Privacy and security have been key themes for Apple for years now, and the company sees itself as market leader to ensure your data is shielded from curious eyes. While encryption and privacy are important problems for many tech companies, Apple has gone much longer than most to make sure your data is only available for youUnless you explicitly say otherwise.
A new secret government order in the UK seeks to absolutely destroy it for any Apple user worldwide. That’s true: Over 2 billion Apple users would have their privacy and security wiped out by a non -revealed order from the British government globally.
The Washington Post was tilted by insiders about the order issued last month from the office of the Home Secretary. Called a “technical capacity message” and invitation secretly Ordered Apple to “create a back door that allows them to retrieve all the content that every Apple user around the world has uploaded to the cloud,” according to The Post.
What the British Government is asking for is the ability to access encrypted skydata before Each Apple -User all over the world. That is, frankly, a comic authoritarian and draconic order and far beyond the jurisdiction of any individual government.
According to Washington Post’s sources, Apple can appeal the decision to a technical board, but it is not allowed to delay compliance while the appeal is underway. As a result, the company is likely to stop offering encrypted sky storage in the UK (a huge problem in itself) or eliminating other iCloud services. But even these extreme measures would not meet the demands of the British government.
As bad as the order is, it is just as worrying that it was made secret and that Apple is legally forbidden to even acknowledge that it has received the order at all. The law makes it a criminal act for even reveal One has received such an order.
The encryption built into any iCloud account is at risk due to the UK’s new rule.
Apple
What is at stake
By default, many Apple Cloud services are encrypted, but they are encrypted during transit and on the server, so Apple has the encryption key. Photos, notes, reminders, iCloud mail and calendar contacts are examples of this data that Apple can decrypt. The company has done so many times in the past when he issued a legal order from law enforcement.
However, health data, home data, messages in iCloud and other types of data end to end Encrypted with the encryption key stored on your Apple device and locked to your password or biometric (Facial ID and Touch ID). Apple has no way to decrypt this data even if they would.
By 2022, Apple began offering the advanced data protection option that brings end-to-end encryption to almost all Apple Cloud services. If enabled (Go to Settings> Your Account> iCloud And look for Advanced data protection Selection), Only iCloud Mail, Contacts and Calendars are stored encrypted with the key in Apple’s hands.
Apple has a support document with a table showing which data is encrypted to end to end and which Apple has key to, for both standard and advanced data protection settings.
The British rule essentially requires that all data that Apple stores for its cloud services Each Apple -User in the World.
Of course, if a government has access to a back door to your data, it’s only a matter of time before the back door escapes a government agency borders and is in the hands of external agencies, governments, criminals or even sold on the black market. It is too valuable one thing to think that it would remain limited to a security agency in the UK and that they would only use it sparingly and when absolutely necessary.
In short, there is no such thing as a “safe back door.”
On his face, if fully complied with, the security of sky storage for any Apple user in the world (estimated at about 2.2 billion) would not only be diminished, but mainly not -existing. A less strict interpretation can allow Apple to get away with only ruining the privacy of its users in the UK or stopping valuable and popular cloud services for all of them.
What is not In danger, from our understanding of the reporting on this question, is the holiness of your Apple devices themselves and their storage. The order apparently only applies to cloud data and does not require a back door to access your iPhone, iPad, Mac or any other device or the data stored locally on it.
Apple is certainly not the only recipient of such an order. Google’s encrypted backups to Android phones, WhatsApps encrypted message data and other similar cloud services would be such large or greater targets for the British government. Again, if these companies have been given orders to make this encrypted data available to the British government and whether they have complied with it or not, it would be a criminal act to even leave it known. We are abandoned by alerts and leaks to know if our privacy secretly violates globally.