1w ago

Apple turns off iCloud encryption feature in UK following reported government legal order.

therecord.media Apple turns off iCloud encryption feature in UK following reported government legal order

The removal of the Advanced Data Protection (ADP) feature in the U.K. follows the British government reportedly issuing a secret legal demand to Apple to provide it with access to encrypted iCloud accounts.

Technology @lemmy.zip

Cat @ponder.cat

1w ago

Apple turns off iCloud encryption feature in UK following reported government legal order.

therecord.media /apple-encryption-feature-off-britain

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23 comments

Google or Facebook should stop using HTTPS there with a big red banner saying WE HAD TO DISABLE ENCRYPTION BECAUSE YOUR GOVERNMENT WANTS TO SEE WHAT YOU DO, THE SIDE EFFECT IS EVERYONE CAN SEE WHAT YOU DO
- All UK machines, phones, and servers should just remove all root certificates. Can't trust encryption right?
  X509Brexit.
  Then they wouldn't have to interact with any part of the encrypted internet.
  
  Why didn't you take the obvious: "BreX609it"

Apple said users who already had it turned on will be given a period of time to disable it in order to keep using their iCloud accounts, although the length of time was not stated.
I'm in the UK and have ADP enabled but I am yet to be informed by Apple when/if it will be disabled in the future. I'm glad we had a change in government but this is a serious misstep from Labour.
ETA: I've written to my local MP to voice my disapproval of this "technical capability notice" and I urge anyone else in the UK to do so as well.
- Start a petition, I’m sure people will sign it based on how serious this could be for security in general
  
  When was the last time a petition achieved anything? Better off writing directly to your MP. Parliamentary petitions exist purely to allow MPs to ignore the problem as it's easier to dismiss a few thousand signatures on a petition rather than a few thousand letters stacking up on their desks.

Lol. Some galaxy brains were 'Oh my Apple would never roll over and simply do what they're told! They'll keep our data safe!' and mad at me for saying exactly this was going to happen.
Well, huh, look at that. A corporation that rolled over faster than a well-trained golden retriever. Who would have guessed it.
- To be fair this is the opposite of rolling over. Rolling over would be adding the back door.
  
  Yep. This is exactly what I expected them to do. They don’t want the liability of losing your data or enabling your privacy to be compromised on their devices, and the eroded trust of their customer base from that.
  Unfortunately the UK put them between a rock and a hard place here. As shitty as it is, I’m glad they opted to remove the feature for only that market, rather than weaken it for everyone. It sucks, but it’s the lesser evil.
  I don’t think they had any good choices here. Just like the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone, they decided not to make the device’s OS inherently less secure with the inclusion of a backdoor and I can at least appreciate that much.

Uhm this is exactly why you only store already-encrypted data on remote servers

So despite all the tough talk, they just roll over and capitulate. The only way to protest this is to move your stuff off Apple.
- …to less-secure alternatives? Do you really think Google is going to say “no backdoor, we’re keeping encryption, we don’t need YOUR market”?
  
  No? Kinda? I'd say a Pixel (so Google hardware, yeah) with Graphene, and either self-hosted, or independent end-to-end encrypted cloud storage.
  There are alternatives to the tech conglomerates.
  
  To a more secure alternative, obviously. There are other options than Apple and Google.
- Apple’s choices here were:
  Do what they did, and remove the feature for the UK only
  Create a backdoor into their OS that can potentially be used by not just governments, but bad actors too, effectively crippling security for every single device they sell worldwide and bypassing the usefulness of on-device encryption entirely.
  Exit the UK market, which is not realistic and would leave millions of UK customers without any further recourse than to replace their Apple devices, which is incredibly wasteful and expensive (not to mention inconvenient).
  Apple chose the lesser evil. What more could you possibly expect in this situation? If you want to protest, protest the government demanding that level of surveillance on their citizens.
  
  Artificially pull out of UK, by forcing all UK residents to select a different country of residence with a banner as to why UK residents can't have iPhones, then store all their ADP encrypted data on data warehouses outside of the UK. Then claim that they (Apple) don't track users and have to trust that users are selecting the correct countries of residence, and that they (Apple) will not allow the UK government to peak into non-UK residents, so they can't help "sorry (not sorry)".
  Option 4 is similar to option 3 by telling the government to shove it, but with the very important benefit of still allowing the residents to use their products. It's (almost) a win win.