatever they need themselves.

Even in the US, even if Apple doesn’t have a backdoor, isn’t NSA linked up into the telecom companies already?

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

#274
post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it was her speech that got her a multi-year jail term. Are we really going to have to have the "shouting fire in a crowded theatre" conversation? I think there is some nuance to the conversation about this woman - but you are avoiding it with incredible agility.

I guess no one ever claimed authoritarianism was imposed on the British unwillingly. Seems to have lots of defenders.

Out of interest, which country are you writing that from?

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

#275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Netflix mainly runs from caching boxes at ISPs though. Most of their content comes from there. AWS is way too expensive to serve all that content from. I see a lot of dumb implementations. At work we're picking up all our physical servers and moving them to AWS compute boxes that run 24/7. Purely statically, just because our idiot CIO wants to be a "cloud-driven company" so he can spout the buzzwords. We're spending…

Yes. But Netflix is by far AWS’s largest customer. The distribution happens on caching boxes. But there is a lot of processing that happens on AWS. You can look at any of the numerous reinvent videos or even Netflix’s own blog.

Just because your company has a brain dead lift and shift implementation (don’t do that), doesn’t mean every company does.

As a former employee of AWS ProServe (Amazon’s internal cloud consulting department - full time direct hire employee) and now and outside consultant, I’ve seen and been involved in a lot of large scale implementations.

I have no love lost for AWS the company (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44607821) , but let’s not pretend it’s a bunch of startups and naive enterprise corporations that don’t know tech.

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

#276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK AI bill included a proposal to create an AI authority, forcing third party to align with their approaches to AI. They've been looking to use AI for consumer surveillance; AI user monitoring essentially. "We can't have a backdoor so we can't use AI to monitor the user"

AI and encryption are technically orthogonal. But they’ll use any guise to further their agenda.

I suspect the steel man version of the argument is that AI is capable of producing images indistinguishable from child and revenge porn, so it must be regulated, and that means they need a way to reach into your zeros and ones to check. Maybe they want to know you're not asking it how to terrorize people, too.

Hence, the confluence of AI and encryption.

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

#277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US has plenty of arrests for terroristic threats and similar. Many of these are online now. 12k arrests per year related to online posts doesn't sound all that high.

Making terrorist threats are different than insulting some's religion, complaining about illegal immigrant crimes or shitting on politicians online. It's disingenuous to argue they're in the same ballpark that EU and US speech is similarly policed because it's not.

Not terrorist threats - terroristic threats. This includes anything that someone might think is threatening. Do you have examples of non-threatening language resulting in arrest in the UK?

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

#278
post #102

> Apple did not respond to a request for comment. “We have never built a back door or master key to any of our products, and we never will,” Apple said in February. This must be some "technically correct" weasel words bullcrap, as without at least equivalent access there is no chance Apple would be operating in China.

AKA "fuckin...england fucking chill, don't blow this. You're FVEY mate, why you go scaring everyone when you know I got this. Just relax, you really think TAO don't got this? The Equation Group? We got this, in there like swimwear."

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

#279
post #168

I don't get why the UK always does this. it's like GSM encryption all over again. Is it a particularly snoop-ey culture stemming from GCHQ or something?

The UK has always been a nanny state. Moore was writing about this decades ago.

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

#280
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically, there is no backdoor. The front door is wide open, the government just needs to ask. Or not even that -- just take whatever they need themselves.

Even in the US, even if Apple doesn’t have a backdoor, isn’t NSA linked up into the telecom companies already?

What are the chances that the NSA has a useful zero-day on the TLS encryption standard?
Post reply on HN