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Comment by amelius | Hacker News Reader

Meanwhile, who believes that the US has no backdoors in these devices?

Cold logic dictates otherwise. The UK is part of Five Eyes: total data sharing between intelligence agencies. If that were the case, why would the UK need a law to get data it already has?

San Bernardino shootings smartypants

It wouldn’t need the law, but putting the proposal up and then, after the predictable backlash, retract it could be a ploy to make the criminals/us think they don’t have access to the data now.

WW2, the Allies used all sorts of fake outs to lead the Germans to believe that the Enigma machine remained secure. Many people died for the sake of the secret.

Given the lengths the government has gone to monitor its citizens, I could believe the technology stack has already been compromised.

Upvote from me. Your point is completely valid and simply stated, and yes, I agree that they very possibly could do exactly this sort of thing for the sake of play-acting a government blindness that doesn't really exist as such.

Truly this site is crawling with anal-retentive man-children who downvote over any silly self indulgent bullshit they can think of.

https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2024/10/4.html

https://sneak.berlin/20231005/apple-operating-system-surveil...

It’s not really a secret; it’s by design and it’s public. iCloud is not end to end encrypted by default. Apple and the state can read the on-by-default iCloud Backup which contains your iMessage sync keys and all your historical iMessages and attachments. iCloud Photos, Contacts, and Mail are all similarly not e2ee and trivially readable by Apple, DHS/FBI, and anyone else under FAA702 (aka PRISM, aka the #1 most used US intel source) without a warrant.

https://www.reuters.com/article/world/exclusive-apple-droppe...

Apple processes FAA702 orders on upwards of 80,000 Apple IDs per year per their own annual transparency report.

Snowden himself said that they see so many nudes that they got desensitized to it.

This clever setup allows them to claim iMessage is e2ee while still escrowing keys in effective plaintext to Apple in the iCloud Backup, rendering the e2ee totally ineffective.

I think “backdoor” is probably an appropriate term for it, but they have made no secret whatsoever of it.

It’s terrifying to think that the US federal government can read every iMessage in the entire world across a billion devices (except China, where the CCP can do the same) in effectively realtime. The power that that enables (if only in blackmail ability) is staggering.

  allows them to claim iMessage is e2ee while still escrowing keys in effective plaintext to Apple in the iCloud Backup

Does this also apply to their advanced data protection feature?

My read is that it does not apply to ADP.

Also, what regular criminal, let alone terrorist, would leave iCloud backup turned on after all the hacks and leaks over the years. I assume that most in the HN community, like myself, have iCloud backup turned off.

Criminals (that get caught, or get put under surveillance) are generally criminals because they are stupid.

I would venture a guess that almost all criminals have iCloud Backup enabled, because that is the default setting.

I don' think so, but, even with advanced data protection on - if you communicate with someone via iMessage, for example, that does not use advanced data protection, and then they use iCloud backup, then it nullifies it essentially. Feds could get your messages via the recipients iCloud backup.

Advanced Data Protection needs to be turned on for both you, and everyone you communicate with if you want the full chain to be E2EE. Your communications are only ever as secure as its recipient.

Good point. A lot like pgp and email in that sense.

Hopefully no one, in services available globally (i.e. not US-specific), just to be sure.

Why litigate it when you can buy it from the NSO / IDF?

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