The government ordering Apple to break its encryption is stupid, counter-productive and unworkable (FREE TO READ!) takes.jamesomalley.co.uk/p/ask-the-co... - ThreadSky

jamesomalley.co.uk • 16 days ago

The government ordering Apple to break its encryption is stupid, counter-productive and unworkable (FREE TO READ!)

https://takes.jamesomalley.co.uk/p/ask-the-computer-people-first

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leewardmister.bsky.social•16 days ago

Enjoyed this. If they do it for China, though, doesn't that mean: they know how to do it, they've done it before, thus it's perfectly workable. What am I missing?

maxsang.bsky.social•16 days ago

They just don't offer those features to Chinese customers (and presumably don't falsely advertise their products to them as private). Grim.

tommorris.org•16 days ago

The bit that's strange is most people aren't using Advanced Data Protection as it is a massive faff, and only really meant for people who might face an advanced persistent threat—journalists or activists in high risk countries, say.

There's also a simple workaround: backing up over USB.

maxsang.bsky.social•16 days ago

Not many people have the self discipline to move those backups off-site. And a USB drive stored in the drawer next to the computer is just at risk of fire/flood/theft as the computer is.

tommorris.org•16 days ago

The average user won't necessarily bother. We've "got nothing to hide" (except all the things we'd rather hide).

If you are the Bad Guy the government are so worried about, "plug phone in every few days and set up a script to copy the encrypted backup image to a remote location" is trivial.

maxsang.bsky.social•16 days ago

Quite.

lukeredpath.co.uk•16 days ago

Another good reason a lot of non-techie folk might avoid it is because lots of people tend to forget passwords and obviously that would result in irretrievable data loss.

amazingmikeyc.bsky.social•16 days ago

This comes up every 6 or 7 years doesn't it. It's very silly.
They think it's like making a skeleton key but it's actually removing all the locks

marc.wickens.uk•15 days ago

I don't think they are being asked to "break" encryption, but rather provide governments with decryption keys – similar to how it's possible to choose a recovery contact who can do the same. Not saying I necessarily agree, but unless I'm mistaken, augment is not about weakening encryption algorithms

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