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

Apple pulls data protection tool after UK government security row

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

571–580 of 1001 posts

Re: Apple pulls data protection tool after UK government security row

#571

Post by nobankai »

r00fus wrote: post #337
dustingetz wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how much distance between 1) tech monopoly strong enough to stand up to G7 nation state demands 2) tech monopoly strong enough to remove itself from G7 nation state jurisdiction? edit: s/monopoly/empire, apologies

It's amusing to think of Apple as a "monopoly" (if anything they have a monopsony on TSMC production) but let's just replace that with "giant" for purposes of discussion. Tech giants typically devolve local operations to small companies to avoid liability - think petroleum suppliers not owning gas stations (because those typically end up as superfund sites). Not sure if this analogy this works for Google Android and…

[flagged]

Re: Apple pulls data protection tool after UK government security row

#572

Post by SJC_Hacker »

mtrovo wrote: post #326
nottorp wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> have an Android device beside me that regularly asks me to back my device up to the cloud But is that backup encrypted? If it's not, all they need is to access your data. This is about having access to backups that are theoretically encrypted with a key Apple doesn't have? > We're talking about the largest back door I've ever heard of. Doesn't the US have access to all the data of non US citizens whose data is stor…

> Doesn't the US have access to all the data of non US citizens whose data is stored in the US without any oversight? Totally agree. Having this discussion so US centred just makes us miss the forest for the trees. Apart from data owned by US citizens, my impression is that data stored in the US is fair game for three letter agencies, and I really doubt most companies would spend more than five minutes agreeing with…

> Totally agree. Having this discussion so US centred just makes us miss the forest for the trees. Apart from data owned by US citizens, my impression is that data stored in the US is fair game for three letter agencies, and I really doubt most companies would spend more than five minutes agreeing with law enforcement if asked for full access to their database on ̶n̶o̶n̶-̶U̶S̶ ̶n̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶a̶l̶s̶ anyone.

Re: Apple pulls data protection tool after UK government security row

#574

Post by redeeman »

smsm42 wrote: post #524
ljm wrote: post #358

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…

It's not literacy. They don't care. They need control, and if establishing control means increased risks for you, it's not something they see as a negative factor. It's your problem, not theirs.

opinion: any government that "needs" such control, is an enemy of the people and must be abolished, and anyone can morally and ethically do so

Re: Apple pulls data protection tool after UK government security row

#575

Post by JansjoFromIkea »

ohnoitsahuman wrote: post #144

Let's vote Labor and Liberal to keep the UK from going fascist on our data. Oh wait....shit.

The Blairite wing of that party has always been extremely bad with this kind of thing (see Tony Blair's obsession with ID cards over the decades) so it's unsurprising they'd push something like this.

Re: Apple pulls data protection tool after UK government security row

#576

Post by MetaWhirledPeas »

mtrovo wrote: post #294
ComputerGuru wrote: post #199

Note that this doesn’t satisfy the government’s original request, which was for worldwide backdoor access into E2E-encrypted cloud accounts. But I have a more pertinent question: how can you “pull” E2E encryption without data loss? What happens to those that had this enabled? Edit: Part of my concern is that you have to keep in mind Apple's defense against backdooring E2E is the (US) doctrine that work cannot be comp…

Apple is in a really tough position. I don't know if there's any way they could fulfil the original request without it effectively becoming a backdoor. Disabling E2E for the UK market is just kicking the can down the road. Even simply developing a tool to coerce users out of E2E without their explicit consent to comply with local laws could be abused in the future to obtain E2E messages with a warrant on different co…

> Apple is in a really tough position.

You mean Apple is in a unique position to make a statement. No more Apple products in the UK. Mic drop. Exit stage left.

Re: Apple pulls data protection tool after UK government security row

#577

Post by aqueueaqueue »

anoncow wrote: post #506

>Online privacy expert Caro Robson said she believed it was "unprecedented" for a company "simply to withdraw a product rather than cooperate with a government. That is such a self serving comment. If Apple provides UK a backdoor, it weakens all users globally. With this they are following the local law and the country deserves what the rulers of the country want. These experts are a bit much. In the next paragraph t…

"a product" and "cooperate" are doing so much work in that statement that they collapsed and look like ________ and ________

They re-emerged as "security feature" "add vulns to security features to make it an insecurity feature"

Re: Apple pulls data protection tool after UK government security row

#578

Post by jshier »

GeekyBear wrote: post #521
exe34 wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that having nothing to hide means you have nothing to fear hopefully the US turning from leader of the free world to Russia's tool will give them the kick they need to realise that just because you trust the government now doesn't mean you trust the next government or the one after it.

You probably don't want to look up which US President tried to force Apple to insert an encryption back door into iPhones back in 2015. However, Google did only start moving to protect location data from subpoenas after people started to worry that location data could be used as a legal weapon against women who went to an abortion clinic, so your larger point stands.

That would be none, as it was the FBI, operating independently (as it's supposed to), which tried to force the issue. They even tried to go to Congress but found little support for their stunt. I'm not even sure Obama ever spoke in support of the backdoor, much less used any political power to make it a reality.

Re: Apple pulls data protection tool after UK government security row

#579

Post by kali_00 »

AutistiCoder wrote: post #520
IshKebab wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What concerns me more is that Apple is the only company audibly making a stand. Meta also said they would make a stand if a similar request comes for WhatsApp. I'm not going to hold my breath though.

They wouldn't even be able to. WA is end-to-end encrypted.

With almost everyones backups stored in plain-text, making it all a little silly.

Think about it for a second: you can re-establish your WA account on a new device using only the SIM card from your old device. SIM cards don't have a storage area for random applications' encryption keys, and even if they did, a SIM card cannot count as "end-to-end" anymore. Same goes for whatever mobile cloud platform those backups might be stored on. And you'd hope Apple or Google aren't happily sending off your cloud decryption keys to any app that wants them. Though maybe they are?

Re: Apple pulls data protection tool after UK government security row

#580

Post by JansjoFromIkea »

b800h wrote: post #231
ohnoitsahuman wrote: post #144

Let's vote Labor and Liberal to keep the UK from going fascist on our data. Oh wait....shit.

The party most likely to cut this stuff out is Reform, although they'd probably be closer to ambivalent about it.

UKIP/Brexit/Reform as a vehicle to hold large influence over politics from outside Westminster might.

I would imagine the party's attitudes on a myriad of things would shift if they were in power though.

Post reply on HN