U.K. orders Apple to let it spy on users' encrypted accounts
30 comments
·February 7, 2025newscracker
_Algernon_
If they had some balls, they would just stop offering icloud altogether in the UK until they have appealed. Let's see how the judge feels when half the country can't access their files anymore and Apple points to this decision as the reason.
eterm
Apple doesn't have the same dominance in the UK than it does in the US, so the UK would probably just tough that one out.
MortyWaves
I have zero clue where you’re getting this from. iPhone is incredibly popular and every politician has one.
CSSer
Then it sounds like they don’t have much to lose ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Ekaros
The government did get more than third of the votes. So this is the choice of democratically elected government and the voters and as such should be followed.
CoastalCoder
Huh, I guess 1/3 isn't rational!
/j
kazinator
I have to give you a full up vote since they don't come in thirds.
Nasrudith
It seems you understand the republicanism but not the democracy. Rights are nonnegotiable. The UK can go pour Tabasco sauce on their prying, useless eye.
ggm
Presumably the US government will have no compunction in using this to view US citizens private materials under UK government access rights, irrespective of US privacy law.
givemeethekeys
Apple should green bubble all UK text messages and explain that it is the law.
dkdbejwi383
Is green bubble iMessage or SMS?
iMessage is barely used in the UK, WhatsApp is the default messaging platform here
spacebanana7
I'm in the UK pretty much only use iMessage/Snapchat.
I had a look at the stats though and you're probably correct about WhatsApp being default, although we do have a surprisingly diverse and competitive messenger market:
https://www.statista.com/forecasts/997945/most-used-messenge...
marliechiller
Id be very interested to break that data down by age. I'd hypothesise people who grew up during the dawn of social media (late 00s, early 2010s), will be strongly aligned with whatsapp whereas younger generations might be more iMessage/snapchat whatever else is out there these days. The most interesting generation would be gen X'ers. I guess theyll be a jumble of all solutions, including SMS
mewse
Green bubble is messages you sent via SMS (and so may have been charged by your carrier depending on your cellular plan)
Blue bubble is messages you sent via iMessage.
All incoming messages are grey, regardless of whether they were sent to you via SMS or iMessage.
ggm
(Although I was able to access the article in full on the original URL)
ggm
Rather than break the security promises it made to its users everywhere, Apple is likely to stop offering encrypted storage in the U.K., the people said. Yet that concession would not fulfill the U.K. demand for backdoor access to the service in other countries, including the United States.
kazinator
Jurisdiction, schmurisdiction. What's that, you know?
hunglee2
US tech needs to obey the laws of the country in which it operates. I am sure the demands of UK government are more than reasonable - and, as it is a democracy - as full endorsement of the people / users
sigwinch28
I’m from the U.K. and I consider the government’s actions around digital privacy to be somewhere between incompetent and malicious.
aaronmdjones
Same here.
spacebanana7
It doesn't. Apple could play hardball and threaten to withdraw from the UK market, with a propaganda notification like TikTok did. They could also appeal to Trump/Elon for help.
Also the wider part of this order is that Apple would access to the international users data, including US customers, if I understand the article correctly.
card_zero
They're currently antagonizing Trumpelon by refusing to halt DEI stuff, so they might not get any help.
kazinator
The bad guys know where to find solid open source crypto for their cloud backups and whatnot.
Therefore you know this is not about chasing the bad guys. It's about keeping the Average Joe under the thumb.
rcxdude
It'll catch the bad guys who don't know what they're doing, which is a pretty big percentage of them.
tlb
That's true at a point in time, but bad guys start out as clueless noobs with poor opsec. The Silk Road guy, for example, was identified by forum posts he made before becoming a drug lord. The sort of people who become radicalized through online videos aren't using strong crypto until after they've committed to becoming terrorists. So a database of texts going back several years is quite useful in catching actual bad guys.
Which is not to say I approve of more surveillance. Just that surveillance of convenient modes of communication (iMessage) is useful to serious crime fighting.
rich_sasha
I don't know to what extent this is true. A lot of criminals strike me as good at chopping off fingers etc but not computer stuff.
There absolutely is a balance between Average Joe's right to privacy and privacy restrictions for fighting crime. Without undermining the former, I'm astounded how HN discounts the latter 100%. It is real.
Nasrudith
Because the latter are fucking pathological liars who maintain a rachet stealing away rights. They earned their reflexsive distrust.
luckylion
> The bad guys know where to find solid open source crypto for their cloud backups and whatnot.
That's a very bold assumption after EncroChat and SkyECC.
Archive link: https://archive.is/3Pp0U
I was wondering whether this is about Advanced Data Protection, which encrypts almost all data end-to-end on iCloud. It’s only later in this report that it gets into this key detail:
> At issue is cloud storage that only the user, not Apple, can unlock. Apple started rolling out the option, which it calls Advanced Data Protection, in 2022.
Before stating this, the article says:
> Rather than break the security promises it made to its users everywhere, Apple is likely to stop offering encrypted storage in the U.K., the people said.
This means Apple would be prevented from providing Advanced Data Protection to users in the U.K.
Not making Advanced Data Protection available is made worse by this requirement:
> One of the people briefed on the situation, a consultant advising the United States on encryption matters, said Apple would be barred from warning its users that its most advanced encryption no longer provided full security.
Apple can appeal, but is forced to comply meanwhile (until the appeal is heard) anyway:
> Apple can appeal the U.K. capability notice to a secret technical panel, which would consider arguments about the expense of the requirement, and to a judge who would weigh whether the request was in proportion to the government’s needs. But the law does not permit Apple to delay complying during an appeal.