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UK Court Rejects Government Secrecy in Apple's Fight Against Backdoor Request
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I just picked your comment to reply to because it was on the first few pages. I'm in the US.
But I am very curious about how things truly operate in the UK I guess?
Yes, I understand government and so on and so on. And I realize this is like everyone in the world thinking everyone in the US is backing our current president 1000%, which isn't the case. I'm not saying I am for or against, but just stating the obvious truth.
But for UK residents, who can you fight back against if you were going to hope to support leaders in the future that wouldn't do this type of thing? It's not the PM, well not directly. So is it just your parliament members that are fighting this or a section of them that are in the Defense area?
While I say I understand how your government works, I obviously don't know the details of how such precedings happen or if they're just parliament members in some commission that have the power and are using it for something like this? Or is it more coming from places like MI5 or MI6, or maybe I'm watching too many spy movies lately.
Honest question though, I guess my question is, if the majority of UK citizens don't agree with this then how or who do you fight to stop it in the UK?
I don't know if I'm breaking any official secrets here, but I'm a UK user and Advanced Data Protection is still enabled for me.
Since Apple aren't permitted to lay down a warrant canary, I'll let you know if things change. Having said that, they craftily managed to work around the censorship notice last time around.
Since Apple aren't permitted to lay down a warrant canary, I'll let you know if things change. Having said that, they craftily managed to work around the censorship notice last time around.
Nintendo can't build a factory in one day. Not taking into account the actual construction, there's the logistics of where to place it, as well as getting the needed permits. There's also the fact that even a factory in the USA would need to import parts from afar, as there are currently no factories in the USA creating those parts (and add that to the time needed to move a Nintendo factory to the USA).
Also, some rare earth minerals are not present on American soil: You'd need to import those, no matter what. Unless, of course, you take over a sovereign country by force.
What Trump really wants is for countries and companies to debase themselves, tears streaming down their faces as they say "Sir, you are so smart. We bow down to your impressive intellect."
UK followed the trumpers and has been a clown show ever since. They wrecked their country and now they want to spy on the entire world and they're not even a part of the EU. . They can go Tim Apple themselves 😁🤣😁🤣😁😁
And then it’ll be the back door to your house 🤭Next it’ll be a back door to your iPhone📱
Trump probably does enjoy compliments, just like anyone else... but saying that he's only doing this for the kowtowing and the knee bending is a lot like saying that a gourmet chef in the most expensive restaurant in town only cooks incredible food so that his patrons rave about how much they love his food. Again, sure... that doubtless makes him feel good -- but the chef actually does it to get paid huge wads of cash for his services.
If you think about it for even a brief moment, I'm sure you can see where this is going -- but can you see how it gets there? Because those intervening steps might not be so obvious. (Or they might be... I honestly have no idea, but I'm just going to toss this out there anyway.)
Mind you, I don't know if Trump is going to succeed... but I think what he actually wants is for most of these foreign nations to 1) drop their own tariffs against the US, thereby instituting genuine "free trade" with the US, and 2) erect their own reciprocal tariffs against nations that hold adversarial positions against the US (ergo, China). In other words, Trump is doing what he believes will bring wealth into the United States, ultimately (eventually) at the expense of US adversaries.
(In a few cases -- Canada and Mexico, for example -- he's also using the tariffs as a political bludgeon to try to convince them to do other things for the US... but that's not particularly relevant to the point I'm trying to make.)
Of course, Trump is running a huge gamble, with these tariffs. If things go his way with even a small handful of key countries, he could potentially be lauded as the most successful US president in history, with regards to US domestic fiscal/economic policy. Which will no doubt make him "feel good"... but far more importantly, winning this gamble would mean that the entire nation rises with the tide. Including Apple. Also Ford. And (make no mistake) also all of the Trump family's various business enterprises. And Musk's enterprises, for that matter.
Trump has a little less than four years to make his grand gamble pay off. If it falls flat? ...
Well, that's another story.
Also, 6 out of 7 people make up statistics for the sole purpose of benefiting their argument.
I can’t believe how many people (in the US) have bought this nonsense without making any basic check about what tariffs were in place (against US exports) before this nonsense started.
Clue: In relation to the UK/US reciprocal tariffs were generally low, balanced, and in line with WTO rules.
I wonder how long is going to take for the average Joe to understand that anything built in the US will cost them double what it cost now.
There is a reason globalisation is so popular.
I am not for breaking encryption, but from a security POV, criminals (terrorist, drug lords, black market, etc) can do pretty funny stuff with encrytped international communication.
You could replace Apple with Trump and consumers with Americans and it would still be true.
So I guess building factories while jacking up the price by ten fold to cover those costs is not greed.
Yes and they can develop their own encrypted international communication. Criminals break laws already and they certainly don’t mind breaking a few more. What gives?
Sell a device that can’t use iCloud feature at all? Or App Store? At some point the concession is simply not an option. Idk how useful iPhone is without access of App Store and iCloud. Ok maybe the encryption doesn’t involve App Store directly but still.
So I guess long term tariff is the solution, at least in MAGA eyes, while everyone enjoy higher prices on everything.
pull out so they aren't on a slippery slope. if they are putting back doors in uk, other countries are going to start asking for them.
I doubt they'd ever cut off the App Store. Far too much of the world ecoonomy revolves around these centralised, overly-controlled app portals to make it even legal. There are many companies for whom their app is the only way to interact with customers. This is partially the arguement for opening up platforms to multiple storefronts but I digress...
They could get away with cutting iCloud though. There are multiple third parties that exist to back up photos from a device (OneDrive, Dropbox, pCloud etc) and you always have the option of localised backup to a PC or Mac via a good old USB cable. Customers have choice in this respect.
There are three states here:
1. Did you have ADP enabled? If so, you can leave it on and continue using it as you were beforehand. No need to manually sync stuff. Everything is still E2EE.
2. If you had ADP enabled, and you disabled it when you heard about the request form the UK Home Office, that was foolish as you now cannot turn it back on.
3. If you didn't have ADP enabled, you can no longer enable it, and you are in the same position you were in previously, i.e. some of your files/data were E2EE and still are, and some were not and still are not.
But the issue with that, then, is why wouldn't the UK government go after those other services and ask for a backdoor to be put in?
Apple is far larger than any cloud data storage company and has the financial and legal might to fight against these stupid requests, but a small cloud provider may not be able to.
You're not breaking an official secret. Having ADP enabled on your devices isn't an official secret.
ADP (Advanced Data Protection) is an opt-in extra layer of protection for your data stored in iCloud. SDP (Standard Data Protection) encrypts data in-transit between your devices, and Apple stores the encryption keys on its servers, but it also end-to-end encrypts 15 categories of data, and those keys are stored on your trusted devices. ADP increases this to 25 categories.
It's all explained on this page.
When Apple received the notice from the UK Home Office to enable the UK's investigatory powers (police, secret services, etc.) to have access to and be able to decrypt end-to-end encrypted data, Apple refused, and disabled the option to enable ADP for UK users.
The reason why your ADP is still enabled is because Apple do not have to encryption keys on their servers (they're only on your trusted devices, remember), so if they were to disable ADP on your behalf they wouldn't be able to decrypt your data and you'd lose everything. They're probably thinking of some technical way to move those encryption keys from your devices back onto Apple's servers (and hopefully test the process!) in case they lose the court battle(s) and have to remove ADP for UK users completely.
BBC News had a story about the ruling yesterday, and it had a quote from the Home Office: "The Home Office stressed it was not seeking blanket data access - and any requests to view individual accounts protected by ADP would need a court approved warrant." This is a staggering admission of incompetence on their part. They are admitting they know cack all about technology. If Apple put a backdoor into ADP, it will not stay private, and it will not only apply to UK users. It will open up the data of every iCloud user across the world. This is why Apple refused to put in the backdoor.
These sorts of things are years in the planning. It was likely originally planned as a power flex on behalf of the previous government, the increasingly paranoid Conservatives. They were/are still trying to sell the ridiculous notion that Brexit was a good idea and that the UK had the same leverage as the EU. Apple just happened to be the biggest fish in the pond.
In many ways it mirrors the Epic Games fiasco. Of the 30% it paid out in storefront fees on behalf of Fortnite, 70% went to Sony and less than 5% went to Apple. It made more sense to sue Sony to make the PlayStation an open platform but epic weren't about to bite the hand that feeds it. Instead they tried to make an example of Apple and then leverage that against the rest of the industry as they were the biggest fish.