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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

#321

Post by SamuelAdams »

ok123456 wrote: post #115
jjani wrote: 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.

"We have never built." ok, so then who built it?

Well, allegedly Apple could have designed, advised and tested the solution, and if a contractor builds it, then the statement is technically correct.

Apple (and many other organizations) contracts work out for liability reasons, this is not the first instance of it.

Also note the language - specifically a “back door” or “master key”. If you call it something else, literally anything else, the statement holds up.

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

#322

Post by weavejester »

ethbr1 wrote: post #300
caycep wrote: 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?

UK citizens don't have a constitutional right to free speech, which tends to bleed over in unhealthy ways to the government prioritizing its own interests over citizens'.

> UK citizens don't have a constitutional right to free speech

They do.

The UK has an uncodified constitution, and this includes the Human Rights Act, which guarantees freedom of expression to UK citizens.

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

#323

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

xhkkffbf wrote: post #16
duxup wrote: 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?

There is a lot of reflexive anti-Americanism on Hacker News. The US is generally assumed to be the bad guy.

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

#324

Post by scarface_74 »

wkat4242 wrote: post #174
overstay8930 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Again no Trump fan. But I’m glad that Trump policies have made at least the EU not to be so dependent on the US military itself and US military contractors. There is no private company monopoly including BigTech that I can’t extricate myself away from quite easily.

It’s much harder to extricate yourself from the US influence on the world stage.

Not that I’m not seriously looking at a Plan B outside of the US after I retire. We are already planning to spend a few months a year between Costa Rica snd Panama City next year - warm, safe countries in US time zones.

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

#325

Post by Dylan16807 »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #88
pests wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a difference in kind I think. Creation of any type of work - art, writing, programming, modeling, deep research, etc is much more accessible on a PC than on a smartphone. Not only because of the input devices available, but also the restrictions of the platform and OS. Maybe it wasn’t intentional, but the form factor of the modern smartphone discourages creation. When I was a young child me and all my friends wo…

>the form factor of the modern smartphone discourages creation Ever take photos or videos with your phone? Is that not creation? >When I was a young child me and all my friends would “use the PC together” Same, but this is more "old man yells at clouds". Children today have their own way of creation, now using AI.

Sitting around in a room taking photos and videos is a lot less creative than drawing. It's possible to do strongly creative photo/video things with a phone but it's not most of the use.

If you make a list of creative activities that can be done on a computer or phone, a big majority are notably harder to do on a phone.

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

#326

Post by idiotsecant »

reactordev wrote: post #101
idiotsecant wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're 'not at liberty' to post wikipedia links? Or you have knowledge of programs wikipedia doesn't?

The latter. Wikipedia doesn’t know everything. NDA’s are enforceable.

Pretty sure no NDA ever says it's forbidden to discuss the subject of the agreement, but cute little internet innuendos whispered from behind a coy little fan are ok.

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

#327

Post by slavik81 »

aydyn wrote: post #313
sothatsit wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google tailors search results to you. When I searched up their search, it showed me nothing relevant as well. "moore authoritarianism fiction author" worked though.

Yes and regardless the point is its some extremely niche author. The vast majority of anglophones aint gonna know him.

The author of V for Vendetta, Watchmen, 300, and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen?

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

#328

Post by ath92 »

jesseendahl wrote: post #310
heavyset_go wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the in-transit encryption in the world won't matter if they've pwned the decrypted client device. Every company from your device's manufacturer, OS vendor, telecom carrier, app distributors and 3rd party software providers can be compelled to help make that happen. And then there's always Cellebrite and friends.

This is not just encryption in transit or simplistic client-side encryption. It is end-to-end encryption, where each device's key generation is handled by your phone's Secure Enclave. This article is a decent starting point in terms of what Advanced Data Protection is: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102651 If you want a deeper dive into the security engineering of iCloud Keychain, the second half of this Blackhat ta…

Does all of that matter if an attacker has access to your device and can take screenshots of your conversations, or read those conversations out of memory in their unencrypted state?

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

#329

Post by pabs3 »

nl wrote: post #290
theturtletalks wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The whole point of encryption in transit is that it doesn't matter if the telecom companies aren't trusted: they still can't read the data.

Presumably the data is not that relevant; former NSA director Michael Hayden said: "We kill people based on metadata."

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

#330

Post by anadem »

slavik81 wrote: post #327
aydyn wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and regardless the point is its some extremely niche author. The vast majority of anglophones aint gonna know him.

The author of V for Vendetta, Watchmen, 300, and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen?

Well I (as a widely-read 81 year old bookworm lol) have never heard of him
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