What does it have to do with the EU?
This was the UK Government’s secret demand to Apple, so hopefully the US can weigh in and stop this nonsense.
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US Probes UK's Apple Encryption Demand for Possible Treaty Violation
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What does it have to do with the EU?
This was the UK Government’s secret demand to Apple, so hopefully the US can weigh in and stop this nonsense.
DOGE having access to the reams of “personally identifiable information” (PII) on individuals housed at the IRS, Social Security Administration, Office of Personnel Management, Department of Education and other federal agencies – not to mention the federal payments system at Treasury is acceptable to almost 50% of Americans, so what is the difference if the UK can see your photos?
President Musk will soon have access to everything about your life when the final decision gets to the Trump Court.
Hopefully my student loans don't send me to prison for "robbing" the government.
President Musk will soon have access to everything about your life when the final decision gets to the Trump Court.
Hopefully my student loans don't send me to prison for "robbing" the government.
That’s applicable to encryption laws each country allows, not a government dictates backdoor access to make encryption readily accessible to their law agencies. Do you see USA allow that? Apple never permitted their iPhones to allow backdoors here in the states.
It wouldn't be abandoning the user base, it would end up changing the law. And, it wouldn't even take long.
Here is how I see it unfolding:
Step 1: Apple pulls out of a country due to government stupidity
Step 2: Apple informs the affected citizens why it pulled out; "Your government caused this!"
Step 3: The affected citizens direct their uproar at their government
Step 4: The affected government changes their mind due to the backlash (this has happened before)
Step 5: Apple returns to the country a month or so after leaving
Yes, every country has a military, but how effective is that military going to be when A) they are also negatively affected by government stupidity, and B) private citizens far outnumber them.
Here's what the 1st Trump administration Justice Dept. said about the CLOUD act..
"The United States enacted the CLOUD Act to speed access to electronic information held by U.S.-
based global providers that is critical to our foreign partners’ investigations of serious crime,
ranging from terrorism and violent crime to sexual exploitation of children and cybercrime. Our
foreign partners have long expressed concerns that the mutual legal assistance process is too
cumbersome to handle their growing needs for this type of electronic evidence in a timely
manner. The assistance requests the United States receives often seek electronic information
related to individuals or entities located in other countries, and the only connection of the
investigation to the United States is that the evidence happens to be held by a U.S.-based global
provider. The CLOUD Act is designed to permit our foreign partners that have robust protections
for privacy and civil liberties to enter into executive agreements with the United States to obtain
access to this electronic evidence, wherever it happens to be located, in order to fight serious
crime and terrorism."
IMO, that overview doesn't make it sound likely that the CLOUD Act could be used to invalidate what the UK is doing. In other words, the CLOUD Act was not created to increase protections against data requests.
"The United States enacted the CLOUD Act to speed access to electronic information held by U.S.-
based global providers that is critical to our foreign partners’ investigations of serious crime,
ranging from terrorism and violent crime to sexual exploitation of children and cybercrime. Our
foreign partners have long expressed concerns that the mutual legal assistance process is too
cumbersome to handle their growing needs for this type of electronic evidence in a timely
manner. The assistance requests the United States receives often seek electronic information
related to individuals or entities located in other countries, and the only connection of the
investigation to the United States is that the evidence happens to be held by a U.S.-based global
provider. The CLOUD Act is designed to permit our foreign partners that have robust protections
for privacy and civil liberties to enter into executive agreements with the United States to obtain
access to this electronic evidence, wherever it happens to be located, in order to fight serious
crime and terrorism."
IMO, that overview doesn't make it sound likely that the CLOUD Act could be used to invalidate what the UK is doing. In other words, the CLOUD Act was not created to increase protections against data requests.
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Wonder if anyone negging this post might like to take the time to constructively discuss the questions?
Wow did I read this correctly? A US govt administration is pushing back on a foreign govt and not letting our American companies get bullied? No that can’t be true
I think this is the first time in years where I saw a headline where our govt is helping our companies.
Well, you may wish to ask the private citizens of North Korea, China, Myanmar and the female population in Iran how things are going even though they outnumber their respective militaries.
Good point, I should have mentioned that this works better in countries that are not already oppressive. I'll remember that the next time I need to explain my comment. But even those countries don't have enough prison space to house every citizen.
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The CLOUD Act was created during the 1st Trump administration to primarily speed up the process for foreign governments seeking access to digital data.
Some countries have laws over what type of data is legal and not. Even in the US. So wanting to have access to your citizens data, maybe, might be, considered somewhat reasonable, when warranted. However, the U.K. wants unfettered access to all of Apple’s users regardless of where they’re based. Which is completely unreasonable, because U.K. laws only apply to U.K. citizens.
I'll let everyone else pore over the particulars here, but I can tell you I'm never going to throw a bouquet in the direction of Tulsi "Russian propaganda, cozy'd up to al-Assad" Gabbard
She may be "wearing our uniform", but, despite that, I'm not at all clear on "whose team she's on"
She may be "wearing our uniform", but, despite that, I'm not at all clear on "whose team she's on"
Partisan politics is a strange beast. People are defending UK's ability to spy on American citizens (and others) because they don't like the current President. Isn't it possible to oppose privacy intrusions regardless of who's intruding?
The current president signed the CLOUD Act during his 1st administration. The stated purpose of the CLOUD Act was to speed up foreign governments access to digital data. So Donald Trump wasn't trying to increase data protections via the CLOUD Act.
“assistance requests” is the key term here.
UK wants to force Apple to insert a back door to allow unfettered access to all users data - across the entire world. Without the need to make a request from the government of that user’s country.
The issue was that UK users data might be stored on Apple’s servers in the US. This act was to “force” companies like Apple to honor requests from foreign agencies.
The alternative would be for the UK to force companies to store data on local servers, like some other countries do.
Withdrawing affected services from the UK market would be my idealistic approach. But Apple is under constant pressure to keep growing revenues, profits, etc. so they can't afford to play hardball on this.
We also have to keep in mind the huge question mark hanging over the Google default search deal that has the potential to leave Apple chasing a big pile of lost services revenue. This makes it even harder for Apple to take a strong ethical stance against government overreach.
The best thing concerned UK citizens can do for themselves is withdraw from services affected by the ending of ADP. Plenty of Apple cloud services are still E2EE... for now at least - so you don't have to go cold turkey. But keep in mind, the UK has it sights very much set on things like Messages and WhatsApp in the next round of battle against encryption.
Would you be the one to explain to the shareholders, who only care about infinite growth, that Apple are pulling out of the 2nd most populated European country who have a higher than average iOS market share rather than simply pulling a software feature?
What a great idea. Throw a hissy fit and punish all Apple users in the UK for the actions of their government. Maybe they should ban all sales in Europe as well. I’m glad you’re not running Apple as they would be bankrupt in a month.
I don't think many people use ADP. I'm only one that does in my friend/family group. Doesn't seem to have much mattered much in the UK:
Apple’s UK Privacy Fight Is Noble But Shortsighted
If the tech giant hopes that killing encryption will cause public upset and deter other governments, it’s probably wrong.
www.bloomberg.com
Banning the Google search deal would be good for Apple users. It would force Apple to build their own search engine (or buy one of the shelf) finally bringing some much needed competition to the search engine market.
Apple could easily make up the shortfall by selling ads on their own search engine.