US lawmakers press Trump admin to oppose UK's order for Apple iCloud backdoor US lawmakers want newly confirmed Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard to back up her tough talk on backdoors. They're urging her to push back on the UK government's reported order for Apple to weaken iCloud security for government access. Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Representative Andy Biggs (R-AZ) sent a letter [ …
Oh, the relevant parts of the US government can get the truth from Apple, and they likely already have. They just aren't likely to share it with anyone because various people would get angry if they did, and possibly because the kind of people who can get Apple to tell them are also the kind of people who would quite like the idea of having a backdoor themselves. They have repeatedly ignored requests for information or to follow the law coming from the same few legislators who care, and if it suits them, they can ignore this too.
I think it's safe to say that someone in Apple might have spilled the beans here. The question is, did the UKs gag order provide enough poison* to identify from the reports in the press, the identity of the person who leaked? I wouldn't want to be that person if they are based in the UK right now.
*Poison, as in poisoned data with an identifier. E.g.
Hey Joe, Don't tell anyone, but we need 576 units of potentially illegal product.
Hey Fred, Don't tell anyone, but we need 478 units of potentially illegal product.
Hey Sam, Don't tell anyone, but we need 379 units of potentially illegal product.
Newspaper Report. Acme Inc importing 478 units of ILLEGAL PRODUCT!
<mafia knocking on Freds door>
Unless all three illegal products are actually desired, that won't work so well. There are several types of data that can be poisoned like that. You can do it to documents which might be leaked in their entirety in the hopes that the journalist involved will either publish them verbatim or do some searching based on the extra data, letting you identify them. Doing it to a single fact that can be stated in a couple sentences is really quite hard, and if a leaked document is rendered down into a couple of sentences in the story, figuring out which copy of the document it was isn't going to be easy. That's when they get out the normal set of tools for responding to leaks: the surveillance systems on computers that often don't tell you unless the employee concerned was inept, the manual investigations of the most likely candidates, and the questioning.
The "technical capability notice" would have been served to Apple, either one notice or several to the same address. So no chance to poison.
Apple themselves would have to inject identifies when sharing with their execs, legal team, technical team, US authorities, etc.. which would be a quite different and extraordinary story.
What they really want is for Apple to treat the UK like they already treat China. In China, the iCloud data of Chinese users must be stored on servers located in China, and encrypted using a key that Apple shares with China. And (I don't know for certain but I assume) Advanced Data Protection (which encrypts your data using a key only you control, and will lose your data if you lose the key) is not available to them.
If the UK wants more than that then yeah its a problem but Apple will simply say "no". And they won't have to worry about losing market share in the UK, because there's no point to the UK making such demands only of Apple. They'd do the same of say Google and Meta, thus afflicting Android and WhatsApp with the demands. So they would also say no to the UK, and since the UK has no viable alternative to iPhone and Android short of creating a national Android version and only allowing those phones to be sold/used in the country they'd be checkmated.
During the COVID epidemic, the UK tried creating their very own contact tracking app. The politest way of describing it would be that it really was not very much good. Google and Apple took one look at the Android and IOS versions sent to each respectively and declined to give it admin rights, forcing it to run, badly, in userland.
They then subsequently brought out their own versions, which were exceedingly elegant and not bloated, buggy power-hogs.
The UK has form for producing their own rather crap versions of software; it has the talent to produce masterpieces but simply does not apply this talent.
That...
given the DOGE's love of getting into computer systems they have no business being anywhere near, I would have thought that having access to private citizen (aka Lawsuit targets) would be perfect for them.
As the DOJ are filing criminal charges (ROFL) against the likes of Leticia James etc having unfettered access to their iCloud would help their admittedly flimsy case.
I us an iPhone, like many commentards here. Do I keep tabs on exactly what is stored in my iCloud? no I don't but then again, I have nothing criminal (in UK law) to hide.
If I could set my own encryption key then the UK Gubbermint can go take a hike.
>With Tulsi G in charge, anything given to Us Intelligence may well find its way to Russia
That's how we have always done UK USA intelligence sharing.
Committed communists in MI5 report to Moscow who forward the info to Russian agents working for the CIA
It's not the most efficient, but it does ensure full employment.
Of course they're not true! Just the dirty tricks of the Blob to keep this cleanout from happening. Have you not seen how deep the corruption goes? As Mike Benz said, it will take 50 years to stop the bribery, fraud and entrapment that's been going on. For god's sake they were even paying the BBC, a state broadcaster! Bill Gates was even funding it. Elected officials have not been running things for a long time. They either take the bribes or blackmail and do what they are told or they get sidelined by those that do.
If the US cannot legally spy on their citizens, they can use a five-eyes partner like the UK to do it on their behalf using their snooper's charter. That's how the five members place themselves above their own laws, by each snooping on the citizens of other nations and sharing the data. In the case of the UK, they can legally snoop on their own citizens and on everyone else's using their legislation. So they will be quite busy. I hope we are being paid for all this data filching, as Brexit Britain needs every dollar it can blag.
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Isn't taking the data from partners still spying? Just harder to catch.
Brexit is not the cause of British woes. The cause is corruption of government and institutions turning them towards this idea of the Great Reset. The idea that you must destroy society to rebuild as you want. The 'as you want' is not as we want by the way. We are the cattle to be farmed; milked then slaughtered when not producing.
Let's presume that America comes to its senses and manages to extract Trump (or Vance) in four years. If Gabbard really is an asset rather than a naive fool, then the information she has siphoned off and extracted will be hugely valuable. Their intelligence services will have to be burnt down and rebuilt.
I have to agree with the Americans on this. Encryption can not have "safe back doors." There IS no such thing. It is mathematically and organizationally impossible!
So the UK can quite rightly screw off with such demands, and if they insist, they'll have to be cut off from support by the vendors and the UK's iPhone users left dangling with a brick in their hands...
As I've seen it this order applies to all data held by apple, not just on 'UK users' whatever that might be defined as. Which does seem slightly over reaching.
Imagine if Brazil, or France, insisted apple give them access to all apple worldwide user data. The UK government would be opposed, so how does this square that circle?
If you look at it closely: Apple already offers “backdoored” storage with a description that data will be released with a valid court order. With the huge advantage that all the numpties who lose their keys can ask apple to restore their data.
Then apple offered an option to not store your keys. Lose the keys, your data is gone. Bring a court order, and apple
Can’t hand over anything. Send 100 Chinese spies to apple, and they can’t access your data. And this rumoured request means they force apple to lie to you. And get your data without a court order. Which would make the existent not so secure method more secure.
Quote: "...Apple iCloud backdoor...."
Anyone who relies on BIG INTERNET PROVIDERS for privacy (e.g. Apple, Signal, Meta....)...such a person is DRINKING THE KOOL-AID..............
...........KOOL-AID supplied by......gasp!......governments and BIG INTERNET PROVIDERS.................
Yup.......private encryption has lots of problems.......BUT MANY FEWER PROBLEMS than relying on the NSA or Apple or Signal.............
Considering the orange idiots admin will be giving all intelligence over to Russia anyway. So while they are in office, doubt anyone will want to share anything with them.
Roll on midterms, lets hope they all get voted out. But sadly, they'll try everything in the book to steal it. I don't believe orange tango man stole 2024, it was purely a large chunk of Americans being idiots and voting for him. But the midterms, I really think orange man will try whatever he can do hold all the seats. After all, he'll want his sons to take over the role once hamburgerly crushes his heart and his 6 feet under.
UK.Gov should only be allowed to spy on our emails if we can read ALL of theirs too - and not just the WhatsApp messages of someone who has fallen out of favour with the Party leadership for whatever reason.
Besides, as any good spook kno, you don't need to use encryption to pass messages to other spooks - "John has a big moustache" and all that. If 1980s Hollywood could figure that out, the home of James Bond should certainly be able to!
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