Microsoft gave FBI set of BitLocker encryption keys to unlock suspects' laptops
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
This is why the FBI can compel Microsoft to provide the keys. It's possible, perhaps even likely, that the suspect didn't even know they had an encrypted laptop. Journalists love the "Microsoft gave" framing because it makes Microsoft sound like they're handing these out because they like the cops, but that's not how it works. If your company has data that the police want and they can get a warrant, you have no choice but to give it to them.
This makes the privacy purists angry, but in my opinion it's the reasonable default for the average computer user. It protects their data in the event that someone steals the laptop, but still allows them to recover their own data later from the hard drive.
Any power users who prefer their own key management should follow the steps to enable Bitlocker without uploading keys to a connected Microsoft account.
Except the steps to to that are disable bitlocker, create a local user account (assuming you initially signed in with a Microsoft account because Ms now forces it on you for home editions of windows), delete your existing keys from OneDrive, then re-encrypt using your local account and make sure not to sign into your Microsoft account or link it to Windows again.
A much more sensible default would be to give the user a choice right from the beginning much like how Apple does it. When you go through set up assistant on mac, it doesn't assume you are an idiot and literally asks you up front "Do you want to store your recovery key in iCloud or not?"
That's not so easy. Microsoft tries really hard to get you to use a Microsoft account. For example, logging into MS Teams will automatically link your local account with the Microsoft account, thus starting the automatic upload of all kinds of stuff unrelated to MS Teams.
In the past I also had Edge importing Firefox data (including stored passwords) without me agreeing to do so, and then uploading those into the Cloud.
Nowadays you just need to assume that all data on Windows computers is available to Microsoft; even if you temporarily find a way to keep your data out of their hands, an update will certainly change that.
Admittedly, the risks of choosing this option are not clearly laid out, but the way you are framing it also isn't accurate
> sign into your Microsoft account or link it to Windows again.
For reference, I did accidentally login into my Microsoft account once on my local account (registered in the online accounts panel). While Edge automatically enabled synchronization without any form of consent from my part, it does not look like that my Bitlocker recovery key is listed on https://account.microsoft.com/devices/recoverykey. But since I unlinked my account, it could be that it was removed automatically (but possible still cached somewhere).
GPEdit -> Computer Configuration → Administrative Templates → Windows Components → BitLocker Drive Encryption → Operating System Drives → “Choose how BitLocker-protected operating system drives can be recovered”
Repeat for other drives.
This seems to go against principles of key management. If your key escrow peer has defected, the correct response is to rotate your keys.
The current approach is weak, and strikes me as a design unlikely to be taken unless all the people involved were unfamiliar with secure design (unlikely IMO), or they intentionally left the door open to this type of access.
1. Is there any indication it forcibly uploads your recovery keys to microsoft if you're signed into a microsoft account? Looking at random screenshots, it looks like it presents you an option https://helpdeskgeek.com/wp-content/pictures/2022/12/how-to-...
2. I'm pretty sure you don't have to decrypt and rencrypt the entire drive. The actual key used for encrypting data is never revealed, even if you print or save a recovery key. Instead, it generates a "protectors", which encrypts the actual key using the recovery key, then stores the encrypted version on the drive. If you remove a recovery method (ie. protector), the associated recovery key becomes immediately useless. Therefore if your recovery keys were backed up to microsoft and you want to opt out, all you have to do is remove the protector.
I would be using an operating system that wasn’t geared up to be cloud backed up and closed source.
Once the feature exists, it's much easier to use it by accident. A finger slip, a bug in a Windows update, or even a cosmic ray flipping the "do not upload" bit in memory, could all lead to the key being accidentally uploaded. And it's a silent failure: the security properties of the system have changed without any visible indication that it happened.
Stats on this very likely scenario?
This is absurd, because it's basically a generic argument about any sort of feature that vaguely reduces privacy. Sorry guys, we can't have automated backups in windows (even opt in!), because if the feature exists, a random bitflip can cause everything to be uploaded to microsoft against the user's will.
Nah, no shot.
> that just so happens to take a screenshot of your screen every few seconds
Recall is off by default. You have to go turn it on if you want it.
There is the old password for candy bar study: https://blog.tmb.co.uk/passwords-for-chocolate
Do users care? I would posit that the bulk of them do not, because they just dont see how it applies to them, till they run into some type of problem.
>Microsoft is an evil corporation, so we must take all bad stories about them at face value. You're not some corpo bootlicker, now, are you? Now, in unrelated news, I heard Pfizer, another evil corporation with a dodgy history[1] is insisting their vaccines are safe...
Yes. The thing is: Microsoft made the design decision to copy the keys to the cloud, in plaintext. And they made this decision with the full knowledge that the cops could ask for the data.
You can encrypt secrets end-to-end - just look at how password managers work - and it means the cops can only subpoena the useless ciphertext. But Microsoft decided not to do that.
I dread to think how their passkeys implementation works.
Apple does this too. So does Google. This is nothing new.
It's a commonly used feature by the average user who loses their password or their last device.
During set up, they even explicitly inform the user that their bitlocker keys are being backed up to the cloud. And, you can still choose to use bitlocker without key escrow.
It's 2026. The abuses of corporations are well documented. Anyone who still chooses Windows of their own volition is quite literally asking for it and they deserve everything that happens to them.
I'd already long since migrated away from Windows but if I'd been harbouring any lingering doubts, that was enough to remove them.
What do you suggest? I’ll try it in a VM or live usb.
The real issue is that you can't be sure that the keys aren't uploaded even if you opt out.
At this point, the only thing that can restore trust in Microsoft is open sourcing Windows.
The fully security conscious option is to not link a Microsoft account at all.
I just did a Windows 11 install on a workstation (Windows mandatory for some software) and it was really easy to set up without a Microsoft account.
This is a part of Settings that you will never see at a passing glance, so it's easy to forget that you may have it on.
I'd also like to gently push back against the cynicism expressed about having a feature like this. There are more people who benefit from a feature like this than not. They're more likely thinking "I forgot my password and I want to get the pictures of my family back" than fully internalizing the principles and practices of self custody - one of which is that if you lose your keys, you lose everything.
Bitlocker on by default (even if Microsoft does have the keys and complies with warrants) is still a hell if a lot better than the old default of no encryption. At least some rando can't steal your laptop, pop out the HDD, and take whatever data they want.
In my humble opinion: the current state is better than no encryption at all. For example: Laptop theft, scavengers trying to find pictures, etc. And if you think you are target of either Microsoft or the law enforcement manage your keys yourself or go straight to Linux.
False. If you only put the keys on the Microsoft account, and Microsoft closes your account for whatever reason, you are done.
done here meaning you've lost your data which uhhh, is currently on a drive in the hands of thieves, so what did you lose again?
Users absolutely 100% will lose their password and recovery key and not understand that even if the bytes are on a desk physically next to you, they are gone. Gone baby gone.
In university, I helped a friend set up encryption on a drive w/ his work after a pen drive with work on it was stolen. He insisted he would not lose the password. We went through the discussion of "this is real encryption. If you lose the password, you may as well have wiped the files. It is not in any way recoverable. I need you to understand this."
6 weeks is all it took him.
They can fight the warrant, if you don't at least object to it then "giving the keys away" is not an incorrect characterization.
> It protects their data in the event that someone steals the laptop, but still allows them to recover their own data later from the hard drive.
It allows /anyone/ to recover their data later. You don't have to be a "purist" to hate this.
With this scheme the drive is recoverable by the user and unreadable to everyone except you, Microsoft, and the police. Surely that's a massive improvement over sitting in plaintext readable by the world. The people who are prepared to do proper key management will know how to do it themselves.
Apple does the same thing with FileVault when you set up with your iCloud account where, again, previously your disk was just left unencrypted.
So all the state needs to get into your laptop is to get access from Apple to your iCloud account.
That said, when setting up FileVault, you have the option to escrow your recovery key with Apple. If you enable that, Apple can get the recovery key.
I think the reasonable default here would be to not upload to MS severs without explicit consent about what that means in practise. I suspect if you actually asked the average person if they're okay with MS having access to all of the data on their device (including browser history, emails, photos) they'd probably say no if they could.
Maybe I'm wrong though... I admit I have a bad theory of mind when it comes to this stuff because I struggle to understand why people don't value privacy more.
I’m not sure how you’re criticizing the “gave” framing when you’re describing and stating Microsoft literally giving the keys to the FBI.
Better, and more accurate wording, would be that "Microsoft surrendered keys" or "Microsoft ceded keys". Or "Microsoft legally compelled to give the keys". If Microsoft did so without a warrant, then "gave" would be more tonally accurate.
In addition, none of this is new. They've been turning over keys when legally compelled to, for many years.
Fun fact: Apple does this too. https://support.apple.com/en-us/108756
Often it is the case that companies hand over private data to law enforcement just by being asked for it nicely, no warrant needed.
Absolutely not. If my laptop tells me that it is encrypted by default, I don't like that the default is to also hold a copy of the keys in case big brother wants them.
Call me a "privacy purist" all you want, but it shouldn't be normal to expect the government to have access to a key to your house.
Companies know that putting themselves in a position where they can betray their users, means they will be forced to do so. Famously demonstrated when Apple had to ban the Hong Kong protest app [1]. Yet they continue to do it, don't inform their users, and in the rare occasion that they offer an alternative, it is made unclear and complicated and easy to get wrong [2].
They deserve every ounce of blame.
However a hostile foreign government has less control over me.
As such using a tool of a hostile foreign government (Microsoft) needs to be understood and avoided.
Definitely agree that choices like these are the most sane for the default user experience and that having these advanced options for power users to do with it what they want is a fair compromise. Wish more people were open to designing software for the average person and compromising on a middle ground the benefits both kinds of users.
I have W11 w a local account and no bitlocker on my desktop computer, but the sheer amount of nonsense MS has been doing these days has really made me question if 'easy modding*' is really enough of a benefit for me to not just nuke it and install linux yet again
* You can get the MO2 mod manager running under linux, but it's a pain, much like you can also supposedly run executable mods (downgraders, engine patches, etc) in the game's context, but again, pain
I'd be more concerned about access to cloud data (emails, photos, files.)
So, yes. That is how it works: 1) Microsoft forces users to online accounts 2) Bitlocker keys are stored in an insecure manner allowing any US agency to ask for them. I intentionally say "ask for them" because the US government is a joke with respect to respecting its own citizens privacy [1] at this point.
This type of apologetic half-truth on behalf of a multi-billion dollar corporation is getting old fast.
[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2026/01/22/micro... [1] https://www.npr.org/2026/01/23/nx-s1-5684185/doge-data-socia...
But, the 5th amendment is also why its important to not rely on biometrics. Generally (there are some gray areas) in the US you cannot be compelled to give up your password, but biometrics are viewed as physical evidence and not protected by the 5th.
The 5th Amendment gives you the right to refuse speech that might implicate you in a crime. It doesn’t protect Microsoft from being compelled to provide information that may implicate one of its customers in a crime.
In practice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_re_Boucher
The government gets what the government wants.
But this is irrelevant to the argument made above, right?
While it is true that NSLs or other coercion tactics will force them to give out the keys, it is also true that this is only possible because Microsoft implemented a fatally flawed system where they have access to the keys.
Any system where a third party has access to cleartext or the keys to decrypt to cleartext is completely broken and must not be used.
We know iCloud has configurations that can’t disclosed, and I wonder if there is a middle ground between if you loose the recovery key you are stuffed and maybe have a recovery key unblocked by a password similar to ssh keys
You mean "Install Linux",because that's easier than dealing with the steps required to do that on Windows
can they compel testimony? keys, passcodes and the like are usually considered testimony. did they try? the usual story here is that they don't have to, that the big corporations will turn over any info they have on request because they can and the government makes a better friend than a single user. the article mentions 20 "requests" per year on average but doesn't say anything about the government using force.
I agree with your conclusion though: data you share with anyone is data you've shared with everyone and that includes your encryption keys. if that matters to you, then you need to take active steps to ensure your own security because compelled or not, the cloud providers aren't here to help keep you safe.
Will they shoot me in head?
What if I truly forgot the password to my encrypted drive? Will they also shoot me in the head?
What about your wife's head? Your kids' heads?
I recently needed to make a bootable key and found that Rufus out of the box allows you to modify the installer, game changer.
Tl;dr - "Basically, you’re either dealing with Mossad or not-Mossad. If your adversary is not-Mossad, then you’ll probably be fine if you pick a good password and don’t respond to emails from ChEaPestPAiNPi11s@ virus-basket.biz.ru. If your adversary is the Mossad, YOU’RE GONNA DIE AND THERE’S NOTHING THAT YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT" (Mickens, 2014)
Which are both choices. Microsoft can for sure choose to block the government and so can individual workers. Let's not continue the fascism-enabling narratives of "no choice."
There is always a choice.
These two statements are in no way mutually exclusive. Microsoft is gobbling up your supposedly private encryption keys because they love cops and want an excuse to give your supposedly private data to cops.
Microsoft could simply not collect your keys and then would have no reason or excuse to hand them to cops.
Microsoft chose to do this.
Do not be charitable to fascists.
The choice is not between honoring the warrant and breaking the law.
They can go to a judge and fight the warrant. Other companies have done this.
Microsoft won’t, one more reason I will never use anything from them.
But Microsoft chose to keep them plain text, and thus they are, and will continue to be abused.
We must not victim blame. This is absolutely corruption on microsofts part.
but they didn't do so.
and it's surely just a coincidence, because m$ has always been such an ethical company.
and it's surely not by design to centralize power by locking out competing criminals from the user's data, but not themselves.
</s>
>This is why the FBI can compel Microsoft to provide the keys.
>in my opinion it's the reasonable default
I really can't imagine what kind of person would say that with a straight face. Hanlon's razor be damned, I have to ask: are you a Microsoft employee or investor?
Back in the day hackernews had some fire and resistance.
Too many tech workers decided to rollover for the government and that's why we are in this mess now.
This isn't an argument about law, it's about designing secure systems. And lazy engineers build lazy key escrow the government can exploit.
Most of the comments are fire and resistance, but they commonly take ragebait and run with the assumptions built-in to clickbait headlines.
> Too many tech workers decided to rollover for the government and that's why we are in this mess now.
I take it you've never worked at a company when law enforcement comes knocking for data?
The internet tough guy fantasy where you boldly refuse to provide the data doesn't last very long when you realize that it just means you're going to be crushed by the law and they're getting the data anyway.
The solution to that is to not have the data in the first place. You can't avoid the warrants for data if you collect it, so the next best thing is to not collect it in the first place.
It has nothing to do with the state and has to do with getting the RSUs to pay the down payment for a house in a HCOL area in order to maybe have children before 40 and make the KPIs so you don't get stack-ranked into the bottom 30% and fired at big tech, or grinding 996 to make your investors richest and you rich-ish in the process if you're unlikely enough to exit in the upper decile with your idea. This doesn't include the contingent of people who fundamentally believe in the state, too.
Most people are activists only to the point of where it begins to impede on their comfort.
False. You can design truly end-to-end encrypted secure system and then the state comes at you and says that this is not allowed, period. [1]
[1] https://medium.com/@tahirbalarabe2/the-encryption-dilemma-wh...
That's it. That's the whole thing. Whatever "secure system" you build will not have this property and users will lose their data, be mad at you, and eventually you'll have to turn it off by default leaving everyone's data in plaintext. It's a compromise that improves security for people who previously left their disk unencrypted. It changes nothing for people who previously did their own key management.
You won't be able to turn the first group into the second group. That's HN's "Average Familiarity" fallacy. The fact that basically every 2FA system has a means of recovering your account by removing it should tell you that even technical people are shit at key management.
There was no “back in the day” where big tech was on our side. Stop being a poser
The people going 'well of course' or 'this is for the user' drive me insane here because as said, there are secure ways you can build a key escrow system so that your data and systems are actually secure. From a secure design standpoint it feels more and more like we're living in Idiocracy as people argue insecure solutions are secure actually and perfectly acceptable.
Hackernews is a public forum, and the people here change constantly. "Back in the day" there were mostly posts about LISP and startup equity. It's obviously not the same people here now.
> Too many tech workers decided to rollover for the government
Again, not the same group of people. In the 2000s "tech workers" might have mostly been Californians. Now they're mostly in India. Differing perspectives on government, to be sure.
> lazy engineers build lazy key escrow
Hey you should know this one, because it's something that HAS stayed constant since "back in the day": The engineers have absolutely no say in this whatsoever.
When you get high up in an org, choosing Microsoft is the equivalent of the old "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM". You are off-loading responsibility. If you ever get high up at a fortune 500 company, good luck trying to get off of behemoths like Microsoft.
govt := new_govt
terrorist := youTrying to resist building ethically questionable software usually means quitting or being fired from a job.
In the 90s and 00s people overwhelmingly built stuff in tech because they cared about what they were building. The money wasn't bad, but no one started coding for the money. And that mindset was so obvious when you looked at the products and cultures of companies like Google and Microsoft.
Today however people largely come into this industry and stay in it for the money. And increasingly tech products are reflecting the attitudes of those people.
s/workers/Corporations/
It isn't really about the government. It's about a bunch of people trying to convince you that the locked-down proprietary closed source corporate crap that they use isn't in and of itself a security risk, no matter what the quality of the code that you've never seen is. Apple, Microsoft, Google etc. aren't your friends; no matter how brand loyal you are, they'll never care whether you're alive or dead.
FOSS isn't your friend either, but they're not asking you to trust them. Any exposure to these world spanning juggernaut military and intelligence contractor companies is a security hole. It's insane that people (thinking of Europeans now) get fired up to switch from this stuff because Trump but not because of course you should. Instead they're busy calling being suspicious of Microsoft old and hatred of Apple's customer corral stuck up and the desire to own your own machine fanatical and judgemental. Have you ever considered that you've been programmed to say and encourage dumb stuff that is completely against your own interests and supports the interests of the people who sell things to you?
You're convinced by the argument that people dumber than you have to be protected from their own machines (by corporations who have no interest in or obligation to protect them) - have you ever thought that people are saying the same thing about you? That you have to be protected from writing things you shouldn't write or talking to people you shouldn't be talking to? And the world isn't a meritocracy: the people on the top are inbred creeps. You've given up your freedom to dummies with marketing departments.
So now I just use whatever I want. Someone else can be a tech moralist.
I'm glad the knee-jerk absolutists are marginal, for one. A world run by you people would be much worse for anyone who isn't you.
This is one such example.
This sort of utilitarian nitpicking over the convenience of a "median" user is like maximizing the happiness of a cow on a factory farm. The cow would be better off if it did not exist at all. It is a matter of freedom and dignity.
Ask a non techy user:
* How do they backup their data/do they backup their data at all?
* Do they know 3-2-1 rule? Are they following it?
I bet 90% people will answer no to some of the questions.
And data backup is much more of an everyday topic compared to disk encryption.
I don’t get how people like you trust the corporation or the government that much. If we were all more cognizant of security and privacy, it would be much harder for large orgs to break our society the way they are doing today.
What happens if I forget my keys? Same thing that happens if my computer gets struck by a meteor. New drive, new key, restore contents from backups.
It's simple, secure, set-and-forget, and absolutely nobody but me and your favored deity have any idea what's on my drives. Microsoft and the USGov don't have any business having access to my files, and it's completely theoretically impossible for them to gain access within the next few decades.
Don't use Windows. Use a secure operating system. Windows is not security for you, it's security for a hostile authoritarian government.
What happens if you forget your backup keys?
At this point I think all of the modern, widely used symmetric cryptography that humans have invented will never be broken in practice, even by another more technologically advanced civilization.
On the asymmetric side, it's a different story. It seems like we were in a huge rush to standardize because we really needed to start PQ encrypting data in transit. All the lattice stuff still seems very green to me. I put P(catastrophic attack) at about 10% over the next decade.
the only real defense of privacy these days is to literally not write anything down or store it in any way
Privacy is not a crime.
It's time - it's never been easier, and there's nothing you'll miss about Windows.
Fedora is my recommendation. I remind people Fedora is not Arch. Fedora is a consumer grade OS that is so good, I don't lump it in with the word Linux.
You can build your ideal fantasy setup piecewise, and I definitely recommend getting there, but Fedora is nice, and clean, and has plenty of "just works", and 99.999% of the problems you might run into, someone else has, too, and they wrote a treatise and tutorial on how to fix it and why it happened.
In the past 3 years: - mouse/cursor issues due to some kernel upgrade I think, as Fedora stays close to upstream - unresponsive computer due to a bug in the AMD graphics driver
Both were easy to fix (kernel cmdline change or just kept updating my computer), and I absolutely recommend Fedora. That's what I'd use if I had servers. But, you'll probably have to debug _some_ issues if you use something less-used like AMD.
I've tried to get them to use the web version of office, I've tried to get them to use OnlyOffice and LibreOffice, I've even tried showing them LaTeX as a last ditch effort, but no, if it isn't true Microsoft Branded Office 2024, the topic isn't even worth discussing [1].
I'm sure there are technical reasons why Wine can't run Office 2024, and I am certainly not trying to criticize the wine developers at all, but until I can show Wine running full-fat MS Office, my parents will always "miss" Windows.
To be clear, I hate MS Office. I do not miss it on Linux. I'm pretty sure my parents could get by just fine with LibreOffice or OnlyOffice or Google Docs, but they won't hear it.
I've also tried to get them to use macOS, since that does have a full-fat MS Office, I've even offered to buy them Macbooks so they can't claim it's "too expensive", and they still won't hear it. I love my parents but they can be stubborn.
[1] Before you accuse me of pushing for "developer UI", LaTeX was not something I led with. I tried the more "normy-friendly" options first.
If I had a dollar for every time MS Word failed to correctly handle the BIDI mix and put things in the wrong order, despite me reapeatedly trying different ways to fix it, I'd be richer than Microsoft.
On the contrary, Google Docs, LibreOffice, and pretty much every text box outside of MS Office can effortlessly handle BIDI mixing, all thanks the Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm [1] being widely implemented ans standardized.
That's a 100% easy peasy safe mode, the worst they're likely to encounter is a brief 2 minute call with you, and in the worst case scenario, they get to go back to Windows without having to be scared of losing anything.
At least they are honest about it, but a good reason to switch over to linux. Particularly if you travel.
If microsoft is giving these keys out to the US government, they are almost certainly giving them to all other governments that request them.
> If they have a key in their possession [...]
So they do have a choice.
> Here's what happens on your Dell computer:
> BitLocker turns on automatically when you first set up Windows 10 or Windows 11
> It works quietly in the background, you won't notice it's there
> Your computer creates a special recovery key (like a backup password) that's saved to your Microsoft account
> You might be reading this article because:
> Your computer is asking for a BitLocker recovery key
...such as after your laptop resets its tpm randomly which is often the first time many people learn their disk is encrypted and that there's a corresponding recovery key in their microsoft account for the data they are now unexpectedly locked out of.
https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/el-gr/000124701/automatic...
Though that doesn't mean Microsoft couldn't implement a way of storing these keys so that they can't be accessed by Microsoft. Still better than nothing though.
Apple has that figured out. Your keys can be stored in your cloud synced keychain but only you can decrypt that keychain.
That’s why they couldn’t help the FBI to decrypt devices even when compelled.
Microsoft should have done the same. They should never find themselves in a place where they can be compromised like this.
Will this make people care? Probably not, but you never know.
https://cointelegraph.com/news/fbi-cant-be-blamed-for-wiping...
Perhaps next time, an agent will copy the data, wipe the drive, and say they couldn't decrypt it. 10 years ago agents were charged for diverting a suspect's Bitcoin, I feel like the current leadership will demand a cut.
LUKS isn't all rainbows and butterflies either [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46708174]. This vulnerability has been known for years, and despite this, nothing has been done to address it.
Furthermore, if you believe that Microsoft products are inherently compromised and backdoored, running VeraCrypt instead of BitLocker on Windows likely won’t significantly improve your security. Implementing a VeraCrypt backdoor would be trivial for Microsoft.
PGP WDE was a preferred corporate solution, but now you have to trust Broadcom.
We now know that BitLocker is not secure, and an intelligent open source dev saying that was probably knowingly not saying the truth.
The best explanation to me is that this was said under duress, because somebody wanted people to move away from the good TrueCrypt to something they could break.
[1] https://truecrypt.sourceforge.net
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TrueCrypt#End_of_life_announce...
I trust BitLocker and Apple’s encryption to protect my stuff against snooping thieves, but I have never, ever assumed for a moment that it’d protect me against a nation-state, and neither should you. All the back-and-forth you see in the media is just what’s public drama, and a thin veil of what’s actually going on behind the scenes.
If there’s stuff you don’t want a nation state to see, it better be offline, on a OSS OS, encrypted with thoroughly audited and properly configured security tooling. Even then, you’re more likely to end up in jail for refusing to decrypt it [1][2].
[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/02/man-who-refused-...
[2] https://www.vice.com/en/article/how-refusing-to-hand-over-yo...
Don't think Apple wouldn't do the same.
If you don't want other people to have access to your keys, don't give your keys to other people.
As a US company, it's certainly true that given a court order Apple would have to provide these keys to law enforcement. That's why getting the architecture right is so important. Also check out iCloud Advanced Data Protection for similar protections over the rest of your iCloud data.
[0] https://sixcolors.com/post/2025/09/filevault-on-macos-tahoe-...
As of macOS Tahoe, the FileVault key you (optionally) escrow with Apple is stored in the iCloud Keychain, which is cryptographically secured by HSM-backed, rate-limited protections.
You can (and should) watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLGFriOKz6U&t=1993s for all the details about how iCloud is protected.
Unbreakable phones are coming. We’ll have to decide who controls the cockpit: The captain? Or the cabin?
Of course Apple offers a similar feature. I know lots of people here are going to argue you should never share the key with a third party, but if Apple and Microsoft didn't offer key escrow they would be inundated with requests from ordinary users to unlock computers they have lost the key for. The average user does not understand the security model and is rarely going to store a recovery key at all, let alone safely.
> https://support.apple.com/en-om/guide/mac-help/mh35881/mac
Apple will escrow the key to allow decryption of the drive with your iCloud account if you want, much like Microsoft will optionally escrow your BitLocker drive encryption key with the equivalent Microsoft account feature. If I recall correctly it's the default option for FileVault on a new Mac too.
Except for that time they didn't.
But given PRISM, I'm sure Apple will just give it up.
To everyone saying 'time to use Linux!'; recognize that if these people were using Linux, their laptops wouldn't be encrypted at all!
And because of Bitlocker, their encryption is worth nothing in the end.
> if these people were using Linux, their laptops wouldn't be encrypted
Maybe, maybe not. Ubuntu and Fedora both have FDE options in the installer. That's objectively more honest and secure than forcing a flawed default in my opinion.
No, it's worth exactly what it's meant for: in case your laptop gets stolen!
> flawed default
Look, in terms of flaws I would argue 'the government can for legal reasons request the key to decrypt my laptop' is pretty low down there. Again, we're dealing with the general populace here; if it's a choice between them getting locked out of their computer completely vs the government being able to decrypt their laptop this is clearly the better option. Those who actually care about privacy will setup FDE themselves, and everyone else gets safety in case their laptop gets stolen.
Shufflecake ( https://shufflecake.net/ ) is a "spiritual successor" to TrueCrypt/VeraCrypt but vastly improved: works at the block device level, supports any filesystem of choice, can manage many nested layers of secrecy concurrently in read/write, comes with a formal proof of security, and is blazing fast (so much, in fact, that exceeds performances of LUKS/dm-crypt/VeraCrypt in many scenarios, including SSD use).
Disclaimer: it is still a proof of concept, only runs on Linux, has no security audit yet. But there is a prototype for the "Holy Grail" of plausible deniability on the near future roadmap: a fully hidden Linux OS (boots a different Linux distro or Qubes container set depending on the password inserted at boot). Stay tuned!
Or remote access to the computer. Or access to an encrypted backup drive. Or remote access to a cloud backup of the drive. So no, physical access to the original hard drive is not necessarily a requirement to use the stolen recovery keys.
This is so much more reasonable than (for example) all the EU chat control efforts that would let law enforcement ctrl+f on any so-called private message in the EU.
But what about unsophisticated users? In aggregate it might be true data exfiltration is worse than data loss? I don't know if that's true.
But what is true is enabling encryption by default without automated backup and escrow will lead to some data loss.
It's difficult for me to separate the aggregate scenarios from individual scenarios. The individual penalty of data loss can be severe. Permanent.
This is incorrect. A full disk image can easily obtained remotely, then mounted wherever the hacking is located. The host machine will happily ask for the Bitlocker key and make the data available.
This is a standard process for remote forensic image collection and can be accomplished surreptitiously with COTS.
As for it being user hostile. I am pretty certain that thousands of users a year are delighted when something has gone wrong and they can recover their keys and data from the MS Cloud.
There should perhaps be a screen in a wizard, Do you want your data encrypted? y,n
If (yes) Do you want to be able to recover your data if something bad happens? (else it will be gone for ever, you can never ever access it again) y/n
Tell them you work in IT and that you'll make their computer faster and more secure. Don't mention Linux by name.
Some ways around this is to either not store sensitive user data on servers, or if that needs to happen then encrypt it with user supplied keys.
when it comes to giving out encryption keys, the answer should always be 'we don't have them.' 'you can't get them.'
Sad day for privacy at Microsoft.
Bitlocker isn't serious security. What is the easiest solution for non-technical users? Does FDE duplicate Bitlocker's funcationality?
If you open the BitLocker control panel applet your drive(s) will be labelled as "Bitlocker waiting for activation".
(1) false advertisement
Companies like MS and Apple are telling their clients they offer a way to encrypt and secure their data but at best these claims are only half truths, mostly smoke and mirrors.
This is not OK. I don't want to get into legal parts of it, because I'm sure there's a fine print there that literally says it's smoke and mirrors, but it's despicable that these claims are made in the first place.
(2) the real need of ironclad encryption
I was born and raised in Eastern Europe. When I was a teenager it was common that police would stop me and ask me to show them contents of my backpack. Here you had two options - either (a) you'd show them the contents or (b) you would get beat up to a pulp and disclose the contents anyway.
It's at least 5h debate whether that's good or not, but in my mind, for 90% of cases if you're law abiding citizen you can simply unlock your phone and be done with that.
Sure, there are remaining 10% of use cases where you are a whistleblower, journalist or whatever and you want to retain whatever you have on your phone. But if you put yourself in that situation you'd better have a good understanding of the tech behind your wellbeing. Namely - use something else.
Use LUKS instead.
Today, 2 out of 3 of my machines are KDE fedora. The last one is TBD because my kids are using it.
I didn't have a choice for machine 1 because it wasn't eligible for windows 11 and windows 10 security updates were EOL. Machine 2 quickly followed.
At the time, there had been disappointing windows news every few months. Since there have continued to be disappointing windows news every few months.
I expect more disappointing windows news to follow.
As far as I can see this particular case is a straightforward search warrant. A court absolutely has the power to compel Microsoft to hand over the keys.
The bigger question is why Microsoft has the recovery feature at all. But honestly I believe Microsoft cares so little about privacy and security that they would do it just to end the "help customers who lose their key" support tickets, with no shady government deal required. I'd want to see something more than speculation to convince me otherwise.
Yes, the American government retrieves these keys "legally". But so what? The American courts won't protect foreigners, even if they are heads of state or dictators. The American government routinely frees criminals (the ones that donate to Republicans) and persecutes lawful citizens (the ones that cause trouble to Republicans). The "rule of law" in the U.S. is a farce.
And this is not just about the U.S. Under the "five eyes" agreement, the governments of Canada, UK, Autralia and New Zealand could also grab your secrets.
Never trust the United States. We live in dangerous times. Ignore it at your own risk.
Have you heard of our lord and savior, Linux?
If I earn my living from a company that doesn't make Linux versions, should i still switch?
Should my customers?
It's a great idea, and my work does not touch the internet, but the confusing variations of linux do not a happy workfoce make.
Your 'lord and saviour' can fuck off, with all the others, I prefer science.
Then test Omarchy.
This news piece from a non-tech organization will help educate non-tech people.
Similarly, your TPM is protected by keys Intel or AMD can give anyone.
If you want to extrapolate, your Yubikey was supplied by an American company with big contracts to supply government with their products. Since it's closed source and you can't verify what it runs, a similar thing could possibly happen with your smartcard/GPG/pass keys.
If it were preventing a mass murder I might feel differently...
But this is protecting the money supply (and indirectly the governments control).
Not a reason to violate privacy IMO, especially when at the time this was done these people were only suspected of fraud, not convicted.
Well you can't really wait until the conviction to collect evidence in a criminal trial.
There are several stages that law enforcement must go through to get a warrant like this. The police didn't literally phone up Microsoft and ask for the keys to someone's laptop on a hunch. They had to have already confiscated the laptop, which means they had to have collected enough early evidence to prove suspicion and get a judge to sign off and so on.