UK Reportedly Withdraws Demand to Access Encrypted iCloud User Data

[surferfb]

Great news.

Apple often gets attacked on here for “only caring about the money” when dealing with governments, but here’s a great example of them standing up for their users.

 

[Lone Deranger]

I guess that's what a glass and gold statue buys you.

 

[gatorvet96]

The UK. The laughing stock of the world.

I can say as an American that sadly my country is certainly The Laughing Stock of the World. Finally we are the best at something.

 

[Devyn89]

Did Kier Starmer get jealous of the power of Qi in China?

 

[waziazi]

The UK. The laughing stock of the world.

fallen empire. god bless china

 

[robvalentine]

Good, now they just need to repeal the online 'safety' act

 

[robvalentine]

The UK. The laughing stock of the world.

That would be the USA. I do appreciate the pressure that the US government put on our government to repeal this though.

 

[cjsuk]

The UK. The laughing stock of the world.

Joint laughing stock I'll have you know.

 

[baconcat_8964]

I’ve written to my local one 3 times since Labour were elected and I’ve never heard back. At least the tories would send a generic reply template that addressed none of the concerns I raised.

Lib Dem here. They replied to me quite quickly, nothing constructive though.

 

[JamesMay82]

Any news about Apple reactivating encryption in the UK for new users?

yes hopefully they can do it quite quickly. I turned mine off when the news broke when In hindsight I should have left it on. its a nightmare manually syncing phone and computer all the time.

 

[Zedcars]

Probably right after they realised that their age-verification scheme could be bypassed in about 5 minutes by anyone with half a brain...

3 seconds.

 

[Jay-Jacob]

I don't see why they shouldn't.
In fact I expect this to be a very quick decision to take.

Hopefully Apple will. I need to switch it on my parents iPhones. They wanted me try it out myself first at least year cos they worried lose access to iCloud if goes wrong. Obviously it been working perfectly for me and I was about to switch it on my parents then this happened.

 

[northernmunky]

Brit here, yes this is embarrassing and yes our civil liberties are being infringed upon big time right now. But then again the Americans can't exactly say much with Trump destroying your own civil liberties and being perfectly ok with it!

America had the most respect internationally during the Obama years... how miss those days.

 

[Shanghaichica]

Does that mean we get advanced data protection back?

 

[waziazi]

uk=new terrorits

 

[Wando64]

Hopefully Apple will. I need to switch it on my parents iPhones. They wanted me try it out myself first at least year cos they worried lose access to iCloud if goes wrong. Obviously it been working perfectly for me and I was about to switch it on my parents then this happened.

Since I’ve written my post, I read the BBC article about this and realised that at this stage this is still more or less a rumour, in that Apple has not yet officially heard from either the US nor the UK governments.
Nothing is going to happen until things are officially confirmed, if indeed true.

 

[iZac]

Does this mean UK users will get end-to-end encryption back?

 

[Manzanito]

Great news.

Apple often gets attacked on here for “only caring about the money” when dealing with governments, but here’s a great example of them standing up for their users.

Which in turn is good for getting more money. One of the key selling points of the iPhone is privacy.

 

[Onelifenofear]

UK is insane right now. Putting people in jail for posting they are critical of their regime, but protecting child abusers from 3rd world countries.

The problem is you are believing the press and Right wing media on this.

What was posted about the government? About what? The only things I have seen is people inciting violence via posts getting arrested.

The whole child abuse issue while hideous was 12 years ago ( under a different government ) and the current one have launched a full enquiry into what happened.

 

[Onelifenofear]

So this back door is not a direct backdoor into the system. or some sort of LIVE movie like access to a phone.

It was an idea by one department that Apple could unlock encrypted iCloud backups... they can't... it's encrypted and even Apple cannot access it. It's like the EU demanding stuff when they have zero idea how it would be implemented or what end-to-end encryption means.

Most governments have a legal recourse to REQUEST encrypted info from phones - this has been around 20+ years.

The UK requested it and all Apple coudl do is STOP offering encrypted backups.... and guess what about .00001% of users even do that.

 

[iPadified]

A very important win for Apple.

Actually a very important win for people.

 

[Onelifenofear]

Does this mean UK users will get end-to-end encryption back?

We always have had it... it was only the iCloud Backups that didn't. The theory was:

Bad guy deletes his phone or throw it in the sea
iCloud Backups could be accessed by the police etc.

 

[cocky jeremy]

AKA, the US Government said, "I don't think so, little buddy.", and the UK tucked their tail and said, "Ok, daddy."

 

[Onelifenofear]

Actually a very important win for people.

Well it was always a court mandated process... Law enforcement had to get a court order to get access and then apple had to comply. It really was aimed at stopping terrorists and class A criminals.

The process also informed the owner that this was going to happen... so technically someone would have to be in custody already or they coudl just delete all the backups anyway.

jsut want very well thought out by a department that had no idea how the technology worked anyway.

 

[laptech]

Do you people honestly think if the CEO of Apple Tim Cook accidently icloud locked any of his devices that people inside Apple are going to tell him 'sorry boss, everything you've lost everything because we cannot access icloud locked devices', hell no. There is a back door in my opinion. Apple are using their massive resources to convince the world no such things exists. It exists and only two people in the world know about it, Tim Cook and the software designer he got to design it. That's my opinion anyway.