BBC News - Apple pulls data protection tool after UK government security row
- “In a statement Apple said it was “gravely disappointed” that the security feature would no longer be available to British customers.”
Washington post - Apple yanks encrypted storage in U.K. instead of allowing backdoor access
I guess removing access for the uk is better than backdooring it in silence. But still, not great.
Also, it is interesting comparing compliance on this with complying with the EU on sideloading apps.
Original title: ‘Apple caved and pulled end-to-end encrypted backups in the uk’ - record of bad take title
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Copy of my comment in c/apple:
Honestly I think this is the right move.
Pull the feature and tell the public that the government won’t permit the public to secure their own data.
“I have security and privacy features for you, but your government won’t let you use them”
Set the public against this overreach.
I think it’s the right move by Apple.
I don’t think it’s the right move by my Government to be ordering this.
Like most governments, the UK’s has a poor record on understanding technical standards (They’re still trying to implement age-restriction on porn sites, something that’s been ongoing for a decade) Backdoor or lack of encryption - both make data security impossible and make the lives of criminals a whole lot easier. We simply cannot have safe data this way.
If your government wants to look, we want to look as well
Apple does not allow other competing security and privacy features. If apple was opening up, the gov couldn’t do anything in the first place
The UK government’s obsession with being a Big Brother is so damn frustrating. A preview of what other governments will try and become in the near future, unfortunately.
That’s not caving. That’s standing up and saying fuck you, your people don’t matter as much as the rest of the world because you’re lunatics.
yea, its a blow to uk user’s privacy & security but not caving. Caving would be implimenting a backdoor. Title was a bit of an annoyed initial reaction, sorry there… maybe best to improve it, i’m not sure?
Saying “fuck you” would be more like “we’re no longer selling devices in uk and iCloud won’t work anymore”
Yes, and that ultimately may happen, but Tim Cook is a capitalist and wants to keep selling devices there if he can. We’ll see how the UK gov responds before we find out the end outcome.
Here in the UK, many typical phone users already assume that their data is shared anyway. Every person that i spoke to about this today asked why I think it’s a problem as they have nothing to hide. A worrying position.
Here’s my response to this line of thinking:
“Would you be okay if I fucked your spouse/partner/etc? No? Why not? You’re already having sex with them. What’s the difference?”
Consent. That’s the difference.
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What if you ask if you can borrow their phone and password for an hour? They have nothing to hide?
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That’s the point isn’t it?
They would say “that’s different” without elaborating why exactly.
Exactly why we must shift from privacy to control, power.
“If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to say” -Edward Snowden
Wasn’t it something more similar to “saying that you don’t care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is like saying that you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say”?
Yes that’s it. Thanks for clarifying
Ask them why they don’t keep their toilet in their living room. 😆
Because it would stink. I get your point but there are better ways of demonstrating it.
Apple Caved. I’m no apple fan but what exactly would not caving have been here? Make the backdoor? Pull out of the UK ? Fund an expensive legal battle against the laws of a democratically elected government?
Apple did not cave
caving would’ve been to build the backdoor
End to end encryption is MEANINGLESS if someone else also has a key
They removed a feature in the region to avoid setting a precedent that they would backdoor their feature on the whims of a shitty government
Now Apple gets to tell the UK that they would love to give fully encrypted backups but the UK government does not like encryption and security
I want to say I agree that Apple was put in a Lose Lose here. Building a backdoor would be detrimental, but removing the obstacle does no better. Now other countries can say “well shoot if we just force them to put a backdoor in they’ll just remove the issue entirely”. The main issue that the EU had with e2e is that they lacked the capability of accessing the data, Apple removing e2e in the EU moreorless said “yea sure whatever you can access the data, we just don’t want you to access the rest of the worlds data”
But whats the next step for when the next country (say the US) also decides they want a piece of that action. “Oh let me remove e2e in the US as a whole as well”.
This was an L across the entire board privacy and reputation wise. Apple has set the precedent that they will cave and cater to big brother corporations if it means they can stay in operation in that country. It completely destroyed all the trust that they got from the previous fight vs the US government as a result.
I don’t really know what they could have done differently then fight it though.
yeah I admit ‘apple caved’ was kinda just a gut reaction ‘apple bad - encrypted backup good’.
If they fully caved we likely wouldn’t have known about it, they’d have just put in a backdoor and given themselves and/or the uk encryption keys. Denying encrypted backups because of this is probably best.
You could argue apple does have the resources for a a legal battle, but you also can’t really expect them to do that. They’re not liberty or big brother watch. I doubt that would go well in domestic courts anyway, after that, the ECHR could be sympathetic on proportionallity & art.8 grounds but its a lot of effort.
maybe I should edit the title?
I would leave the title. It’s important that people be critical but willing to adjust opinion.
Apple has fought these in the past (San Bernardino shooting / Phone unlock). It is honestly best for them to never take a case on this issue that they could lose.
@Strawberry Governments and corporations are powerless to E2EE employed by the users themselves, such as GPG/GnuPG/PGP. What could/will UK gov do against GPG and similar tools, especially those which are open-source and freely available?
I’m rooting for British people to defy their government and create their own pair of public and private keys using GPG/PGP or similar suite (preferably open-source, because they can be easily forked, adapted to easier UX/UI to any end-user, etc), sharing their public keys with each other so they can send enciphered messages, rendering useless such anti-E2EE British law.
British people don’t even know what signal is, and if they do, they will name it a terrorist tool
When the corporation controls the hardware and the OS it can easily break any encryption running there. Just include key loggers, break RNG entropy, extract keys from memory, or just capture any data before they are encrypted. Or just let the governments into the OS so they can do all that.
Oh now that does it, of course local storage is superior!
Gentlemen, set up your
Z3JhcGhlbmVPUw==duress passwordsApple can claim that they never built backdoor. But talk is cheap without showing the code for people to audit.
Basically every phone manufacturer has its own layer on top of AOSP that is closed source so…
Curious what happens if you were someone who had opted in to ADP. If your data is fully encrypted, do you just get to keep using it that way? Does this only impact new users? Or, is Apple going to somehow capture users encryption keys and revert ADP?
The BBC article clarifies (not sure if NYT does as well, I can’t read it)
Users will have a grace period to opt out of encryption before their data is deleted. Apple states they do not have the ability to automatically unencrypt the data.
In the process of self hosting everything anyways. This just sped things up for me
The UK government has you that way too - you are legally compelled to reveal any passcodes if ordered by a court, and you’ll stay in prison until you do. (Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000)
But it at least does remove them from third party exposure (phone company, their AI, massive breaches etc), you just have to be sure your own security is good.
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I’ve got an android
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And that helps how exactly?
Go all the way, remove ALL iPhone services from the UK saying the government will not allow users to have privacy. The government will go back on it within a week.
So what’s Google doing? I assume they’re impacted by the same regulation.
kinda horrible to read all these “this big tech company is a rebel and my best friend” comments.
apple allowed this for the usa before many times. this time it had to be publicly announced, cause the orange sleeper agent told them to undermine the uk gov in order to allign the MEGA endeavour.
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