Thank goodness! It’s about time Apple takes a stand against all these ridiculous attempts to cripple the amazing work they have done over the past 15 years. If these countries think they can do it better, let them create their own phones!
From the country that instituted Brexit against popular opinion and had an unelected leader that was only in office for a few weeks, who destroyed hundreds of billions of pounds from their economy.
Either you’re a revisionist or you simple don’t understand how referendums work.
The vote for Brexit was clear, the majority of the population of the United Kingdom voted for it to happen (17.4M to leave vs 16.1M to remain).
Yes, Scotland and, to a lesser degree Northern Ireland, voted to remain. However even nearly 40% of the Scots voted to leave which is a fact that the SNP never recognises as they pretend that all of Scotland voted to remain in the EU.
Was it the right decision? Well, I don’t think we will truly know that for at least another 10 years. None of the prophetic doom and gloom scenarios ever got close to materialising and the country was always going to be worse off during the initial divorce stage.
Either way the result of the decision is largely irrelevant, what is relevant is that a democratic vote was taken and was then acted upon (albeit poorly).
This is how democracy dies. The "democratic vote" was driven by anti-immigrant and racist factions with big megaphones stoking the fires of fear and loathing in the population to the extent that they vote against their own interests.
From the country that instituted Brexit against popular opinion and had an unelected leader that was only in office for a few weeks, who destroyed hundreds of billions of pounds from their economy.
Either you’re a revisionist or you simple don’t understand how referendums work.
The vote for Brexit was clear, the majority of the population of the United Kingdom voted for it to happen (17.4M to leave vs 16.1M to remain).
Yes, Scotland and, to a lesser degree Northern Ireland, voted to remain. However even nearly 40% of the Scots voted to leave which is a fact that the SNP never recognises as they pretend that all of Scotland voted to remain in the EU.
Was it the right decision? Well, I don’t think we will truly know that for at least another 10 years. None of the prophetic doom and gloom scenarios ever got close to materialising and the country was always going to be worse off during the initial divorce stage.
Either way the result of the decision is largely irrelevant, what is relevant is that a democratic vote was taken and was then acted upon (albeit poorly).
This is how democracy dies. The "democratic vote" was driven by anti-immigrant and racist factions with big megaphones stoking the fires of fear and loathing in the population to the extent that they vote against their own interests.
Respectfully, neither side came off as some paragon of virtue. From the increasingly ridiculous fear based assertions from the remain camp through to the roads paved with gold claims of the leave side.
Both sides had genuine valid points in their favour, it was largely overshadowed by theatrics.
From the country that instituted Brexit against popular opinion and had an unelected leader that was only in office for a few weeks, who destroyed hundreds of billions of pounds from their economy.
Either you’re a revisionist or you simple don’t understand how referendums work.
The vote for Brexit was clear, the majority of the population of the United Kingdom voted for it to happen (17.4M to leave vs 16.1M to remain).
Yes, Scotland and, to a lesser degree Northern Ireland, voted to remain. However even nearly 40% of the Scots voted to leave which is a fact that the SNP never recognises as they pretend that all of Scotland voted to remain in the EU.
Was it the right decision? Well, I don’t think we will truly know that for at least another 10 years. None of the prophetic doom and gloom scenarios ever got close to materialising and the country was always going to be worse off during the initial divorce stage.
Either way the result of the decision is largely irrelevant, what is relevant is that a democratic vote was taken and was then acted upon (albeit poorly).
This is how democracy dies. The "democratic vote" was driven by anti-immigrant and racist factions with big megaphones stoking the fires of fear and loathing in the population to the extent that they vote against their own interests.
Democracy is not about right or wrong - it’s what the majority vote for, no matter how stupid they may be.
The first Common Market referendum and EEC membership referendum was in 1975 , to gauge support for the country's continued membership of the European Communities (EC)
So that time (1975) the people voted to stay in then in 2016 another lot of people voted out. I could argue the first lot were manipulated and deceived by fear mongering (the disaster that would occur if the UK left), but that would be unfair.
Unfortunately this is democracy, other systems have been tried with not really any better results.
From the country that instituted Brexit against popular opinion and had an unelected leader that was only in office for a few weeks, who destroyed hundreds of billions of pounds from their economy.
Either you’re a revisionist or you simple don’t understand how referendums work.
The vote for Brexit was clear, the majority of the population of the United Kingdom voted for it to happen (17.4M to leave vs 16.1M to remain).
Yes, Scotland and, to a lesser degree Northern Ireland, voted to remain. However even nearly 40% of the Scots voted to leave which is a fact that the SNP never recognises as they pretend that all of Scotland voted to remain in the EU.
Was it the right decision? Well, I don’t think we will truly know that for at least another 10 years. None of the prophetic doom and gloom scenarios ever got close to materialising and the country was always going to be worse off during the initial divorce stage.
Either way the result of the decision is largely irrelevant, what is relevant is that a democratic vote was taken and was then acted upon (albeit poorly).
This is how democracy dies. The "democratic vote" was driven by anti-immigrant and racist factions with big megaphones stoking the fires of fear and loathing in the population to the extent that they vote against their own interests.
Democracy is not about right or wrong - it’s what the majority vote for, no matter how stupid they may be.
The first Common Market referendum and EEC membership referendum was in 1975 , to gauge support for the country's continued membership of the European Communities (EC)
So that time (1975) the people voted to stay in then in 2016 another lot of people voted out. I could argue the first lot were manipulated and deceived by fear mongering (the disaster that would occur if the UK left), but that would be unfair.
Unfortunately this is democracy, other systems have been tried with not really any better results.
This is NOT democracy. This is subversion of democracy in favor of extremism, nationalism and racism. And it's the the next stop on the road to authoritarianism. Which is the next stop on the road to tyranny. Which is the final stop before the end of the road: tyranny.
From the country that instituted Brexit against popular opinion and had an unelected leader that was only in office for a few weeks, who destroyed hundreds of billions of pounds from their economy.
Either you’re a revisionist or you simple don’t understand how referendums work.
The vote for Brexit was clear, the majority of the population of the United Kingdom voted for it to happen (17.4M to leave vs 16.1M to remain).
Yes, Scotland and, to a lesser degree Northern Ireland, voted to remain. However even nearly 40% of the Scots voted to leave which is a fact that the SNP never recognises as they pretend that all of Scotland voted to remain in the EU.
Was it the right decision? Well, I don’t think we will truly know that for at least another 10 years. None of the prophetic doom and gloom scenarios ever got close to materialising and the country was always going to be worse off during the initial divorce stage.
Either way the result of the decision is largely irrelevant, what is relevant is that a democratic vote was taken and was then acted upon (albeit poorly).
This is how democracy dies. The "democratic vote" was driven by anti-immigrant and racist factions with big megaphones stoking the fires of fear and loathing in the population to the extent that they vote against their own interests.
Democracy is not about right or wrong - it’s what the majority vote for, no matter how stupid they may be.
The first Common Market referendum and EEC membership referendum was in 1975 , to gauge support for the country's continued membership of the European Communities (EC)
So that time (1975) the people voted to stay in then in 2016 another lot of people voted out. I could argue the first lot were manipulated and deceived by fear mongering (the disaster that would occur if the UK left), but that would be unfair.
Unfortunately this is democracy, other systems have been tried with not really any better results.
This is NOT democracy. This is subversion of democracy in favor of extremism, nationalism and racism. And it's the the next stop on the road to authoritarianism. Which is the next stop on the road to tyranny. Which is the final stop before the end of the road: tyranny.
I see now you are absolutely right, I thank you for your carful thought out insight.
From the country that instituted Brexit against popular opinion and had an unelected leader that was only in office for a few weeks, who destroyed hundreds of billions of pounds from their economy.
Either you’re a revisionist or you simple don’t understand how referendums work.
The vote for Brexit was clear, the majority of the population of the United Kingdom voted for it to happen (17.4M to leave vs 16.1M to remain).
Yes, Scotland and, to a lesser degree Northern Ireland, voted to remain. However even nearly 40% of the Scots voted to leave which is a fact that the SNP never recognises as they pretend that all of Scotland voted to remain in the EU.
Was it the right decision? Well, I don’t think we will truly know that for at least another 10 years. None of the prophetic doom and gloom scenarios ever got close to materialising and the country was always going to be worse off during the initial divorce stage.
Either way the result of the decision is largely irrelevant, what is relevant is that a democratic vote was taken and was then acted upon (albeit poorly).
This is how democracy dies. The "democratic vote" was driven by anti-immigrant and racist factions with big megaphones stoking the fires of fear and loathing in the population to the extent that they vote against their own interests.
Democracy is not about right or wrong - it’s what the majority vote for, no matter how stupid they may be.
The first Common Market referendum and EEC membership referendum was in 1975 , to gauge support for the country's continued membership of the European Communities (EC)
So that time (1975) the people voted to stay in then in 2016 another lot of people voted out. I could argue the first lot were manipulated and deceived by fear mongering (the disaster that would occur if the UK left), but that would be unfair.
Unfortunately this is democracy, other systems have been tried with not really any better results.
This is NOT democracy. This is subversion of democracy in favor of extremism, nationalism and racism. And it's the the next stop on the road to authoritarianism. Which is the next stop on the road to tyranny. Which is the final stop before the end of the road: tyranny.
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.”
From the country that instituted Brexit against popular opinion and had an unelected leader that was only in office for a few weeks, who destroyed hundreds of billions of pounds from their economy.
Either you’re a revisionist or you simple don’t understand how referendums work.
The vote for Brexit was clear, the majority of the population of the United Kingdom voted for it to happen (17.4M to leave vs 16.1M to remain).
Yes, Scotland and, to a lesser degree Northern Ireland, voted to remain. However even nearly 40% of the Scots voted to leave which is a fact that the SNP never recognises as they pretend that all of Scotland voted to remain in the EU.
Was it the right decision? Well, I don’t think we will truly know that for at least another 10 years. None of the prophetic doom and gloom scenarios ever got close to materialising and the country was always going to be worse off during the initial divorce stage.
Either way the result of the decision is largely irrelevant, what is relevant is that a democratic vote was taken and was then acted upon (albeit poorly).
This is how democracy dies. The "democratic vote" was driven by anti-immigrant and racist factions with big megaphones stoking the fires of fear and loathing in the population to the extent that they vote against their own interests.
Democracy is not about right or wrong - it’s what the majority vote for, no matter how stupid they may be.
The first Common Market referendum and EEC membership referendum was in 1975 , to gauge support for the country's continued membership of the European Communities (EC)
So that time (1975) the people voted to stay in then in 2016 another lot of people voted out. I could argue the first lot were manipulated and deceived by fear mongering (the disaster that would occur if the UK left), but that would be unfair.
Unfortunately this is democracy, other systems have been tried with not really any better results.
This is NOT democracy. This is subversion of democracy in favor of extremism, nationalism and racism. And it's the the next stop on the road to authoritarianism. Which is the next stop on the road to tyranny. Which is the final stop before the end of the road: tyranny.
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.”
Alexander Fraser Tytler
How I love conversing with educated and thoughtful people like you, irnchriz! Well put, wasn't it? In fact, it was Plato's stated belief (in The Republic) that democracy is the worst form of government, for the same reason: it always descends into tyranny. But then, his ideal goverment was by enlightened monarchy, ie: a philosopher king or archon, such as Solon of Athens, or emperor, like Marcus Aurelius later on in Rome. Unfortunately, as Lord Dalberg-Acton observed in the 19th century, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." The Socratic philosophy boils down to monarchy, aristocracy, oligarchy, democracy, autocracy, tyranny, totalitarianism. Rinse and repeat. My observation leads me to believe that America is in the final stages of democracy, degraded by the rise of oligarchs in and around all branches of government, determined to impose their autocratic lust on the rest of us.
It's about time Apple drew a line in the sand. I'm sick and tired of countries dictating how a product is designed especially when those countries have nothing worthwhile to offer. Yes, the UK and EU make some cellular devices but nothing compared to what Apple produces. The removal of end-to-end encryption is simply a ploy to allow governments to capture all kinds of personal information without even having a warrant. The UK wants to go back to the days of the telephone party line so they can snoop constantly.
Apple produces most of its products in China - a country not exactly known for its free speech, unfettered access to the WWW or any encrypted communications.
As a UK citizen, I would like to make it clear that the current Conservative party government is in its dying days looking for provocative, popularist legislation to minimise the scale of its defeat at the forthcoming general election. This unworkable piece of legalisation is carefully designed to make the opposition parties appear to support child pornography if they oppose it. The British Conservative Party are historically the most successful political party in the World. Their means are ruthless and for only one purpose - to be in power and reward their financial supporters. Usually this is blatantly by giving titles and membership of The House of Lords. Only power, not morality or anything sensible matters. To put a bookend on this, the House of Lords has the most members of any governing assembly in the World after the Chinese National People's Congress. The House of Lords is always stuffed with as many 'friends' of the Conservative Party as they can get away with in any year - there are currently around double the numbers of members than there are even seats for in their chamber.
This stupid piece of legalisation is unworkable and has nothing to do with its content. It is about painting the opposition as supporters of child pornography as we go in to the election season.
The intent is fair and reasonable and with the best of intention to capture and stop the cruel and sadistic world that exists out there, unfortunately, if this was forced on technology, that vehicle where these images are shared would just move to another platform. Reducing security is not the answer but something still has to be done to help prevent this from happening.
It's about time Apple drew a line in the sand. I'm sick and tired of countries dictating how a product is designed especially when those countries have nothing worthwhile to offer. Yes, the UK and EU make some cellular devices but nothing compared to what Apple produces. The removal of end-to-end encryption is simply a ploy to allow governments to capture all kinds of personal information without even having a warrant. The UK wants to go back to the days of the telephone party line so they can snoop constantly.
The problem for Apple, at least in some eyes, including politicians, is Apple has found a way to adhere to a country's security laws even if it requires compromising user's privacy and individual security in order to do so. The demarcation line for Apple isn't yet clearly established, but there is one nonetheless, likely based on market size and type of government, and that's a fact.
"Apple stores customer data on Chinese government servers."
"Apple agreed to store the digital keys that unlock its Chinese customers' information in those (government) data centers. And Apple abandoned the encryption technology it uses in other data centers after China wouldn't allow it."
My guess is the UK probably teeters on that edge and perhaps where Apple makes a public proclamation that they are NOT big enough on their own. Or it could be that the UK has more exposure to public pressure than some other less open countries and Apple is counting on them to convince the UK to drop the plan.
In order to try to avoid future demands from others, Apple might make the UK the sacrificial lamb.
That is a bad analogy. With China and its law requiring that China's citizens data be kept on China government servers, this only affects citizens of China. In no way is by Apple keeping citizens of China data on China government servers, affecting any of the Apple users privacy rights here in the US (or anywhere else in the World). And citizens of China do not have any US Constitutional right to privacy and Apple have no right to grant them any of those, just because they're using an Apple device.
But with this UK law requiring CSAM scanning on all end to end encryption messages, (in the UK), not only would the privacy of UK citizens be compromised but also those of all iMessage and FaceTime users (and all users of other end to end encryption messaging services.), if they were to message with anyone in the UK. There is no fix to iMessage and FaceTime that would only affect the citizens of the UK. Unless this law only applies to UK citizens messaging other UK citizens. But if you here in the US were to send an end to end encrypted message to a friend in the UK, you would be affected by this law as someone else was able to un-encrypt that message, besides your friend in the UK.
BTW- Even China allows end to end encryption with iMessage. If this law passes, you would be able to send an end to end encrypted message to a citizen of China, but not to a citizen of the UK.
Just curious, does the UK allow the Post Office to open mail without a search warrant?
The necessity of obtaining a search warrant is one of the firewalls against privacy intrusion in the US. I assume that obtaining a search warrant requires a judge to agree that there is probable cause to conduct a search for specific items and information. As far as I know Apple currently complies with legal requests backed by search warrants for information that it maintains within its system. But Apple does not maintain the private secrets or keys needed to unlock encrypted information stored within its system.
Allowing a government agency or their proxy to universally access any user’s information without obtaining a search warrant backed by probable cause and signed off on by a legal authority seems like a very grave violation of citizens’ rights, at least in most democratic countries. That alone should be a major inhibitor to the implementation of universal scanning even before the encryption matter comes into play.
Are the UK citizens okay with their government deciding that they have blanket probable cause to assume everyone using Apple’s electronic communication systems have potentially committed a crime? That’s a pretty harsh and degrading assumption. You’d think citizens in a non authoritarian democratic society would find this kind of behavior totally unacceptable and fire the elected officials who are proposing the scheme.
It's about time Apple drew a line in the sand. I'm sick and tired of countries dictating how a product is designed especially when those countries have nothing worthwhile to offer. Yes, the UK and EU make some cellular devices but nothing compared to what Apple produces. The removal of end-to-end encryption is simply a ploy to allow governments to capture all kinds of personal information without even having a warrant. The UK wants to go back to the days of the telephone party line so they can snoop constantly.
The problem for Apple, at least in some eyes, including politicians, is Apple has found a way to adhere to a country's security laws even if it requires compromising user's privacy and individual security in order to do so. The demarcation line for Apple isn't yet clearly established, but there is one nonetheless, likely based on market size and type of government, and that's a fact.
"Apple stores customer data on Chinese government servers."
"Apple agreed to store the digital keys that unlock its Chinese customers' information in those (government) data centers. And Apple abandoned the encryption technology it uses in other data centers after China wouldn't allow it."
My guess is the UK probably teeters on that edge and perhaps where Apple makes a public proclamation that they are NOT big enough on their own. Or it could be that the UK has more exposure to public pressure than some other less open countries and Apple is counting on them to convince the UK to drop the plan.
In order to try to avoid future demands from others, Apple might make the UK the sacrificial lamb.
BTW- Even China allows end to end encryption with iMessage.
AFAIK, as of 2021 (?) they do not, at least in a practical sense. E2EE would mean the Chinese government cannot access typed or sent messages at all, which would be against Chinese security laws, the same reason other Apple E2EE services had to be disabled in China. It may be encrypted,but that does not mean the Chinese had not already established a means of seeing the typed messages on your phone prior to being sent.
The best I've been able to understand is that iPhone vendors in China install a new certificate in the enterprise enrollment chain-of-trust. This allows the Chinese government to use that certificate to bypass the Apple signed one for code execution on the device.
So they really don’t care that the data is encrypted on the way out of the phone, because they’ve already established access to it before it ever leaves the phone in the first place.
I'm assuming they'd still work if you use a VPN to appear out of the country to Apple servers.
I expect Signal would still just work, I can't imagine they'd go to any actual effort to break it, they'd just not "officially" support UK users.
They would be removed from the UK version of the App Store and as they are mostly indexed by telephone number they would disable any account that used a UK phone number.
While you may be able to do some workarounds the loss of critical mass and the fact you'd only be able to communicate with existing international users makes it not worth it.
Sadly I expect the current government in the UK thinks that Apple/Meta and Signal are bluffing, they aren't they are deadly serious and the UK is a small enough market they can that walk away from it.
The UK is largest market in EMEA by quite a margin.
The problem with this concept is that for every pedophile implicated, they will identify 100 parents who are texting pictures of their child rashes to grandparents, spouses, nurse family members, pediatricians, medical offices, dermatologists etc etc.
This has been written about in the media with some needless persecution of parents.
I am not sure this is even good by the standard of “think of the children.”
From the country that instituted Brexit against popular opinion and had an unelected leader that was only in office for a few weeks, who destroyed hundreds of billions of pounds from their economy.
The majority of people who bothered to vote, voted for Brexit it wasn’t instituted against anyone, those who participated voted for it (democracy). If you didn’t show up on the pitch (voting booth) and vote against it in greater numbers you deserve what you got.
The next item on the Tory menu is eliminating the NHS and going to the American style healthcare insurance system, and insurance in America is falling apart everywhere, Housing, Health, Fire, Hurricane, Tornado, Flood, and Earthquake, those who are against government are going to want government help, a bail out maybe?
The EU and Europe and general will just keep pushing until Apple finally says no, maybe the British can bring back industry and making stuff in their country? fat chance the upper crust, are all finance, lawyers, accountants, judges, landlords, aristocracy, tax dodgers and politicians. Just to bad the common person in Britain keeps falling for the upper 5% interests over their own.
Apple will be forced to regionalize their devices, Europe, EU, Britain and many other countries just will not stop, I believe Apple will be forced to have a basic core phone, similar to a gaming console in some parts of the world.
I, and hundreds of thousands of British permanent EU residents were NOT allowed to vote in the Brexit referendum.
Precisely the group who would be directly affected more than anyone else by Brexit.
Sixteen and seventeen year olds weren't allowed to vote either. Another huge group who have been negatively affected. It was their future that was hanging in the balance.
If those two groups had been allowed to vote, the result would have been different.
This is putting to one side the lies of the leave camp, the fact that the referendum itself was not binding and the woefully inadequate legal text that the referendum was based on.
Ok then and if 5 and 6 years old could vote as well as the dead the result may have been different. This is a ridiculous argument.
I'm assuming they'd still work if you use a VPN to appear out of the country to Apple servers.
I expect Signal would still just work, I can't imagine they'd go to any actual effort to break it, they'd just not "officially" support UK users.
They would be removed from the UK version of the App Store and as they are mostly indexed by telephone number they would disable any account that used a UK phone number.
While you may be able to do some workarounds the loss of critical mass and the fact you'd only be able to communicate with existing international users makes it not worth it.
Sadly I expect the current government in the UK thinks that Apple/Meta and Signal are bluffing, they aren't they are deadly serious and the UK is a small enough market they can that walk away from it.
The UK is largest market in EMEA by quite a margin.
Never heard of Germany???
iOS market share in Germany is around 38% vs 52% in the U.K.
Mac market share is estimated to be 25% in the U.K. vs 16.6% in Germany.
The OP’s comment had nothing to do with the size of economy and everything to do with the number of units sold. The U.K. is the biggest market for Apple’s hardware and software within EMEA.
It's about time Apple drew a line in the sand. I'm sick and tired of countries dictating how a product is designed especially when those countries have nothing worthwhile to offer. Yes, the UK and EU make some cellular devices but nothing compared to what Apple produces. The removal of end-to-end encryption is simply a ploy to allow governments to capture all kinds of personal information without even having a warrant. The UK wants to go back to the days of the telephone party line so they can snoop constantly.
The problem for Apple, at least in some eyes, including politicians, is Apple has found a way to adhere to a country's security laws even if it requires compromising user's privacy and individual security in order to do so. The demarcation line for Apple isn't yet clearly established, but there is one nonetheless, likely based on market size and type of government, and that's a fact.
"Apple stores customer data on Chinese government servers."
"Apple agreed to store the digital keys that unlock its Chinese customers' information in those (government) data centers. And Apple abandoned the encryption technology it uses in other data centers after China wouldn't allow it."
My guess is the UK probably teeters on that edge and perhaps where Apple makes a public proclamation that they are NOT big enough on their own. Or it could be that the UK has more exposure to public pressure than some other less open countries and Apple is counting on them to convince the UK to drop the plan.
In order to try to avoid future demands from others, Apple might make the UK the sacrificial lamb.
BTW- Even China allows end to end encryption with iMessage.
AFAIK, as of 2021 (?) they do not, at least in a practical sense. E2EE would mean the Chinese government cannot access typed or sent messages at all, which would be against Chinese security laws, the same reason other Apple E2EE services had to be disabled in China. It may be encrypted,but that does not mean the Chinese had not already established a means of seeing the typed messages on your phone prior to being sent.
The best I've been able to understand is that iPhone vendors in China install a new certificate in the enterprise enrollment chain-of-trust. This allows the Chinese government to use that certificate to bypass the Apple signed one for code execution on the device.
So they really don’t care that the data is encrypted on the way out of the phone, because they’ve already established access to it before it ever leaves the phone in the first place.
Now I may be wrong, but my understanding is that yes, in the practical sense, there is E2EE with iMessage in China. No one else can read the encrypted iMessage after it's sent from the sender device, while it's being sent and before it is un-encrypted on the receiver device. That is E2EE.
In the US, if the sender backups up his device to the iCloud, Apple re-encrypts the iMessages when they are stored in the iCloud. And Apple has access to the key. If the government get a court order, Apple can access those E2EE messages.
But in China, when iMessage users backs up their iMessages to the iCloud, they are store in the government servers and the government now has access to those messages without needing to get a court order.
The only place where E2EE messages can be kept where only the sender and receiver have access to them, is encrypted on their own devices that are protected by a passcode. Apple have no access to that passcode and not even a court order can force Apple to turn over something they don't have access to. Pretty sure an iPhone in China do not have a backdoor that can bypass the user passcode. But not sure. And for sure, the government can install their own spyware on any iPhones they want. But iMessage E2EE works the way it does in China as in the US. It's just that in China, it's much harder to keep the government from seeing that message, when it's un-ecrypted on the sender or receiver device, due to government spyware. But spyware like Pegasus can do this with any iPhone, anywhere in the World. And it's not Apple that installs the spyware on their China devices to compromise iMessage nor is there a government backdoor to the iMessage in China.
Comments
Both sides had genuine valid points in their favour, it was largely overshadowed by theatrics.
Democracy is not about right or wrong - it’s what the majority vote for, no matter how stupid they may be.
The first Common Market referendum and EEC membership referendum was in 1975 , to gauge support for the country's continued membership of the European Communities (EC)
Yes - 17,378,581 Votes (67.23%) - No - 8,470,073 Votes (32.77%)
So that time (1975) the people voted to stay in then in 2016 another lot of people voted out. I could argue the first lot were manipulated and deceived by fear mongering (the disaster that would occur if the UK left), but that would be unfair.
Unfortunately this is democracy, other systems have been tried with not really any better results.
Alexander Fraser Tytler
As a UK citizen, I would like to make it clear that the current Conservative party government is in its dying days looking for provocative, popularist legislation to minimise the scale of its defeat at the forthcoming general election. This unworkable piece of legalisation is carefully designed to make the opposition parties appear to support child pornography if they oppose it. The British Conservative Party are historically the most successful political party in the World. Their means are ruthless and for only one purpose - to be in power and reward their financial supporters. Usually this is blatantly by giving titles and membership of The House of Lords. Only power, not morality or anything sensible matters. To put a bookend on this, the House of Lords has the most members of any governing assembly in the World after the Chinese National People's Congress. The House of Lords is always stuffed with as many 'friends' of the Conservative Party as they can get away with in any year - there are currently around double the numbers of members than there are even seats for in their chamber.
This stupid piece of legalisation is unworkable and has nothing to do with its content. It is about painting the opposition as supporters of child pornography as we go in to the election season.
The necessity of obtaining a search warrant is one of the firewalls against privacy intrusion in the US. I assume that obtaining a search warrant requires a judge to agree that there is probable cause to conduct a search for specific items and information. As far as I know Apple currently complies with legal requests backed by search warrants for information that it maintains within its system. But Apple does not maintain the private secrets or keys needed to unlock encrypted information stored within its system.
Allowing a government agency or their proxy to universally access any user’s information without obtaining a search warrant backed by probable cause and signed off on by a legal authority seems like a very grave violation of citizens’ rights, at least in most democratic countries. That alone should be a major inhibitor to the implementation of universal scanning even before the encryption matter comes into play.
Are the UK citizens okay with their government deciding that they have blanket probable cause to assume everyone using Apple’s electronic communication systems have potentially committed a crime? That’s a pretty harsh and degrading assumption. You’d think citizens in a non authoritarian democratic society would find this kind of behavior totally unacceptable and fire the elected officials who are proposing the scheme.
The best I've been able to understand is that iPhone vendors in China install a new certificate in the enterprise enrollment chain-of-trust. This allows the Chinese government to use that certificate to bypass the Apple signed one for code execution on the device.
So they really don’t care that the data is encrypted on the way out of the phone, because they’ve already established access to it before it ever leaves the phone in the first place.
Never heard of Germany???
This has been written about in the media with some needless persecution of parents.
I am not sure this is even good by the standard of “think of the children.”
Mac market share is estimated to be 25% in the U.K. vs 16.6% in Germany.
The OP’s comment had nothing to do with the size of economy and everything to do with the number of units sold. The U.K. is the biggest market for Apple’s hardware and software within EMEA.
In the US, if the sender backups up his device to the iCloud, Apple re-encrypts the iMessages when they are stored in the iCloud. And Apple has access to the key. If the government get a court order, Apple can access those E2EE messages.
But in China, when iMessage users backs up their iMessages to the iCloud, they are store in the government servers and the government now has access to those messages without needing to get a court order.
The only place where E2EE messages can be kept where only the sender and receiver have access to them, is encrypted on their own devices that are protected by a passcode. Apple have no access to that passcode and not even a court order can force Apple to turn over something they don't have access to. Pretty sure an iPhone in China do not have a backdoor that can bypass the user passcode. But not sure. And for sure, the government can install their own spyware on any iPhones they want. But iMessage E2EE works the way it does in China as in the US. It's just that in China, it's much harder to keep the government from seeing that message, when it's un-ecrypted on the sender or receiver device, due to government spyware. But spyware like Pegasus can do this with any iPhone, anywhere in the World. And it's not Apple that installs the spyware on their China devices to compromise iMessage nor is there a government backdoor to the iMessage in China.