Only the US is allowed to backdoor every company globally! /s
There is no backdoor in Apple’s encryption. That’s the reason the US and UK governments have prosecuted Apple repeatedly. They can obtain iCloud data with a warrant, but are repeatedly pressing for real-time surveillance. The UK banned encryption without a backdoor, so Apple turned off encryption rather than compromising their standard.
The funny thing is, advanced data protection was optional, and not on by default. Apple just stopped offering it in the UK
https://support.apple.com/en-us/108756
When it’s enabled, they can’t access iCloud data at all, even with a warrant due to the fact it’s E2E with keys they don’t control. That’s what the UK got really mad about. But Apple shut the whole feature down for the UK in response to the backdoor ask.
It’s not different from the UK banning signal because it’s E2E encrypted and they can’t access it.
They’re likely only backing down now because of consumer/media backlash
Apple would need to supply the data if they had the encryption key right? So can we assume that even Apple cannot see the encrypted data?
Correct, standard iCloud data is accessible with a warrant. But the UK wanted their own backdoor so they have constant access without a warrant.
But with advanced data protection, Apple can’t provide the data because they don’t have the encryption keys, regardless of a warrant.
Important to note iMessage is always E2E encrypted though, so iMessages cannot be accessed even with a warrant. Advanced data protection just expands that to all iCloud data
Using iMessage with backups does mean the backups are unencrypted and accessible by warrant (unless you use advanced data protection)
Ah yes, that’s true as well
Okay interesting, thank you for the info.
Who even uses iMessage these days? Pretty sure I turned it off completely because it was messing with the 5 SMS I send in a year …
iMessage is far more common in the US afaik. Whereas most people elsewhere will use WhatsApp or whatever, nobody in my extended family uses anything but iMessage to communicate
Ah, yeah right, the US is still stuck in the 00s with that (and payment methods).
But iMessage doesn’t work on Android and by default the message will just fail if they have an Android phone and you use iMessage.
Out of my 10 most recent client contacts, only one has used SMS. The rest are all iMessage.
Sure, that’s anecdotal. But I’m in the UK and this is my experience.
There
areexistmany, manybackdoors. Dont be naïveSource?
“Trust me bro” or “do your own research”.
The burden of proof is on the person making the claims - and as they haven’t backed it up with sources, I’d say it’s bullshit.
Snowden, historical documents about CIA, info from Chinese and Russian intelligence
I didn’t think any of that was backdoors. That was the government snooping on unencrypted communications.
None of those substantiated the existence of an Apple-made back door.
These things you write, they are not in any way substantiation of the claim that Apple doesn’t make backdoors.
That’s because it’s categorically impossible to prove a negative.
In theory you can learn mind reading from some fantasy universe and check every Apple person. Or ask a crystal ball. Or use some other way to collect full information about our universe, check every rabbit hole, so to say, and then confidently confirm “there’s no Apple backdoor here”. “Here” meaning this plane of existence.
In practice yes.
EDIT: Forgot - the “refused to cooperate” and “they have disagreements” things even in daily wisdom don’t change the probability of Apple having made backdoors. It’s PR. You most likely won’t learn it from the news if they do, in fact, cooperate.
Even in your made up scenario it doesn’t prove the negative. Maybe your mind reading didn’t work because Apple has a mind wiping device that made them forget. Maybe the crystal ball didn’t work because Apple made an even more powerful “crystal ball blocking” device. You can’t prove that’s not what’s really happening.
So no, you in fact can’t prove a negative.
With that additional detail in possibilities it’s also not possible to ever fully prove a positive.
My example was with an assumption that you have the full information. Hypothetically.
I’m not claiming they don’t. I’m pointing out the absurdity of calling somebody out for not doing the impossible.
I didn’t say “prove”, I used another word with bigger allowance. Of “likely backdoors vs likely not” kind. I wanted to say that their “public” conflicts with governments and their statements of the “trust us, we won’t sell you” kind are all worth nothing, because being caught lying won’t cost them anything.
What WOULD you consider evidence of them not having backdoors, then?
( ͡° ͜つ ͡°)╭∩╮ UK
Feck you too, I guess. If that’s how you want to behave.
I could understand you being unhappy with our government, but just blanket swearing at all 68 million of us is a dick move.
Are you the UK? No, you’re someone who lives there. The UK is a state.
Dude identifes as a country
New gender just dropped
Let’s not even get into the legitimacy of a state calling itself “The UK of GB and NI” when they’d have a tough time proving NI is entirely onboard
That’s just every country, isn’t it? Seems like most of Spain has separatist movements; Provence and Brittany and Burgundy retain their sub-national identities; probably some in Tobago want to split from Trinidad. If Northern Ireland joined Eire no doubt the Loyalists would start clamouring to reverse that.
A lot of GB isn’t either, to be fair.
It should be renamed to, London plus all surrounding bits of land that we don’t care about. It’s a bit of a mouthful but it would be a more accurate name
“brevity is the soul of wit”
~Shakespeare
“Um actually, wit is actually a subjective phenomenon, with everyone having a different idea of what it actually means. How could such a construct actually possess a ‘soul’? And that’s not even getting started on the assertion that souls actually exist in any real way”.
~Obinice
I could be wrong but I don’t think s/he was being serious
They should allow a backdoor, but only on UK Parliament members’ phones.
Could add cameras in their homes and work, so we can monitor them 24/7 with AI.
I’ve got a mate who’s a delivery driver, his employer has a cab cam watching him all the time. We are employing these MPs, same principle.
By the way, nobody is forced to become a politician, so yes.
UK keeps forgetting that it’s just a little country now. It can’t play the big boy games like the EU and US any more.
You basically summed up the UK in a sentence. People here genuinely think we either are, or should be a world power like America.
Then git yer ass out there and start taking over countries. Greenland is up for grabs, I hear. Maybe invade Argentina from Falklands.
- We’re friends with the Danes and don’t wanna piss of the EU any more than we already have.
- The last time we took over loads of countries, we committed so many attrocities. Like we made the Nazis look like pussy cats. Barack Obama wouldn’t have a bust of Churchill in his office because his father was tortured in a concentration camp set up under him.
The “big boys” were all pussies over sending western tanks and long range missiles to Ukraine, the UK was the first. There are very few things we can be proud of these days. But that is one of them.
The whole having a backdoor to encryption is bullshit, that defeats the entire point.
I do understand that they want some kind of control on things like encryption, since criminals/terrorist/etc can abuse it as well. Keeping society safe is kinda important, and some level of transparency is used for that. This like deposited annual reports for example will help find companies/people funding terrorism.
But we should never completely compromise the privacy of individuals
They want a backdoor to your emails while terrorism has been clear as day and they still haven’t done anything about it in Gaza.
UK is becoming a shit show very fast, this right after OSA.
It’s maybe the time to block the UK from the internet and leave them “be safe” alone.
Ask them for a backdoor to their wives for “national security”
They might agree.
