“Any kind of back door … access for the ‘good guys’ can also be exploited by the ‘bad guys,’” observes a Technology & Innovation Foundation report.
We can omit the skeptical scare quotes around “bad guys”; cyberhackers stealing your private information are bad guys.
Example: the China-affiliated hackers who looted U.S. telecommunications systems with the help of U.S.-mandated back doors.
But “good guys” demanding unlimited access to encrypted information are also bad guys.
Example: the United Kingdom officials behind a secret order last month, recent divulged by the Washington Post, demanding that “Apple allow access to all cloud content from users worldwide.”
Reporter Joseph Menn observes that this hitherto undisclosed order requiring “blanket capability to view fully encrypted material, not merely assistance in cracking a specific account, has no known precedent in major democracies.”
Apple is not commenting, now, to avoid legal jeopardy. But in March, when told the order was impending, Apple said: “There is no reason why the UK should have the authority to decide for citizens of the world whether they can avail themselves of the proven security benefits that flow from end-to-end encryption.”
Apple may stop offering encrypted storage in the UK rather than obey the order. This probably wouldn’t satisfy the Starmer government. If Apple sticks to its guns, its products may even end up being banned in the UK.
The alternative is open season for private and state-backed cyberhackers.
Meanwhile, time to remove your secrets from the cloud.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Illustration created with Flux and Firefly
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4 replies on “Tearing Into the Apple”
I remind everyone of when Yahoo! helped the Chinese state to identify dissident Xu Wanping, who thus spent nine years in prison and emerged with chronic damage to his health.
Apple should just withdraw from the UK. The Labour government would stomp its feet and then fall, whereupon Apple could return, its products more popular than ever.
I don’t have secrets in the cloud. Not any secrets at all, really. But have issues with governments being able to access my information with just the simple option of their deciding to lie to get a warrant, since we absolutely KNOW that they’d do that. Let a couple decades go by without the government betraying the public trust and I may reconsider, but for now, career bureaucrats equals corrupt bureaucrats.
I have files stored in the cloud (not Apple’s), but I would never be stupid enough to ever put anything on a computer, let alone the cloud, that I would be concerned about the government knowing. I’ve assumed that the government is spying on us since the early days of the Internet, and time (and Ed Snowden) proved my hunch to be right.
You write “the government” but in this case the UK is demanding access to information about all of Apple’s users, worldwide. If the UK prevails, then every government will make the same demand. Even if you have no desire to leave America, your life can still be made difficult if some foreign state decides to treat you as a criminal or as having lost in some civil action.