Let’s be clear about what this article is saying. The U.K. has a law that allows it to issue “technical capability notices” to companies. These notices require the company to effectively disable, or secretly backdoor, their encryption mechanisms.
The insane thing about the U.K. law is that it does not only apply to U.K. customers. It can potentially be used to go after non-UK customers as well. Say, people here in the US.
The article says that it is unclear what the Biden administration knew about this. I’m going to go out on a limb and speculate wildly: the U.K. was not doing this without some degree of collaboration and encouragement from its close ally.
The UK government (at the time, and probably still now) were technologically, utterly incompetent and it's probably the least onerous thing they prev. govt passed in its dying days.
Still, I'm sure GCHQ et al lobby hard for "the good guys" ...
Insane indeed. It seems the British government thinks it still has an empire. But regardless, if Apple complies with UK demands, other governments will demand the same access. Also, I wonder if this law allows the UK to go after companies without a UK presence, like e.g. Protonmail or Signal ...
Australia and I believe also New Zealand have the same laws on the books. Not sure about in NZ but here in AU they even use precisely the same language — technical capability notice. Seems very five eyes to me
no one has ever seen one of these orders. they are never made public and the recipients cannot disclose them to anyone, not even within their companies.
When in doubt, get yourself an #android smartphone where you can freely install other mobile operating systems like #grapheneOS. Like a Google Pixel Smartphone or a #fairphone, for instance. Then you decide what's going on with your device ... ;-)
Be mindful that there is a reason these demands are made of Google and Apple, their hardware has no parallel for security. Also note these demands are made on software changes.
Agreed, but my concern is more about the ethical right to privacy and the general danger of opening up this technology. Once it is opened up, be assured it will fall in hands of more parties and party can start. Of course, this was never the purpose or an aspect of encryption.
The alernative to using a Pixel being suggested is a device running substandard low support hardware with post exploitation mitigations that don't even offer proper protection such as the recording mic/audio. State actors don't need to make such demands for it for a reason.
Not surprising given their recent speech on attracting AI demonstrated that they're all fucking clueless when it comes to technology more modern than the television
ok i checked this out. "Andy Yen is a Trumpist" doesn't appear to pan out. it's based on a gigantic meltdown by redditors over a 3-sentence tweet about an antitrust-centric judicial nominee known for attacking google, the big tech firm threatening small tech firms like proton. nothingburger.
agreed. i didnt do a deep dive or anything, but if you limit the context to only encryption and big-tech anti-competition measures, yen's comment isn't outlandish by any means
ofc, the toxicity around even referencing the US pres makes the statement a categorically dumb one to push to users 1/2
i could also imagine a minor "lip service" aspect -
it's not like he donated $1MM to the guy's inauguration fund. there's a world where surface-level pandering to POTUS' ego and social media addiction could, in theory, reduce chances of an encryption-based company falling into govt crosshairs 2/2
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The UK government (at the time, and probably still now) were technologically, utterly incompetent and it's probably the least onerous thing they prev. govt passed in its dying days.
Still, I'm sure GCHQ et al lobby hard for "the good guys" ...
... which implies this is kinda moot ..?
... since presumably there's no story to them demanding access to most people's (non-E2EE) backups!?
https://Filen.io
https://Sync.com
It's time for end to end encryption to shine.
ofc, the toxicity around even referencing the US pres makes the statement a categorically dumb one to push to users 1/2
it's not like he donated $1MM to the guy's inauguration fund. there's a world where surface-level pandering to POTUS' ego and social media addiction could, in theory, reduce chances of an encryption-based company falling into govt crosshairs 2/2
So they’re putting us all at risk.