This is one thing Apple has been pretty firm on. You can’t have a secure product and have backdoors. You can try to hide them all you want, but a backdoor will always be a massive security vulnerability.
They moved the storage of encryption keys for Chinese users to servers in China
No they didn’t. iMessage can only be decrypted by keys stored in the secure enclave on your device.
There are some things that the Chinese government can access. The contents of messages isn’t one of them.
And as for Facetime… those calls aren’t recorded at all. Not sure how a legal order is supposed to allow access to data that doesn’t even exist.
I agree that’s not how it works in most places but I don’t assume to know the inner working of a Chinese iphone or the version of iOS it’s running. If there is a financial incentive apple will bend for China while also saying it didn’t.
They moved the storage of encryption keys for Chinese users to servers in China instead of shutting down iMessage and Facetime. Quite the different response compared to here.
I was assuming Apple was posturing until they’d actually have to do something.
They could well have postured in China as well, before backtracking. I have no Idea if that happened, but it seems reasonable from a PR vs Legal vs business development standpoint.
They moved the storage of encryption keys for Chinese users to servers in China instead of shutting down iMessage and Facetime.
These are totally separate things. Apple users in China can still use iMessage and FaceTime and those are still end-to-end encrypted. If you choose to store your iMessages in iCloud, those can be accessed by the government, but that’s the same as they can in every other country. The UK’s proposal is to directly break the security of iMessage itself, something worse than what China has done.
I don’t doubt it. Apple would probably just ship a new app called “Texts” or something that only does traditional cell carrier text messages, and then refer customers to third party solutions for video conferencing. A nice explanatory web page on Apple’s website to point customers in the region towards would be the cherry on top.
21st century govenrments: Hey guys, why don’t we ban math?
Yeah good luck with that. Gotta give it to Apple on this one, though I’m not a huge fan of their business practices otherwise.
Good, why should they comprise security. It makes it easier for everyone to hack, not just the government
