The United Kingdom has issued a secret order to Apple. It wants the corporation to build a backdoor for Britain’s security services that it could use to access the cloud accounts of any iPhone user across the planet.
As first reported by The Washington Post, Britain issued the order in secret last month. The U.K. isn’t looking to root around in a specific account for a specific security reason. No, it wants free access to all a user’s encrypted material, full stop. The U.K is making the demand under a 2016 law called the Investigatory Powers Act, derisively known as the Snooper’s Charter.
That’s weird coming from the UK. Expect that to be an American thing.
Peasants mad that they’re treated like peasants by the aristocracy and their guards.
The United Kingdom has issued a secret order to Apple.
If they’re so bad at keeping secrets that anyone can read all about them within a month, then they have no business ordering anyone to create software backdoors.
Global access is wild, basically it means if the UK could force this that any five eyes country would then have the same access without needing to look bad to their citizens.
Also, how hard do we expect Apple to fight this? I have a hard time believing they would just pull out of the UK but I could be wrong. From what I understand China has this type of access because they don’t allow E2EE.
Global access is wild, basically it means if the UK could force this that any five eyes country would then have the same access without needing to look bad to their citizens.
Doesn’t the US already have that backdoor? From what you’re saying, the UK probably already has access? Not attacking, sincerely asking.
As a British person I hope Apple pulls all iCloud services including iMessage and FaceTime, rather than comply with this demand. It’s the only way the public will notice.
If Apple renamed iMessage something like Leaky Communicator or Insecure Texts (Security Breach)
and renamed FaceTime like FaceTime with you and your government…
and then both apps had frequent warnings about data being shared with the government, I wonder how many folks would be willing to go years without ever bothering to do anything to try to fix it.
(btw iOS prompts to contact legislators would go a long way now that I think about it, a la the TikTok thing)
