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Comment by matthewdgreen | Hacker News Reader

This fight is about providing encryption to the masses. If you want to use your own open source security solution, you should definitely do that (really!). But you will be one of a small number of people doing so. And a society where only a small number of "wizards" have freedom isn't a free society at all.

I am very sympathetic to the idea that more components should be open source, and Apple's systems should be much more open (particularly backup.) But at the end of the day if Apple is compromised there is no open source solution that can save you. They design the silicon.

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> This fight is about providing encryption to the masses

If apple cared about providing encryption to the masses, ADP would be enabled by default and you'd have to opt out of it.

As-is, all your messages, photos, and so on are backed up unencrypted to apple's servers where they can read them at will. End-to-end encryption is opt-in, and I doubt most "the masses" even know a setting for that exists.

>If apple cared about providing encryption to the masses, ADP would be enabled by default and you'd have to opt out of it.

Apple is also a company that needs to cater to its customers. If they enabled ADP by default and customer locks themselves out and goes to Apple, they want to be able to help. ADP is intended for people who understand what it is but nit savvy enough to run their own system.

This is correct, apple has a very customer first support culture which has a famous history of blowing up in their faces.

Internal metrics for support teams are almost entirely customer satisfaction focused, which built a culture of getting a result for the customer at all costs, which was very exploitable by social engineering.

It doesnt surprise me that they dont want to let customers encrypt and lose all their baby photos by default.

You can't have it both ways. Either you're providing encryption to the masses, or you're not.

Providing encryption to the masses would in fact be telling people who lost their phone, or forgot their password "no, all your photos are gone forever, tough luck. Also, you have to make a new apple account and re-purchase all your apps".

You must have a different definition of "providing" because offering a service is definitely providing it. Apple makes "smart" devices that do what people want them to, and encryption is second to that. I think it's a fair compromise to have it easily available but not default.

I didn’t say it was Apple fighting. I’m referring to the broader fight. Getting Apple to deploy encryption by default is one outcome I’d like us to fight for. But if we give up and start poo-pooing Apple’s encryption because it’s not pure enough, that fight is over.

Is the society that relies on everyone else to make the decisions that serve their best interests free either?

It’s impossible to live without depending on other people’s decisions unless you live completely isolated. It’s not “free” but most people are fine sacrificing some freedom for other gains. This has already been discussed for centuries, see Thomas Hobbes and the social contract.

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