Apple Caved

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I also have an Android and iPhone. It seems like I’ll have to switch from iCloud to self-hosting.

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Apple did not cave

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

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America can't legally spy on its own people

The UK can

And the UK is in an intelligence cooperation with America

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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?

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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?

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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.

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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.

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Exactly why we must shift from privacy to control, power.

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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.

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I agree that I was confused at first, until I remembered that any of the coalition countries (7 eyes?) has access to anything secret, they share with others that don't.

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Saying “fuck you” would be more like “we’re no longer selling devices in uk and iCloud won’t work anymore”

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@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.

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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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...edited but kept a note, it was bugging me.

I remember that case, yeah apple does some good here. I remember 404media running a story about iphones rebooting preventing unlock recently( 1 and 2 ).
I guess you really don't want any present established for that.

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In the West, we’re told our system is superior even if it fails to deliver any tangible progress, because we have free speech and privacy. Yet, while people in China flourish as our standard of living continues to egress, turns out the whole free speech argument was hollow all along. Irony, anyone?

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You’re right. I could never convince my mates. Their typical response “I have nothing to hide, they already have my data”

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This is frightening.

They do not have the ability to just remove e2e back-ups in the UK alone and walk away from this, that's not how the law is written as I understand it.

The snooper's charter gives the UK government the RIGHT to DEMAND access to encryption keys of any user GLOBALLY. The law is that they can force the cooperation of Apple to decrypt the account of an American user, of a German user, of a Russian user, of a South African user, of a Brazilian user, of a Japanese user who have never stepped foot in the UK.

So they're claiming that this protects their users, that they haven't complied but the only way to avoid complying with these secret gag orders for compromising encryption GLOBALLY at the demand of the UK government is to remove themselves entirely from the jurisdiction of the UK. Is to remove all executives and technical personnel from UK soil, to not hire such people who live in or are citizens of the UK as technical personnel as they could be gag ordered and compelled to cooperate. To basically entirely pull out of any presence but maybe storefronts in the UK and take steps to prevent the arrest and pressuring of their executives and key technical people with access from being subject to UK coercion.

That they haven't done that means all users globally are still at risk. This may be a big PR stunt to convince people they haven't caved when in fact they have in secret and will hand over data of global users to the UK which shares it via eyes agreements with the US, with France, Australia, etc. This has the added benefit of allowing the UK to keep such access secret by acting annoyed with Apple but not actually pressing any case. If they try and actually prosecute or pressure Apple that's a sign that they haven't cooperated globally, if they only offer angry words to the press IMO that's a sign that in secret they've given access globally and only informed UK users that their cloud data isn't protected.

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Oh now that does it, of course local storage is superior!

Gentlemen, set up your Z3JhcGhlbmVPUw== duress passwords

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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.

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But then wouldn't this be "Apple prevents UK and 7 Eyes nations from spying on citizens?"

People in the UK are out of luck but the whole reason they're turning off encryption there is to prevent governments from having a backdoor into their service.

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Apple Caved