Fundamentally, I think the issue is more about technical literacy amongst the political establishment who consistently rely on the fallacy that having nothing to hide means you have nothing to fear. Especially in the UK which operates as a paternalistic state and enjoys authoritarian support across all parties. On the authoritarianism: these laws are always worded in such a way that they can be applied or targeted va…
> Especially in the UK which operates as a paternalistic state and enjoys authoritarian support across all parties. This seemed strange to point out. It’s not really any more or less “paternalistic” than most western nations including the US.
Apple pulls data protection tool after UK government security row
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Re: Apple pulls data protection tool after UK government security row
#402Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> In the UK, there's no right to bear arms, so people are pretty helpless against their oppressing government. There's a right to bear arms in the US and it doesn't seem to be helping them with their oppressive government.
Look into the Black Panthers. It actually does work quite effectively.
Re: Apple pulls data protection tool after UK government security row
#403Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right but then you are jailed at Heathrow for not unlocking your phone. The UK has made it clear that Counter Terrorism legislation has no limits in UK law even if that means compromising all systems and leaving them vulnerable to state actor attacks. MPs will continue to use encrypted messaging systems that disappear messages during any inquiries of course.
You can provide a self destroy PIN with GrapheneOS.
Re: Apple pulls data protection tool after UK government security row
#404Earlier quoted context omitted.
How? In the UK, there's no right to bear arms, so people are pretty helpless against their oppressing government.
Technically I guess you're right, but one hopes that the foundations of British democracy provide its citizens with the tools to fight against an oppressive government. The only rub is getting them to stand up and do that.
Re: Apple pulls data protection tool after UK government security row
#405Fundamentally, I think the issue is more about technical literacy amongst the political establishment who consistently rely on the fallacy that having nothing to hide means you have nothing to fear. Especially in the UK which operates as a paternalistic state and enjoys authoritarian support across all parties. On the authoritarianism: these laws are always worded in such a way that they can be applied or targeted va…
> Especially in the UK which operates as a paternalistic state and enjoys authoritarian support across all parties. This seemed strange to point out. It’s not really any more or less “paternalistic” than most western nations including the US.
Re: Apple pulls data protection tool after UK government security row
#406I have a naive question, and it's genuine curiosity, not a defence of what's happening here. This ADP feature has only existed for a couple of years, right? I understand people are mad that it's now gone, but why weren't people mad _before_ it existed? For like, a decade? Why do people treat iCloud as immediately dangerous now, if they didn't before? Did they think it was fully encrypted when it wasn't? Did people no…
At one point in time, the entirety of web communication was completely unencrypted. Why were people not mad then? Do you think people would be angrier now, if HTTPS were suddenly outlawed? Among other valid answers, removing rights and privileges generally makes people angrier than not having those rights or privileges in the first place.
Oh, we were. I am in the crowd who had been asking for generally used encryption since 1995. After all, we were already using SSH for our shell connections.
The first introduction to SSL outside of internet banking and Amazon was for many online services to use encryption only for their login (and user preferences) page. The session token was then happily sent in the clear for all subsequent page loads.
It took a while for always-on encryption to take hold, and many of the online services complained that enabling SSL for all their page loads was too expensive. Both computationally and in required hardware resources. When I wrote for an ICT magazine, I once did some easy benchmarking around the impact of public key size for connection handshakes. Back then a single 1024-bit RSA key encryption operation took 2ms. Doubling it to 2048 bits bumped that up to 8ms. (GMP operations have O(n^2) complexity in terms of keysize.)
Re: Apple pulls data protection tool after UK government security row
#407Re: Apple pulls data protection tool after UK government security row
#408Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right but then you are jailed at Heathrow for not unlocking your phone. The UK has made it clear that Counter Terrorism legislation has no limits in UK law even if that means compromising all systems and leaving them vulnerable to state actor attacks. MPs will continue to use encrypted messaging systems that disappear messages during any inquiries of course.
Except no one has ever been jailed for simply refusing to unlock a phone unless there was heavy evidence there was something on the phone. Stop spreading incorrect FUD
Re: Apple pulls data protection tool after UK government security row
#409EU is all for privacy while UK is slowly drifting towards becoming a Stasi state.
Re: Apple pulls data protection tool after UK government security row
#410Earlier quoted context omitted.
> other than the possibility of leaks of the nation’s most sensitive data Amusing when you consider the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC, a part of GCHQ), along with the Information Commissioners Office, both publish guidance recommending, and describing how to use, encryption to protect personal and sensitive data. Our government is almost schizophrenic in its attitude to encryption.
Correct me if I'm wrong here, and maybe this is too charged for HN, but looking over at you guys from the US: The US has problems (don't get me wrong, look at our politics, enough said); but the UK seems to be speedrunning a collapse. The NHS having patients dying in hallways; Rotherham back in the popular mind; a bad economy even by EU standards; a massive talent exodus (as documented even on HN regarding hardware e…