Apple pulls data protection tool after UK government security row

My assumption is that Google has keys to everything in its kingdom [1].

[1] https://qz.com/1145669/googles-true-origin-partly-lies-in-ci...

Could that be true and at the same time a 'vulnerability' exists that megacorp is party to?

> Google left China when the government wanted all keys to the citizens data.

Google left China after China started hacking into Google's servers.

> In January, Google said it would no longer cooperate with government censors after hackers based in China stole some of the company’s source code and even broke into the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights advocates.

https://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/23/technology/23google.html

They were working to reenter the China market on China's terms many years later, when Google employees leaked the effort to the press. Google eventually backed down.

China feels like an important difference here though. Google leaving China doesn't protect Chinese citizen's data any more than Apple turning off ADP in the UK does. As far as I know, Apple isn't pretending that the data of Chinese users is encrypted from their government, and the way they're complying with the Chinese laws shouldn't impact the security of users outside of China.

Apple pulling ADP from UK users is similar - the UK has passed an ill-considered law that Apple doesn't think it can win a court case over, so they're complying in a way that minimally effects the security of people outside the UK. If, as someone outside the UK, I travel to the UK with ADP turned on, my understanding is it won't disable itself.

Would you have been more satisfied if Apple just pulled out of the UK entirely? Bricked every iPhone ever purchased there? Google doesn't seem to have made any stand for security ever - them pulling out of China feels more to do with it meaning they wouldn't have had access to Chinese users' data, which is what they really want.

iCloud in China is operated by a local subsidiary. There is a dedicated screen explaining this when you set up an iCloud account in this region.

They adapt to the local rules of each region, much like they’re doing here in the UK.

It’s different. Apple follows Chinese law to operate their services in China, just like Microsoft.

With Google, their services are way broader. Operating a hunk of their search business with a third party Chinese firm just isn’t viable for their services, which are way more complex.

Perhaps Apple has a greater leverage in China due to its outsized manufacturing presence. And it's likely they already dont offer ADP to Chinese citizens.

Eh Google had pretty good reasons to not operate in China (not seeing them in this thread, don't recall the details precisely enough to relate here)

Apple is deeply embedded in China (manufacturing) and benefits from a decent (but shrinking) userbase in the country. China isn't asking for the keys to all iphone user data, just data stored in China.

That would not be treason, by a long shot.

Treason is the only crime defined in the constitution, and it is quite a high bar.

> Doesn't the US have access to all the data of non US citizens whose data is stored in the US without any oversight?

Totally agree. Having this discussion so US centred just makes us miss the forest for the trees. Apart from data owned by US citizens, my impression is that data stored in the US is fair game for three letter agencies, and I really doubt most companies would spend more than five minutes agreeing with law enforcement if asked for full access to their database on non-US nationals.

Also, remember that WhatsApp is the go-to app for communication in most of the world outside the US. And although it's end-to-end encrypted, it's always nudging you to back up your data to Google or Apple storage. I can't think of a better target for US intelligence to get a glimpse of conversations about their targets in real time, without needing to hack each individual phone. If WhatsApp were a Chinese app, this conversation about E2E and backup restrictions would have happened a long time ago. It's the same on how TikTok algorithm suddenly had a strong influence on steering public opinion and instead of fixing the game we banned the player.

> non US citizens whose data is stored in the US

They don't even care where it's stored...

See: CLOUD Act [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act

Android data isn't encrypted at rest (or at least not in a way Google doesn't have the key). If the uk gov has a warrant, they can ask Google to provide your Google Drive content. The whole point of this issue is Apple specifically designed ADP so they couldn't do that.

> But is that backup encrypted? If it's not, all they need is <whatever piece of paper a british security official needs, if any> to access your data.

Based on them mentioning the difficulty of opting out, I presume OOP does not use Google's cloud backup.

> Doesn't the US have access to all the data of non US citizens whose data is stored in the US without any oversight?

Er, no...? I'm not sure where you get that idea. Access requires a warrant, and companies are not compelled to build systems which enable them to decrypt all data covered by the warrant.

See, for example, the Las Vegas shooter case, where Apple refused to create an iOS build that would bypass iCloud security.

i think people focus on whether backups are encrypted too much. it really doesn't matter when the government has remote access equivalent to your live phone when it's in an unencrypted state, which they almost certainly do.

The US claims the same

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act

Lots of Americans in this thread seem to be talking down to other countries laws while being completely unaware of their own

They wouldn't even be able to.

WA is end-to-end encrypted.

The government put in restrictions against using certain powers in the Investigatory Powers Act to spy on members of parliament (unless the Prime Minister says so, section 26), so I think they're just oblivious to the risk model of "when hackers are involved, the computer isn't capable of knowing the order wasn't legal".

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2016/25/section/26

They don't even need control. They want control. Why? Either they're idiots who think they need control or they are tyrants who know they'll need control later on when they start doing seriously tyrannical things.

opinion: any government that "needs" such control, is an enemy of the people and must be abolished, and anyone can morally and ethically do so

Agreed.

I used to think it was illiteracy, but when you hear politicians talk about this you realise more often than not they're not completely naive and can speak to the concerns people have, but fundamentally their calculation here is that privacy doesn't really matter that much and when your argument for not breaking encryption based around the right to privacy you're not going to convince them to care.

You see a similar thing in the UK (and Europe generally) with freedom of speech. Politicians here understand why freedom of speech is important and why people some oppose blasphemy laws, but that doesn't mean you can just burn a bible in the UK without being arrested for a hate crime because fundamentally our politicians (and most people in the UK) believe freedom from offence is more important than freedom of speech.

When values are misaligned (safety > privacy) you can't win arguments by simply appealing to the importance of privacy or freedom of speech. UK values are very authoritarian these days.

Paternalism, unless I'm mistaken, is a belief among those in power that they what's best for you, better than you do, and will exercise power on your behalf in that manner. Just like your parents do when you're a child.

In medicine, a paternalistic attitude towards the patient from a point of authority (like a father) The doctor acts as if he knows more and knows what is better. The patient has his own preferences and priorities, but they don't necessarily match with what the doctor does.

I suppose a paternalistic state functions to satisfy the needs of the people, and to define those needs. The people get what the state says is best for them.

> That is achievable in physical security, but not in cybersecurity.

Not with physical security either, I'm afraid.

People are extremely opposed to pedos, so they're a primary rationalization for oppressive technology. But then you have two problems.

First, pedos know everybody hates them, so they take measures normal people wouldn't in order to avoid detection, and then backdooring the tech used by everybody else doesn't work against them because they'll use something else. But it does impair the security of normal people.

Second, there aren't actually that many pedos and the easy to catch ones get caught regardless and the hard to catch ones get away with it regardless, which leaves the intersection of "easy enough to catch but wouldn't have been caught without this" as a set plausibly containing zero suspects. Not that they won't use it against the ones who would have been caught anyway and then declare victory, but it's the sort of thing that's pretty useless against the ones it's claimed to exist in order to catch, and therefore not something it can be used effectively in order to do.

Whereas industrial espionage or LOVEINT or draining grandma's retirement account or manipulating ordinary people who don't realize they should be taking countermeasures -- the abuses of the system -- those are the things it's effective at bringing about, because ordinary people don't expect themselves to be targets.

You probably don't want to look up which US President tried to force Apple to insert an encryption back door into iPhones back in 2015.

However, Google did only start moving to protect location data from subpoenas after people started to worry that location data could be used as a legal weapon against women who went to an abortion clinic, so your larger point stands.

> hopefully the US turning from leader of the free world to Russia's tool

So much humour in one short phrase.

Do you really believe your propaganda or is it just absentmindedly parroting pro permanent war talking points?

Just to be clear: Wallace is not a head of state, or even an MP any more. At one point, he was Secretary of State for Defence, a Cabinet position, however he resigned this in 2023.

This doesn’t justify his position (it’s stupid) but he doesn’t speak for the current government.

> one UK head of state

What on earth are you talking about?

Charles III is head of state, and before that, Liz II. The monarch absolutely does not get involved in politics.

Ironic.

And that's why it is so important to nip this "pedo" / "think of the children" crap right in the bud.

Obviously pedos on the interwebs are bad, but hey as long as it's just anime they're whacking off to I don't care too much. But the real abuse, that's done by - especially in the UK - rich and famous people like Jimmy Savile. And you're not gonna catch these pedos with banning encryption, that's a fucking smokescreen if I ever saw one, you're gonna catch them with police legwork and by actually teaching young children about their bodies!

https://xcancel.com/BenWallace70/status/1892972120818299199

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I feel like the comment was clear, technical illiteracy leads politicians to believe that they'll be the only ones with access to this backdoor, which isn't true.

Let me offer a possible example that might be more in line with the HN commenting guideline about interpreting people's comments as charitably as reasonably possible:

My password manager vault isn't exactly something to hide in the political sense, but it's definitely something I would fear is exposed to heightened risk of compromise if there were a backdoor, even one for government surveillance purposes. And it's a reasonable concern that I think a lot of people aren't taking seriously enough due, in part, to a lack of technical literacy. Both in terms of not realizing how it materially impacts everyday people regardless of whether they're up to no good, and in terms of not realizing just how juicy a target this would be for agents up to and including state-level adversaries.

As for Eric Schmidt, he's something of a peculiar case. I don't doubt his technical literacy, but the dude is still the head of one of the world's largest surveillance capitalist enterprises, and, as the saying goes, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

Folks in the United States aren't routinely arrested for Facebook posts.

If you see a red car driving down the street do you not call it red because there are many other red cars? They're adding color (pun intended) to their description of the general bias of the UK government. What you're doing is called Whataboutism - the argument that others are doing something similar or as bad in different contexts. It doesn't make what the UK is doing any less bad for citizens (and non-citizens) privacy or data sovereignty.

It's also comparatively worse than the raw numbers suggest because the customer base of Apple phones in Germany is much smaller than in the UK.

I wonder what the impact of Apple withdrawing from China will be. I know we are talking about UK, but this made me think.

Not only their sales will reduce, but hey Chinese manufacturing cuts down. By how much? Will it be impactful? I would think so but wonder if it is quantifiable.

I love their products: whatsapp and facebook

That’s exactly the plan. Anyone with this enabled in the UK will need to manually disable it or they’ll get locked out of their iCloud account after a deadline.

The hardware will not allow this, at least not without modifications. The encryption keys are not exportable from the Secure Enclave, not even to Apple's own servers.

At this point, the right thing to do is allow for an alt-service.

Apple has already fought US government demands that they push an update that would allow the US governmrnt to break encryption on a user's device.

> In 2015 and 2016, Apple Inc. received and objected to or challenged at least 11 orders issued by United States district courts under the All Writs Act of 1789. Most of these seek to compel Apple "to use its existing capabilities to extract data like contacts, photos and calls from locked iPhones running on operating systems iOS 7 and older" in order to assist in criminal investigations and prosecutions. A few requests, however, involve phones with more extensive security protections, which Apple has no current ability to break. These orders would compel Apple to write new software that would let the government bypass these devices' security and unlock the phones.

https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%E2%80%93FBI_encryption_...

Would just upload the keys

Apple do not remotely control devices, and automatic updates are not mandatory.

> Apple is in a really tough position.

You mean Apple is in a unique position to make a statement. No more Apple products in the UK. Mic drop. Exit stage left.

Or, this is how they save face with their customers having complied with the request rather than stop trading with the UK.

>> Apple's defense against backdooring E2E is the (US) doctrine that [government can’t] be compelling work (or speech, if you prefer)

It’s really not "work” but speech. That’s why telecoms can be compelled to wiretap. But code is speech [2], signing that code is also speech, and speech is constitutionally protected (US).

The tension is between the All Writs Act (requiring “third parties’ assistance to execute a prior order of the court”) and the First Amendment. [1]

So Apple may be compelled to produce the iCloud drives the data is stored on. But they can’t be made to write and sign code to run locally in your iPhone to decrypt that E2EE data (even though obviously they technologically could).

[1]: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/10/judge-doj-not-all-writ...

[2]: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/remembering-case-estab...

Setting a retention time out is playing with fire. If the police get ahold of the other party's device, and present an exhibit which they say contains the true conversation, you could be worse off than if you retained the conversation. The fact that you have since deleted it could be incriminating.

In some jurisdiction, yes, legally, such evidence might not be probative, but you might still convicted because of it.

Given historical backups are the norm here, retention only does so much.

Really, apps should encrypt their own storage with keys that aren't stored in the backups. That's how you get security/privacy back.

In a world where they cancel encryption they can't access... doesn't Signal and its CIA funded origins concern you?

I use a patched Signal client that disables retention deletion and remote delete messages.

Signal can't evade this law either.

Many people do, unfortunately, so long as it's framed as "only terrorists and pedophiles need encryption that cops can't break".

Most politicians are.

Instead of the word cheering we could use letting.

Bad people flourish over the inaction of good people.

(but yes, there are always several who protect and argue for things risking their own and everyone's livelihood, exposing themselves to shady elements, along singled out and elevated thin aspects, cannot understood why)

> Why were people not mad then?

Oh, we were. I am in the crowd who had been asking for generally used encryption since 1995. After all, we were already using SSH for our shell connections.

The first introduction to SSL outside of internet banking and Amazon was for many online services to use encryption only for their login (and user preferences) page. The session token was then happily sent in the clear for all subsequent page loads.

It took a while for always-on encryption to take hold, and many of the online services complained that enabling SSL for all their page loads was too expensive. Both computationally and in required hardware resources. When I wrote for an ICT magazine, I once did some easy benchmarking around the impact of public key size for connection handshakes. Back then a single 1024-bit RSA key encryption operation took 2ms. Doubling it to 2048 bits bumped that up to 8ms. (GMP operations have O(n^2) complexity in terms of keysize.)

Counterpoint: when web communication was unencrypted it was before we did our banking, tax filing, sent medical records, and sent all other kinds of sensitive information over the internet. The risks today are not remotely the same as they once were.

always used my own encryption and cyphered any sensitive data/communications, but the problem is that most people won't and you're often compromised by them

simple solutions like Whatsapp, Signal and ADP brought this to the masses - which some governments have issues about - and this makes a massive difference to everybody including those who wouldn't be caught dead using an iphone anyway

if we could go back to the early 1990s when only professionals, Uni students, techies and enthusiasts used the internet I'd go in a heartbeat but that's not the world we're living in

Not for content in the cloud, as far as I understand. Someone will correct me, but you can be arrested and threatened with terror charges if you dont unlock your device, but this does not give them permission to access other computers via the internet.

ive been through all this with the law. no one ever got jailed for not handing over encryption keys unless they were a definitive criminal and theres strong evidence there is criminal data on the device.

they tried this with me (NCA) but the judge wouldnt sign off as they had nothning on me or my device. this did however REALLY want to access it! fuck them. pricks

Handling the encryption yourself is the way to go, but for maximum security, don't send that encrypted data to the cloud. Keep it all on your own server(s).

That doesn't help people who aren't technically capable, of course. But at least those who are can protect themselves.

> your own *nix server

Just be sure it's pre-Intel Management Engine / pre-AMD Platform Security Processor!

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>Governments should be scared of their people, though not in the way that I expect Vance means.

A guillotine once in a while for some politicians/bureaucrats will do some good. There is a rich history of the French doing it. I'm not even trying to be funny.

This sounds more like what you want to be true than anything. Your comment reveals nothing of JD Vance, and a lot about your own biases.

True.

It's a very unwise position Vance takes.

The world would clearly be better run if all governments feared their people, than it would if all people fear their governments.

The UK can pull this kind of stuff precisely because they do not fear any consequences from their people.

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Exactly, it's the same thing with the Chat Control law in the EU and it reminds me of the scene in the movie Office Space where the consultants are trying to figure out who is doing what in the company.

Basically instead of doing their jobs, the cops expect Apple, Meta et al to intercept all the data, then feed it into some kind of AI black box (not done by them but contracted out to someone else at the taxpayer's expense) that will then decide if you get arrested within the next 48H (I am exaggerating but only slightly)

What are the cops doing instead of doing their jobs? That's my question. Aren't they paid to go out and catch the criminals or do they simply expect to get the identity of people each day that need to be investigated?

Well put. It's pretty much impossible to sympathize with Vance saying this when the administration he is a part of is scaremongering about "the enemy within".

> Our government is almost schizophrenic in its attitude to encryption.

Of course: it's not a monolithic entity. It's a composite of different parts that have different goals an interests.

I suppose they don't believe certain facts engineers are telling them. With Brexit it was coined "Project Fear". Now they're being told that adding backdoors to an encrypted service almost completely erodes trust in the encryption and, as in the case with Apple here, in the vendor. However, I suppose it is very hard to find objective facts to back this. I'd guess this is why Apple chose to both completely disable encryption and inform users about the cause.

Now we're probably just waiting for a law mandating encryption of cloud data. Let's see whether Apple will actually leave the UK market altogether or introduce a backdoor.

In the US, the NSA has always had both missions (protect our country’s data and expose every other country’s data). Since everyone uses the same technology nowadays, that’s a rather hard set of missions to reconcile, and sometimes it looks a little ridiculous. As of fairly recently, they have a special committee that decides how to resolve that conflict for discovered exploits.

I mean, this is no different than one part of the government suggesting running laundry at night to reduce the environmental impact of energy use, while another suggests only running it while awake to reduce fire hazard. Governments and corporations rarely have complete internal alignment.

That's because GCHQ knows they can kill if you refuse to decrypt so they have no problem suggesting it to you.

Correct me if I'm wrong here, and maybe this is too charged for HN, but looking over at you guys from the US:

The US has problems (don't get me wrong, look at our politics, enough said); but the UK seems to be speedrunning a collapse. The NHS having patients dying in hallways; Rotherham back in the popular mind; a bad economy even by EU standards; a massive talent exodus (as documented even on HN regarding hardware engineers); a military in the news for being too run down to even help Ukraine; and most relevant to this story - the government increasingly acting in every way like it is extremely paranoid of the citizens.

Any personal thoughts?

You’ll probably want a method of downloading apps tied to the UK app store though - particularly banking apps.

btw, anyone know if this cancels Apple+ Support too? I’ve been resisting switching countries because I don’t want to lose that subscription since you can only subscribe within 60 days of device purchase.

They've been sending people to prison for posting memes....

Would a Wise card work?