Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained

#491

Post by piqued » Tue, Jan 21, 2020, 10:37 PM UTC

_bxg1 wrote: post #335

microtonal wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They botched the original Windows Phone through a failure of management This. I had some Windows Phones besides my iPhones, because I liked very much what they were doing. Windows Phone 7, despite being technically weak (it was based on Windows CE), had an awesome UI. Nokia had some really affordable phones that were really well-built for the price and Windows Phone was getting traction. Quite a few friends/colleague…

And underpinning all of that was the unfortunate fact that this truly innovative and lively new area of development at Microsoft found itself happening at the tail end of Ballmer's tenure. There was this spark of energy around Zune, and then Kin ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Kin ), and then Windows Phone that was just completely orthogonal to the stagnant money-printing strategy that Microsoft followed be…

Oh man, I had the second gen Zune. It really was so good.

To this day I still think about that little touch/d-pad, and wish something similar had caught on with more devices...

Re: Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained

#492

Post by clairity » Tue, Jan 21, 2020, 10:39 PM UTC

wallace_f wrote: post #481

clairity wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "That entity is not a person." the (current) supreme court doesn't agree, and their opinion carries a tad more weight. corporations are basically super-persons in the eyes of the court, since corporations intrinsically funnel the resources of its many consituents, unlike individuals. instead, any entity exerting outsized power, like corporations, should be held to higher standards of duty and transparency. that's a…

From a distance, to me it's interesting to read about fears of the FBI snooping in our phones and email, and see how quickly the discussion jolts to how immoral (or amoral) corporations are because one of them is not completely defying government.

(part of) how we mitigate unfettered power is pitting powerful entities against each other. the answer isn't "government!" or "law enforcement!" or "corporations!" but rather more even distributions of power, and lacking that, powerful entities in opposition.

that we also rationalize the actions of a corporation (to understand them) doesn't necessarily imply complicity. lacking more evenly distributed power, we should want apple to be pitted against google, the fbi, and the chinese government to funnel apple towards a privacy-oriented stance that it might not otherwise have.

incidentally, (many) americans vehemently support 2nd amendment rights as a way to have some semblance of power in an otherwise overwhelming power structure.

Re: Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained

#493

Post by filoleg » Tue, Jan 21, 2020, 10:42 PM UTC

selebrazin wrote: post #420

mosselman wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but you do get wrung out for personal data in order to sell you ads. There is always that.

And do you believe that running Windows in a virtual machine prevents Microsoft from getting the telemetry data and who knows what else? While you're right that running Android does expose (some of) your data to advertisers, with Windows, we're not even sure what exactly is leaving your machine the last time I checked. Or are you suggesting that an average Linux user who wants to back up their iPhone needs to buy and…

> And do you believe that running Windows in a virtual machine prevents Microsoft from getting the telemetry data and who knows what else?

If you only use that VM for backing up your iPhone, there are no useful telemetry signals for them to collect in the first place.

Re: Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained

#494

Post by bravoetch » Tue, Jan 21, 2020, 10:45 PM UTC

musicale wrote: post #455

reroute1 wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, but isn't this largely semantics? Saying Apple doesn't care about customers may technically be true, but that is taking it quite literally. The statement can also be meant to imply the people in Apple care, of course no one would speculate that a non human corporate entity would care. I also largely agree that the Apple meme of privacy being trotted out lately doesn't quite jive with this news, but at the same ti…

The people at Apple who write the code usually do care about privacy. Their bosses and execs? It is harder to tell. From the information I have, the majority of Apple employees do care about values such as privacy and ethical business practices, as well as product quality and usability, but those values can sometimes be undermined by executive decisions based on business and monetary motives.

That doesn't matter one bit if they continue to work there when their ethics and values are not aligned.

Re: Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained

#495

Post by Marsymars » Tue, Jan 21, 2020, 10:45 PM UTC

StillBored wrote: post #383

_bxg1 wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft literally paid developers to port their apps to Windows Phone: https://www.theverge.com/2013/6/15/4433082/microsoft-paying-... It's that chicken-and-egg problem where people don't want to use it because it doesn't have the apps they need, and developers don't want to make apps for it because it doesn't have enough users. Microsoft tried to throw money at the problem to middling success. But I think it was t…

I'm not sure why paying developers is a problem to bootstrap the ecosystem. Although, if they were paying for temple run (as the image might suggest) that seems odd. Mostly because presumably they should be targeting the apps everyone uses that don't have good replacements (aka netflix/prime streaming/etc). I would guess that they aren't the only ones. Do you think LG/Sony/Samsung/roku/apple tv/firestic/etc all got t…

> But MS was a special case, it seems to me that every time I looked at CE/Mobile/etc they were tossing existing app compatibility aside for the latest and greatest toolkit that went with some not particularly good set of phones.

Their (forward) app compatibility was actually very good. I wrote a WP7 Silverlight app in 2011 that still works on the last release of Windows Mobile 10.

Re: Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained

#496

Post by president » Tue, Jan 21, 2020, 10:46 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #482

president wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to take a step back, take off your engineering hat, and realize that the issue is not about private keys. This is about a company (Apple) needing to follow the laws of the country that it operates in or else it is banned. It doesn't matter if Apple was selling bread or handbags, they MUST provide the government with data about their customers when compelled. This is the case with all companies operating in C…

The only way it could follow the laws of the country would be to rearchitect its entire system and somehow send the private keys to its servers and save them. While technically they could do that, do you realize how much legal trouble they would be in in the US if they did so without disclosing it? Alternatively, they would have to have a special build of iOS for China. Also, none of the “citations” make mention that…

The questions you are posing make it clear that you don't understand the issue at hand, much less the broader context behind these data laws. Companies have invested much more $$$ and resources for much less reward. Also, everything is legal as long as your lawyers sign off.

Re: Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained

#497

Post by djohnston » Tue, Jan 21, 2020, 10:47 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #462

lern_too_spel wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The keys exist on machines managed by the third party, which is controlled by the state. Therefore, the state has access to the data. Edit: Apple itself has stated that the keys are in China. The option of having Apple devices talk through the Great Firewall to servers in the US that then encrypt the data for storage in China (and on the querying end, request encrypted data from China to decrypt and process in the US…

The private keys don’t in fact “exist on machines managed by a third party”. That’s kind of the entire concept of public/private key encryption.

Nothing about assymetric crypto mandates that a 3rd party cant manage the key. In this case, CCP has the key.

Re: Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained

#498

Post by rayhendricks » Tue, Jan 21, 2020, 10:47 PM UTC

_bxg1 wrote: post #206

> aboyt how much Apple cares about users No company cares about anything. A company is not a person. Apple, because of its privacy-marketing, is incentivized to be the privacy player in the market. But only so far as consumers keep them honest about it. They got away with this loophole because it stayed under the radar; if it gets enough attention and enough customers show that it matters to them, it could change. On…

Apple cares about me paying $999 for another iPhone in a couple years, along with trying to sell me iCloud storage (that sweet, sweet reoccurring revenue). Now I’m never going to purchase iCloud storage because the feds could snoop in it.

If there is a more secure alternative available then I’ll go with that. Also iCloud backup is now turned off, no need to enable the surveillance state.

Re: Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained

#499

Post by dangus » Tue, Jan 21, 2020, 10:48 PM UTC

justapassenger wrote: post #191

Wonder if this will help to kill a meme, about how much Apple cares about users and what great values they have, how they're going to stand for the user, fight with governments, etc. While iPhone itself is pretty secure as a device phone (and Apple makes sure to remind you about that in each ad, public speaking, attacks on competitors, etc), as an ecosystem it's not secure. And it's like that on purpose - there's no…

> there's no good and easy option to backup your phone other than iCloud

This is false. You can back it up with Finder (since Catalina) or iTunes on Windows or previous macOS versions. You can even do wireless syncing over your local network.

All of the infrastructure that Apple built out before iCloud still exists. You can sync your photos with the Photos app locally. It’ll one-click import everything and you can have it automatically clear out storage on your phone after the import has completed as well. You can then back up your computer however you want - locally, encrypted with Time Machine is an easy option.

Re: Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained

#500

Post by scarface74 » Tue, Jan 21, 2020, 10:49 PM UTC

president wrote: post #496

scarface74 wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only way it could follow the laws of the country would be to rearchitect its entire system and somehow send the private keys to its servers and save them. While technically they could do that, do you realize how much legal trouble they would be in in the US if they did so without disclosing it? Alternatively, they would have to have a special build of iOS for China. Also, none of the “citations” make mention that…

The questions you are posing make it clear that you don't understand the issue at hand, much less the broader context behind these data laws. Companies have invested much more $$$ and resources for much less reward. Also, everything is legal as long as your lawyers sign off.

I perfectly understand how public/private key encryption works. Can you find any citations to support your specific claims that Apple is sending user’s private keys from their devices and giving those keys to China?