I don't think the UK government would try to put Apple out of business if they don't comply it's more likely that they would just get heavily fined until they do so.
The most likely outcome, I would guess, is that Apple just stop offering Advanced Data Protection as a service in the UK rather than create some kind of backdoor.
It's a weak proposition from the government because anyone with something to hide will just move it somewhere else with encryption. Honest UK consumers are the one's getting the shitty end of the stick because we're about to loose protection from criminals.
You're assuming that turning off ADP in the U.K. is sufficient to appease the British Government. The Investigatory Powers Act can also be interpreted to give the U.K. the right to ask for encrypted data from users outside of the U.K. (see Apple making this exact point in a filing here [1].) Turning off ADP in the U.K. doesn't end the controversy if that's what's at stake.
It creates a nasty precedent doesn't it? If Apple can provide the UK government with foreign data, what's to stop Russia or China making them provide data on UK minister's phones, or more likely dissidents in exile? I can't see on what basis the government thinks they're going to get to be exceptional here?
It's also worth noting that one of the ways the five eyes get around domestic spying laws is to spy on each other's citizens. So the CIA spy on British citizens the UK government want to spy on, and GCHQ spy on American citizens the US government want to spy on. So this would indirectly allow the US government to spy on US citizens (even more than it already does, anyway)
True. The data taken can end up anywhere, and where it came from is obscured. Too much circumventing of laws or purposefully violating the privacy and human rights of one's own citizens, even for profit.
This is a fun theory that I've heard repeatedly, but with no evidence. Is there any indication that this is actually legal and happening? I have friends who work in the space that tell me that it's neither.
Actually my takeaway from the Snowden leaks was that the government tried really hard to stay within the confines of the law, even if they wildly stretched the legal theory to get there.
Doesn’t justify what they were doing, or make it legal, but it’s an important distinction when trying to reason about government surveillance programs.
But this is true, right? The whole movement is based on their legal theory giving them rights to behave in a certian way, and the idea that everyone else wastes that 'right' through ignorance and state manipulation. It's dumb, but not dishonest.
Let's consider it through a personal example. Suppose you are on a call rotation, and agree that the on-call engineer can wake you up at 4AM, but only if it's really important, and that the matter at hand has to involve some knowledge that you have, but didn't put on the wiki. Later, you are woken up at 4AM to discuss the results of a football game, and when challenged your coworker defends that they upheld their end of the bargain. They claim that it wasn't specified who it had to be important to, and that once you had been told who won, you had knowledge related to the call that you hadn't put on the wiki.
Would a fair manager consider them as having broken the agreement, or as having tried really hard to comply with the rules?
I would call that wanting plausible deniability (in a different sense than how the phrase is normally used). "Yes we may have a done a bad thing but we believed it was allowed."
You don't have to have a sound legal theory that will hold up in court. You just have to have a sound bite that you can vomit up when someone says "Wait a minute, isn't that blatantly illegal?"
At least in the context of the presidential surveillance program, the ACLU did sue to make them stop. But the program was classified which made getting evidence of the program's existence a crime. The supreme court ruled that they couldn't make a decision without evidence. Shortly after, Snowden leaked the evidence the supreme court had requested. That leak provided the ACLU the evidence necessary to bring the case back to the supreme court and win, "stopping" the program.
It’s in air quotes for a reason. Obama ran on promises to end it and protect whistleblowers like Snowden. Then he kept it alive under new branding and doubled down on vilifying whistleblowers like Snowden.
I'm no historian or otherwise an expert but someone told me that secret services exist almost independent from the government that spawned them and that some even continue to exist after the government is gone. (I forget the examples) The point being that it serves itself first and may act to benefit other parties. (The status quo) The government or the citizens may end up further down the list than imagined.
One of the worst presidents the US has had in at least the last 50 years and he was held up as a champion by the left. Expanded the black sites programs, supported some of the worst foreign conflicts the US has been involved in, somehow was elected twice.
I don't think this word means what you think it means. More importantly, nor do Democratic politicians or self-identified leftists in general. Lumping them all together and equating the revolutionary Communist with the status quo corporatist Democrat is a Fox News thing.
A less extreme self-identity, the "progressives", were bemoaning Obama and his attachment to "hyper-timid incrementalist bullshit" from Clinton's lobbyist-friendly Third Way agenda, as early as 2008. Yes he was a break from the tortured logic and abuses of power that were standard for Bush; Obama was the compromise candidate that was acceptable to progressives and who (positively) did have designs to build a halfway functional healthcare system.
But it seems that that trendline which spent eight years defending some rather insane behavior by the Bush Administration, was not (and is not) finished. We ratchet ever rightwards.
A very large and very public impact on Obama's foreign policy (which is not what he ran on) involved trying to defend himself against constant criticism from a right-wing media machine, which is why it was in large part defined by rightwards-reaching compromises between our foreign policy in 2008, and people like McCain who wanted to start bombing Iran immediately, or people like Greg Abbott who wanted to start shooting at immigrants immediately. What surprised him was that this drew no support. See also: SCOTUS & Garland.
People calling themselves "leftists" and "socialists" today in large part stood up out of dissatisfaction with Obama and the establishment Democrats, and formed a social consciousness during the campaign of Bernie Sanders.
I would say you don't know what "the left" means either, insofar as I don't believe the common use of the word today or then to describe "progressives" was as a loanword for socialism. I don't even think most Americans know what socialism really is, given they're often spotted fawning over the Nordic Model as a proud example, Bernie included, which has nothing to do with socialism. We also have a party called "the Left" here in Denmark, which has nothing to do with the American left in common use today.
It's all entirely relative and contextual. Your definition is the outlier. Not mine.
You've written a few colorful paragraphs that fail to attack my point that he was a terrible US president.
I don't really care (and you shouldn't either) whether Obama's foreign policy was defensive. It was bad foreign policy, period. And that's on him and the American people who voted him into power. Americans owe much of the US' poor foreign posture today to him and his administration.
My point is that most American leftists don't think he was a great president either.
_Especially_ after he put his foot on the scale in the 2020 primaries, orchestrating a behind-closed-doors pressure campaign to sharply unify the party's politicians and favorable media around Biden, in order to defeat Sanders.
Along with the drone war and a few other things, it's part of the package of insults that drove a number of people to stop identifying as Democrats or progressives and start identifying as leftists and socialists, which had been largely taboo terminology in the US (and online, "communists", which still is). The only people in the US still widely using "leftist" as an exonym for Democrats are far-right media and their zombie hordes of septuagenarians.
The leftists describe centrist democratic politicians as "liberals" as distasteful pejorative, and the right uses "liberal" as a distasteful pejorative interchangeable with "socialist" and "communist" and "leftist", for anyone and everyone who isn't on the authoritarian ethnonationalist train.
This semantic shift and new leftist discourse has accompanied a slow realization that the things Obama considered politically unachievable given the constraints of the donor class & media environment, were often things with 70% popular support, and 85% popular support among Democrats. That the perception of popularity & professional political support was being wildly warped by corporate/aristocratic power and the GOP political machine. That ranges from socialized medicine to closing Guantanamo to ending wars in the Mideast.
Pure libertarians are no more blindly idealistic than pure anything else. Elegant solutions are attractive, perhaps especially to those working in stem. I once had someone assert to me that the standard model of physics couldn't be true, because it wasn't elegant enough. You could say that was Dunning Kruger, but while they were working in SW, their PHD was in particle physics. Reality doesn't really care what we find elegant it seems. Still that tendency is no worse than pure socialists. Perhaps it is the same tendency even. Real solutions are messy compromises. Trying to refactor an old codebase I worked on taught me that as I added back hacks for all the corner cases a second time to my new elegant design.
Pure revisionism. Obama did not run on that promise, but he shut down the email metadata collection program before it was even leaked and limited and then shut down the phone metadata program after it had leaked. Snowden leaked details of compromised computer systems to China. That's not whistleblowing.
I didn’t start hearing your take, including the bit about “leaking to china,” in the mainstream zeitgeist until many years later.
He leaked an illegal program to the American people after the Supreme Court denied the ACLU a ruling on the classified program.
His leak resulted in a successful lawsuit against the government by the American people where the judges cited Orwell in their ruling.
Snowden was not the first Snowden, there are a handful of people who attempted to use official channels to blow the whistle on the program. Their careers were ruined and their lives destroyed. If Snowden had followed the official protocols to blow the whistle, we wouldn’t know his name today. He’d have lost everything for nothing and ended up working retail to make ends meet like his predecessors.
These are articles from the time referencing promises made and promises broken
Wasn’t this exact route taken? Government got cases dismissed for lack of standing - plaintiff could not prove they were being spied on… because the government wouldn’t reveal anything.
"We're going to sue you to make you stop" is exactly where you deploy the semilegal sound bite. You then use that as the public justification to stall, deny, countersue, delay, appeal, defend, depose and do everything you can to avoid a decision happening one way or the other until you've already gotten and done what you wanted to get and do.
That strategy relies on courts always being slow and expensive though. It often feels like it, but that's not a universal truth of the court system. If the damage is high enough, courts can fast-track cases. Judges can also issue injunctions before the delays start, and if the argument is too flimsy it can backfire on the defendant.
I'll concede that if whoever's being sued is going to rely on secret legal interpretations like the NSA/intelligence agencies did with the FISA court rulings, then it makes things a lot trickier.
>That strategy relies on courts always being slow and expensive though.
It doesn't rely on them being slow and expensive, it forces them to be slow and expensive, or to abrogate your rights as a litigant in such a way that any decision they make will be overturned on appeal (which drags out the process even further). Courts can issue injunctions, and those injunctions can be appealed, dragging things out further. If the damage is high enough courts can fast track cases but what do you do about the 99.99% of cases where the damage isn't high enough, and who gets to decide when it is? If this doesn't work why does it keep working?
Right, but the point is they went through the motions to attempt to follow the law. They weren't simply saying someone else was doing the work and then doing it themselves. They at least attempt to follow the law internally. Which is not something we knew for certain or not in the public.
> They at least attempt to follow the law internally.
What you are describing are successful attempts to subvert the law, avoid letting know they are subverting the law, and carefully crafted legal defenses in case they have to fight the real law’s enforcement.
That isn’t remotely what trying to follow the law looks like. It shows no respect for what the writers of the laws meant or the law’s purpose.
It shows no good faith attempts to firewall legal interpretation from parties interested in stretching the law. Blatant legal corruption used as a standard process.
It demonstrates no honest or genuine curiosity for collaborating on legal interpretations with other relevant constituencies.
Relevant constituencies for good faith legal interpretation include the law’s writers, the legislatures who passed the law, the courts who are ground truth for interpretation, a wider audience of constitutional experts in the executive branch beyond limited specific lawyers chosen to stretch the law, or citizens.
Didn’t these leaks precisely show that the agencies were effectively above the law? I mean, they tried to make it look like they were abiding by the regulations, but effectively tried every work around they could come up with. Including subcontracting domestic spying to foreign intelligence agencies, using the exact mechanism the parent mentioned? It seems you’re contradicting them by making their point.
There is an important distinction between blatant disregard for the law like you would see in authoritarian countries and this trying to twist the letter of the law into allowing something that it wasn’t intended to allow. Both are bad of course, but the latter shows some fear of the checks and balances. Being nefarious is much more expensive if you fear the courts, and have to spend time and effort circumventing it. Trumps recent behavior shows none of this fear of the courts. Even if the courts overturn the executive orders, much of the damage has already been done.
That doesn't mean they care about the law, it just means that they care about maintaining the public perception that they care about the law. They're perfectly happy to keep up the pretense as long as they can still get what they want anyway, even if they have to add a couple extra inconvenient steps to the process. What they won't do is allow the law to stop them from getting what they want.
It is still a good thing that they had to spend so many extra resources hiding. It means at least some of the checks and balances were imposing a cost on bad behavior.
Why are you using Russia and China as examples of the bad guys here. They're not asking for global access to everyones data, the UK is. The UK are the bad guys.
Why did you assume the context was "bad guys?" It's a well-known fact that there's a lot of geopolitical tension between Russia/China and Western Europe. The comment is raising the point that by setting this precedent they are opening the doors for their geopolitical rivals to publicly do the same (we already know it happens through private state-sponsored cyber gangs).
I read it as using Russia and China as the other guys, rather than the bad guys. The idea is to eliminate any pre-existing feelings of trust and illustrate the fact that once your data is held by anyone in the global intelligence community you should think of it as being held by everyone in the global intelligence community.
Whatever you think of their politics, they are authoritarian in structure. There are fewer restrictions on what those governments can do with the information. I’m not saying anyone should trust the UK government here, but it’s easier to see the risks in a country that doesn’t have to be accountable to the people or the legal system.
I dont think that is actually true in those cases.
Relations with China were pretty cosy till they did a 180 around the second Bush administration and started all that Wolf Warrior diplomacy, 9 dotted line stuff, Hongkong crackdowns.......
Regarding Russia, nobody really cared at all till it was absolutely impossible to ignore. Putin seems to think that he needs the west as an enemy to bolster his standing and power. Just remember after starting the full scale invasion he proudly declared "I hope I will now be heard" or something to that effect. In Russian mass media the imperial project has long been clear and accepted.
I was pretty sure there was a flipflop in the book too, though. Where the narrator reported now being at war with whomever, and that they had always been at war with that party.
Sure, but the parent comment was aimed at the western side and not at the Russians. The West did everything it could to ignore and deny Russians growing hostility because it would have been inconvenient and maybe it would go away somehow.
> Relations with China were pretty cosy till they did a 180 around the second Bush administration and started all that Wolf Warrior diplomacy, 9 dotted line stuff, Hongkong crackdowns.......
No, relations with China were warm right up through the end of the Obama administration and into Trump's first term. That's why the first approach China took to the Biden administration was to hope for straightforward normalization of relations.
China started issuing 10-year visas to Americans under Obama. The Wolf Warrior movies, after which the policy is named, started coming out in 2015.
That's a... unique take. You might want to check out the Century of Humiliation. [1] The one thing you do have right is that "good relations" in contemporary times seem to translate into "completely subservient, even to point of a willingness to engaging in self detrimental behavior if demanded." What happened around the second Bush administration was that China no longer had to be subservient, because their economy started booming, and so they could stand up for their own basic interests. One of the very few things they've pushed for is relative autonomy alongside Taiwan, which is even part of an agreement we ostensibly agree to, while then working to undermine that relationship in every way possible. You are either subservient or an enemy. Hegemony in a nutshell.
The same is largely true of Russia as well. Far from wanting the US as an enemy, Putin even inquired about joining NATO in the Clinton era. I'm sure there were some snickers about 'he doesn't get it, does he'? In fact the CIA initially felt Putin would be a terrible leader since he'd be unable to reign in Russia which was spiraling into chaos and mass criminality in the 90s. Their foresight there was about as accurate as usual.
We are talking post 2000s here. What are you referring to with "completely subservient, even to point of a willingness to engaging in self detrimental behavior if demanded." ?
The notion that China is somewhat entitled to dominate its neighbors because it had a bad run 1-2 centuries ago is a bit silly.
and who exactly are we to dictate what a 5000 years old country and civilisation gets to do when we literally fund the mass murder of an entire group of people because it's "God's Promise" ?
The point is that nobody, certainly not the US, cares about things like territorial integrity or 'human rights.' Recent events have caused the US to have to completely drop the facade, which is in many ways a good thing (even if the situation in question is catastrophic and in no way good). It's all just a pretext to the expansion of power and influence. In the case of Taiwan the history of the country is important. The "Republic of China" was a nationalist force that overthrew dynastic China and eventually managed to unify the country in 1927. They were themselves then overthrown in 1949 by the CCP. Their leadership and forces fled to Taiwan (which was already a part of China), and overthrew the local forces there. The CCP did not pursue them beyond that and so the Civil War ended there.
The Republic of China then tried to gain international recognition as an independent nation but, to this day, basically nobody recognizes them as such. And eventually this led to the emergence of the 'one country, two systems' where China would allow some basic autonomy to the province, yet it would remain a part of China. This was accepted by most of the world, including the US. While simultaneously we then did (and are doing) absolutely everything possible to ensure the emergence of a new civil war in the region. It's not at all because we care about Taiwan (beyond it being in a strategically useful location), but primarily to weaken and destabilize China.
Look, China is a big boy and responsible for its own actions. Taiwan has been an autonomous and sovereign entity for many generations. If China invades Taiwan there most likely will be war, if not then not.
You can always construct some historical and geographical claims and justifications. Haven't you heard, China is a near Arctic nation now.
Regarding your edited added hegemony aspect. That is only true if you define subservience as curtailing your imperialist ambitions.
When the US was engaged in Afghanistan and Iraq the Bush admin and diplomatic circles floated the idea to get China to take on more responsibility in the South China Sea to help manage those territorial disputes.
After all the US was stretched thin and China had and would gain(ed) so much from the rule based order that surely they would be interested in maintaining the status quo and continue to prosper.
Well, next thing China released a map reaffirming their ridiculous 9 dotted line claims and dashed any hope of a cooperation.
Same way the Soviets wanted to “join” NATO in the 50s. To effectively castrate it and make it ineffective.
It would have been easier for them to politically and economically dominate Eastern European countries from “within”.
> Hegemony in a nutshell
From Chinese and Russian perspective sure. Especially Russian politicians have seen the entire world through an exceptionally imperialist lens for centuries.
On the other hand the US has probably been the most “benign” hegemony (relative to their power) in history (still a hegemony of course).
One of the ways the great empires of old learned to create sustainable empires was by giving an exceptional degree of freedom and liberty to those under their control. The US has not been benign in any way shape or form, but what we have done is become the first empire whose borders are not de jure defined, but instead de facto - driven by extreme behind the scenes influence, manipulation, and violence when necessary.
I lose track of exactly how many countries we dominate, but Wiki gives "at least 81 overt and covert known interventions in foreign elections" with another study offering "64 covert and six overt attempts at regime change". [1] Those were both after WW2, and these are only verified "incidents." And this has been paired alongside endless wars, often on completely false pretext, that have led to the deaths of millions and the displacement of what has likely been hundreds of millions. The recent revelations of US AID are also interesting where a ridiculous chunk of "independent media" worldwide seems to largely be a branch of the US intelligence services.
To call this "benevolent" is of course absurd. It's just a new form of imperialistic hegemony, through any and all perspectives. The only asterisk comes in the fact that since it's based on subterfuge instead of in your face stuff, some people remain mostly ignorant to the ways of the world - I suspect especially so amongst those in the US and without a passport.
> Regarding Russia, nobody really cared at all till it was absolutely impossible to ignore.
Regarding Russia, people have cared since the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. The fear of communism and concerns about Russia grew until the red scare in the 1920s, through the cold war, and continues to do this day. There has never been a single point in your life when "nobody really cared at all" about Russia.
America's concerns over Russia died down a lot from what it was after the collapse of the USSR but never really went away. That said, if Putin hadn't been doing his best to fan the flames America would probably still be focused on the middle east as their new favorite boogeyman.
That was USA scorched Vietnam.
That was USA killing civilians in Iraq and Afganistan.
That was USA overthrowing foreign goverments, including Ukrainian...
And then it preached to Russia on what to do with neighboring states...
USA did a lot of nasty things. But since WW2, it did not invade other countries with explicit intent to annex them and forcibly assimilate their population.
Simply because that has bad optics. We "invade countries" on a regular basis, just not with tanks and battleships, and not to annex them or take their citizens but to get what we want out of them without having to do those messy things.
I'm 100% for my country but we do pull some shifty shit then scream to the heavens when somebody else does the same thing.
Nobody said that it's okay. But there are degrees of evil, and there's clearly one here. The guys who come, drop bombs on you, and leave again are bad, but the guys who come and drop bombs on you and then stay and imprison you and erase your entire culture by force are obviously worse.
> But since WW2, it did not invade other countries with explicit intent to annex them and forcibly assimilate their population.
True but the current lunatic POTUS is essentially threatening that to 2 territories (Canada, Greenland), making noises towards part of a 3rd (Panama), and explicitly calling for ethnic cleansing in a 4th (Gaza). I think the USA's "we're not as bad as Russia" sheen is rapidly disappearing (which makes sense when you consider the two lunatics at the top are essentially considered to be Putin lackeys.)
No dispute that he’s talking a lot of nonsense, but don’t rule out that he is bluffing in a major way with all of this stuff in hopes it will help him to win various concessions. If they can be convinced that Trump genuinely might roll in on an Abrams, pave Gaza from one side to the other, and fill it with Trump casinos, he thinks, then the parties will be more open to making a deal that isn’t ludicrous but is still painful to both sides (as a compromise must be).
Note that I don’t believe it is a genius 4D chess move, or a particularly well executed version of the strategy. But just because his pronouncements are so ridiculous and impractical, and just plain offensive, and just because he’s an idiot, that still doesn’t mean it’s not a bluff.
Gaza has nothing with which to do a deal. So far as I can see, which admittedly isn't necessarily all that far, the only parties there that have any meaningfully influential levers to pull are Israel (whose current (unpopular) leader is welcoming this) and Egypt (who have the Suez canal).
(I don't think anyone outside the region is sufficiently motivated to care, though now I think about it I wonder if Iran could buy a nuke or ten from either Russia or North Korea? If so, or indeed if anyone else in the area can, they also become relevant).
Caveat for all of this: I'm guessing wildly on that and you shouldn't take this as deeper than armchair/pub talk.
> All that supplying Hamas with weapons and Syria stuff, going back to backing Egypt in 20 century attacks on Israel, shows at least Russia cares
Could be, but Russia is currently grinding itself to exhaustion on a fraction of the discretionary budget of NATO countries that are also going "hmm, we can't trust the US any more either, and need to build up our own stockpile…", so I don't see them as being strong enough to be relevant — except by selling nukes.
I rather suspect that violations of that particular treaty will be taken very very seriously, something along the lines of the White House saying: "We know Russia sold them to Iran, we're going going to count any Iranian use of them as if Russia used them itself. Tehran nukes our friends in Tel Aviv, means we nuke Moscow." (North Korea, being much smaller and acting like it's constantly under threat from everywhere, might not see any novel risk).
But perhaps that wouldn't be a problem, even for Russia — fait accompli has a way of changing things, and a nuclear armed Iran might make Israel call for international oversight and join the ICC even at the expense of throwing Netanyahu under the metaphorical bus.
Yeah, on this one I can only speculate on the real-life endgame Trump imagines he's going to negotiate using this bluff. Maybe he thinks the Arab countries like Jordan could be convinced to demand of Hamas that they stand down in general. Although I certainly don't see either that demand, nor compliance with it, happening.
Yeah, but until American troops are actually in Greenland, Panama, etc., comparing this country to Russia is nuts.
Trump, even in his most incandescently orange rage, STILL doesn't make as many nuclear threats as Putin does. He certainly has been unable to imitate Putin domestically.
One of the big differences between the USA and Russia, is that the US doesn't actually need to annex a country to get what it wants. The US historically acts on behalf of US owned businesses so they can extract mineral and fossil fuel wealth which is funnelled colonial era style back into the US economy. There is no need to plant a flag when it is cheaper and more efficient to achieve the same effect with Chevron.
Using diplomacy and business is good because it leads to LESS DEATH. And anyone can use it. Especially Moscow which had a ton of influence in post soviet space. It was free to be nice and negotiate with Ukraine and get policies good for both but it decided it's beneath it.
It's a choice not a "need". It's a revealing choice. Implying Russia "needed" to annex a country is very revealing too. Like if they don't have enough land and or resources already. You know how sparsely populated it is?
"Need" is obviously being used to refer to capability to execute interests here, and not requirement for survival. The US didn't need to have the cia help oust the Australian government in the 80s, nor did it need to install sympathetic governments across south America for the sake of its mineral companies, but it did it anyway. Russia does not have international mineral businesses with the capability to operate in these places in the same way the US does. Ethics of death only comes into it insofar as if the US did claim territory, it suddenly becomes responsible for the well being of the people living there, which it avoids by privatising the exploitation.
This is ridiculous. Someone with an actual, literal boot on their neck will hear your spiel about exploitation and laugh as much as they can manage.
The US is a state, and like all states it's a sociopath. The reason it's better than others is because it resorts to force later and less often than other states.
It is unironically better this way; your argument implies that having robust systems of law, transnational corporations, and global trade are somehow just as bad as a war of conquest.
They are not in any of those today, but a very recent history suggests they might be only if the government is serious enough to achieve the goals stated by Trump.
Their troops were in fact in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Serbia...
This does not excuse the atrocities and conquest as performed by Russia, while it's true USA does worry about optics much more (i.e. their presence in Serbia was a lot more toned down than in Iraq or Afghanistan, as Serbia is a European "culture" similar to the rest of Europe).
US go-to is "liberating" a territory, which is — interestingly — the same excuse Russia is using in Eastern parts of Ukraine (and which is why it's likely working with most of their own population, obviously helped with media control).
Thing is, when we look at countries that are "liberated" by US in this day and age, they don't look like US puppet states long-term. Look at Iraq for a prime example.
Russia OTOH did indeed use the "liberate" rhetoric wrt Ukraine, but at this point it made it clear that it intends to annex all territory that it can occupy.
It should be noted that the word "liberate" in a military context has a very long history in Russian war propaganda specifically, which is a big reason why they keep using it. It is an immediate call-out to WW2, which has a near-religious status in Russia, but even beyond that, e.g. the 1939 partition of Poland with the Nazis and annexation of West Ukraine and Belarus was also described as "liberation" then.
Are you the speaker for the majority of the population?
Or is that claim based on the election results, in a state where opposition leaders, journalists, war critics, or even simple lesbians get jailed for said “crimes”?
If majority opposed the war, it would be shameful to support it in public.
Think about it. Autocracy argument here is not relevant: you are not punished for being silent. But if you knew all the neighbors around you oppose something, you'd be ashamed to support it publicly. People are social creatures, and the fear of being rejected by your kind is deeply ingrained in everyone.
Yet, we see people with their real names and pictures support the war on social media. We see kids in Z swag on the streets. We see people signing up and participating in stealing/rapping/torturing/murdering.
If the majority opposes the war, then how come over 1 million already willingly signed up? They were not forced. Aren't they afraid of being judged by their neighbors? Are those 1 million sociopaths? Just statistically this doesn't add up.
So yeah, I'd suggest you drop your silly LLM argument, and go outside your bubble (I conclude you are in russia).
>Yet, we see people with their real names and pictures support the war on social media.
Mostly bots, minor officials, public sector employees and their relatives (they are forced to publish pro-war materials on their and their relatives social media under the threat of losing their jobs)
>If the majority opposes the war, then how come over 1 million already willingly signed up?
That's less than 1 percent. And keep in mind that to get that one percent, they are paid about 20x the average region salary every month.
>and go outside your bubble
Judging by your arguments, you are not in a bubble, you are directly broadcasting Putin's propaganda about popular support. And this is at a time when, to get his agenda in media, Putin has to sentence people to real prison terms not even for posts with condemnation of war on social media, but even for likes under such posts.
New insult unlocked: indirectly suggest my debate partner's arguments are so simplistic and low-quality that they must be generated by an LLM, which I attempt to exploit with a simple jailbreak.
It was in fashion quite long ago on Twitter, after people broke real russian propaganda bots with this (you know, the ones who posed as Americans or Europeans supporting russia, etc.).
Interesting, I'd never heard of this. Anecdotally, I happen to be an American who's very understanding of Russia's response to the the Euromaidan protests in 2014, in which the CIA more or less staged a Jan 6th in Ukraine to coup the legitimately elected government and install what was functionally a US puppet government - one that treated ethnic minorities within the southern and eastern regions of Ukraine about the same way that the ATF treated the Branch Davidians. This is context that is part and parcel of understanding why Putin invaded, which is key if we wish to avoid the suffering, death, and devastation of war in the future. All of that loss is for nothing if society does not learn the painful lessons in diplomacy it desperately needed that might have prevented the war.
I'm not stating that Russia is justified, nor am I suggesting that you should believe them to be.
It's an ugly response with deadly ramifications to an ugly first move with deadly ramifications made by the US government.
This isn't out of character for the US government either, to be clear. The CIA is the premier global expert on covert, astroturfed regime change, after all. Even though we're getting worse at forcing our way of life on foreign populations (Afghanistan, Vietnam), that doesn't negate the dozens of success stories across decades the CIA has under their belt, from the fruit wars in central and south America to illegitimate shahs in Iran... American imperialism is never hard to find.
None of this is true. Yanukovych, the Ukrainian president with strong Russian backing, torpedoed a highly beneficial EU-Ukrainian trade deal under last-minute Russian pressure[1]. Ukrainian youth, who had the most to win from increased trade, employment and studying opportunities, staged a series of mass protest[2]. Yanukovych responded with gradual increase of violence, starting with hired thugs[3] attacking protesters, and culminating with police snipers killing 108 protesters on/around 20 February 2014[4]. That was such a shock that Yanukovych lost all political footing in Ukraine overnight. As he was about to get arrested and criminally tried, he went into hiding. After he was officially declared a wanted fugitive[5], Russian secret services evacuated him to Russia. The very next day after the wave of violence, on 21 February 2014, the Ukrainian parliament assembled and voted unanimously with 328-vs-0 to hold snap elections to find a replacement. Not even a single representative of his own party opposed this. The elections were held on 25 May 2014[6] and the results were recognized by everyone, even by Russia[7].
Calling this chain of events a "CIA coup" is an indication of baffling ignorance of the actual facts. Whoever gave you this "understanding" blatantly lied to you.
Bro you found the most biased news sources on the planet. How about you cite the financial times if this is so clear?
I don't see any evidence that the CIA counciled Ukraine to avoid war. I see a lot of evidence that they'd push for exactly the opposite. Even if they didn't meddle (which is straight unbelievable), they're cackling with happiness that their buffer state went to war.
> in which the CIA more or less staged a Jan 6th in Ukraine to coup the legitimately elected government and install what was functionally a US puppet government
If you start with groundless conspiracy theories it's not surprising where you may end up. The CIA had nothing to do with the revolution of dignity, which was a grassroots protest movement or Ukraines government voting to remove the president after he abandoned the country.
Also Ukraine has had 2 fair and free elections since then (Zelensky beat the incumbent by a landslide) unlike Russia or the parts of the country unfortunate enough to be under their control.
A coup was actually carried out by Russia in crimea. An actual coop where Russian soldiers surrounded the local government at gunpoint
> one that treated ethnic minorities within the southern and eastern regions of Ukraine about the same way that the ATF treated the Branch Davidians.
This is false and shows you have no knowledge of Ukraine or Russia. Zelensky is from a minority group(Jewish) and is a native Russian speaker the current head of the army is an ethnic russian born in Russia.
That's not to mention how Russia treats ethnic minorities or even ethnic Russians in territories they capture
> This is context that is part and parcel of understanding why Putin invaded, which is key if we wish to avoid the suffering, death, and devastation of war in the future.
He invaded because he's an imperialist. It's pretty simple
> All of that loss is for nothing if society does not learn the painful lessons in diplomacy it desperately needed that might have prevented the war.
You're imagining this was Americas fault. The only thing America could have done differently to prevent the war was if they somehow agreed to defend Ukraine or get all NATO members to agree to let them join.
The thing is, most people think that governments wants new tools for surveillance. The fact is, they had this power for a very long time (see Crypto A.G. and history of NSA and others), and practical and verifiable E2EE took these capabilities away.
Now they want their toys back. This is why the push is so hard and coming from everywhere at once.
I think this is an extreme take - they only had those mass surveillance tools since the start of the internet, and any other method of communication (phone calls, physical mail) all required warrants individualized to specific people to tap. But somehow the internet is excluded from all those privacy protections, and now that there’s technology available to ratchet us back to where we used to be, law enforcement agencies are throwing a tantrum about not being able to constantly violate our privacy.
In my mind, it’s pretty simple: if you want to surveil someone, get an individualized warrant to access their devices and data. If they refuse or wipe their data, treat it like destroying evidence in a case and throw the book at them. There’s zero excuse for what law enforcement and intelligence agencies have done to our privacy rights since 9/11.
These (mass surveillance) programs go back to 60s, and it was already prevalent before internet was widespread, also internet was also under blanket surveillance way before. Moreover, this is not only limited to internet per se. Phone calls and any form of unencrypted communications are probably actively monitored for signals intelligence. We're not seeing laws related to this, because mechanisms are probably already in place.
So, I'm keeping my stance of "They want their tools back, because they had them before".
There are very strict laws against wiretapping on calls within the US. Warrants are required before the call can be recorded. That’s why there was so much controversy over blanket metadata collection.
How to achive total pervasive surveillance? One step at a time where each step is not quite too much to cause rioting and revolution. Outrage has a very short attention span.
Option 1: they operate a separate shard in that country and that shared is only accessible by that country. Companies like Apple, AWS, Cloudflare etc. have been doing it this way in China for a while now. Result: they can spy on the stuff in their country, but the only stuff in their country is their own stuff.
Option 2: no longer operate in an official capacity in that country. Have no people and no assets. Mostly works when the country is not a significant market. This usually means some things are only available grey market, black market or not at all. This is why certain products have lists of "supported countries" - it's not just ITAR stuff but also "we don't want to deal with their regime" stuff. Result: country gets nothing, no matter how loud they ask. Side-effect: you can't really risk your employees visiting such a country as they will be "leveraged".
> If Apple can provide the UK government with foreign data, what's to stop Russia or China making them provide data on UK minister's phones, or more likely dissidents in exile?
nothing
the first precedence of not-draft law here was Cloud Act I think
through I would be surprised if China doesn't "de-facto" requires Chineese companies operating outside of China (including Subsidiaries) to cooperate with their secret service in whatever way they want
and if we go back to the "crypto wars" of the ~2000th then there is a lot of precedence of similar law _ideas_ by the US which where turned down
similar we can't say for sure that there aren't secret US court orders which already did force apple to do "something like that" for the FBI or similar, SURE there is a lot of precedence of Apple pushing back against backdoor when it comes to police and offline device encryption, but one thing is in the public and the other fully in secret with gag orders and meant for usage in secret never seeing the light of courts so while it's somewhat unlikely it would be foolish to just assume it isn't the case, especially if we go forward one or two years with the current government...
Anyway UK might realize that now they have left the US they have very little power to force US tech giants to do anything _in the UK_ not even speaking about regulation which is a direct attack on the sovereignty of other states to own/control/decide about their population(s data).
IMHO ignoring the US for a moment because they are in chaos the EU, or at least some key EU states should make a statement that a UK backdoor allowing UK to access EU citizen data would be classified as espionage and isn't permittable if Apple wants to operate in the EU (but formulated to make it clear it's not to put pressure on Apple but on the UK). Sadly I don't see this happening as there are two many politcans which want laws like that, too. Often due to not understanding the implications undermining encryption has on national security, industry espionage and even protection of democracy as a whole... Sometimes also because they are greedy corrupt lobbyist from the industry which produces mass surveillance tools.
There are tangentially similar precedents already, such as the American FACTA law. It is obviously a quite different context, as it just relates to financial information, not all information - but it's a law from the US government, that demands foreign companies send information back to the US.
The wild thing is that foreign companies actually do it. To avoid annoying the US, a lot of other governments ensure that the data is reported.
The US can get away with this through its immense power and economic influence (for the moment, at least). The UK is a small market of middling relevance, and their government's belief that they're a global power is an anachronism. I hope these decisions cause enough companies to break ties that they're forced to realize their position.
The key difference being that it is perfectly legal for the US to request data on income and gains received by US taxpayers while it is illegal for the US to spy (in certain ways) on US residents.
It is completely routine for countries to exchange data on financial accounts [1]. The only aspect that makes FATCA somewhat unusual is that the US taxes US persons even when they are residents of other countries.
Oh 100%, the content (and context) is completely different. The similarity I mean is a government passing a law that asks a foreign company to hand data over to them.
It's legal in the same way this UK thing is legal - because there's a law justifying it. It may make more moral sense, depending on your political persuasion.
> what's to stop Russia or China making them provide data on UK minister's phones, or more likely dissidents in exile?
Realistically: Apple is a US company (with lots of foreign entanglements) with US leaders, and the US and UK are close allies with extradition treaties and the like. I'd expect the US government to put lots of pressure on Apple to prevent it from acting on such requests from Russia or China, and I wouldn't be surprised if Apple execs would get slapped with espionage charges if they didn't head the warnings (especially if they "provide data on UK minister's phones").
We are watching the redefinition of the idea of territorial sovereignty that emerged from the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. We in the US see our expectations of privacy shaped in the UK, and the reverse.
Imagine Kim Jong-un goes to a few police stations in North Korea. It might not work on the first try, but eventually, he manages to trick one officer into believing that Trump threatened him on Facebook. Now, the police of a given country can legally request Apple to provide all information from Trump’s iCloud for an "investigation" into threats of violence— even if they are completely fabricated.
What if Apple just stops operating in the UK? They could start selling "English language" iPhones in France, let people go on a day trip if they wanted to buy them. There are ways of sidestepping this bullshit if you're an international company. Supposing they have any integrity, I mean. How far will the UK double down?
I still don’t think the UK is a big enough market for Apple to be that worried about the following, but if the government and Apple escalate to the point of Apple pulling out of the UK, it would be pretty easy for the government to force all of its telecoms to ban any new iPhones from their mobile networks. So the citizens will probably not get to simply walk right around the restrictions that way, assuming the government is serious about this.
Given the desperation for economic growth in the UK, the idea that they would inflict such a massive bit of self harm on themselves over increased spying options is frankly ludicrous.
Why not. Their hegemony is used as a weapon of war, since 1998 when Microsoft was condemned-but-not-penalized for its monopoly. Make it costly for USA to spy & conquer.
That’s probably the reason apple is resisting. They are currently certified as moderately trust worthy for government operations in Germany. Giving in would invalidate that.
They might have to settle for it. The power of a government is not equal to what legislation they pass - they are heavily limited by the economic and publicity consequences of decisions.
As such, any outcome where this is enforced will be a compromise.
Give me that sort of commitment to privacy and translucent colorful cases for future Macs and Tim Apple's got my money for the next five years at least.
Give Apple a big enough incentive to negotiate with and they may very well cave. If I've learned anything about corporations, it's that money and incentives always speak louder than their purported values.
this isn't apple weighing ethics against revenue. this is apple being forced to decide how much their pro-privacy marketing is really getting them in the market.
I bought the Ubuntu phone. The phone was nice, but there were bareley any apps, and the maps app only worked online, which was useless outside of my home country. A dissapointment overall.
In China, Apple limits end to end encryption and stores user data on state-owned servers. The Chinese app stores censors apps like the New York Times and Washington Post, disallows privacy apps like Signal, or any VPN that might bypass the great firewall.
I think the odds that they quit trying to earn the ~$100B annual revenues they get from the UK over this is closer to zero than 1
Guess what? Trump will (hopefully) come to the rescue here. Don't laugh at that. I'd imagine he will be helpful possibly even with some of the EU rules such as in particular the one which makes even small US companies liable (as I recal) for notifying users of cookies on a website.
Once, and in context it was "Tim [at] Apple", because he loves to name drop like that." Any future mentions of Tim Apple by the president are tongue in cheek.
I will stop using a service or hardware that could grant peaking rights into my folders to a possible administration like the one currently in the US. On day 1, zero hesitation
What is up with the UK? I have always loved my British friends and appreciated England’s history (setting aside their brutality during the British Empire). I just don’t understand where they went wrong on curtailing free speech rights of their citizens, privacy rights, etc. I just hope we in the USA don’t follow their lead.
Democracies without free speech and privacy are not really democracies.
We're governed by the most technically inept people possible.
The Peter Principle writ large.
I'm pretty sure there was a story on here recently when UKGOV / GCHQ were recruiting for a 'senior something something tech/developer/code breaker', offering about the same as a typical entry-level graduate job.
Sell off ARM to foreign interests? Check.
Tell AI data centres where they must be built? Check.
Various inept age checking and backdoor access plans? Check.
The USA strongarming us after 9/11 didn't help. You don't have to look beyond the borders of the US to answer "what's up with the UK" when it comes to eg terrorism legislation
But yes historically we have been pretty brutal. Look up history the past 600 years. We didn't get a huge empire by asking nicely for their land and resources
Yes but no, post WW2 the UK was one of the most liberal places in the world. Somehow things took a turn in the past two decades or so. And then around the 2020s the decline started to rapidly accelerate. The stories that have come out lately are really insane.
Economic decline fuels resentment towards immigrants and minority communities. Government becomes increasingly repressive to keep tensions from boiling over into riots and perhaps worse.
This is why countries are obsessed with growth - many things can be papered over with sufficient growth.
Call me crazy, but it seems probably unwise for any nation to be perpetually operating under "we're a bad recession away from ethno-nationalists starting a race war" as a default state of affairs.
Yes, but my point is that the people that pose the greatest threat to stability are the ethno nationalists. The UK has them violently rioting just last year.
You can’t really put the UK surveillance state on a political left right axis though. Its an orthagonal trend where various Britains have always been trying to monitor each other for various purposes and that’s why it grows and grows. At least that’s how it looks to me as an outsider.
do you have other examples? I have a limited perspective as an American, but I understand Brexit to have been more or less an exception to the way the political winds have generally been blowing in the UK in the last 15 years?
Also, to be clear, are you using anti-liberal in the American political sense of the world liberal (i.e. progressive), or in on the classical liberal sense (which has some overlap with small-l libertarianism within US political circles)?
Well, ever since the early 1990s the UK have been CCTV capital of the world, where you could not go to a neighborhood shop without being watched by the government in medium-to-large cities.
We talk a lot about Red China being a dystopian Orwellian state - but their inspiration came from the UK, both the novel and it's implementation.
Yet it’s a private American company that has the most cameras everywhere, with no control over them. I’m far more concerned about my neighbours ring camera than I am about a regulated public cctv system.
Brexit was the tipping point. The “right wing” Tory party in power was progressive - gay marriage for example. This fell apart when the U.K. said it wanted more right wing and kicked out the Liberal Democrat’s. The leader of the Tories - Cameron - had to then rely on the right wing minority of his party and compromised with a referendum. This was lost by 4 percent and that was everything needed for 5 years of chaos, which then doubled down with the most statist intervention in centuries with covid.
Since Brexit immigration has ballooned, and those immigrating are no longer culturally similar Europeans but instead from outside Europe. This difference is whipped up by elements of the printed press and especially social media. Throw in a dose of American cultural imperialism leading to their problems infecting the U.K through increased communication (again social media, but more YouTube than Facebook in this case) and you have a lot of angry people.
Meanwhile the economy which suffered heavily from the response to 2008 was pounded by the double whammy of Brexit and Covid. Throw in a housing crisis that’s lasted nearly 20 years and you get a disastrous corpse.
Perhaps. Another possibility is that the same societal shift that drove the UK to give up the right to be armed also pushed them in the direction of giving up other rights.
The Poles built a simpler machine that they called a "Bomba", a pre-cursor to the Bombes. Named for a dessert in a cafe near the Polish intelligence service offices where those early codebreakers worked, and because the French also received the intelligence from Poland, they transposed the name. :-)
In July 1939 the Poles had to hand everything over to the British because they knew it was all about to be lost, as they were months away from being invaded.
Unfortunately what the Polish handed over was not quite enough to break German naval enigma, and without that, the war would have been at worst lost, and at best lengthened by years.
The Poles got everything started. The Brits got it finished.
There were several other British innovations in code-breaking around the war time period though, including Tunny, and taken on aggregate it's clear Bletchley had a significant advantage in that space over every other country for a long, long time.
That of course does not excuse a demand for Apple's ADP to be back-doored.
So in short: Poles did all the important parts, like actually breaking the code, Brits just throwed some money at the problem, helping to scale the Bombs.
Nobody - even the Polish - can quantify the value of the each part of the process, but your rendering of what happened is clearly inaccurate by any and all reasonable measures.
> I just don’t understand where they went wrong on curtailing free speech rights of their citizens, privacy rights, etc.
Security establishment's innate desire to read and listen to absolutely everything. Blair/Bush's war on terror. Id card proposals. Smart phone use sky rockets. Supposed E2E comms. Hate speech. Something must be done! Right wing policies on pretty much everything cause more protest. Tories criminalise (*some types of) protest. Labour government raises TCN to Apple.
UK probably went wrong when they left the EU, which since then has done some work on data protection laws. Leaving the EU will probably turn out a mistake, but they could have, in some areas made it a positive thing. They could have made even stronger data protection and privacy laws for their citizen. They could have enforced them more than the EU enforces GDPR. These things do not happen because of uninformed and corrupt politicians. Trade is of course another area, where they could have tried to ensure, that they stick to EU quality and safety controls, to avoid lots of drama and headache. But it was difficult anyway, because if you stick to all things EU, then why leave in the first place? They would have to uphold standards and improve upon them, while being in a weaker position to negotiate with outside of EU partners.
> The most likely outcome, I would guess, is that Apple just stop offering Advanced Data Protection as a service in the UK
Agreed.
> Apple previously made its stance public when it formally opposed the UK government's power to issue Technical Capability Notices in testimony submitted in March 2024 and warned that it would withdraw security features from the UK market if forced to comply.
I feel like the UK always tries to do this w/ encryption. I don't know if it's a cultural sway GCHQ has on legislators and such but it happens w/ every generation of cryptography. Weren't they the one that neutered GSM encryption such that it was essentially ineffective from the get go?
You're assuming people's actual motivations match up with their stated motivations. If your motivation is to be re-elected to a government post by appearing to be tough on terrorism and drugs, every possible outcome of this course of action benefits you. Apple leaves? They were terrorist enablers and you're better off without them. Apple acquiesces? You're the David who took on Apple's goliath and won safety for everyone (again, regardless of whether this actually improves safety for anyone). Apple ignores you? You have an ongoing feud with Dangerous Big Tech that you can campaign and fundraise on for as long as it lasts.
The UK government can’t put Apple out of business; Apple can easily afford to simply exit all business in the UK. The UK is betting that Apple’s greed outweighs their principles. Long odds.
It's betting that the size of Apple's UK market is larger than the impact Apple's privacy marketing has on its worldwide market. Those odds aren't obvious to me
Curious about what would happen if Apple withdrew from the UK and locked all devices with a message saying 'Your device has been disabled following the decision of the UK government to introduce new laws which mean service can no longer be offered in the UK', or something similar. They could base it on GPS or detected MCC codes.
I wonder if you would get anarchist riots until the law was removed. Many of the young with an expensive bricked iPhone (or parents whose kid's iPad was disabled) would probably side with Apple over already unpopular politicians...
The UK is betting that Apple’s greed outweighs their principles. Long odds.
Three weeks ago, I would have agreed with you.
Then Tim Cook wrote a check for $1,000,000.00 to help pay for Donald Trump's inauguration party.†
In spite of what they led us to believe over the last couple of decades, Tim Cook and Apple are no different than any of the other tech companies genuflecting before the new emperor, whose stated goals are the opposite of the "mission, vision and values" lies we were fed by the tech industry.
As Apple isn’t based in the UK and owes no fealty to their government. I don’t agree that your citation is relevant here. Apple is a US company. Bribing local officials to overlook the gay founder is sensible corporate practices, however uncomfortable that is to consider. Revoking privacy guarantees globally, reversing years of public opinion gains overnight, is not. The UK cannot do anything to materially harm Apple in any way that Apple can’t afford short of sending a double-oh to Cupertino.
> As Apple isn’t based in the UK and owes no fealty to their government
Apple isn't based in China, they owe nothing to them either. Apple's willingness to backdoor and modify their services for actual authoritarianism is well[0] documented[1], at no point did they ever threaten to leave the respective markets. Every single spectator knows that Apple leaving these markets would be an admission of guilt.
> Bribing local officials to overlook the gay founder is sensible corporate practices
That hasn't been "sensible corporate practice" since American civil rights were instated. If that is the real motivation for Apple to pen their donation, it would be even more pathetic than a global encryption backdoor. It's not "uncomfortable" to consider, it's illegally discriminatory to a nonsense extent.
What both of you are overlooking, and clearly what this entire thing is about, is antitrust enforcement. Tim Cook knows that Apple cannot survive if they are investigated by a fair commission, so he's trying to manipulate Trump into dropping the DOJ's cases, giving Apple unfair advantages vis-a-vis China and pressuring the EU into stopping their regulation. This is literally surface-level stuff if you even remotely understand Apple's commitment to shareholders and what drives their hardware and software margins in 2025. Everything else is advertisement and a chasing after wind.
Apple needs China. It's a big market that still manufactures most iPhones, despite their efforts to change that. The surveillance bill the UK has passed is in some ways worse than China's (a UK shard would not satisfy it), and the UK is far less important.
I'm well aware. It's a star-crossed romance that is bound to end during this administration. It should have ended a long time ago, Apple simply wanted to exploit the ambiguity of America's politics until it no longer benefit them.
I suspect, no different from the iPhone adopting USB-C or the App Store adhering to EU legislation, Apple needs the UK as well. It really isn't as simple as walking away from certain markets, and even if Apple did abandon it they would still be subject to warrantless surveillance from the UK via Five Eyes.
One thing of note in those other cases is that they only required Apple to comply wrt its customers in the jurisdiction of the country in question. So in China, everything is backdoored, but it doesn't affect users elsewhere.
In this case, the claim is that UK wants global backdoors, so Apple cannot comply quite so easily.
China is not the UK, and isn’t comparable, any more than the US was. Apple’s manufacturing is far more dependent on China than it is the UK, with one exception: Arm. Legitimately, if the UK government declare Arm to be unexportable to the US, they can completely fuck over everyone except Apple, who I expect has a Complete Code license or equivalent so that they can continue development of Arm goes bankrupt or gets cut off from international trade.
A better question that supports the point here is:
Which of the world’s countries are able to materially damage Apple’s ability to transact business in other countries?
Those countries hold serious and real leverage over Apple, because Apple can’t just walk away from doing business in that one country without having their business impacted elsewhere. The UK is not on my version of that list, but if you’ve a good reason why it should be, that’s the missing data here and that’s invaluable leverage to recognize. (It may well also already be documented in Apple’s financials.)
The ARM licensing bit hasn't been relevant since SoftBank bought ARM. The preeminent issue is that Apple is already perfectly fine with warrantless surveillance and didn't leave the EU, US or anyone over it. This expectation for Apple to grow a San-Bernadino-esque backbone in an age where they manufacture backdoors for Five Eyes is hilarious.
Apple has nothing to fear from antitrust because it has no market power. It is an expensive premium product in every category in which it operates and there wre numerous cheaper alternatives in those categories.
The delusion of people on this website thinking that Apple, a minority supplier of cellphones, is somehow a monopoly. LOL is the only reply I can think of.
Of course Apple doesn't have principles, they're a for-profit company. What's in question here is whether they believe the UK is financially worth opening this can of worms. Following US government whims is good business for them in almost all cases, but that math isn't the same for the UK.
For $1 million, you’re promised intimate access to Trump and his inner circle. This isn’t just about tradition or unity-it’s about buying influence and maintaining power. In a world where we’re supposedly pushing for fairness, equality, and transparency, this feels incredibly hypocritical. It’s as if we’re endorsing a system where money talks louder than public interest or ethical considerations. It makes you wonder where the line is between modern capitalism and a system that operates more like an oligarchy.
Google had shareholders in 2005 too or thereabouts when they publicly decided to abandon the Chinese search market for soft, fuzzy reasons (i.e., not because they were losing money on Chinese operations).
And as far as I know, they're still absent from the Chinese search market.
Sounds like you're assuming that UK's goal is to stop criminals. I don't think that's their goal. I think that's their cover story.
As for Apple, their daily/hourly/whatever fines might be less than cost of a major ad campaign if they were to buy that publicity directly. Sounds like a good deal for them to refuse to honor the request.
A backdoor for one is an opportunity for many. Given the UK is completely incapable of outspending most of the world on compute, this effectively hands their enemies that data they’re looking for.
Yes, encryption is one of the most “cat’s out of the bag” situations - even assuming every company worldwide is cowed into submission by governments to add back doors, all they’re going to be catching is the dumb and unsophisticated criminals and even that will diminish as even the dummies realize every text and call is wiretapped once people start seeing their private communiques come out in court.
I suppose there are people in the camp advocating for back doors who still think it’s worth the tremendous downsides to be able to catch that group of criminals (there are certainly plenty of idiot criminals), but anybody can just use plain GPG emails for free, or deploy some open source encrypted chat server on a $20 a month cloud instance… and I assume operators in places like Russia or China won’t mind hosting easy services for less nerdy criminals willing to pay in crypto.
This appears to be majority of them if Brian Krebs is to be trusted. Very few have proper OPSEC, fewer still are disciplined enough to prevent cross contaminating their virtual identities.
Even if you keep your communications airtight, boneheaded decisions when they move the money from cyberspace into meatspace are quite common: people living way beyond their means, 22 y/o's buying $200K+ cars without proper income records get caught quickly once people start looking.
> The most likely outcome, I would guess, is that Apple just stop offering Advanced Data Protection as a service in the UK rather than create some kind of backdoor.
First, these are the same thing.
Second, ADP is already off by default so approximately nobody uses it. It is irrelevant from a privacy standpoint whether or not they offer it.
ADP is a relatively new thing. it makes sense to roll it out gradually both from engineering POV as well as marketing.
Further, as all other forms of e2ee, it makes you responsible for the encryption keys.
As a user on the platform I am quite happy it is offered. Considering that these days it is quite difficult not to have a mobile device associated with “you” (you open links sent to “you” on your mobile device? consider that device compromised from privacy perspective), id rather it be on the platform with stronger protections.
Apple should and can just sever its relationship with the British public and let them reap the consequences of submitting to their nanny state.
Although it's worth wondering why anyone would use any type of corporate cloud backup, anyway. Certainly if you had anything worth hiding, you would disable that first. That just makes this whole endeavor that much more dubious.
"It's a weak proposition from the government because anyone with something to hide will just move it somewhere else with encryption."
This. Whether it is an app to install on your phone or desktop or simply a website to use. People who need encryption to make sure their communication is private will _easily_ find ways around any kind of government snooping.
>I don't think the UK government would try to put Apple out of business if they don't comply it's more likely that they would just get heavily fined until they do so.
Sufficiently advanced "escalating fines until they comply" is indistinguishable from "putting them out of business".
I honestly don't even think we'd fine them real money, it would be too unfriendly to business. So what's this? I think political posturing or at worst the worlds weakest bargaining chip.
Maybe USG will now stand behind American companies and push back on this sort of thing? Enough of the EU or UK fining US companies over bullshit. In this case it's also better for the UK consumers too.
As long as Apple has a business presence in the UK, they are subject to the laws the UK imposes on them even if they're vastly overreaching and impose on other government's citizens. Not supporting cloud services wouldn't be sufficient to avoid the compliance requirement, they would have to formerly stop doing business in the UK.
Looking at the market size that might be a decision that Apple is willing to make as it would most likely be a temporary stick. The government can spin it anyway they want, but Apple devices do not work basically at all without the deep integration of their services. A geoblock would effectively mean UK citizens would be left with unusable devices and I can't see the resulting outrage being directed exclusively at Apple.
It'll be interesting to see how this plays out for sure.
I think this is the most solid answer I’ve seen so far that makes any sense. Could they still go through with it , I’m not sure, they want to project some influence but I still feel this is like haggling for half price to get cost.
Someone else here said something spot on for me, we’re all focusing on how bat sh*t this is because it’s global without even considering how human privacy obligations are just ignored.
Humans have a right to privacy, feels unbelievably pretentious and privileged to even say that. But it’s still true
> As long as Apple has a business presence in the UK, they are subject to the laws the UK imposes on them even if they're vastly overreaching and impose on other government's citizens.
I wonder if this means that Apple would ultimately take the same approach that they have in China, where the iCloud data and services are entirely localized within China and allows the Chinese government unrestricted access.
china had leverage because of the manufacturing happening over there and the incredible market opportunity, UK doesn't have much.
technically i believe apple could get out of the UK market to provoke a backslash on the government.
If they concede, other government will use the exact same blackmailing technique and one can say it will be the absolute end of their "privacy" marketing campaign they spent so much money into.
Apple offers the same escrowed key and non-escrowed key (advanced data protection) features in China as far as I'm aware. The extra capability GCBD has would be access to protected at rest data like iCloud email.
Apple still has legal entities in the UK. Pulling out cloud services would be insufficient to prevent the UK authorities from interfering with their activities.
> prevent the UK authorities from interfering with their activities
I'm still missing how this could be enforced ? To my layman understanding, this reads the same as if China said : "Meta, Tesla, Valve etc has entities in China therefore we get to see all data they store in the EU and the US.
The UK has Zero jurisdiction in Ireland for example where a lot of EU data may be stored.
I have lived to the day that we give an example on china not doing something stupid a western democracy does about rights and freedom. Wild times to be alive. I am also surprised that they demand worldwide access and not just UK users data or all the data stored in UK jurisdiction. But this is going too far.
China has forced Apple to outsource iCloud in China to a state run company, so all data is just directly controlled by the government there. It’s an even worse situation.
That is just China's general rules around tech. Awful? Yes. But not a global issue. Most non-chinese companies are forced to have their chinese properties ran by a chinese company.
This is shown by companies like VW having cars made in china with effectively a license model, these cars are designed and built by a third party with a few interesting exceptions (VW actually licensed a design, the Taos, back and shipped it worldwide)
The insane overreach was the UK wanting data on people not in the UK
We literally tried to do this with TikTok. We can't exactly stand on a high-horse when the highest level of government in the US was totally fine with it.
Our noble "we can't have American data in the hands of our enemies," their savage "forcing American companies to turn over user data."
Edit: I misread the comment tree, I thought this comment was equating the TikTok situation to the UK's request.
I agree that the TikTok demands are pretty similar, though I might quibble over whether they're literally the same, since arrangements like that are the status quo in China but not in the US
Original comment below:
How is "remove foreign control of data on our nation's users" remotely the same as "give us access to foreign users' data"?
They're not even figuratively the same, despite you literally misusing that word
It's not clear which scenario you are referring to.
If by "give us access to foreign users' data", you mean TikTok, then ByteDance is only required to sell the US portion of TikTok to American buyers. If you mean iCloud, then Apple is only required to keep Chinese users' data on local servers.
Oh my bad, I misread the comment tree and thought this comment was a response to the grandparent.
"give us access to foreign users' data" referred to what the UK is asking for, I thought the post i was replying to was equating the UK's request to the US'
It is worse than that, I never expected that most democracies would go back to foregone days, because people get sold out on populism and decided to ignore history lessons.
As a child of Portuguese revolution, I am aware of plenty of stories, apparently many folks nowadays think those are stories to scare misbehaved kids.
Those who are charged with stopping cyber crime are very must against this. End to End encryption is one of the better protections they can give you against foreign hackers and they want you to use it.
Meanwhile down the hall are people who are charged with investigating crimes someone in the country commits and they are want this. It is a lot easier to prove someone is involved in some crime if a warrant can get their data, but end to end encryption means they can only get random bytes. (of course they don't want warrants either, but that is a different issue not relevant here so they will specify warrants in this debate)
The difference is that China and Russia have the sense to spy on foreign citizens with hackers, trackers, and other covert means. Somehow the UK feels entitled to Apple doing their espionage for them, and has the gall to ask publicly.
Note that this is not China apologia: they do the same brazen shit locally, but they're an authoritarian regime. I have lower expectations for human rights there.
It can be enforced in this way: police raids the local headquarters and jail a bunch of people because their company didn't comply with the law.
The only way to prevent that is not having any local office, no employees, nothing. Sell physical objects only by the means of local 3rd party resellers which will import goods. Same thing for services. Of course they can ban imports and services or go after those 3rd parties. It depends how nasty they want to be.
I suspect the UK government would back down way before Apple. People aren’t politically active as those of years pass, but brick their iPhones you’d have a riot.
The US used a similar strategy decades ago to break Swiss Bank Secrecy laws (either Swiss banks had to give up the info or they were going to be kicked out of the US).
As someone else here said, Apple would 100% call this bluff. And you can be certain the UK won't have the US to put pressure on Apple for them. All the would happen is the UK Apple users would be with an expensive paperweight.
That assumes that Apple's shareholders believe that Apple's privacy reputation (relative to other companies) is more valuable than access to the UK market.
All evidence that I have seen suggests that consumers by and large do not care about this kind of privacy. They do not buy iPhones instead of other phones due to the privacy properties.
Therefore Apple's shareholders could order Apple to stay in the UK market.
And if not, then Apple's customers could be compensated with money and other UK-held assets that the government could confiscate.
This is usually true of any corp. However, Apple is the one big tech company that has built its reputation on privacy more than any other, and Cook in particular is very strong on that -- and he's not prone to Zuck-like flip/flopping, at least not so far.
You may be right, of course. But if there's one tech company who _might_ say "no", it's Apple.
According to NASDAQ [1] the two main investors are Vanguard and Blackrock, but the two of them together are far away from 50%. There are a number of other large investors. I didn't do the sums but there must be probably 30 of them to get to 50%. Do some of them care about privacy of common people? Probably not. About the people in their boards? Probably yes.
Most users don't care about that stuff, but I think a small but significant percentage do. I have never been an Apple fan but I am aware that they are significantly better than Windows and Andorid for security and privacy.
Swiss banks didn't care - they didn't have a large Us presence anyway. Until the US started enforcing this by proxy, other banks couldn't do business with you and the US and overall the US is more important to the world than Swiss banks.
Not so sure. Yeah, they didn't have a large US presence but they did a lot of business with US banks and securities markets -- that's what was threatened. It's wasn't the ability to have branches in the US but the ability to conduct business in US markets.
Yep, and the US had a lot more leverage; out of the US translates into no access to US dollars either directly or via a correspondent bank, which essentially means bankruptcy.
I really hope so. I would love to see that showdown. Hopefully, "can't buy an iPhone in the UK and everyone knows why" makes the Snooper's Charter a radioactive mess that legislators fall all over themselves to repeal.
Then they can vote in a board of directors that agrees with them, and have that board fire Tim Cook.
I would hazard to guess that you'll see an exodus of a lot of folks leaving Apple either because (a) they won't follow that order, or (b) in solidarity with those that are fired.
Reminder that privacy is feature that Apple touts (how much you believe them is up to you):
> On January 28, 2021, Apple CEO Tim Cook delivered remarks at Computers, Privacy & Data Protection Conference: Enforcing Rights in a Changing World. The virtual conference — hosted annually in Brussels, Belgium — is one of the foremost international privacy and technology conferences bringing together leaders from academia, government, civil society and the private sector. Learn more about the features and controls Apple provides users to safeguard their privacy at http://www.apple.com/privacy
I don't know where your ideas are coming from - Apple easily folded and gave all data to Chinese government when commanded to do so under leadership of Tim Cook.
Where does your thinking that they'll suddenly forget about revenue from UK over this come from?
This is not just a case of the British intelligence services secretly “tapping into” Irish telephonic and internet traffic via land and maritime cables. Rather in most cases they are being provided free (or commercial) access to the information by companies associated with the use, ownership or maintenance of these cables.
Post-Snowden the Irish government retroactively legalised it...
There are lots of different ways to do business. UK is unlikely to be able to ban the iphone, and I doubt Apple has much business in the UK. As such they can lay off all workers in the UK "because of legal issues" and the workers feel the pain. They can still sell in the UK through third parties, and go to the EU if you need warranty work
The phone itself is only a piece. Apple sells multiple services, without them the phone is useless. If you can't access the appstore, the backups, etc. what good is an iPhone? Now, the UK can say that UK citizens' data can't travel outside of the UK without the UK government permission.
So it's still a problem. This seems like a looming PR battle.
Except perhaps for people living near the border in Northern Ireland, "going to the EU" for warranty work is a completely unfeasible suggestion. It's not exactly a short or cheap journey for most of us!
You don't have to go in person. Put it in the mail. In person can get same day service though. Next day mail is expensive, but you can get it (and if Apple is serious they can partner with the next day mail and do overnight repairs.). It isn't uncommon for someone to ship you are replacement device and then you ship your broken one back after the new arrives (if the old is only partially broke this can be useful). Apple has a lot of options to make this not too inconvenient.
Though will Apple blink is still unknown. Just because they can doesn't mean they will.
The UK public would never accept this. There's basically almost no interest in E2EE at all, but the idea of not being able to take your iPhone to the Apple Store would be riot-inducing. And I think the average Brit would be more comfortable posting their phone to the US than to France.
If Apple really has the guts to stare this one down, then I would expect it's the government who blinks.
That got me curious. Google maps says that from London to the Apple store in Lille, France is about 4 hours by car, and the same for the return trip. Googling suggests that it would be about £120 for round trip transport through the tunnel.
It says that by train it is about 90 minutes each way and would cost about the same as the car trip.
If the reseller is also an Apple authorized service provider that should find. They have genuine Apple parts and can do warrant and AppleCare work.
Not sure it would be worth it though, unless you are in Northern Ireland. If you are someplace more like London it would be a lot faster to go to the nearest Apple Store in France and a lot cheaper.
It is a relatively small market, and if Apple decides to shut down while flooding the streets of London with posters saying “We are forced by your government to shut down in order to uphold your privacy”, the UK
Government would take a massive blow.
Imagine Russian Oligarchs on android devices! Polonium will roll, I tell you!
So if British voters get to chose between having access to iPhones or voting for a government that wants to spy on them at whatever the cost surely the choice must be clear?
Note that it the bar is having the ability to access the server, so this law is completely incompatible with most GPDR solutions: It's illegal to store European user data and then refuse to hand it over to US law enforcement, regardless of whether the data is stored in Europe or the request breaks European law.
I imagine they would fine apple a large sum of money. If apple refuse to pay they send high court sheriffs to confiscate any property they have in the UK to pay the debt.
It would be enforced by fining the UK legal entities (or worse, like charging their legal representatives) if they don't comply. If the UK is serious about this, the only alternative for Apple would eventually be to completely cease operations in the UK.
By the way, this is similar to why for true GDPR compliance, data centers should be operated by EU companies that aren't subsidiaries of US companies, because even if the latter operate data centers located in the EU, they would still be bound to secret orders by the US government.
The most horrible part of the discussion we're making is that we're arguing that UK intelligence should be able to access only UK related data, and not that UK intelligence should not undermine privacy of people
The Clipper Chip died a quick death back when the Clinton administration wanted it, as the push back against it was pretty strong. Now? Seems like a matter of time before every form of electronic communication has a dozen different back, side, and front doors into it.
I don't think that was mandated to be used for every device though. It was also shown to perform key escrow in secret and had its security defeated before it launched.
The Overton window is the range of subjects and arguments politically acceptable to the mainstream population at a given time.[1] It is also known as the window of discourse.
[…]
The political commentator Joshua Treviño has postulated that the six degrees of acceptance of public ideas are roughly:[7]
unthinkable
radical
acceptable
sensible
popular
policy
The moral thing to do would be to resist obeying such laws as much as is feasible. If that fails close all your legal entities and continue offering services to the citizens of that country to the extent that is feasible.
Of course it wouldn’t be very profitable. So unfortunately you really can’t expect a major public company to take a stand like in a case like this.
Fully agree. Imagine giving your data to company XYZ which promises you full encryption privacy. The company XYZ opens a subdivision in country CBA and all's okay unless CBA's law is changed to mandate all companies to give all their data. Now your data is lost to CBA's agents.
Surely if the current government were dumb enough to try and ban Apple from the UK over something like this it would it would make even Truss look competent in comparison.
Not so much because British people love their iPhones to such a extreme degree but because they willing to waste money and resources over something this stupid.
IMHO Apple could bring down the government that tried this if they really wanted to.
> By the way, this is similar to why for true GDPR compliance, data centers should be operated by EU companies that aren't subsidiaries of US companies, because even if the latter operate data centers located in the EU, they would still be bound to secret orders by the US government.
This is interesting, I know GDPR does not mandate data localization but I was under the impression that the requirements are a bit more difficult/stringent for transferring data out of the EU region ? While not perfect, it's a bit less 'open door' than it would be if it was hosted in the US.
The EU has a law saying "don't transfer data out of the EU without the right paperwork, but of course if your American sysadmins have SSH access to servers in the EU to do maintenance that's no problem, just tell them not to copy the data off it"
The US has a law saying "If our spies tell American sysadmins to SSH into a server in the EU and copy data off it, they must do it and they must keep it secret"
I’ve never worked in a company with data the gov’t cared about that wouldn’t have sirens going off. Why is Joe SSHing into the EU data center? And now why’s he trying to turn off the GuardDuty rule that caught him? And why is he trying to delete that from CloudTrail? And why is the SOC 2 auditor asking why he has access to delete things from CloudTrail in the first place?”
You’d have to get a surprising number of people to go along with it.
That's why it's important to choose a sysadmin who has the authority to SSH to servers. Joe SSHes in all the time, it's not an anomaly.
If you think a SOC2 auditor would spot something like this, in a company the size of Apple or Google - you've probably never been through a SOC2 audit :)
I wish that I had not been through many SOC 2 audits. But the point was just that in a sufficiently large org that might have cross-continent data centers, it’s not common to have one person who can access remote data and cover their trail and turn off the alarms and all the other things required to do it surreptitiously. Possible? Maybe. Likely? Probably not.
In my experience, every sufficiently large org with data centres on multiple continents has an accretion of legacy systems and special exceptions.
And a heuristic anomaly detection system that generates masses of false alarms, and enough different teams and documents and policies to bury an army of SOC2 auditors. And so many log lines almost anything can get lost in the noise.
The janitors always have keys to everything. Especially when it’s required by law.
More importantly, apple has customers in the UK. The business from captured apple users is more valuable than apple's privacy reputation.
This all seems very similar to RIM and the aftermath of the riots in the UK. The backdoors became too obvious for customers to ignore. Did not go well for RIM in the market afterwards.
> More importantly, apple has customers in the UK. The business from captured apple users is more valuable than apple's privacy reputation.
Is it though? I wonder how much of Apple's revenue is from the UK, probably around 5-6%? Apple isn't exactly as popular in the rest of the world as they are in the US.
Would damaging their privacy reputation globally be more valuable than the UK market? I honestly don't know, but my hunch says no - they are likely to want to keep their reputation and dump the UK market. I think more likely is Apple is going to be able to get the UK to cave in. Apple is extremely competent with PR, and would be able to spin any kind of pull-out or degraded service in the UK as the government's choice and fault, to the ire of UK citizens.
Who has more to lose though? I mean any government that would do something as stupid as banning Apple because Apple didn’t allow it to spy on its citizens wouldn’t be very popular or last that long..
I mean this would be even more stupid than Partygate and the whole Truss debacle put together.
It seems apparent to me that Apple leaked this information to US press in an attempt to get the UK to back off. Wouldn't Apple also try to subvert the attempt for US intelligence to get a backdoor? Or do we think Apple has less of a leg to stand on with US and would be more likely to roll over?
> Or do we think Apple has less of a leg to stand on with US and would be more likely to roll over?
Apple has no leg to stand on at all. When the NSA comes to your door and demands access to everything you have you don't get to say no. There is no court you can appeal to, and they'll take whatever they want and order you to keep your mouth shut about it. They'll walk right into your headquarters and data centers, force you to move your employees so they can set up an office for themselves on your property, insert their equipment into your network directly and take everything just like they did with AT&T decades ago (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A)
Your only options are to comply or shut down (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavabit) and I'm not even sure the US government would allow "shut down" as an option in some cases. It seems likely that they'd keep a massive target like Apple running even if the owners of the company wanted to cease operations, but lets be honest, Apple makes a lot of people very very rich so they'd never walk away from that. They'll keep making their money and just try to convince themselves that the US are the "good guys" and so it must be okay.
Obviously, Apple is going to comply with US federal law, given that their headquarters and employees are there, as well as their most profitable market. But when possible, they have shown themselves willing to fight against intrusion.
First, that's notably the FBI and not NSA. As gp says, NSA has greater powers with less legal oversight on national security grounds.
Second, a cynic might argue that Apple put up a noisy, principled fight that one time precisely to create the perception that you have here. It could be the FBI learned data requests to Apple are a dead end!
Or the two came to a mutually beneficial understanding: "don't come in the front door waving a court order for the cameras and we'll see what we can do when our reputation isn't on the line, see? And maybe if we help out, that antitrust investigation isn't necessary after all!"
I can't imagine all cloud providers weren't leaned on heavily to provide this access long time ago. Its a treasure trove too juicy to be ignored. Pro quid pro of course.
Anything else is highly illogical or outright stupid, imagine CIA or NSA having meeting on this decade and a half ago and deciding 'well if they won't give us full access when we asked nicely I guess that's it, we have to respect the law and their wish'. LOL. They don't respect basic human rights at all if you don't hold US passport, and even then the list of cases breaking laws and constitution is endless.
Apple is good with their PR, but why do folks accept their every word literally and not as part of marketing spin to sell more services is beyond me. Rest of the market is not even trying to spin it that way which is actually more respectable behavior.
You're including end-to-end encrypted content in that as well, like from Advanced Data Protection?
> If you choose to enable Advanced Data Protection, the majority of your iCloud data – including iCloud Backup, Photos, Notes and more – is protected using end-to-end encryption. No one else can access your end-to-end encrypted data, not even Apple, and this data remains secure even in the case of a data breach in the cloud.
I have no opinion on whether US intel has a backdoor into this e2e encryption or not. It seems like the sort of thing where people non-chalantly state that it must happen, but of course no one ever has actual proof or a source.
I mean, you're right. People think "end to end" encryption helps them, but they forget that Apple controls both the server and client more than the user does.
No. Whistleblowers are extremely rare. Snowden did it, but he also worked with thousands of other employees who had knowledge of some, if not all, of the abuses Snowden told us about, but not one of them came forward. This is pretty much always the case when it comes to whistleblowers. For every one who came forward there were many many more who knew and stayed silent and it's hard to blame them. Whistleblowers are harshly punished, and sometimes killed in retaliation.
Being willing to sacrifice everything you have, including your career, your freedom, and potentially your life, just to let the public know the truth is not something you should expect people to do. It's a huge amount of risk and sacrifice while the only reward is knowing that you've done the right thing even though you'll be vilified and punished for it. That's what makes whistleblowers heroes.
Not necessarily. There's a lot of people absolutely unwilling to risk loosing their salary and career. If you are doxxed as the leaker, what other company would hire you? I'm not even considering if there could be criminal charges involved as well.
Snowden left an example of what kind of lifestyle is possible after leaking, and I doubt snowflakes at FAANG would be down for that. Or how about other examples of leakers that have turned up dead? That's a cheery thought to consider.
So yeah, at this point in time, I do believe there's a lot of people that might not agree, but are not up for the task.
Snowden chose that lifestyle. If he had stayed in the US, he would be out of prison already, just without a security clearance. The longest sentence anyone ever got for leaking government information to the media is 63 months, with a release after 50 months on good behavior.
Manning was released early from her 35 years prison sentence only because there was Obama who had balls to do it and go against extreme far right part of society and government employees. Not going to happen again anytime soon in US.
I am actually surprised she survived this and wasnt suicided or sent to Guantanamo for water boarding till heart stops, I guess thats only for those without US passports.
Apple is famous for keeping projects secret from its own employees. To be clear, I think it's unlikely that this has already been set up for the US, but it would be easiest to do at Apple.
> a back door that allows UK security officials unencumbered access to encrypted user data worldwide
As far as I can tell, China is asking to keep Chinese data in China and have access to it, but it is not asking to access data of American or European citizen and if it did we would be pissed off.
I think it’s a cultural issue. The British have an inflated sense of national self worth as a result of being the world’s largest power during the British empire. While this has not been the case for some time now (since Suez in 1948? Longer?) the people still carry the memory and national myth of great importance. This is likely what drives a sense of entitlement that British demands should bypass the laws of every other country in the world and give them unfettered access to everyone’s data. Think about that, literally everyone who has an Apple device!
MI6 probably gutted the cybersec division. Probably don’t have many viable sploits in their cache against Apple.
I suppose this is _good_ but more competent and well funded groups out of Israel, Israeli military complex, Cyprus don’t need to “ask” for a back door.
> When asked by The Post whether any government had requested a backdoor, Google spokesman Ed Fernandez did not provide a direct answer but suggested none exist: "Google cannot access Android end-to-end encrypted backup data, even with a legal order," he stated.
No, that does not suggest none exists, it only says they don’t have access to it. They could have chosen or have been ordered to give the keys to the government agency but not keep one themselves. I’m not saying that’s likely, just that it’s important to not take these statements as saying more than they do. They wouldn’t hesitate to use “technically correct” as a defence and you have to take that into account.
Before people immediately think the worst of Google or other corporate representatives, be aware that people working in these companies need to weight their words carefully. From The Verge's article on the issue:
The UK has reportedly served Apple a document called a technical capability notice. It’s a criminal offense to even reveal that the government has made a demand. Similarly, if Apple did cede to the UK’s demands then it apparently would not be allowed to warn users that its encrypted service is no longer fully secure.
Which is exactly why I’m making this point. If no government had requested a backdoor, they could’ve simply answered “no”. When you have to weight your words, it means you’re not at liberty to say whatever you want. That is itself a signal, and why warrant canaries are a thing.
Simply answering "no" when that's the truth could be illegal too. The ability to say no creates the ability to say yes as well. If I ask Apple whether they got an order and they say "no", then a year later they say "we cannot confirm nor deny", well then that's a yes.
Kinda depends on judicial interpretations of free speech, but that's how warrant canaries work. Are warrant canaries legal in the UK? They seem to be in the US but idk how well established that is.
That concept has always sounded like tech people trying to hack the law without the proper real-world legal knowledge, IMO.
Bruce Schneier wrote in a blog post that "[p]ersonally, I have never believed [warrant canaries] would work. It relies on the fact that a prohibition against speaking doesn't prevent someone from not speaking. But courts generally aren't impressed by this sort of thing, and I can easily imagine a secret warrant that includes a prohibition against triggering the warrant canary.
You're right to point out how carefully worded these statements are. But I suspect it's rare for companies of Google's status to not have been asked for a backdoor. It's not really an informative question to ask Google.
Of course they were asked. That doesn’t matter, my point is the author is assuming more from the reply than what was said.
It’s like if you conspired with your brother to steal from the cookie jar. He stole the cookies while you distracted your parents. Later on your mother reports to your father:
> When asked whether they stole from the cookie jar, derbOac did not provide a direct answer but suggested they didn’t didn’t know who did it: "I did not see anyone removing cookies from the jar," they stated.
Your statement is factually correct, but it doesn’t say what your mother concluded.
My guess is Google, Microsoft, Signal, Apple, Cloudfare, etc etc etc have all been asked if they could make backdoors. I expect they have all been asked. It's not the same as asking if they have made a backdoor.
So I think a journalist asking an organization like Google if they've been asked isn't really informative, because they almost certainly have been.
I'm not sure how it's relevant other than to say an answer from Google's response might seem oblique, but they're also being asked obliquely and that colors how you might interpret their response.
How does this work wrt false advertising laws? If I relied upon their end to end encryption and it turns out to be false advertising because there's a secret backdoor, who do I sue?
so in this hypothetical, some blackhat is able to download data in mass from apple servers? And you're worried that the only thing stopping that, or creating a duty to protect the data is encryption?
But they can still notify the public, through those canary statements. (I forgot the name commonly used).
For example (a simplistic one), you can have a statement like "we do not have any backdoors in our software" added to your legal documents (TOS, etc). But once a backdoor is added, you are compelled by your lawyers to remove that statement. So you aren't disclosing that you have added a backdoor. You're just updating your legal documents to make accurate claims.
Such actions, even just the act of deleting text, conveys a message you were ordered to not convey and the government is not likely to take too kindly to that.
Not exactly the same but I've had a discussion around a similar topic with a Canadian immigration lawyer. We were put in contact by a mutual friend and the lawyer was looking for an email provider that was hosted in Canada and didn't rely on any US-based services (e.g. spam filtering). I asked him about the requirement and he pointed out that it was legally impossible for him to simultaneously comply with the USA PATRIOT Act and Canadian data protection/privacy laws. The US Gov't could compel his email provider to disclose solicitor-client privileged data with a gag order, and by not telling his client he would be breaking Canadian law.
By putting statements like what you're proposing in your TOS or marketing material you are potentially setting yourself up for a situation where it's now impossible to comply with all applicable laws. As others have mentioned, Australia passed legislation preventing you from disclosing the existence or non-existence of specific legal documents; they're at least warning you up front that the canary itself is illegal. The solution is to not make marketing statements that would become fraudulent in a situation where you can't legally retract them, unfortunately.
Edit: since lawyers are mentioned here... if the lawyer who is telling you that you need to remove the line from the TOS is the same lawyer who told you it was ok to put the line in the TOS... you should probably find a new lawyer because they didn't think through the consequences of approving it in the first place.
> if Apple did cede to the UK’s demands then it apparently would not be allowed to warn users that its encrypted service is no longer fully secure.
One would think this runs afoul of other laws though, truth in advertising and similar.
Its such a legal minefield, and the UKs request borders on violating the sovereignty of other nations I can't see Apple complying, but maybe that's hopium talking.
> No, that does not suggest none exists, it only says they don’t have access to it. They could have chosen or have been ordered to give the keys to the government agency but not keep one themselves.
The whole definition of "end-to-end encrypted" is that only the two ends have the keys. If anyone or anything other than the two ends (the one sending and the one receiving) has access to the keys, it's not end-to-end encrypted.
Whatsapp has had end-to-end encryption since 2016. But it only added encryption to cloud backups in 2021. They didn't share any key material with Google, just backed up the messages and media without any encryption to begin with.
Yes exactly. Google is very careful to say that "Google cannot access Android end-to-end encrypted backup data" and notice it doesn't say that all Android backups are end-to-end encrypted. For what we know, Google could have decided to use non-end-to-end backups in the UK and end-to-end backups everywhere else.
But if they could give a key to the government agency, it wouldn't be end-to-end encrypted, right? Or are you thinking they would have a copy of users' keys that they gave out? (Which I guess is technically possible.)
They could also cripple user key-generation. E.g. they choose random primes from a known subset. It would make communication crackable while also being difficult to detect.
It would be no different from how multiple devices and users access the same content (chat, shared data, etc.). The government’s keys would always be included in set which encrypts the real key. They don’t need the users’ key, Apple doesn’t need their private keys. So technically still end to end encrypted, just with a hidden party involved. Users have no way of knowing this doesn’t already happen.
And when their key leaks, it’s as good as no encryption, but still end-to-end encrypted.
You can not use a DH key exchange, and create the symmetric key by some procedure that is predictable, or encode the symmetric key with the government's public key and send it to them.
It doesn't stop being end-to-end when you add another end. We often do group chats that way.
Or you can create a side-channel and send al the data there. That would stop it from being end-to-end.
My layman’s understanding is that a user’s private key is used to decrypt a random key, which is then used to protect data. Shared files then only require adding key access to that small secret by someone who knows the original key. If one of the original public keys is always one held by authorities, Google never needs to have custody of the private key and can’t access the data themselves making the statement true, but misleading.
Not surprised, considering UK's ridiculous key disclosure law (United Kingdom
The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA), Part III, activated by ministerial order in October 2007, requires persons to decrypt information and/or supply keys to government representatives to decrypt information without a court order.)
that makes anyone with high-entropy random data (which is undistinguishable from the crypto-container) a criminal for "not providing the keys to decrypt"
This is the way that the UK has passed laws for a while now, make them so broad that they potentially criminalise everyone, then selectively prosecute. This is a very obvious setup for future totalitarianism. I’m surprised that the British public stands for it, but I guess they must not care.
People here are very passive and used to being pulled around.
It's insane how far people's rights have eroded already. No right to protest, no right for privacy - what's next on the chopping block?
The impression I have is that (some) people in the UK protest but are ignored, vilified, or punished for it. And then nothing changes.
The last time I wrote to my MP, I got a form letter back basically saying "Don't bother contacting us, only The Party matters". (I mean, those weren't the words at all; but having had lame-but-bespoke messages back from them in the past, this was a noticeable and disheartening change).
As far as I know they haven’t started murdering political opponents yet, so that’s something. But I take your point, the UK is today not a serious country for a variety of reasons.
Are there really any political opponents any more? Al the parties that matter are either explicitly in favour of these ideas or at least behave as though they are.
Whatever the person I was replying to means by political opponent. My point was that they are not opponents if they want the same thing or acquiesce to the same thing.
This is fuelled by notion that law enforcement is incompetent and doesn't work.
If law enforcement won't catch criminal even if you had them all the details, evidence, witnesses, then average person thinks there laws are dead anyway as there is no one competent to enforce them.
> I’m surprised that the British public stands for it, but I guess they must not care.
I can educate people but it always comes back to "I've not got anything to hide". What are we suppose to do, go out to the streets and protest? Start a petition, right to a PM who has no idea what encryption is?
Mentioning Linux to my family opens a can of worms. We are naive to think protesting actually changes something, it's old fashion. Those with power just don't care so unless people attack with their wallets nothing will come from.
It's not 1995 so unless you have £ for lobbying surrounded by people in suites there is nothing public of any nation can do against anyone in power.
They have this power precisely because you have given up. Government power is derived from the consent of the goverened. Collective action does work and always will, but it needs to be coordinated. If enough people in the UK stopped going to work, they could affect change pretty quickly I reckon.
> They have this power precisely because you have given up.
I've not given up, I just don't follow outdated methods of means to take back power. I use my wallet, I don't shop at amazon.
Stop being a consumer and supporting a ego who supports the wars, causes your protesting against. That would be the next greatest thing but we are too convenienced by these services.
Contradiction much? One where we would rather go and protest, head home and then go and support companies that do the opposite of what your fighting for. That is why protests are flawed. I'd rather be out on a Saturday picking up litter (like I do) than be at a protest and that's not just because I don't support the cause.
I just see the it as a old-fashioned method that doesn't apply to today’s new powers. You can't fight for power and then oppositely go and do the opposite nor can you fight when the power is to corrupt. Level the playing field is all you can do.
Innovate, create and throw it back in their faces and don't sell out when the FANG bites you with your cheque.
> Collective action does work and always will, but it needs to be coordinated.
Of course, but who wants to coordinate it. Why not yourself, adding to who wants to be put on a hit list? I get executed and then what, It all goes back to how it was. The Boeing whistleblowers ended up dead, any recourse from that?
Not at all. We should be banding together to make the next best thing but people are lazy, but who can blame them? Easier to just press the big red NetFlix button and then order food on GrubEats.
I'm being realistic, in the capitalist world we live in unless you have assets, power your worth nothing.
You have no voice, no power, ever. Where's the futuristic project that saves the world? I'm sure the next JavaScript library posted on the front page of HN will be it.
I hate to be "woke" and break it to you that in this reality that your just a schmuck to an entity who's paying you to ensure that your powering their machine with bare benefits; if your lucky. Many homeless folk out there.
Heck, if you've got a job after this ML/AI fluff, you must be good at it. I'm 35 and above cynical at this point, I see no hope in this world from both people and those who run the show.
Take it as you wish, I wouldn't hold it against mother earth imploding herself because of the vile the homo sapiens race has become. Anyway, back to our designated cubicles within the walled gardens we opted for.
Less convenience, more care. More respect, less extreme actions. Effective penalities issued to those who break the rules.
A fine to a $multinational company isn't punishment. Strip their assets from.
More respect for one another would uphold so much more positivity in this world, but no we must judge and align folk in to groups. We are still divided by diversity. It's 2025 and we still have issues over someone being black, white or in-between.
Capitalism isn't inherently bad. It works well with respect.
But in this day and age capitalism has gotten so rootless that nothing is done when the power in question abuses their power. There is no respect in today’s capitalism, upgrade respect and you'll have upgraded capitalism. we only go to war because of lack of respect.
Turn the page of the plastic age. I'm now rate limited so that's my digital protesting done for today. Not that anyone has taken side and protested with but would rather point how my ideology is wrong and not contributing to what they would do. But I'm sure you'll be buying your pickets off amazon and walking around town with them only to be tossed aside after the rally this Saturday for them to do something comfy either whether it being Netflix, gaming or porn.
But that's okay it's why I do litter picking out of civil respect; not enough. That way I can pick up the crap that people think they are fighting for as my power of fighting back. When you do go for a smoke, throw the butt on the street, spit on the pavement I'll be there scrubbing that too. Where's the respect? But, hey. People suck we know this. Companies suck more.
Can you threaten class-action lawsuits? If so: Donald, Elon, Jeff, America, UK, Israel, Russia, Microsoft, Google, Apple; you name it. If $entity has treated the world with hurt, you have no respect. Is that what you want to hear? Because that's true capitalism.
Sugar coated? Close your eyes and turn on the TV; especially the news. Pick a side and enjoy the slaughter. You'll be dead soon.
Sorry, I'm genuinely confused about what you're saying. If you think no one is worried about plastic except you I honestly don't know how you could possibly get that impression.
You keep bringing up plastic yet I've not mentioned. Maybe read my first post you replied to again and understand the world is fucked because of faults.
Turn the page of the plastic age? We all live in a plastic age. Everything is plastic your phone is too. Wars are plastic. Plastic is OLD. Turn the page.
Brit here. Yeah from my experience people don't care. Hardly anyone gets prosecuted and those who do have often done something bad.
Most day to day complaints are they don't prosecute enough, often related to the bastard that snatched your phone. We have approximately zero people sitting in jail for failing to decrypt and similar.
>This is a very obvious setup for future totalitarianism.
No it really isn't. If they are planning a totalitarian takeover they are being very sneaky about it. There is a strong anti totalitarianism tradition here including elections since 1265, writing books like 1984 and bombing nazis.
> Hardly anyone gets prosecuted and those who do have often done something bad.
Perhaps often they've done something bad, but sometimes they haven't, that's the point. Obviously this is wrong and you shouldn't be so passive about it.
> If they are planning a totalitarian takeover they are being very sneaky about it. There is a strong anti totalitarianism tradition here including elections since 1265, writing books like 1984 and bombing nazis.
I'd argue people in the UK today like to adopt the label of being anti-authoritarian and anti-totalitarian, but in reality most people here, including our politicians, quite like authoritarianism.
For example, people here often argue things like "I support free speech, but obviously insulting someone for their identity is wrong". So in the UK we apparently have free speech and I can apparently criticise religious people, but at the same time just this week someone in the UK was arrested for burning a bible.
You see this hypocrisy constantly in the UK... "I'm not an authoritarian, but smoking is bad". "I'm not an authoritarian, but you can't be saying that". "I'm not an authoritarian, but if you're worried about mass surveillance you probably have something to hide". "I"m not authoritarian, but you can't just let people have private data on an encrypted device which the government can't access".
The UK is very authoritarian these days, but unlike other parts of the world people here deny it while arguing in favour of more of it.
There's nothing necessarily wrong with being authoritarian and wanting the government to have more control either. Clearly many countries find this type of government appealing, but lets at least be honest about it. We don't want kids on social media. We don't want people smoking. We don't want people being about to call people names on Twitter. We don't want people burning religious texts. We don't want people being free from government surveillance.
It is true, the British do tend to submit to authority. Questioning authority is considered poor taste, bad manners.
This way is more serene and orderly than anarchy. But I suppose it bodes poorly for the individual liberties. On balance, there is value in aligning and orchestrating society. Too much individualism can turn into radicalisation through identity politics, as we’ve seen in the US in the last decade.
A large degree of societal cohesion is not all bad, in the context of the alternative. It’s not all good either, but it has served the British thus far. It’s serving some other countries like China, too, one can’t deny it.
Unfortunately, I suspect this is true. The British public does have an authoritarian bent, with a side helping of “rules are for other people, this couldn’t possibly impact me at some point”.
I'm not sure "giving your rights away" quite sums up the process. It's more as a Brit, and probably most of us, weren't even aware this bill was happening - the government passes many pages of dull legislation - but if it proves a pain you can always vote for whoever offers to repeal it. I suspect the encryption law vs Apple is going to result in the government backing down to some extent.
I've tried to explain the issues with the UK government's stance on digital privacy to my friends. The responses I get:
* I have nothing to hide, I don't care
* Oh come on, our government doesn't care what I'm up to
* The UK will never be totalitarian. I'm not scared of the government
* The UK civil service is incompetent and could never pull this off (fair point, although I worry about the safety of my personal data in the hands of such people)
Let's not forget we had a hard-left (Corbyn) socialist regime come close to power, whose cabinet members called for "direct action" against political opponents, just a few years ago.
I don't think people realise how quickly things could go wrong with these surveillance mechanisms in place, and spiteful, authoritarian politicians taking power.
His job is to reduce the size and power of government.
Authoritarians don’t do that. Libertarians do that. Two opposite ends of the spectrum.
“Misinformation” is a very subjective word, so I’m afraid you and I will have to agree to disagree that Musk is spreading misinformation.
Don’t believe everything you read about Musk in the mainstream media. Don’t forget that the media have a vested interest in denigrating Musk, because he’s their most significant competitor, and while X exists, and we’re able to hear directly from influential people, the legacy media is powerless to control the narrative.
And so on and so on. He never stops lying. He can't help himself. There's something wrong with him.
> Don’t forget that the media have a vested interest in denigrating Musk, because he’s their most significant competitor, and while X exists, and we’re able to hear directly from influential people, the legacy media is powerless to control the narrative.
This kind of conspiratorial thinking won't get you anywhere.
Carl Sagan worried this would happen to you (https://www.openculture.com/2025/02/carl-sagan-predicts-the-...). Sagan said, "I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness"
Quoting opinion pieces in rags like the Washington Post (owned by Musk's bitter personal rival Jeff Bezos) is not the way for us to come to a consensus on what is true (or not) about Musk.
In 2023 there were terrible wildfires in Greece. The media immediately jumped on it and claimed climate change was responsible. Anyone who questioned the narrative was a "climate change denier" or "conspiracy theorist"
Then, later on, we discovered there had been 79 arrests for arson. Obviously, the media barely covered this. Only on free speech platforms like X was the truth revealed, and now, it is also documented on Wikipedia:
Today's "conspiracy theory" often turns out to be tomorrow's fact - so don't be so quick to judge Musk. He probably knows more about the wildfires than you do, given he runs a large network of hundreds of millions of users.
He's got over a decade's worth of lies behind him now. When someone is of such weak character that they feel the need to lie about being good at video games then there's not much more to say.
> He probably knows more about the wildfires than you do
He doesn't. He endorses conspiracy theories.
Carl Sagan was right. You're no longer able to distinguish between what feels good and what's true.
Claiming "disinformation is subjective" and then cherry picking something to avoid all of it isn't even a credible attempt. Consensus isn't the objective, forwarding arguments that hold water is. You haven't disputed a mentioned single fact, so I take it you know they're indeed facts.
It seems like perfect case to make multi-container encryption as default. That is different data will be revealed using different key and there is no way of knowing how many containers there are in the blob of data and not possible to prove someone is hiding a key.
Not if the state can access your super secret containers while you access them with your software. Because state backdoor either in hardware or in OS level
It's incumbent on the prosecution to prove that you know the key they are claiming you are withholding. It is a defence to say you forgot it, or that the data is random. The prosecution would have to prove that you didn't forget it and that the data is not random.
s3 makes it clear that if you plausibly claim you have forgotten it, then the prosecution must prove this is not the case (i.e. you still know it) beyond reasonable doubt.
As mentioned in the article, Salt Typhoon and the recency of this request by the UK. At this point they should know better.
My pet theory is anytime the US wants to do something illegal under US law, they simply ask the UK to do it and vice versa. That's why Salt Typhoon isn't and never will be a lesson learned.
It's not a pet theory, it's exactly how the Five-Eyes system is meant to work. I remember when Total Information Awareness was announced and they even had a cool badge designed for the new govt department. It wasn't a popular idea.
It is a pet theory. It is illegal for the US to access its citizens' and residents' data without a warrant, and asking somebody else to do it doesn't magically make it legal.
It's not a pet theory when there's proof they have engaged in it through five eyes. We're not saying it respects the constitution or its intent. We're saying it's what happens.
Black CIA sites weren't legal either, nor was torture.
> It's not a pet theory when there's proof they have engaged in it through five eyes
What proof? You would think after all the leaks there have been, some proof would exist. Instead, you cling to a conspiracy theory based on a misunderstanding of an agreement.
The fact that you immediately went for "conspiracy theory" discredits you more than you think it discredits me.
They're all conspiracy theorists when the government is accused of wrongdoing and the "proof" demands and moving goalposts happen all the time. Helped by the lack of transparency and all encompassing powers of agencies and governments.
Your arguments boil down to repeating narratives and things like "X is illegal so it doesn't happen" which just shows how naivety is part of your bad argument repertoire. I'm sure black CIA sites and coup d'etats didn't happen if I can't prove them to your liking... And if I somehow satisfied you, there's some justification that make them lawful and correct.
The fact that you fixated on "conspiracy theory" means you don't know what the term means. It means that a large group of people must be working together to make something happen, yet none of them have said anything.
If the Five Eyes participants worked as you have stated instead of as the leaked agreement documents say they work, you would expect Snowden to leak that first because it is obviously illegal. He did not. Why not reduce the number of people required to keep quiet in the conspiracy by having the US spy directly on its citizens? Every question you might ask about your conspiracy theory makes it sound even more ridiculous if you bother to ask it.
Australia does a great job of enacting wacky authoritarian policies in the last 5 years; It would make sense to use them as a staging ground. Does any specific legislation come to mind?
This week we've had the federal laws strengthend to a one year minimum jail time for nazi salutes. I think saying "punch a nazi" unironically could now also get you a year in jail, but I'm not sure about that one.
I'm not deflecting I think we just have different points of view.
> The point ... is to defeat them while you can.
That can be your point, and with that framing almost anything is permissible!
My point is generally to let free, open democracy run its course without putting our fingers on the scale too much.
I'm not scared of people doing a salute in the style of a movement that's been dead for almost a century. I'm not scared of communists flags or chants, or people chanting from the river to the sea. I think it's all healthy as long as it's non violent. The argument that it leads to violence is not logically sound and very minority reportesque.
> The argument that it leads to violence is not logically sound and very minority reportesque.
That a nazi salute, corroborated with converging political views…? You obviously don’t understand, don’t see how things happen.
Or you do, and you know downplaying “nazi wannabees” is part of the game.
It’s not about being scared but principled: an open democracy does not tolerate ideas going against its very foundations: it makes sure these are, expressed maybe, but kept in a very strict perimeter which they ought no get out from.
I started reading and it talks about something where a warrant and a case are required to request interception on each case. Is that whacky? You don't think it helps you know fight crime and stuff? Or you have an actual specific example?
Democracies around the world are increasingly looking to surveil and expose private data of their citizens, and introducing laws where simple act of defiance will become criminal.
I believe we should increasingly turn to steganography as a way to ensure our privacy (obviously, combined with encryption). Something that provides simple plausible deniability but lots of data to use as a carrying medium should become the default selection (like "personal videos" — a great use for our phone cameras to build an extensive collection), so even if "identified" as potential carrier for the data, it would be impossible to convict someone over it.
I can imagine a scheme where your secret passphrase defines what bits of data in a video to use to carry actual data and yet avoid changing the output too much. Obviously, coming with a non-reversible algorithm that takes into account different lossy video encoding schemes is non-trivial, though I am sure there is some (plenty?) prior art to build off of.
Clever technological tricks are not the solution to political problems.
"Plausible deniability" is cute, but in practice, who cares?
> impossible to convict someone over it.
Yeah, sure, tell me how well that works for you. "Your honor, the data is mathematically indistinguishable from random bytes so you can't convict me" -> "The witness saw you type in a password to view data from that image, give us the password or you're going to prison. Even if you don't give us the passphrase, the police officer says you might be using something called 'steganography', and that's already enough to convict you"
The court and legal system does not care about clever logical tricks or cryptographic tricks or any of that.
When you've been observed doing something (esp with evidence), "plausible deniability" falls through.
But when you haven't (eg. if you had your data that way in an Apple Cloud, and Apple was required to provide blanket access to everything), nobody can come and claim you've got there anything other than videos.
Obviously, a sufficiently motivated actor won't be stopped (see torture), but your data is not out in the open.
As I responded in a sibling comment, that is true when you are being targeted: for blanket surveillance of innocent citizens, it will work wonders.
The problem with just doing encryption is that it can be made illegal and it's obvious when you are using it with a cloud platform. The same is true for steganography (you can make it illegal), but someone would have to know you are using it to apply the same tactic.
Oh absolutely, I once saw research exploring how terrorist groups were using World of Warcraft emotes as their steganography and I show my students how to do simple least significant bit hiding when I teach them about image processing.
Unless you know for a fact someone is using hidden communication its near impossible to discern in the wild.
> Democracies around the world are increasingly looking to surveil and expose private data of their citizens, and introducing laws where simple act of defiance will become criminal.
Yes. Democracies around the world are increasingly stopping being democracies.
> Democracies around the world are increasingly looking to surveil and expose private data of their citizens, and introducing laws where simple act of defiance will become criminal.
Not only that, but also trying to ban platforms that don't follow their censorship guidelines (TikTok in the US, X under scrutiny in UE) and even voiding elections when the result is not good (Romania) under very slim technology-related pretense (somehow a few ads are deemed enough to cancel an election, but 24/7 oriented news from every established newspapers in another country like France is totally OK). It's becoming harder and harder to believe in said democracy when the methods are all but looking like the ones used in non-democracies.
Also because the candidate who won the first round and was almost guaranteed to win (not the nut job TikTok guy who came second) didn’t belong to any of the major parties. So the government wasn’t particularly excited about that…
2) why wasn't the person/party that broke the law penalized then? PNL was found to have paid for the TikTok ads for Georgescu. Did they get even a slap on the wrist?
> Something that provides simple plausible deniability but lots of data to use as a carrying medium should become the default selection (like "personal videos" — a great use for our phone cameras to build an extensive collection) [...]
No. I want all of my data end-to-end encrypted. In transit, at rest, everywhere and at all times. Privacy is a human right. Security of their citizens is what these governments vowed to protect. If they can't, these governments should be changed.
This is so disheartening. I thought we were making progress in the anti-surveillance privacy narrative, but this says otherwise. As a UK citizen, is there anything I can do to dissuade this?
In my mind, the only way to beat these efforts for good is to win hearts and minds of the larger public. Currently because only weirdos like us care about this stuff, we have to constantly be on top of these things and writing letters making posts etc.
Overall i agree with you, it is really disheartening. That being said, i've made progress with my family on valuing privacy and the dangers of surveillance. I think people might be changing their minds slowly but still lots of work to do.
A breakthrough with my sisters was when abortion was threatened here in the states. Mentioned to them that it would be easy for authorities to enforce abortion punishments by subpoenaing data from menstruation cycle tracker apps. This kind of "clicked" for them and they became more open to the other parts (not given ratukan or whatever their purchase history, etc. etc.)
Thought experiment: let’s say that Trump said that he thinks Apple is helping hide illegal immigrants because they are communicating with each other over channels that ICE can’t decrypt, how much pressure do you think he could put on legislatures to pass a law here?
Now let’s say that some Republican Senators and Representatives were ethically opposed to but then threatened to be primaried and President Musk said he would throw all of his money behind a potential opponent, how long do you think it would take a law to be passed?
Even without a law, we already see that Cook will willingly bend a knee to Trump as will Google.
Right now in my home state the governor was trying to get a law passed banning Western Union from allowing illegal immigrants from sending money overseas.
He will just do an executive order. He is an authoritarian, basically a king. "But but but it's illegal". The system can't keep up with speed he is dismantling it.
That all it takes is the co-presidents to say that by giving up your freedom we can get rid of those “evil illegal immigrants” and enough people will give up their rights.
> I thought we were making progress in the anti-surveillance privacy narrative, but this says otherwise.
I think we are perhaps the lowest point ever in terms of anti-surveillance efforts. There seems to be bipartisan effort among many (most?) western governments that the government should have unfettered access to all data, regardless of any reasonable expectation of privacy.
Encryption seems barely tolerated these days. Governments are insisting on backdoors, they are making it illegal in some cases for companies to even discuss what is going on or that monitoring is happening.
We barely know what is going on with the programs and efforts that get leaked to the media, much less the programs that operate in total secret.
> As a UK citizen, is there anything I can do to dissuade this?
If you voted for this Tory-lite government, then you can stop voting for any future Tory-lite governments. If you did not, there's not much you can do in practice without devoting your life to it.
Wait. The Tories aren’t in power yet you want to attribute this to “Tory-lite?” It’s the Labour Party that is in charge, so why not put the blame on the actual perpetrators? Is it because you don’t want Labour getting blamed? I am confused. The Labour Party is the one jailing people for speech, so it follows that they would want backdoors into iCloud so they can better investigate ThoughtCrime.
The director of public prosecutions of England and Wales, Stephen Parkinson (appointed by the Labour Attorney General), warned against "publishing or distributing material which is insulting or abusive which is intended to or likely to start racial hatred. So, if you retweet that, then you’re republishing that and then potentially you're committing that offense [incitement to racial hatred]."
He added further, "We do have dedicated police officers who are scouring social media. Their job is to look for this material, and then follow up with identification, arrests, and so forth."
I'm very surprised that I got as many as three replies by people who interpred my comment this way! You got it right indeed.
I'm a bit confused though, surely if I call someone "Hitler-lite" this couldn't possibly be inteprered as something positive, haha. Maybe it's just tribalist reflexes, or maybe I did word things strangely.
This stuff started from the Online Safety Act 2023 passed under Rishi Sunak's Tory government.
For some reason Americans, including Musk, go all partisan and feel the need to blame speech restriction on the lefty party but it's not what happened.
You know the answer, of course with FPTP there's only two parties with a realistic chance. But why do they? Because you keep voting on them. Your votes made e.g. Corbyn lose but Starmer win. What signal does this give off? A very different signal than if both would've lost. Would another Tory government would have been even worse? In the short term, maybe. But this kind of short-termism is what has got Labour (and all of the other similar parties all over Europe) in this exact predicament. Better to make them lose for picking an awful candidate that's a Tory-lite and bite the bullet. It's not like the Tories would have kept winning for decades on end with the way things were going.
If you agree that Brexit happened under the Tories and not Labour, then we can also agree that THIS order is happening under the newly elected "Labour Party" and not the "Tories", or so-called "Tory-lite" names.
It's completely pointless trying to remove accountability of this government's illogical actions and then to immediately resort to blaming the previous government for bad decisions like this one.
Just admit that this is under the Labour government.
Huh? You completely misunderstood what I meant by that moniker. In no way at all does it absolve them of blame - quite the opposite, it's calling them nearly as bad, so close that the difference doesn't really matter.
The government is a reflection of the people. It might not be perfect, but if 80% of the country didn’t want this type of surveillance we wouldn’t see any government pushing it.
You have to change the view of the country as a whole, and for generations the U.K. has been a country of curtain twitchers.
Well, in the UK just planning a non-violent protest can get you 5 years in prison as many people have already discovered. Protesting has been pretty much made illegal by a very broad legislation that defines any protest that causes "disruption" as illegal - what "disruption" means is up to interpretation of course.
Which just means you need a large group to protest. They can arrest 10,000 people no problem, but get several million together and you have an army. Best is to get some of the actually army/police with you so that when (not if!) they try to get violent you can make it clear this is a revolution they won't win.
I hope it never reaches the above level, but always remember that remains an option.
Yeah but to get a million people together you need to plan for it first, and that's where they get you :P It's honestly shocking the state of things in the UK in that regard. I'm surprised there isn't more outrage around it, even the people I know who used to say they hate the Just Stop Oil protesters expressed shock that they've been given 5 years for just talking about a protest, not actually doing it.
I don't support the legislation you're referring to, but I think you're painting an exaggerated picture (unfortunately a common theme of these threads on HN about the UK). You can easily find examples of recent protests in London: https://news.google.com/search?q=protests%20london&hl=en-GB&...
Note how I didn't say that protests don't happen in the UK. They obviously do. But the problem is that now that effectively every protest has been made illegal due to the fluid definition of what "disruptive" means, the enforcement is arbitrary. Just stop oil protesters? Thrown in jail. Protesting in front of the Chinese embassy? Carry on. That's the problem with the broad legislation in the UK - government wants to have the power to spy on everyone, but obviously it doesn't mean everyone will be spied on. Just people who do something the government doesn't like.
I understand. However, I think your original post was very much open to being misinterpreted by people who don’t live in the UK or follow UK news. It’s obvious to us that protests still happen in the UK. But many people here only read negative news stories about the UK and would just assume from your post that protest in general was now effectively banned.
Weren’t the few JSO protestors who were jailed convicted of doing things that would be objectively illegal in more or less any country? Where are the countries that allow me to deface priceless works of art or block public highways without any legal consequences? I am not saying that these are necessarily illegitimate forms of protest, but they come under the heading of ‘civil disobedience’. The whole point of civil disobedience is that you get punished and thereby draw attention to your cause. Even in the US you can easily be jailed for protests involving blockading or trespassing: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-69003240.amp, https://www.vpm.org/news/2024-06-24/gaza-protest-interstate-...
It may well be that the new legislation is overly broad, but I don’t think the JSO protests are a great example of this.
Labour have no problem with it, just the same as the Online Safety Act which is causing chaos right now. They're fine with the legislation and have never expressed a desire to see it repealed. They didn't even do much to prevent it in the first place.
This is what the parent comment is getting at when they say "Tory-lite".
Are you still under the impression that different political parties will actually do diffrent things? It even sounds like you think Labor are 'good' and the Tories are 'bad'. I think you may change this opinion after the next 4 years.
Yeah know, at some point a historical review would suggest that the constant stream of labour led initiatives to end privacy might indicate that the problem is not just the tories.
> I thought we were making progress in the anti-surveillance privacy na[rra]tive
What lead to to believe that? The Conservatives and Conservative-Continuity governments both agree that our data simply must be in the hands of the police, DEFRA, and your local council.
RIPA will never be repealed and only strengthened.
I don't disagree with your analysis but i wouldn't be so fatalistic. This stuff _isn't_ inevitable and i think it's possible to win people over to our side. Things can change for the better, but they won't unless people who care don't give up
Ahh, I used to have that opinion, but I've encountered too many "It's fine if they want it, I've got nothing to hide" people. (They never give you their Facebook password if you ask, though. Funny, that.)
Change what you can, I say, VPN on the network device.
> When Oliver shows Snowden evidence that all typical Americans care about is whether the government can see our "dick pics," he encourages Snowden to go through a list of every government surveillance program and explain its capabilities in terms of access to "dick pics."
Probably helps if the next time they try to remove the rights of large segments of the populace based on medical choices, lock people down, track them and propose vaccine passports, that you realize where everything is headed and oppose it vocally.
It's always through the appearance of good intentions and a public that pushes for whatever narrative they're fed that they normalize this.
Let's start supporting parties that have principles.
And stop making excuses for parties that don't (i.e. Labour, Lib Dems and Conservatives).
At the moment, the UK public (and media) considers it a sport to disparage and smear parties like Reform, whose leaders want to shrink the power and over-reach of the state.
We are so concerned with appearing virtuous and internationally generous, we cannot be seen to align with a party that wants to put UK citizens first (border security? deporting dangerous criminals back to their home nation? gasp, how could we be so ghastly!)
This self-defeating attitude needs to change if we want a better future for our children.
> Let's start supporting parties that have principles.
The problem is that there are none.
The correct assessment of all these political parties is that by default, they all cannot be trusted. Especially both labour and the conservatives.
> This self-defeating attitude needs to change if we want a better future for our children.
Yes. The second problem is that the United Kingdom is incapable to changing itself historically and is fundamentally destined to never be open to change.
Sadly, the EU is trying very hard and very persistently to pass the Chat Control bill. So far the EU hasn't succeeded, but I would be surprised if EU politicians didn't keep trying until it is finally codified into law.
Successive UK governments consistently fail to understand the UK's place in the modern world. Insisting on access to encrypted data in all jurisdictions globally is just another example of them thinking small and acting big. Its the digital equivalent of sending a gunboat to put-down the troublesome "natives". Meanwhile its 2025, not 1925.
I'd like to think that we've reached the point now that there will be mass resistance to threats to privacy and freedom of speech in the UK, but Britons are such a docile, accepting, and pliant people when it comes to standing up to Big Brother.
Why now? I gave up on this at least 10 years ago. If you can't even get techy people to think about the ethical ramifications of encryption etc then it's a lost cause. What makes you think now it's different? They said it couldn't get much worse 10 years ago, as did they 20. Do you really think the UK population has a breaking point where they will suddenly understand privacy and why it's important?
The UK population generally wants to put their fingers in their ears and pretend everything is ok. Remember we're all descended from people who didn't go to the colonies to try to get a better life.
I looked them up and they are not terribly old but did Ancient and Modern History at Oxford - the guy who did the law and philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford - Home Secretary. I doubt they are very up on tech.
What are you talking about? I'm a german and the surveillance here is crazy. The EU is pushing for more surveillance.
I always love the left wing echo chambers like reddit/HN who pretend like the EU is some kind of utopia.
I was wondering whether this is about Advanced Data Protection, which encrypts almost all data end-to-end on iCloud. It’s only later in this report that it gets into this key detail:
> At issue is cloud storage that only the user, not Apple, can unlock. Apple started rolling out the option, which it calls Advanced Data Protection, in 2022.
Before stating this, the article says:
> Rather than break the security promises it made to its users everywhere, Apple is likely to stop offering encrypted storage in the U.K., the people said.
This means Apple would be prevented from providing Advanced Data Protection to users in the U.K.
Not making Advanced Data Protection available is made worse by this requirement:
> One of the people briefed on the situation, a consultant advising the United States on encryption matters, said Apple would be barred from warning its users that its most advanced encryption no longer provided full security.
Apple can appeal, but is forced to comply meanwhile (until the appeal is heard) anyway:
> Apple can appeal the U.K. capability notice to a secret technical panel, which would consider arguments about the expense of the requirement, and to a judge who would weigh whether the request was in proportion to the government’s needs. But the law does not permit Apple to delay complying during an appeal.
If they had some balls, they would just stop offering icloud altogether in the UK until they have appealed. Let's see how the judge feels when half the country can't access their files anymore and Apple points to this decision as the reason.
Not just most of the judges, but most of the MPs who voted on this. Let them eat their own cake.
I think they could do something like what Tik Tok did, by letting users know why they can no longer provide the service.
I would personally give Apple money to see them actually stand-up to this. What's probably more concerning is the number of companies not complaining about this at all.
Even to the extent that parliament does care — and both this lot and their predecessors have ignored a lot of criticism about this specific law — turning public disfavour into a change to the law is often a slow process.
I don't see UK judges getting motivated to rule in favour of a foreign company because they took their ball and went home, not even in cases where the ball happens to be very popular.
Even in that case, Apple could withdraw from the market.
If push comes to shove and apple actually called their bluff and withdrew completely from the UK market, I'd bet that that government would become so unpopular that they would not be elected again for quite some time.
Apple can't offer icloud with encryption. It doesn't force them to offer the service at all afaict? Forcing a company to offer service at all seems like a gigantic judicial overstep IMO.
True, the UK is one of the few European countries where iOS is bigger than android just like in the US. I work in mobile management and we see those a lot in northern Europe. Where they're scarce is in South and East Europe.
Here in Spain no person has even tried to SMS me (which is the fallback for iMessage which I don't have) for 6 years or so :). I also don't have RCS enabled. It's all WhatsApp and Telegram.
The SE is also relatively expensive in Europe. And in Spain Apple seems to have completely removed all trace of the SE from their website. Strange enough. Didn't check other EU sites.
In the UK the employment arrangements of politicians are very unconventional. In some ways, they're more like independent contractors than salaried employees.
If your MP has an office in their constituency? They rent the office and buy all the computers and desks and printers and whatnot out of their own pocket, and get the expenses reimbursed later on.
The separation between work life and professional life is also extremely blurry. After all, you have to build up a network of supporters and donors and people in the party who like you before you can get elected. So hundreds of your best supporters and closest allies already have your personal number saved against your name in their phone.
For years, law enforcement pushed for encryption backdoors, arguing they were necessary to combat crime and terrorism.
In the US, after Salt Typhoon compromised telecom networks—including court-authorized wiretap systems—the FBI has now (somewhat reluctantly, I think) started advising government officials to use end-to-end encrypted apps like Signal and WhatsApp to protect themselves. [1]
I think the UK government is running a bit behind wrt Encryption.
> So much for personal liberties. I'd like to give Labour the benefit of the doubt and assume this is a holdover from the last government knowing how fast the civil service actually works but given the Tory 3.0 plan they are going with I wouldn't put it passed them.
>We didn't vote for this.
You very much did vote for this, you voted for Labour under Keir Starmer and he did not particularly hide his being tory-lite. If one is surprised by this they must not have paid any attention before voting.
quite why Labour deserve the benefit of the doubt on anything authoritarian I don't know
Labour was behind:
- forced key disclosure (Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000), still in force
- 72 day detention without charge (Terrorism Act 2006), defeated before it became an Act
- national identity register and mandatory id cards (Identity Cards Act 2006), ripped up by the next Tory government
- various attempts at removal of ancient right to trial by jury (partially successful)
Its crazy how people still think one political party will be 'better' than another! I guess they must be young. After you have seen 10 or so government terms play out you soon learn.
The US is the only country with codified freedoms from the government. Every other country has rights given by the government to their citizens.
The US may suck every now and then, but the US constitution is one of the best things in human history. It protects us from governments like the UK that don't think they have any limits to control their citizens.
> and because the constitution hasn’t prevented state censorship in the US[2-4]
That the constitution hasn't been upheld to a perfect standard all the time doesn't mean it doesn't codify freedoms. Also, precisely what the standard is isn't universally agreed upon and changes over time.
GP tried to argue that, by virtue of the First Amendment & co, US citizens are more protected against right violations than any other country, including those that merely “give” the rights to their citizens.
Freedom being “codified” doesn’t mean much when it’s trivial to violate it both directly and indirectly.
> What the standard is isn’t universally agreed upon.
The First Amendment is very explicit about what the standard is: “[…] or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
The government has many tools to violate precisely those rights, and both sides of the political spectrum have exercised them.
The society and political environment that created the Constitution are far in the past, and we should stop pretending that modern US shares its spirit. Instead, we should look around to learn from the success of other countries.
The constitution is merely a few pages of paper produced by the founding fathers together with many more pages of paper produced by the Supreme Court.
Without men and women willing to stand by it and defend it, it is useless. And what we are seeing is that there are increasing number of people who have taken an oath to defend the constitution but have chosen not to do so.
History is full of cases where a well written constitution is ignored by the ruling government.
> The US is the only country with codified freedoms from the government.
No, its not. Plenty of other countries have written constitutions with codified rights against the government. Many of them are more explicit about how the conflict between explicit grants of power to the government and explicit rights of the people balance in conflict, which may make them seem superficially less strong; OTOH, the fact that the US Constitution has both unqualified grants of power and unqualified enumerated rights has led to that conflict being resolved by the courts, by...qualifying the rights based in large part on the grants of power.
> Every other country has rights given by the government to their citizens.
That's no more true of “every other country” than it is of the US. The Constitution itself is a deal negotiated between representatives of and ratified by state governments, so all of the rights it protects are, ipso facto, granted by government.
Indeed. It’s somewhat funny (and sad) how the average educated person simply denies this or says it doesn’t matter.
For example, in the Dutch constitution, freedom of speech, religion, privacy et cetera are all qualified “except as restricted by law.” [0] That is to say: if the government passes a law restricting your speech, religion or privacy, that will typically be Constitutionally acceptable. Meanwhile, in the US, the Constitution is absolute, to rather extreme ends. The Dutch constitution is of course rather obvious in its weaknesses, but there are other signs for other countries aside from the text itself. One good method is to take a look at the mechanisms of enforcement of the Constitution and measures of Constitutionality. For a good laugh: https://www.advocatie.nl/nieuws/rechter-mag-wetten-langs-de-...
[0] https://wetten.overheid.nl/BWBR0001840/2023-02-22 For example: “Ieder heeft, behoudens bij of krachtens de wet te stellen beperkingen, recht op onaantastbaarheid van zijn lichaam.” or “Everyone has, subject to restrictions under the law, the right to inviolability of his body.” Most other rights include such a provision.
How do you mean? Who upholds those codified freedoms? Many democratic countries have similar fundamental laws that are explicitly hard to change or bypass. In the end though all rules are either enforced by some authority or they are mere suggestions. The USA doesn’t seem like a special case to me?
> Many democratic countries have similar fundamental laws that are explicitly hard to change or bypass.
What exactly constitutes "hard to change"? In many countries, fundamental freedoms are regular legislation which can be overturned in the usual manner. Even a threshold of 2/3 or 3/4 to change is much easier to overcome than the federated constitutional amendment process in the US.
There are also countries that have a constitution that cannot be overturned like a regular legislation. It's not like the US is the only place that has it that way.
Right, I didn't mean to imply it was a US-only phenomenon -- plenty of countries have fundamental rights enshrined in their constitutions, with varying degrees of difficulty to amend. I was specifically responding to the claim about countries that instead have "hard to change" laws, since laws are typically much easier to repeal than constitutions.
> Even a threshold of 2/3 or 3/4 to change is much easier to overcome than the federated constitutional amendment process in the US.
This can go either way. If you can agree 3/4 of state legislatures to agree on an amendment, you can successfully ratify it (via convention if needed if Congress isn't amenable). But 3/4 of state legislatures can represent small states - so much so that it's possible to amend the US Constitution though legislatures that are nominally representing less than 25% of the country (and in practice even less than that when you consider the effects of FPTP).
While the US does have a written Constitution that explicitly limits government power (notably in the Bill of Rights), many other countries also have codified documents or legal frameworks that protect citizens from government overreach.
For example, Germany's Basic Law (Grundgesetz) was created after World War II to ensure the protection of human rights, including freedoms of speech, assembly, and religion, among others. In Canada, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is part of the Constitution Act of 1982 and guarantees a range of civil liberties. India's Constitution, too, contains an extensive list of fundamental rights that are designed to restrict arbitrary government action, such as the rights to equality, freedom of expression, and personal liberty. South Africa's Constitution is also highly regarded for its strong emphasis on human rights protections.
Even in the United Kingdom, where there is no single written constitution in the US sense, many rights are protected by statutes (such as the Human Rights Act 1998) and established common law principles that limit government power.
Many democracies enshrine rights in law, reflecting the widely accepted idea that such rights are inherent and must be protected against undue governmental interference, rather than merely being granted as privileges.
> In Canada, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is part of the Constitution Act of 1982 and guarantees a range of civil liberties.
I would like to point out Section 1 of the Charter:
> 1. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.
There is a ton of complexity to determining whether or not Charter violations by the government will actually have any kind of consequential remedy for those whose rights have been violated. None of the rights or freedoms in it are strictly absolute and there's legislation that infringes on many of them with those infringements held as "reasonable" by the courts.
Well didn’t Snowden reveal that is a bit of a stretch in what actually happens?
Don’t the 5 eyes just just look over each other citizens and report to each other?
The constitution only protects up until a national security threat and then ignored is it not?
Still I think the US is an amazing country with some of the strongest protections from the government. I just don’t think it is as rock hard as you believe.
You are missing the most important part: a culture in which these kinds od overreach are not tolerated. For sure resistance has waned over time, but it is still strong. The constitution is merely a piece of paper if people are not willing to defend their rights.
>the US constitution is one of the best things in human history. It protects us from governments like the UK that don't think they have any limits to control their citizens.
The next 4 years will certainly prove or disprove this statement!
The US Constitution also guarantees birthright citizenship, but that doesn't mean the government will actually respect that right. The US Constitution only holds as long as people are willing to defend it.
That amendment has never been tested in the grounds that the Trump administration is.
It certainly wasn’t intended for the currently used purpose and will very much come down to “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” which anyone short of the best legal scholars in our country aren’t qualified to speak to.
The text of the amendment is as clear as day: anyone born in the US is automatically a citizen, with only a few, well defined exceptions (children of foreign diplomats).
The Supreme Court already ruled on the meaning of the amendment in 1898, so there's no possible ambiguity left.
Trump's executive order is just blatantly illegal.
Ah, but it's not so simple. Here's part of the majority opinion:
"Chinese persons, born out of the United States, remaining subjects of the Emperor of China, and not having become citizens of the United States, are entitled to the protection of, and owe allegiance to, the United States so long as they are permitted by the United States to reside here, and are “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” in the same sense as all other aliens residing in the United States. . . ."
You'll note the "so long as they are permitted by the United States to reside here" part. His parents weren't illegal immigrants. They were 'legally domiciled,' which was a thing at the time. Again, from my understanding it gets more in the weeds than that.
You're confusing the facts of the case with the opinion.
The section you're quoting is a recapitulation of the facts of the case, as agreed upon by all parties. The majority then lays out its legal theory and applies them to the facts, not all of which are relevant to the decision.
The court argues at length that under English Common Law (which is also the law of the United States), anyone born in the country is automatically a citizen, with only two exceptions:
1. Children of accredited diplomats.
2. Children born to hostile foreign armies in belligerent occupation of some part of the country's territory. For example, it cites the case of a child born to the wife of a British soldier during the British occupation of Charleston, during the revolution. That child is not an American citizen.
The court only recognizes one further exception to birthright citizenship:
3. Children born under the jurisdiction of Native American tribes. The court says that the existence of quasi-independent native tribes is a special circumstance with no precedent in English Common Law.
The court specifically argues that English Common Law and the text of the 14th Amendment allow no other exceptions. The concept of "legal domicile" is not relevant to citizenship, and the court specifically states that even the children of sojourners, businesspeople and others only temporarily in the country become citizens at birth. The only exceptions are those I listed above.
The point is that you have to actually read the majority opinion, which argues all of these points at great length.
What Trump is trying to push through, by executive order, would be a massive revision of American law, going back to the Constitution and even before the revolution. The 14th Amendment was intended to make those principles, which Trump is now denying, completely unassailable for all time.
Erm, a nationwide injunction was already made against that part of the executive order by a federal judge. You're the second person today I've seen try to imply that we're in a dictatorship because of that executive order. Whoever is spreading that misinformation should be fact-checked!
The president has ordered the bureaucracy to ignore the 14th Amendment. You may be blasé about that, and even consider pointing that out to be "misinformation," but I'm not. It's a sign that Constitutional rule in the US is in serious danger.
I'm not even going to get into all the other unconstitutional actions Trump has taken, such as appointing Elon Musk to lead the most powerful agency in the federal government without Senate advice and consent.
Senate consent is only required for actual agency posts. Elon's team is just a small part of the USDS which is part of the Office of the White House. Which doesn't require Senate consent. Elon also has a Top Secret clearance and is technically competent to do the job.
Now I'm not defending everything Elon does but I'm saying that I didn't see anything that looked illegal there about the job description and the hiring itself.
Personally, I'd be happy enough if they just gutted just the FDA. There's probably a lot of other agencies doing harm and are overfunded.
Also, was advice and consent from the senate obtained for all these billions of taxpayer dollars being wasted and given to other countries for things that aren't needed?
> Senate consent is only required for actual agency posts
The Constitution requires Senate advice and consent for all government officials, except minor officials specifically exempted by an act of Congress. Calling Elon Musk and DOGE "just a small part of the USDS" is laughable. You know that isn't true. They have the power to take over and shut down any federal agency they choose. He's not some minor official, and the Constitution is very clear that his position needs Senate approval.
> I didn't see anything that looked illegal there
Shutting down USAID is illegal. The president does not have the authority to arbitrarily shut down federal agencies and to not spend money that Congress has appropriated.
> was advice and consent from the senate obtained for all these billions of taxpayer dollars being wasted and given to other countries
Yes. Why are you even asking this?
> for things that aren't needed?
AIDS patients in Africa don't need antiviral drugs?
Further proof against the idea that we live in "democracies", if anyone still believes that. We're at the hands of petty tyrants. Modern societies are surveillance hellholes, and it seems to only get worse and worse. So much for "progress".
I think Technofeudalism, as Yanis Varoufakis put it, creates inverted totalitarianism where people are controlled not directly by government with guns but with corporations with access control and moderation power over apps that form the majority of the public commons, personal, and work lives. To resist this subjugation, individuals, municipalities, and groups, large and small, need to build their castles on the bedrock of non-profit co-op services in countries with strong privacy safeguards rather than on the uncertain sands of corporate shores where they will be swept away by the next wave. It's expensive, it's starting from scratch it many cases, and not going to be as immediately polished as corporate offerings, but the socioeconomic and human capital won't be as easily destroyed, manipulated, or raided by police or corporate whims.
I think this is unnecessarily defeatist. The UK is still a well functioning democracy. Using scare quotes around proper democracy just blurs the line to authoritarians and dictators.
We elect our politicians. We demand they stop serious crime and terrorism. When they have bad ideas about how to do that, we let them know that it's a bad idea. Or we don't elect them again. This works.
"We elect our politicians. …When they have bad ideas about how to do that, we let them know that it's a bad idea. Or we don't elect them again. This works."
Think so? Perhaps on the surface. Think Yes Minister and Sir Humphrey. No matter how well meaning politicians are they'll be screwed rotten by determined public sector employees and then they'll be finished off by powerful corporate interests, citizens haven't a chance.
What's more you the citizen will likely be the last to know about it. Yes, outwardly all will seem normal as that's the plan but it's only a chimera—appearance is everything. Those in control learned that trick from Vespasian, it has a long lineage of working well.
Can't you see the Investigatory Powers Act wasn't dreamt up by politicans but by nameless but very powerful gnomes in GCHQ, MI6, etc., etc? For starters, politicians wouldn't have had the brains to concoct an Orwellian act on a scale like that on their own. (I've spent too long working in government bureaucracies to know how it works.)
Tragically, democracy, these days, is essentially dead. On the surface it appears alive and functioning and the citizenry still thinks it has say, but in reality it's actually like a cockroach that's been parsitized by a wasp—it's 'alive' in appearance only.
And yet you have a lengthy accumulation of the aforementioned bad ideas.
Perhaps because in your FPTP electoral system, you have few avenues to actually "let them know that it's a bad idea". I mean, supposing you don't like this particular law - which party would you vote for to send the signal?
People vote like their dad or what the paper (Murdoch) tells them. If you are lucky to have a thinking voter they only get to choose 1 or 2 issues. Maybe they want lower income tax more than something something privacy.
People won't vote against their interests? "Latinos for Trump" etc. Says otherwise. Brexit people getting kicked out of Spain etc.
No, in most countrys you have no right for a bank accouny. So when you do something the bank does not like, you will fall complete out of the system. You cannot go to work, you cannot buy anything.
I think you'll find that the majority of UK's citizens believe its government should be able to access data with a warrant. Whether the dēmos agree with your particular values is another matter, but this is not obviously undemocratic, unlike royal assent.
If a company starts hosting backups for millions of users across the world, the become a natural target of such court orders.
The only way to prevent this is to avoid this huge, massive, centralisation. Of course, Apple wouldn’t want this.
If we had lots of smaller scale hosting providers around the world (potentially dozens per country), the scope of attacking each one with such an order is much smaller.
"The USA fought a war in part because they did not like the use of general writs of assistance to allow agents of the British King to search peoples houses and papers where their suspicion chanced to fall. The UK lost that war so no way!"
Not the strongest argument these days. There's no way that the US hasn't already backdoored apple's systems. They might not be sharing that access with your local law enforcement agencies, but you can bet that the NSA has a backdoor. They've likely set up camp inside Apple. (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A). It seems the US lost the war to stop kings from spying too.
I feel Apple is one of the few companies that has the market power to say, Fuck you, we will just not sell or offer any services in your market, and I suspect that would be enough for voters to knock some sense into their government.
>Apple previously made its stance public when it formally opposed the UK government's power to issue Technical Capability Notices in testimony submitted in March 2024 and warned that it would withdraw security features from the UK market if forced to comply.
> The 2016 law [Investigatory Powers Act] is nicknamed the Snoopers' Charter and forbids unauthorized disclosure of the existence or contents of a warrant issued under the act.
> "Apple can appeal the UK capability notice to a secret technical panel, which would consider arguments about the expense of the requirement, and to a judge who would weigh whether the request was in proportion to the government's needs. But the law does not permit Apple to delay complying during an appeal," the Post wrote.
Sounds like the godawful "assistance and access" laws that were rushed through in Australia a couple of years ago, right down to the name of the secret instrument sent to the entity who gets to build the intercept capability.
Apple may withdraw security feature, which is unclear what that achieves at all. Apple will not withdraw all sales in a country for privacy of that country’s citizens, as evidenced in China.
UK demanding to see private information for citizens in other countries though..
The UK government drops the ball on just about every matter the public care about, but when it comes to overreaching digital surveillance, they're absolutely obsessed.
The writing is on the wall for the UK, has been for long, and the Labour government is going out of the way to ensure there can never be any reform, even if they have no mandate. There is one way they want to go, and they will drag their population along kicking and screaming. Anyone who can should get out.
Presumably the US government will have no compunction in using this to view US citizens private materials under UK government access rights, irrespective of US privacy law.
They'll share the data on US citizens with their US counterparts. Thats what the US and Australia do. That way govt's can claim they dont spy on their citizens. Their allies do it for them.
It's baffling to me that any sane, healthy person would advocate for invasion of not just one person's privacy (in the case of known or highly suspected criminal activity), but a whole country's people's privacy. (In this case, at least, the privacy of all Apple users in the UK.)
Where does this problem start? Is it a basic education thing that valuing one's own and others' privacy needs to be taught to kids from a young age?
For instance, in the meetings in which these ideas are proposed, why are they not considered a serious, fireable offence, like bringing up racist or sexist comments?
I very much agree. I think to many people the preference for safety/security over privacy is just very tilted toward the former. That especially becomes true once there is some incident that triggers people's amygdalas, like a terrorist attack or even petty crime. Nothing makes "privacy" seem stupid like getting assaulted or otherwise victimized. Although I'm heavily skewed toward the "privacy" end of the spectrum, I do understand people's need and desire for safety above privacy/freedom. I wish they would recognize when they're decision-making is being driven by emotion rather than logic, but alas we can't change humanity.
It baffles me how you seem to think intelligence agencies have some sort of morals or sense of duty to their citizens. These organisations are set up with the sole purpose of spying on all people. They have done it for decades and have done it in some fantasticly dispicable ways. So no, asking a corporation for data on their customers is probably is probably a relatively weak action for them to pull on the grand scheme of things.
Sure, but something like this isn't limited to just the spy agencies. They don't have the authority to do something like this on their own. Therefore there must be some buy-in from people outside the intelligence communities such as MPs, members of Congress (in US), etc. Those are the groups I think GP's comment deserves an answer to.
I totally get the spy agencies' "moral flexibility" requirements, as I've heard it put.
From what I understand, the spy agencies have ways of obtaining your private information that don't necessarily involve blanket requirements to access all users' data (e.g. creative ways of injecting malware into specific people's devices). But those approaches don't scale, of course. And they shouldn't need to.
Intelligence agencies may have their own definitions of morality, but they do not exist outside of the law, which is supposed to be the output of a democratic process.
It is, Android handsets are not prevented by Google from selecting an entirely different operating system if they distrust the one installed by the OEM. It is expressly the choice you would make if you expected userland encryption to be mandated broken.
It doesn't protect against every attack (eg. Stingray or evil maid) but it absolutely would protect you from a situation like the one in the OP. Breaking your encryption can only work if the OEM controls your phone more than you do.
Well, except that Play Integrity will effectively prevent you from using any banking, payment or government ID app using a non-OEM operating system. I am writing this from LineageOS, so I am enduring the major inconvenience myself, but I do not expect the average person to do so.
The average person has made a lot of mistakes concerning their identity and privacy. Their habits will have to fundamentally change if they want to avoid dragnet surveillance.
I frankly don't expect the average Apple user to abandon their ecosystem, sunken costs and all that. But I do expect them to reconsider their unconditional support for a company that fights for the right to surveil them. LineageOS is hard to use, but as someone that already got most my apps off F-Droid it's honestly a cinch.
I tend to agree but I'd generalize it a bit more by changing it to: "It starts with UK citizens buying [phones from most tech companies] and expecting their data to be private at all."
> For instance, in the meetings in which these ideas are proposed, why are they not considered a serious, fireable offence, like bringing up racist or sexist comments?
Hate to tell ya, those aren't fireable offenses at the highest offices anymore either.
"Stupid is as stupid does...",
this is the same Home Office Minister, Yvette Cooper (Flipper) that says pointy kitchen knives and Amazon orders are the reason for knife crime epidemic in the UK.
Next up x.com banned from the UK.
Given recent polling, we have to assume that what is MI5's today will be Reform's tomorrow. We have to ask what our government and judiciary are doing putting our privacy in the hands of the far-right.
I never understood this kinds of arguments... both sides want to read your private data, but it's bad if 'the other side' does it? It's your current MI5/government that wants access to apples data.
My interpretation is that it is an argument against trust in authority in privacy discussions.
A: Privacy matters!
B: Why should you care if you have nothing to hide?
A: If you have nothing to hide, then give me the password to your Facebook.
B: I don't trust you with that, but I trust my governments and relevant authorities.
The point is that B's faith in authority is flawed as the "powers that be" are an eternally shifting target. By agreeing to government surveillance, you place trust in every subsequent government, even the ones you would rather not.
Side A abuses (legal, governmental) power, and instead of "lynching" them for that, we turn the issue into "this will become bad only because of side B will do the same". To me it looks like someone supports side A, and wants to limit the "badness" of whatever they did, but still can't support the thing, so they find the way out by claiming that the other side will do something bad with that data, as if the collecting the data (chats,...) isn't bad enough by itself.
I understand your analogy with friends and facebook, and explaining that stuff to your grandma in this way would probably work... maybe even better if you used "your neighbor Sally works for the government, she could read your chats too, do you really want that?"... but on a technical "forum", it (to me) gives off very politically biased vibes.
For what it's worth I don't support this Labour government one iota. I fully admit to being extremely biased against the Reform party, much in the same way that I'm biased against standing in front of a fully loaded 16 wheeler moving at 60mph.
One side wants to purge large parts of the population and the other one doesn't. Yes, all parties can abuse data, but their policies do actually matter.
I think if you value privacy this isn't the right place to be making distinctions between parties. This only serves to alienate people and isn't the core argument.
I think it's more likely to get broad support when framed as us vs. them where "us" is normal working people regardless of political affiliation and "them" is our government elites trying to spy on us.
No, sorry, I've read too much history to buy into this line of reasoning. Authoritarians are a concrete threat to people's safety and they have a long history of abusing sensitive information about people to do so.
I think maybe we're talking past each other. I'm saying that when advocating for privacy, an effective framing (if winning privacy rights battles is the goal) is to make it "us" vs. "them" instead of some kind of party based push.
If it's associated too strongly with a specific party it alienates too many people to ever get mass support and become a fundamental value that "everyone" agrees on
I do see what you're trying to say. It's just that authoritarian supporters of privacy are a bit of an internal contradiction. Either they're fooled or are being disingenuous.
It's no good having people arguing for "privacy for me but not for thee", which is what it will boil down to. Ultimately authoritarians will use anything which gives them influence and control, with digital privacy violations being one of the easiest to rationalise (no violence, no physical theft).
So I don't see it as worthwhile trying to include such individuals in such a consensus. It's like trying to include foxes in a discussion about how we should best secure hen houses.
Yeah that makes sense, can't really disagree. i'm just always wary of othering large swaths of the population as beyond hope. I think so many powerful groups are invested in making us all hate eachother and in my experience we're all a lot more similar than we think
Yeah I do actually relate a lot to what you're saying. I should emphasise though that such individuals may still be worth reaching. I don't think most people stay lost causes indefinitely. But you have to break down the desire to support authoritarianism first before it makes sense to tackle digital privacy.
Unfortunately that just means there's a lot more sticky work untangling the kind of tribalistic politics we find ourselves in today.
The other one isn't even voted in yet, hasn't done anything yet, and the current one already wants the data, that they shouldn't get.
The current ones are already abusing their power, and the other one might hypothetically do something, if and when and if at all.
This is like Alice making it legal and then punching you in the face and instead of you "punching back", you say "this is fine, but Bob is bad, because if he gets voted in, he'll punch harder".
If there were a way to magically ensure that only the good guys had access to the information, I'd be way less concerned about these measures. (There are only a few things that I care about being secret for the sake of secrecy, and I can easily keep those off of computers.)
Every encryption backdoor is a huge vulnerability. Even if we somehow ensure that the powers-that-be remain entirely trustworthy (something that, historically, we can't even manage for a century), they're not the only people who'll have access to the backdoor. It's not possible to make an encryption backdoor that only authorised parties can use: as they say, the laws of mathematics do not respect the laws of Australia.
I see from your history you may have knee jerked this one. I am referencing the far-right Reform party's current polling success and how this may be reflected in our government in the future.
Just make TimeCapsule for iOS and iPadOS. With option to store it fully encrypted in AWS cold storage as Apple subscription. I want my data to stay at home.
The government did get more than third of the votes. So this is the choice of democratically elected government and the voters and as such should be followed.
This sort of policy comes from the Home Office regardless of who gets elected. The spooks always want everything.
You could probably make an ECHR argument about it, but even Germany who are most paranoid about Stasi-like behavior have some sort of rights carveout for law enforcement purposes.
Germany hasn't imposed any similar ban on end-to-end encryption without a law enforcement backdoor. My configured iPhone region, configured Apple ID region, and physical location are all in Germany right now, and I was able to enable Apple's Advanced Data Protection here without a problem.
Yes, German law enforcement does have a rights carveout, but not nearly as big of one as in the UK (or the US).
Yes. Unfortunately those who thought a Labour government would be any less likely to deploy surveillance law than the Conservatives clearly do not have a very long memory. A pervasive obsession with snooping and controlling people's private affairs is one thing the two parties are quite united on
Of course, the U.K. is rather famously not a republic, but rather a democratic monarchy. Now, if only the King would do his job and refuse assent to the Parliament when it does something wrong.
The King is only two years younger than Trump, and has cancer. His main interests are watercolor painting, traditional architecture, homeopathy, the Goon Show, and vegetables. He was never likely to do anything confrontational.*
I wonder if a future King William might try something like this, though.
* Come to think of it, Hitler liked three or four of those things too, so this is less demonstrative of character than I imagine.
Yeah, this is likely not intended to catch the most sophisticated of hackers, but your average drug dealer / murderer / thief / paedophile.
I don't know where the belief that all criminals are tech experts comes from; the popularity of cool-looking "encrypted" phones as opposed to actually encrypted apps like Signal should have long dispelled that myth.
I'd argue that the opposite is probably true, people who think that crime pays are less smart and more impulsive than the average person, and hence less likely to think about things like this.
> I don't know where the belief that all criminals are tech experts comes from;
From forums of tech experts.
I do not think this attempt by the authorities will be any useful, while it would initially work... well these guys may not be hackers but are not idiots and over time you will get your average baddies become tech-savvy enough to circumvent this.
> I don't know where the belief that all criminals are tech experts comes from; the popularity of cool-looking "encrypted" phones as opposed to actually encrypted apps like Signal should have long dispelled that myth.
I don't know to what extent this is true. A lot of criminals strike me as good at chopping off fingers etc but not computer stuff.
There absolutely is a balance between Average Joe's right to privacy and privacy restrictions for fighting crime. Without undermining the former, I'm astounded how HN discounts the latter 100%. It is real.
I disagree. There should no compromise on my privacy ever. We are not (yet) in a dictatorship and I’m not a criminal. Why should I suffer because governments are incompetent?
Devil's advocate: we accept compromise of people's basic freedom of movement (via arrest) when under investigation. Even though we know a non-negligible amount are innocent, virtually everyone considers it a necessary compromise
Perhaps part of the difference is that the public acknowledge this as a necessary _evil_ and get rightly outraged when they hear of people being detained without good cause. But with privacy, especially electronic privacy, almost nobody cares when "we will only allow a small number of agents to use this for imminent terrorist danger" inevitably turns to "we will let any random council worker casually pull up every website you've been to with no warrant"
So, strictly speaking, that's not how UK law, at least, works. The court can absolutely compel you to say things you memorized - in fact, including encryption passwords. You can of course, physically, refuse, but you can be held in contempt of court, and jailed until you reveal the information, indefinitely. So not at all off limits.
Indefinitely jailing people to get a confession sounds like a midevil torture tactic. Is that a good balance of the Average Joe's right to privacy and privacy restrictions for fighting crime you speak of?
> Indefinitely jailing people to get a confession sounds like a midevil torture tactic.
That's very clearly not what I wrote. You can demand information this way, not a confession... People in the UK generally have a legal obligation to answer any questions the court has, unless they are themselves the accused. There are a small few other exceptions.
Just because UK law allows compelled disclosure doesn’t make it right—it makes it a bad law. It creates a self-incrimination loophole, shifting the burden of proof onto individuals instead of the state. Leading to erosion of due process and a presumption of guilt, forcing people to either comply or face punishment, even when no crime has been proven. Civil rights advocates have lambasted this law.
So I ask: Do you believe it to be balanced?
Using flawed laws to justify more erosion of privacy only deepens the problem.
In a situation where a criminal used Whatsapp and decrypting it is needed for the conviction, why should I suffer because of your absolute views on privacy?
I hold neither of the extreme views, and frankly I am baffled by anyone in either of them.
In a situation where an accused criminal used Whatsapp and decrypting it is needed to view the content which may or not lead to a conviction. This ridiculous idea that law enforcement knows people are guilty and it is these pesky rights that keep getting in the way is just false. Police regularly and consistently abuse their power to railroad people and take the easiest path to convicting someone.
Even in situations where citizen rights do “get in the way” of convicting the guilt, that is the price we pay to not be thrown in jail for crimes we didn’t commit. Former Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas said “It is better, so the Fourth Amendment teaches us, that the guilty sometimes go free than the citizens be subject to easy arrest.” He also said “Big Brother in the form of an increasingly powerful government and in an increasingly powerful private sector will pile the records high with reasons why privacy should give way to national security, to law and order... and the like.”
It's easy to construct a reasonable scenario. You catch a guy doing something bad. You know he's a part of a big organized crime organisation, because you already caught some of the other conspirators. And you could bring the whole thing down based on documents / chats etc which are encrypted.
I'm not saying, based on that, you throw away privacy rules. But to not even acknowledge that there is a conflict is IMO insane.
Reading through this thread, I get the sense that the desire for absolute privacy stems from a perception of the government as basically another mafia - a ruthless, unprincipled organisation that will exploit any weakness in you, just because. Maybe that's the root of the difference. I'm lucky enough to have never lived in such a country. Sure, I care about government accountability, there will always be bad actors, and governments in general aren't always super-competent, but I believe fundamentally, governments in places I have lived are not evil. They aren't another mafia I need a firewall against.
If you have evidence that he was doing something bad, prosecute him. You must have evidence, because you couldn’t know he was doing something bad based off these chats you can’t read.
>You know he's a part of a big organized crime organisation, because you already caught some of the other conspirators.
So charge them with conspiracy or RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations).
>you could bring the whole thing down based on documents / chats etc which are encrypted.
How can you possibly know that? If you have evidence of crimes, use that to prosecute. If you don’t have evidence, then you don’t know crimes were committed. Regardless, you don’t even know if these encrypted chats contain anything incriminating.
Government is not another mafia, they are a group of people who are flawed. “Good” governments have laws protecting the rights of citizens against individuals within government. That is like saying that we don’t need defense attorneys because prosecutors are good people and wouldn’t bring a case against an innocent person, or would never bend/break the rules to get a conviction. We have them to protect the rights of the innocent and the guilty.
That's true at a point in time, but bad guys start out as clueless noobs with poor opsec. The Silk Road guy, for example, was identified by forum posts he made before becoming a drug lord. The sort of people who become radicalized through online videos aren't using strong crypto until after they've committed to becoming terrorists. So a database of texts going back several years is quite useful in catching actual bad guys.
Which is not to say I approve of more surveillance. Just that surveillance of convenient modes of communication (iMessage) is useful to serious crime fighting.
Thats what Five Eyes does and always has done. It asks other countries for info on their own citizens so that they do not have to break their own laws in accessing their data directly.
Suffice to say, they don't even have to backdoor the encryption to give the UK what they want. iOS users are like fish in a barrel, if you force some insecure paradigm on them they can either adopt it or leave.
It will be interesting to see if Apple will follow up on comments they made when this change was first floated, and remove effected services from the UK.
> Apple says it will remove services such as FaceTime and iMessage from the UK rather than weaken security if new proposals are made law and acted upon.
My gf doesn't have iCloud. She makes a backup from time to time by connecting her iphone to her macbook, encrypts the backup folder with 7z, and then I store the resulting file in my dropbox.
I follow the same procedure with my Android phone, no google cloud.
BTW anything I upload to Dropbox is encrypted first.
In case you don't already know, if you don't encrypt an iPhone backup with macOS first the backup won't contain _all_ of your data.
Apple says "Encrypted backups can include information that unencrypted backups don't" however the list they give is non-exhaustive. You might find yourself disappointed when trying to restore a non-encrypted backup that you've encrypted yourself in a disaster scenario.
Because I dont own anything Apple, nor anything that doesnt give me full control over my stuff.
I assume that instead of educating me on how the backups are in a user unreadable format, you chose to make a snide remark and leave me to guess the truth.
Why would anyone trust a backup they cannot read themselves in an emergency?
Apple basically already has this built into macos - you can create an encrypted disk image and mount it to access the files. I'm not sure if it is possible to open these on ios.
Right, after all the docs leaked by Snowden et al? After it has been shown time and time again that Apple give any customer data to the US government that they ask for? Trump as your president?! Thats right, the UK is the creepy nanny state!
Because Apple is an American company. They should feel protected, enabled even, to resist censorship and surveillance under American law. American regulation should stop Apple from exporting harmful or substandard cryptography. American researchers should be working with Apple to discover dangerous exploits. America doesn't seem to care about any of that, which is why it's primarily America's fault for exporting backdoorable cryptography to the UK.
Instead, Tim Cook is writing checks to the NSO Group's favorite President, fighting regulators, suing security researchers, and turning a blind eye to Elon illegally collecting secret Apple testimonies despite his declared opposition to Apple's business.
Where is my iCloud data stored? If I visit China, is a copy stored there? If my phone is from China, but i live in the USA, where is my iCloud data? Is it replicated globally? I once asked in an Apple store, but no-one knew the answer
Where your data is stored depends on the country set in your Apple Account. In your scenario your data will never be stored in China but I don't know if your USA-based account data is replicated in the EU, though.
don't know why the downvote, this is a genuine question. If i bought my iPhone on holiday in Vietnam and created my iCloud account there, but live in France, where is my iCloud?
It'd be nice to not have to have this fight every 3-5 years but privacy is antithetical to the role of the security services so they're never going to give it up.
The only way to get one over on the NCA is to irretreivably delete the data they want. As long as it exists, they will extort you and your family uitil you give them the keys.
I’m so ashamed to be a U.K. citizen and to have both legacy parties (Tories and Labour) staunchly supporting these horrendous breaches of privacy.
We have had a number of bad laws over the last ten years that have entrenched state surveillance and presumption of guilt.
The only party I can see taking a principled stance on civil liberties is Reform UK, whose policy document states:
> A British Bill of Rights
> Our freedoms must be codified and guaranteed. Never again can our entire country be locked down on shoddy evidence and lies. Our data and privacy must be protected. Surveillance of the public must be limited and those monitoring us held to account.
In the past the Lib Dems were quite good at standing up for privacy and liberties when Lab and Con were both agreeing on more intrusion, but I'm not sure if that's still the case
Lib Dems did vote against the Investigatory Powers Bill (2016), and Nick Clegg blocked the original Snoopers Charter (Draft Communications Data Bill). So they have good form on this.
However, since 2016 the party almost exclusively shifted focus to opposing Brexit... which is ironic for a party that describes itself as "Liberal Democrats," trying to overthrow a public referendum (the strongest form of democracy)
Reform UK believe that the detrimental side effects of lockdown policy outweighed the benefits of lockdown policy (again, there's evidence to support this view)
"While this meta-analysis concludes that lockdowns have had little to no public health effects, they have imposed enormous economic and social costs where they have been adopted. In consequence, lockdown policies are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument."
We need more voices that are willing to state these truths in Parliament IMO.
Your comment makes it sound like they're all about research, but they also want to ditch human rights and the world health organisation? This conflict of logic makes me think there's probably more to it than just research and doing good in the world. Can it be that they speak of e.g. lockdowns having been bad based on that ReformUK voters were particularly badly affected by that policy and that this study after the fact found that, indeed, they did more harm than good? Ignoring that this wasn't necessarily knowable at the time, but it reflects badly on the government to have made a mistake with hindsight and so they can gain votes since they weren't in power back then and thus the fallacy is to think they'd have known better?
Thanks for confirming that they're indeed extremist, right in point#1 of that link. "Nothing extreme about disavowing a human rights convention" my ass, lol
Replacing one human rights convention with another human rights convention is not "extremist" any more than it was extreme for the UK to enter the ECHR in the first place (which necessarily meant changing our existing human rights laws).
It is disingenous at best to claim that leaving the ECHR means that the UK will abandon or downgrade human rights, unless you have detailed insider information on the proposed British Bill of Rights, and if you're in a position to analyse the relative strength of the ECHR vs the BBR.
I am confident that a new-found ability to send rapists and murderers out of the UK and back to their home country will IMPROVE the human rights of UK citizens.
> Reform UK believe that the purported efficacy of the mRNA vaccines at preventing transmission was massively exaggerated (we now know it was).
Okay, let's check the paper.
> Thus, the current evidence suggests that current mandatory vaccination policies might need to be reconsidered, and that vaccination status should not replace mitigation practices such as mask wearing, physical distancing, and contact-tracing investigations, even within highly vaccinated populations.
I must conclude, as a party dedicated to the science, that Reform UK therefore would be on board with the above mitigations, if they are genuinely interested in pursuing at least the simplest / cheapest effective mitigations for Covid.
Yes - Reform UK is a far right populist party. They currently have 5 out of 650 MPs and are steadily gaining popularity - similar to the rise of other parties like AfD across Europe.
1. Nice cherry-picking. The US and Canada (and, in fact, a majority of world nations) are not signatories of the ECHR. Those countries seem to get on just fine without it. In particular they are able to deport dangerous foreign criminals without issue - meaning their citizens are safer. There's nothing extreme about leaving the ECHR.
2. The WHO is notorious for failures in policy e.g. Covid response, bends to political pressure from China (e.g. not respecting Taiwan as an independent entity), and is dependent on private donors like Bill Gates which means they have undue influence. A 2021 probe into the WHO found its staff were involved in sexual abuse during an Ebola outbreak in Congo. There are plenty of reasons for leaving it. There's nothing extreme about leaving the WHO.
3. We absolutely should get the oil and gas we need from our own reserves, rather than buying it from despotic regimes and shipping it half way round the world at great ecological expense. There's nothing "extreme" about using our own natural resources.
4. We know now that there were many serious side effects from the mRNA injections and that the contracts granting lifetime immunity to the manufacturers for harm were extremely suspicious. This is a totally novel form of medical intervention, administered to a large population in a hurry, under intense political pressure. There's nothing "extreme" about an enquiry on mRNA injection harms. What are we afraid of? Uncovering the truth?
"CV events such as thrombosis, thrombocytopenia, stroke, and myocarditis frequently occur with the mRNA vaccines studied. A significant number of studies included in our review reported BNT162b2 events, which presses the need to conduct more research into the CV implications of mRNA‐1273 (Moderna) vaccine."
Love swinging through here to collect the latest crop of:
- that’s silly
- they can’t do that legally
- this makes no technical sense
- this is a bad idea
- this will never happen
The entire globe becomes Xi Jinpeng’s China with American Characteristics after the iCloud encryption system is neutered and a court warrant is no longer needed.
The extraterritorial effect of the law is profoundly troubling, especially the prohibition on revealing the existence of the Technical Capability Notice. However, Apple would almost certainly be subject to lawsuits in the US and EU if it secretly added a backdoor to iCloud Advanced Data Protection, because doing so would violate their privacy policy and would likely give rise to fraud claims. They could kill iCloud Advanced Data Protection entirely, or they could add a backdoor and say there is a backdoor, but they could not, without being exposed to liability, secretly add a backdoor while simultaneously claiming that the data is end-to-end encrypted and nobody other than the user can access the data.
See also "U.K. orders Apple to let it spy on users’ encrypted accounts":
> The law, known by critics as the Snoopers’ Charter, makes it a criminal offense to reveal that the government has even made such a demand. An Apple spokesman declined to comment.
> The Investigatory Powers Act 2016 (c. 25) (nicknamed the Snoopers' Charter)[1] is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which received royal assent on 29 November 2016.[2][3] Its different parts came into force on various dates from 30 December 2016.[4] The Act comprehensively sets out and in limited respects expands the electronic surveillance powers of the British intelligence agencies and police.[4] It also claims to improve the safeguards on the exercise of those powers.[5]
See also "U.K. orders Apple to let it spy on users’ encrypted accounts"
Not just "see also." Your link is the original reporting.
Without journalists and organizations like these doing hard, expensive work like this no one -- not even on HN -- would know about it.
It's a shame that the link being used for the HN entry is to a blog re-writing other people's work, and not doing any of that work or sharing any of that expense themselves.
Considering that the only tool that humans have to manage AI is the mathematical guarantee of both practically unbreakable and even theoretically unbreakable encryption maths alongside the inherent safety of an ecosystem of human enslaved AIs (or whatever nicer way there is to say that), then this is by default the most dangerous worst possible action a government could initiate towards destroying AI safety at both an individual and "ecosystem"-wide level.
This is not my opinion, this is just logic.
My opinion on this is that these people are f***g retarded.
Apple have about 50% of the UK handset market. It's 80m terminals so that's 40m x their estimated profit of $500 per phone, so $20b (sure, currency, tax, you name it)
Does Apple lose much, in future revenue if people buy out of the ecology in the UK market? At scale, sure. But then again no. It's a 3.8 trillion dollar company. This is almost noise.
I don't think there will be a rush to the door. Set against overall revenue targets, they can comply and weather the storm.
I'm in the UK pretty much only use iMessage/Snapchat.
I had a look at the stats though and you're probably correct about WhatsApp being default, although we do have a surprisingly diverse and competitive messenger market:
Id be very interested to break that data down by age. I'd hypothesise people who grew up during the dawn of social media (late 00s, early 2010s), will be strongly aligned with whatsapp whereas younger generations might be more iMessage/snapchat whatever else is out there these days. The most interesting generation would be gen X'ers. I guess theyll be a jumble of all solutions, including SMS
I also suspect international social structures could play a big role. In the UK many people have friends & family that emigrated to iMessage counties like the US & Australia. But many have links to WhatsApp countries like India or even Telegram countries in Eastern Europe.
Don't they almost all work on a "goodybag" model now where you top-up £x for the next month of tens of GB of data, hundreds or unlimited minutes, and unlimited texts? Using "real" balance is uncommon in my experience
This is fucked, TBH, i would be happier if Apple jus pulled every single aspect of their business out of the UK rather than comply with this, I don't want to get some shitty android phone, I don't care what anyone says, theu are just not as good.
Surprising that UK specifically demanded a worldwide backdoor, not just backdoor for UK citizens. Looks like a good workaround for this US gov to get info on Americans via 5 eyes.
There is so much utterly cynical LARPing in that article. Apple was one of the earliest members to join PRISM. [1] And given the nature of the 5-eyes surveillance [2], The British government almost certainly already has access to 'encrypted' accounts from Apple. The difference is that that access is probably not lawful, which means they need to engage in parallel construction as is already regularly done in the US [3] if/when using it in court cases. All this change would likely do is enable them to use the data directly.
I felt an obligation to excessively site stuff here, because I find it bemusing anybody in tech can take such articles or topics at face value.
If Apple can be compelled to keep shut about Push Notifications being bugged, who knows what else they're obligated to keep under the covers. Caveat emptor.
They overtly and actively lied about participation in PRISM, as did all companies involved (Google, Microsoft, YouTube, Facebook, etc) because they were legally obligated to lie about participation in it. It's all just so unbelievably fake and stupid. I suspect the main reason there's minimal to no anti-trust in big tech is because it's largely just become a branch of the US intelligence services.
In some way I find the Chinese system preferable in that they're completely transparent about spying and domineering the companies within the country. The only difference in the US is we actively lie about and engage in all this utterly ridiculous LARPing that makes anybody with half a head on their shoulder just despise every player involved.
About the time a country has secret courts and is forcing private entities to lie to others publicly, something has gone very wrong with the direction of the country.
That is what remains when a government grows to incompetent, the fear of the citizen, who sure is planning "something" as he should, for such incompetence shall not get away. Paranoia is the subconscious awareness of institutional incompetence.
The complete lack of any kind of technological understanding by the people in power of most major governments is a huge existential risk. Thankfully businesses like Apple are completely staked on privacy, but Apple is actually big enough to give a middle finger to the UK. Other companies might not be able to.
Apple is a hypocrite. They already were a huge partner to NSA's PRISM and China's surveillance programs. Their privacy marketing is solely because they could not tolerate profits made by Google and Meta. Now they also want to become ad company.
Even if you ignore the above points, Apple's software is closed source. You cannot change OS or install any unapproved app on your own phone. Apple phones are Orwellian's wet dream. If people still trust bigtech then society is doomed.
> businesses like Apple are completely staked on privacy
This is completely false. It has been shown time and time again that Apple will bend to whatever data requests the US government ask for.
You may think they care about your privacy, because they tell you they do. But they are legally bound to say that. Every surveilance program they have ever been part of has had a legal requirement to lie publicly about its existance. Then when it becomes public through a leak, they are able to say 'Sorry we lied, we had to by law'.
Apple frequently acquiesces to privacy-diminishing demands from demonstrably unnecessary markets like China and Russia. They are also card-holding members of PRISM and admit to being part of warrantless surveillance efforts[0] in America.
If you're holding out on Apple, a company that has proven to betray every principle they claim to stand for, to defend privacy when money is on the line, then you've been fooled. I don't know how many times Hacker News has to say it before you chumps learn, but Apple is not a privacy-committed company. Being able to point at whitepapers is not the same as knowing how your device functions.
So which part of Time Capsule is not a good idea? Since you said directly I didn't think it through. But given how rude you have replied and I have already given you the benefits of doubt to explain, may be better not to reply.
This kind of thing makes me furious. I know there’s the EFF but what can someone concerned with privacy advocacy do in the face of these kinds of things? Are there orgs and political movements that are out there already? Privacy is a human right. IMO it’s one of the big issues of our time.
The moment this happens, I will stop using an iPhone and switch to a mainline Linux phone like Pinephone. Android is far worse though and you can't even uninstall Meta apps.
PRISM, blocking of apps in china, giving over that data to the CCP. I believe they did similar in Russia. The FBI hackings and Pegasus stuff (Although, this is more like bad security)
I should emphasize that 'I personally don't care'. I find it more interesting that people believe there is some safety in Apple products because their marketing says so.
When I was younger, I used to care about these people getting taken advantage of. Today, I wonder how I can replicate the formula. Sorry pals, Apple did it and people were happy about it. I'll make people happy too, its a Noble lie... err Paternal lie :)
Funny that the government does not need to order people to divulge their private communications.
It can just order to a third party do so. Wait, why does a third party have access to peoples' private communications. That is the Apple design. The company wants people to use their servers.
Surely any moderately sophisticated group of criminals can simply create there own end to end encryption apps. So even if the UK, or other governments, get there own way they will only et to see the content related to the less competent criminals. Perhaps it's still worth it to some.
> After the Dutch and Canadian police compromised their server in 2016, EncroChat turned into a popular alternative among criminals for its security-oriented services in 2017–2018. The founders and owners of EncroChat are not known. According to Dutch journalist Jan Meeus, a Dutch organized crime gang was involved and financed the developers.
> iCloud Backup is not end to end encrypted. iCloud Photos is not end to end encrypted.
DO NOT SPREAD FUD.
If you could be bothered to spend two microseconds on a search engine, you would find this[1] which states IN THE FIRST PARAGRAPH :
For users who turn on Advanced Data Protection, the total number of data categories protected using end-to-end encryption rises from 14 to 23 and includes iCloud Backup, Photos, Notes and more.
Approximately nobody has turned on advanced data protection.
When you go to an Apple store and buy and use an iPhone, as millions do, you are prompted to create an Apple Account and log in. iCloud and iCloud Backup are automatically and silently enabled. The device automatically runs non-e2ee backups nightly.
This is how almost every iPhone on Earth runs. Most people don’t even know the feature exists. Even amongst techies that know about it, almost nobody has it enabled.
The real practical reason for that is that that even techies know the risks of being wholly responsible for your encryption keys and most are comfortable with the current tradeoff. I have a couple more security minded friends who simply disable iCloud backups and make encrypted backups locally, which was available before ADP.
You cannot acknowledge the existence of a request by the UK. You cannot tell users you implemented the proposed system. And you must do all of this to citizens who have no representation in your system, without the consent of their governments.
It all begs the question, what else have they requested, and of those which requests were accepted secretly?
There is only one way to respond to this. You just do not comply with this. If you are Apple you withdraw from the UK completely if necessary. But a better option is probably to just take the punishment for not complying while you appeal. The cost will be large regardless. But the reputational damage if Apple complies seems it will be larger than both the fine for noncompliance or the cost of losing all business in a large market like the UK.
I think Apple has a very short window for a powerful response here. It should be re-using the famous Pirate Bay wording for maximum effect.
> You just do not comply with this. If you are Apple you withdraw from the UK completely if necessary
But Apple has a massive history of complying with government data requests all over the world. They care not for user privacy one bit, and so this request is not that unusual for them.
This is exactly the arrangement five eyes had with partners, spying on citizens of partner countries to circumvent laws preventing local authorities doing so.
So the whole article is based on “people familiar with the matter”. I suspect that the real motivation, truth and substance lies beyond the “enrage” oriented title.
This would mean that they would have access to everything stored in Keychain too if you have that synced with iCloud… Which I believe probably most people have. So they will essentially have access to millions of peoples email accounts then.
Encryption is encryption. If this is for dirt digging or evidence for police... then make the person provide it instead. Spy agencies just have to deal with it. Sure there are other ways of tapping information.
I'm pretty sure this is not unique to Apple. They likely served the same order to Google, Microsoft, and any other major provider that has any user data. And most of them complied without objection.
Is this something UK demanded, or a FVEY loophole from other partners. Does US still need to fiddle with legal loop holes to surveille on domestic citizens after Cloud?
They're not exactly the same, but you should have similar feelings about forcing a company to hand over data to researchers and forcing a company to install a back door for law enforcement.
I don't care about either, they're voluntary problems. You're a moron for trusting X with your data, you're a moron for trusting Apple with it too. It's just like how Apple defenders said with iMessage - "just buy a different phone if you care, duh."
All of the sudden people start caring, acting like they never had the chance to regulate their OEM of choice. No, you get exactly what you paid for. You trust Apple, don't you? They're a prestige company, they'd never sell you out. Probably. Oops[0].
I doubt very much if any terrorist, criminal or child abuser is going to use any google or apple cloud service to back up their files.
Anyone with a fundamental understanding of online privacy and security would encrypt any files prior to uploading them to the cloud rendering any back doors and access to those files useless and toothless.
I dont use any of these services. I have never understood the thinking around uploading your private life to some server in the cloud when they are more secure on an external hard drive at home.
The overlap between “criminal” and “fundamental understanding of online security” is fairly small.
I use online services and sync, but my life is so boring (and data breaches have exposed so much) that a disaster that destroys my house and all backups is far more likely that harm from government or private snooping on my cloud files.
I know we’re supposed to stand on principle and make data storage choices as if today’s cat photo were evidence of being the real JFK assassin, but I don’t have the energy.
Hamas switched from smartphones, with encrypted messengers to pagers, a communication device with encryption so weak it may as well not be there. Criminals get caught because they used plain phone calls and texts _all the time_. Hell, child abusers are regularly reported to the police because someone saw a suspicious picture on their phone when scrolling through the gallery. Crime and an understanding of cybersecurity don't necessarily overlap.
I agree that cloud services cannot be trusted to do encryption within their clients, but on platforms like iOS it's difficult to do automated backups using independent encryption. It's also quite difficult not to accidentally enable backups to these services because the setup flow for every phone guides you to hitting the "upload everything I do to Apple/Google".
To Apple's credit, while they normally store a copy of the encryption key, making most cloud encryption entirely useless, they do offer setting a custom key at least. GDrive and OneDrive sure don't.
I believe they switched to pagers because their location can't be tracked. Every pager message is broadcast across the whole country and the pagers just listen to all of them and only tell the owner about the ones meant for them.
A phone has to at least tell the nearest tower that it's within range so that the tower can know to send it messages. After that, when it get's a message it sends some sort of acknowledgement. In theory anyone can pick up those messages with a phased array or set of directional antennas and get a directional fix on the phone.
there are dumb people out there but can you sum up (just talking about illegal drugs) an industry that makes $360 billion per year? Brazilian ghettos have army grade weapons like anti-aircraft missiles [0]
psychopathy is a mental disease who impair people to control their impulses/defected judgment; often these are permanent personality traits, which either will let them sit in a prison for the rest of their lives depending on what they did or they will be liberated if they get caught with a high chance of another incidence... search for papers/work from Kent Kiehl if you are interested in this type of stuff
I think you have a very high opinion of the millions of people around the globe, with varying levels of computer literacy, who are terrorists, criminals, and/or child abusers.
I once worked with a business lady who used her dumbphone as an argument in a discussion where we were deciding whether all our users have smartphones. She proudly displayed the dumbphone and said that if she has one, others probably have too.
I learned only much later that her husband was prosecuted for fraud related to government funds. So she had a good reason to have a dumbphone.
It's anecdotal evidence, but still.
You are of very low opinion of people, probably assuming that you are smarter because you are some kind of IT guy.
> I learned only much later that her husband was prosecuted for fraud related to government funds. So she had a good reason to have a dumbphone.
Does she? Law enforcement can wiretap and track dumbphones just as easily as smart phones. The lack of encrypted calling/texting options even make it easier for law enforcement. If she's trying to hide more fraud, the dumbphone isn't helping her. And of course if she is trying to hide fraud from law enforcement, she probably shouldn't be doing the fraud in the first place.
There are good reasons for using dumbphones (smartphones distract, and it's having a serious impact on everyone these days) but avoiding being prosecuted isn't one.
> I have never understood the thinking around uploading your private life to some server in the cloud when they are more secure on an external hard drive at home.
Depends on your threat model. If someone unofficial wanted at what you're doing, they'd likely find it easier to go after your home data than what you have in iCloud -- particularly if using Advanced Data Protection for iCloud.
The real goldmine is WhatsApp. In most cases, WhatsApp backups are enabled and uploaded by default, including when the whole iPhone backup is created. And by default, backups are unencrypted.
So if you ever wonder how they access those WhatsApp messages, when you think that they would be end-to-end encrypted, reality is something else.
> I doubt very much if any terrorist, criminal or child abuser is going to use any google or apple cloud service to back up their files.
Meanwhile, the amount of local news arrests for people getting busted for uploading CSAM to online platforms like Google and Apple is exponentially increasing.
News stories seem to indicate that many criminals use computers just like any given person does.
Even people concerned with security who know a little seem to be terrible at it.
A local protest group in my area was passing around an image with security tips. They were hilariously bad, suggestions based on very confused understandings of risk. These people weren’t criminals necessarily, but they were motivated and concerned and somehow just terrible at basic security.
They are still people committing crimes. I don't think that's quite the same as the prototypical survivorship bias would imply.
There is the possibility that there is a great deal more crime being commuted by capable super criminals who understand the nuances of security .... but I'm more of a subscriber to the theory that for "most" crime, it's a lot of stupid people.
Rather than break the security promises it made to its users everywhere, Apple is likely to stop offering encrypted storage in the U.K., the people said. Yet that concession would not fulfill the U.K. demand for backdoor access to the service in other countries, including the United States.
Considering that the UK and Aus are both countries that share all their data with the US, I'm surprised at the naivety of the comments here about this.
This is a well worn path for the CIA gather dirt without needing to break any rules on monitoring US citizens.
It depends on whether other countries make or enforce conflicting laws. The UK order says they can't tell people after implementing the backdoor that Advanced Data Protection no longer provides the claimed level of security, which is a form of dishonesty that probably violates consumer protection laws in many countries.
And Apple argued to the UK Parliament when the relevant law was being enacted that it violates the right to privacy confirmed by the European Court of Human Rights, which other countries will still be bound by even if the UK follows through on its occasional threat to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights.
The UK doesn't have the geopolitical clout it once did, especially not after Brexit.
> The UK doesn't have the geopolitical clout it once did, especially not after Brexit.
Aye.
But (1) I don't think the UK government really understands that, and (2) for intelligence operations, they might still have enough.
Everyone else has the exact same dichotomy of simultaneously wanting all the computers safe from other hackers while also hacking everything themselves, and many also want the added extra of guaranteed citizen's right to privacy, so legal fights like this are advantageous to most nations: all the other countries watching this get to have their cake (they can spy on encrypted comms) while eating it too (in this metaphor, when Apple is found out, they get to punish Apple and pretend to be above such things).
Sure. But if one country (or one group of countries) legally requires Apple to do this worldwide and another country (or group of countries) legally forbids Apple to do this even within their own national borders, then Apple has to decide which country (or group of countries) it cares more about. It's not obvious to me how that would shake out, but the UK certainly can't assume it would like Apple's decision there, especially since seeming to care about privacy is an important part of Apple's marketing brand.
The funny thing is that anyone pointing out authoritarianism will get downvoted with a whole bunch of partisan arguments or left/right false dichotomies.
Here we are, though, at the point where the government overreach for these "beacons of democracy" such as US and UK do this often and by design and we're all supposed to pretend "thing are fine, trust us". Next they'll push some other overreach using children, terrorism, drugs or some other usual excuse and people will defend it pretending the government has good intentions and largely works for the people.
> the law actually makes it a criminal offense to reveal that the government even made such a demand.
Why is it tho ? The government has something to hide ?
i mean it's complete bullshit, citizen have the right to privacy and government has the obligation of transparency and being accountable to its citizens.
When did the UK turned into a middle east dictatorship ?
> Google has enforced default encryption for Android phone backups since 2018. When asked by The Post whether any government had requested a backdoor, Google spokesman Ed Fernandez did not provide a direct answer but suggested none exist: "Google cannot access Android end-to-end encrypted backup data, even with a legal order," he stated.
That is absolutely laughable.
If the uk government couldn't access google data, they would have ordered google the same thing they did with apple.
Apple theoretically can't access their user data when e2e encryption is enabled yet the uk government doesn't care. how does that differ from google ?
once again, if you want your data to be safe from google, apple, and the others you got to avoid all cloud and resort to use good old hard drive with encryption.
the only ones getting fcked are once again the average people who don't have much to hide in the first place, the pedophiles and terrorist they are much more aware than the old fart at the government on how to stay hidden.
It's pretty funny that as the US implodes, UKGOV, instead of grasping the opportunity to show that they're the new good option for your internet service needs, decides to blow not one but both kneecaps clean off with the doubly whammy of the OSA/Ofcom debacle[0] and now this farce.
(I suppose the silver lining is that Starmer is merely sidling towards Trump as his new best mate rather than the full-throated slobbering that Johnson/Truss/Sunak would have given him.)
[0] I know this is primarily the fault of the last lot but this shower of onions haven't done anything to roll it back and/or clarify WTF is going on.
Once again, governments push for backdoors under the guise of security, ignoring that any vulnerability they introduce can and will be exploited by bad actors. If Apple caves to this demand, it sets a precedent for every other country... Privacy isn't just a marketing gimmick! It's a fundamental right
I don't assume in general that any of cloud services in the US are free of government surveillance either. Your only hope for any kind of privacy is self-hosting, and using certs issued by your own CA (I strongly suspect Let's Encrypt is a honeypot). Likewise I strongly suspect Proton Mail and Signal are both honeypots. Tucker Carlson was spied on when arranging his interview with Putin, even though he uses Signal. This likely bypasses the protocol - you don't get to examine the binary that's installed on your phone. It could contain all sorts of Five Eyes special sauce, as could iOS, and the companies won't even be able to tell you about any of it. It's safe to assume that all VPNs are tapped, too, unless you run your own.
I saw a comment earlier about this being the USA asking the UK to do this.
Sounds like quite the conspiracy theory, but if the USA were not OK with this, the UK surely wouldn’t dare to take on a crown jewel in the US tech sector, potentially causing them serious problems.
Why not just require all data on the icloud be sent to a server all unencrypted? Ain’t no difference. Apple isn’t gonna do it and Trump will tell UK to shove it
With the increased caliber of software folks in Trumps orbit, my sense is we will have a much more informed decision from the Whitehouse on this topic and whether the US should weigh into the fray with the UK.
as a side note, its really baffling what this capability would actually provide for? Any serious criminal isn't using icloud backup or even an iPhone in the first place. So this is just a shit outcome for the general population.
If this goes through, I look forward to the news of the world expose on some cabinet members personal details
before migrating to the u.k - immigrants prepay for services e.g nhs etc. then still get taxed when they work for those same services. & remember some of these services are not easily available. yeah NHS is free - but good luck getting an appointment at the doc.
that's extra revenue for the u.k gvt.
the security guards, the care workers etc - which people are working those jobs ? immigrants or spouses of immigrants.
right now the conservative leader Kemi is campaining to increase permanent residency to 10 years. & citizenship to 15 years. who's gonna stay for that in a country where electricity & basic bills are expensive as hell.
skilled native british people are leaving & getting replaced by migrants. the doctors at the nhs majority are foreign trained.
Can you offer an example of someone being jailed for "disagreeing with the extreme left on social media," or is this an alternative fact that you've acquired via osmosis?
I am aware of people being jailed in the UK for making terrorist threats on social media, and arguably those prosecutions were inappropriate, but that doesn't appear to be what you're claiming.
All you have to do is search for it yourself. It’s not just UK citizens that are affected. They’re threatening to have US citizens extradited to the UK to face charges [1] for online speech that’s protected by the first amendment.
Your own article notes that it is “it’s highly unlikely that British authorities will go after U.S.-based social media posters like Musk for violating British laws in an online space.”
Similarly, the links again show that you are whitewashing the events: those people jailed weren’t “disagreeing with the extreme left” (every leftist would be in jail since they disagree with each other constantly) but for things like saying they were going to a violent protest and advocating burning down hotels where refugees were living. Going to a highly plausible specific threat is quite far beyond disagreement.
I've been following the stories relatively closely, since I live here and have an interest in these things.
I'm not aware of any arrests for "disagreeing with the extreme left", which is what I'm specifically asking about. It's important not to distort facts to fit a narrative.
As you probably know, we don't have first amendment protection in the UK.
We're talking about US citizens -- who are protected by the first amendment -- who have never set foot on UK soil being threatened with extradition to the UK! This is not justifiable.
You're talking about that, but it's unclear why, because it's not an example of someone being jailed for "disagreeing with the extreme left on social media".
It's also a silly story. The dual criminality requirement, and various other considerations, make it virtually certain that no such extradition will occur. Those who fear that the UK is descending into a dystopian hell may be comforted to know that we have the world's stupidest police officers. Your news story can't even be bothered to track down the specific moron who made this statement (Metropolitan Police Commissioner Mark Rowley), referring instead to a fictional 'head of police'.
This line of reasoning -- "don't worry about these authoritarian power grabs, they're spearheaded by incompetent bozos" -- is faulty. Look at what's happening in the US right now!
I'm not in either country but I'm pretty outraged at the amount of this crap going on all over the western world. I'm also an Apple customer but I'm pretty upset that I have to rely on a big corporation to defend my right to privacy from foreign snoopers.
I also think it's counterproductive to try to play the "your government is worse than mine" game. We should all be pointing the fingers at all of these governments (and their authoritarian big tech allies) all over the world.
I didn’t tell you not to worry about authoritarian power grabs. I was just pointing out that you’re going off on a tangent rather than responding to the question that was asked.
There are several examples, but connected, just this week, the British police not only arrested a men for burning the Koran, but they also doxed his full name and hometown.
This, right after Islamists killed people in Europe for burning the Koran.
US tech needs to obey the laws of the country in which it operates. I am sure the demands of UK government are more than reasonable - and, as it is a democracy - as full endorsement of the people / users
The Investigatory Powers Act 2016 was one of the big things (before Brexit) that made me realise the UK wasn't a suitable place to run a tech business.
> I am sure the demands of UK government are more than reasonable - and, as it is a democracy - as full endorsement of the people / users
"Full endorsement" of the electorate isn't how representative democracy works. Given FPTP, the government got a huge majority of seats with 33.7% of the votes, but as there's not universal voting that's only 14% of the actual population, and even with those who did vote it's not clear how many people were voting "not the other lot".
It doesn't. Apple could play hardball and threaten to withdraw from the UK market, with a propaganda notification like TikTok did. They could also appeal to Trump/Elon for help.
Also the wider part of this order is that Apple would access to the international users data, including US customers, if I understand the article correctly.
> They're currently antagonizing Trumpelon by refusing to halt DEI stuff, so they might not get any help.
I'd probably categorize that more as "declining to halt" rather than "refusing to halt", AFAIK the US government doesn't have an actual law/mandate/whatever for non-governmental organizations on that front.
Tim Cook is a master of negotiating with governments. See how he played off China and the US during Trump's first term to avoid both American tariffs and Nike-style Chinese boycotts.
If he's antagonising Trump it's for a reason. Perhaps to avoid showing weakness by being too keen.
(Although I was able to access the article in full on the original URL)