U.K. orders Apple to let it spy on users' encrypted accounts

[Zorro]

Source: Washington Post

Secret order requires blanket access to protected cloud backups around the world, which if implemented would undermine Apple’s privacy pledge to its users.

Security officials in the United Kingdom have demanded that Apple create a back door allowing them to retrieve all the content any Apple user worldwide has uploaded to the cloud, people familiar with the matter told The Washington Post.

The British government’s undisclosed order, issued last month, requires blanket capability to view fully encrypted material, not merely assistance in cracking a specific account, and has no known precedent in major democracies. Its application would mark a significant defeat for tech companies in their decades-long battle to avoid being wielded as government tools against their users, the people said, speaking under the condition of anonymity to discuss legally and politically sensitive issues.

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.

The office of the Home Secretary has served Apple with a document called a technical capability notice, ordering it to provide access under the sweeping U.K. Investigatory Powers Act of 2016, which authorizes law enforcement to compel assistance from companies when needed to collect evidence, the people said.

Read more: https://wapo.st/4k2AF5Z

[cstanleytech]

1. A backdoor into something that is supposed to be secure is stupid as shit.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

2. I got an iPhone iOS update last night, to 18.3. Related? NT

[Firestorm49]

3. I do understand that there are cases where access may be necessary, but I also see our personal communications and

privacy being uprooted daily. The new administration is also on a quest to silence or censor mainstream media broadcast to conform to its twisted ideology.

With all of the privacy matters that we think we have, in reality, we have very little to no privacy. I say Apple should tell the British government to screw itself and, by the way, America too. It’s time that we stand up for rights to keep our communications our own. Intrusion into our private lives is highly offensive, but I fear, irreversible.

[republianmushroom]

4. This will send tremors thru out the world.

[Intractable]

5. Folks, if you store your data in the cloud, they own it, not you.

From the article ...

The office of the Home Secretary has served Apple with a document called a technical capability notice, ordering it to provide access under the sweeping U.K. Investigatory Powers Act of 2016, which authorizes law enforcement to compel assistance from companies when needed to collect evidence, the people said.

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.



For years, Apple, Microsoft, Google, and others have been seducing us with promises of ease, security, and convenience into use their online backups for all of our personal data.

Don't do it!

[Aristus]

6. This is basically Trumpism, only with cricket and afternoon tea.

Don't be fooled. Don't let them, Apple!

[LauraInLA]

7. Go Tuta or Proton. There are encrypted alternatives with both free and paid/business plans.

[Igel]

8. Google will find a way to cave.

Growing a spine ...

1. Summon high-level British staff to the US for consultation/training/conference/etc.

2. At the meeting, pull a TikTok. Declare that all data/metadata held under Britain territorial jurisdiction has been transferred "off shore" , decrypted and re-encrypted with a different algorithm and that any "on shore" copies deleted and shredded. Next paragraph: As of a certain date (perhaps a week later), any access from an IP in Britain will be frozen as Google shuts down all services in Britain and its territories, employees suspended, in order for users to retrieve/transfer/curate their data/metadata; 30 days later, all user data and metadata will have been deleted and, with backups, shredded and as of that date any/all employees will be immediately terminated. Offer to help defray any costs for Americans that return to the US (or foreign nations moving to another country) and for British nationals to do the same, with assistance in procuring a visa for them and theirs, if that's permitted.

2. Immediately declare to the international press that free speech is a bedrock of English common law and of democracy, and that Labor, perversely, is out not only to undermine British democracy--it's about to be imperialist with respect to other countries by denying them sovereignty and their citizens even minimal rights over their data. After all, Orwell's novels were written not about fascist countries but socialist/communist ones; and intended not first and foremost for Russian or Chinese or American consumption, or even the British right such as existed at the time, but for those that he thought a bit too cozy with oppressive socialist regimes whose transgressions they were blind to.

It's highly unlikely I'll visit Britain again, at my age and financial insecurity--and relative lack of interest in most things British. At the same time, were I to head that way in 5 years and the government there had an AI with "open access" to all Google data/metadata on me, that would make me uneasy in principle. (Just as back in 1997 or maybe 1996 the stu-gov committee I chaired heard a presentation by one of the comp sci gurus that was one of the two PIs in the first DARPANET message, and who talked about various aspects of cybersecurity back then in the dark-age '90s. Immediately a bunch of the reps searched on my name and pulled up IRC messages I'd posted. Then they searched on their *own* names and there were a lot of "oh, shit!" and "what the fuck!" comments. Even if there was nothing incriminating, you really don't want to be stripped of your privacy.