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Even in 2015 Apple put in backdoors. They have been really good at making people believe things that are not true. E.g. from the linked post:

iCloud already protects sensitive categories of data (like Passwords, Health data, Messages in iCloud, etc) with end-to-end encryption by default.

Except that there is a footnote in Apple's security document where they confirm that Messages in iCloud is not end-to-end encrypted if you don't enable ADP and have iCloud Backup enabled (which is probably most users):

Standard data protection: When iCloud Backup is enabled, the keys to your backups are secured in Apple data centers. If you use both iCloud Backup and Messages in iCloud, your backup includes a copy of the Messages in iCloud encryption key to help you recover your data.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/102651

So, there is always a backup of Messages in iCloud accessible to Apple and thus (US?) law enforcement, unless you enable ADP and the people you communicate with also use ADP.

WhatsApp is similar by the way. Unless you enable E2E backups, they end up in iCloud/Google Drive backups and are only encrypted at rest. Of the major messengers, I think only Signal completely opts out of iCloud backups and have their own real E2E-encrypted backups.

Even most technical people I talk to do not know this and don't have ADP enabled.

There are a lot of weak defaults like that.

They never did. they had the balls to resist against western governments, where it was politically adventagous to do so. They folded to China real quick, because they wanted to make sales. All "icloud storage" in china has been on another storage platform, that follows all the local laws.

Apple routinely removes VPNs and other apps from App Store in Russia even though they supposedly left the market in 2022.

They obvioualy never ever resisted anything except its a good PR stunt.

Apple is surely resisting, but there's a limit to how far they're willing to go. They won't risk losing the entire EU market, for example. Or the Chinese market.

The UK is a minor footnote. They can afford to lose it if push came to shove, but for now they're willing to make conciliatory gestures.

I never had to confirm my age because my account is old enough to prove I must be old enough

> "please confirm your age" screen is now mandatory during the iPhone setup in all countries

Not quite.

The request to confirm age is there, but actually completing it isn't mandatory (though granted, it does leave an 'alert' thingy on your phone settings saying you haven't finished setting it up).

Is it required to KYC in those countries?

I'm generally okay with "how old are you?" without KYC and changeable later. It just allows apps and websites to display age-appropriate content.

I doubt that with the speed of thought dramatically increasing due to AI, that the door will stay closed just because it's being closed now. That decision will be revisited.

Everyone should read the case of the IT consultant getting arrested in the UK because he posted a photo of him doing some target shooting during a trip to the US: https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/consultant-arrested-linkedin-s...

Stories like this quickly put to rest the idea that everyone who gets arrested must actually deserve it. The bar for posting content that violates the law is very low.

There was also the tragic story of the Cambridge professor who was completely unqualified and had a fake life story. When journalists would get close to the story he would report them to the police for harassment to spike the stories.

yes, its not legal to harass women getting an abortion. That includes being in a given range of an abortion clinic and making a political statement. What part of that is hard to understand?

People know the laws and yet they still do it thinking they're some sort of Catholic Batman. You want to change the law, do what we all do; write to your fucking MP, join a political party, campaign, donate. Don't harass someone vulnerable in a difficult state of mind and impose your morality upon them. Respect their choice and their agency.

In the US you can be arrested for the following speech:

* true threats of violence

* incitement to break the law specifically

* crimes of speech: soliciting crime, fraudulent representations, lying under oath

* stalking/cyberstalking

So lets quit this idea that its some abstract of "political orthodoxy". Stop framing crime as "difference of opinion". Hate speech and incitement to racial/religious hatred or violence are crimes here. People publishing hate speech online and then being all Pikachu face when they get arrested for breaking the law are not victims. The highest profile pretend victim was the wife of a Conservative Councillor who posted a message online that hundreds of thousands of people saw that encouraged people to set fire to hotels where asylum seekers were staying. The judges sentencing remarks were particularly eye opening given she demonstrated a relative lack of respect for the court ("If I get in trouble then I'll play the mental health card").

> they already arrest over 30 people a day for speech that offends the prevailing political orthodoxy.

This is completely false and comes from a commonly misrepresented statistic; '30 arrests a day' is plainly the arrests made under section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 and section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988 which includes things like online stalking and harassment. I hope you're just mistaken and not willfully implying that those issues are merely offensive to the prevailing political orthodoxy.

I think this is mostly being misrepresented.

There is speech and there are consequences for speech.

If I incite or state that I am going to commit violence, stalking, rape or murder, should I face consequences? Yes. That's what is happening.

There are outlying cases which will be used to discredit this perspective but reality is there are a hell of a lot of very not nice people out there making active threats and inciting hatred and violence.

And everyone gets their day in court.

You can get arrested for making a joke that might offend someone in a private whatsapp group. Doesn't even have to be political.

I think this is the link where the chap asks for legal advice: https://www.reddit.com/r/LegalAdviceUK/comments/1vxkcic/poli...

Anyone old enough to remember the London riots should remember the fact that the acting government issued a D notice to all broadcasters, preventing them from reporting the issue.

This is part of what started the death of BBM and proliferation of news via social media. You’d go on Twitter and see all the reports or riots and burning buildings then go to the BBC and… nothing.

All of this is to say that successive British governments, over a span of decades, have been actively destroying freedom of speech and a right to privacy for its citizens.

With AI and the rise of populism combined with the absolute decimation of the average person’s attention span it is going to get a lot worse.

I’d say it is a very low quality article. There is very little detail about what the offending speech actually includes. For example:

> The wife of a conservative politician was sentenced to 31 months in prison for what police said was an unacceptable post.

What did she say? The article does not elucidate.

Inciting violence for example is not legal. I believe spaces around abortion clinics are also to be free from demonstrations. US free speech absolutists seem to vehemently disagree until you say something unkind about Charlie Kirk or ICE.

The low point might be quoting Elon Musk. This is true in any context, but in particular here. The scandal is real, but none of it is about people being arrested for non-politically-correct speech.

There’s plenty of otherwise real stuff to poke the UK about.

The British Government has be consistently violating people's rights for decades and probably well before that.

Recently I saw a clip on GB News where one of their analyst said that anyone that opposes a war and/or conscription with Russia will need to put in prison. The show host, Jacob Rees Mogg and Lord Redwood saw nothing wrong with the statements.

None of these people have been in the armed forces and are too old to be called up for conscription.

> The wife of a conservative politician was sentenced to 31 months in prison for what police said was an unacceptable post.

Pretty sure she called for the murder, by arson, of asylum seekers although the article missed that bit out.

Sigh, this is an absolute bullshit figure and people need to stop parroting it - it's 30 arrests under the mal comms act which might include for example, phoning your ex girfriend to say you're coming to stab her. Or phoning in a bomb threat via telephone. Or any number of pretty terrible things it's perfectly reasonable to get nicked for. Or posting on Facebook telling everyone we should set the local migrant hotel on fire. These are not political prisoners.

https://lordslibrary.parliament.uk/select-communications-off...

What was the speech? I can't read beyond the paywall.

Yeah come on, that figure has been widely debunked.

Subjects, not citizens.

This is a deeply deranged opinion piece. The author ties himself into knots to conflate a tiny number of high profile instances involving social media posts with harassment and other negative behavior involving electronic communication.

How many of those 30 are unarguably "bad" posts though? Threats of violence and so forth.

The UK is currently demanding that Apple install mandatory OS level client side real time scanning malware on every device, bypassing all security and encryption to monitor everything. Its an insanely evil and completely unacceptable demand.

Apple should withdraw from the UK until the UK government learns to respect encryption and privacy.

Well in the article they explicitly said they can’t turn off ADP by design, so no luck. But I’m all for making the politicians suffer the consequences of their own decisions.

How are they allowed to even offer e2ee Keychain/iCloud Passwords for example? Isnt that subject to lawful access too?

I love this. Apple aren't going to pull out of a market. They aren't pulling out of China for example.

They dont really need to pull out, instead on every single piece of marketing material where they talk about anything remotely close to things affected by this they mention that unfortunately they cant give it to UK users due to the governments desire to erode privacy protection, and really hammer home how bad it is.

This happened 18 months ago, you can stop hoping.

I think it's like the EU rules against Monero: the thing itself isn't illegal, but you're not allowed to make a business around it.

You can switch your Apple ID's region to another country, enable ADP then revert your account's region back to the United Kingdom. You've got to leave Family Sharing first and may also need to adjust/cancel subscriptions - I don't think it's totally straightforward.

I've not looked into it but I suspect this uses eligibilityd, the same thing that does the location based checks to see if EU users can use 3rd party app stores.

From what I remember it uses a combination of things like your current GPS location, your SIM cards reported country and more to determine what country you're really in to restrict certain features.

So it's not as simple as swapping your location in settings, or even traveling to somewhere in the EU, theres a certain sticky-ness to what your device thinks is your current country.

Edit: bit more info on eligibilityd here https://theapplewiki.com/wiki/Eligibility#eligibilityd

Yeah, good point. I wonder what would happen if someone without ADP in the UK changed over the region settings to the United States, switched ADP on, and then switched the region back to the UK. I wonder if anybody's tried this?

I think country is associated with the iCloud/Apple ID account, not the physical device.

Apple complies with the Chinese government's demands, that's the minimum they're willing to play along with. The UK is well above that.

It seems you are suggesting that if a private corporation (a foreign one at that) is large enough it should ignore the law of the country its operating in. I don't think you will like the consequences of such a situation, and will charitably assume you have just not thought your message through for even a second before posting it.

PS: If you think the British gov is authoritarian.. well, you might not know what the term means and/or anything about the spectrum of governments operating today or in the past.

But apple also cannot just stop selling or supporting their product in the UK either. So that card is dropped from both sides. As long as apple is beholden to a few million costumers and subscribers to their services in the UK; UK law is able to pressure them, fine them and restrict them because of those users.

We don't want it the other way around; companies placed outside the borders doing and selling whatever they want without a care. So we end up in a negotiation.

Apple choose to maliciously comply; subtly revealing the TCN, giving all UK users notices about what their government demanded of them to encourage public outrage, and push on the correct parts of the UK government that has their interest in mind.

There are many real concerns for U.K. citizens, from the price of fuel and food, to extreme weather, to constant attacks on infrastructure from undeclared actors.

This is not one. Nobody (within 2%) gives a stuff.

You can just register US Apple account or switch region to US and not bother with UK regulations.

Only disadvantage that you will need to pay fot services via US gift cards as you need US bank cards otherwise.

This news is about the UK. Across the channel, the EU has effectively outlawed anonymous currency. I believe the UK FCA also has such rules in force. So your post is rather moot.

this.

crypto has a lot of theoretical value, but in practice people only really think of crypto when they want to tap into shadow economy.

I do not deny that this technology will be instrumental to network communities, provided we are ever allowed to form such. I do not deny that offline POSes and fully offline tap-to-pay may become a possibility if an existing fiat currency adopts crypto as one "interface" among traditional banking, Apple/Google Pay, and cash. (this, by the way, would be incredible in Ukraine - right now it's power off, and you can't use your bank for offline purchases.)

in practice it's only really shadow economy. at this point it's not even a speculative asset of some notable value

Did your bot malfunction and post in the wrong thread? "The current admin", this is a thread about the UK lmao.

This got me curious as-well. It cannot be bound to phone number or carrier, since that's not a requirement to create an apple account. It could be bound to phones sold in the UK, but that is easily avoided. It could check the GPS, but then you can just take a trip over to France to activate your account.

I'm guessing they could, in theory, attack open source projects, but it would not be very effective as those could be infinitely forked. That's the reason why governments will actually support an encourage an oligopoly of proprietary platforms via regulations (e.g. mandatory automated scanning) which only companies can practically comply with.

There's no way to obtain root access on GrapheneOS without making your own builds (which won't be affected by many of the apps adding support for GrapheneOS, who likely would only whitelist the official signing keys) or keeping the bootloader unlocked in perpetuity (because AFAIK there is currently no way to recalculate verified boot hashes on top of a systemless root like Magisk -- not that I even know if that works on GOS in the first place). Some years back I was actually working on calculating AVB2 hashes from a live system rather than ONLY through the Android build process, until TWRP wiped my phone without consent or confirmation due to an OpenRecoveryScript that I absolutely did not put there and I basically stopped tinkering with Android root due to that. I have an iPhone nowadays.

There is a 2005 political cartoon by Jonik where an Uncle Sam has a box labelled Control of Internet Speech on the table. Corporate media is asking "How would you like this wrapped," with paper labeled either "Anti-Terrorism" or "Protect Kid."

For the last 25 years certain western governments (especially the US and UK/5 eyes) have focused on control over democracy. They've sold it as protections, defense, safety, etc. It's the opposite. Control, power, abuse, and the votes/$$$ to ignore their constituents. This is usually lead by conservative or far right parties who have zero history with abusing power and control (ex McCarthyism in the US).

We live in a world of surveillance. Even if most of that is to market you ads and extract capital it's still degrading and less safe for anyone but the core in group(s).

I don't think you need a huge, wide-ranging conspiracy to end up with a strong anti-privacy movement, even in a state which otherwise tries to defend consumer rights (in varying degrees of competency) for the most part.

I think you can just start with:

1. Campaigning on behalf of a worthy victim, or against a terrible enemy, is a good way to become more socially powerful. Most people are less willing to disagree with you when you do this because it risks introducing motive uncertainty - are you criticising the means because you truly object to the means, or are you criticising the means because you don't support the worthy victim or oppose the terrible enemy? This is a socially disadvantageous position to argue from.

2. Exploited children are worthy victims, and drug traffickers and terrorists are terrible enemies.

3. Therefore, policies that nominally protect children or oppose drug traffickers and terrorists are socially advantageous, and arguing for them is likely to increase your social power.

The means here are disproportionately likely to be done in a concealed way if the underlying policy is not broadly popular, independently of the effects it has on localised politcal arguments. Many people, myself included, don't support every political cause that helps a worthy victim or opposes a terrible enemy.

Social pressure is harder to apply at a distance, so the reality-warping effects of motive uncertainty are less powerful, so it makes sense that it's kept to private pressure groups and lobbying.

Governments want this the most

You won't be criticizing your boss/mayor/president/local politician/whoever, if you have to do it from an account tied to your own name. Having everyine install a digital ID on their phones (to prove they're old enough to jerk off to pornhub) is the first step, the "real name" policy is the next. The encryption ... well, one of the separate steps inbetween those two.

>So who are the major influencers, and their thoughts, for pushing this?

the governments themselves. left, right, or center, their number one priority is to maintain their power.

it amuses me immeasurably when the useful idiots in the West cheer on the policies of China and Russia. think of the children, think of the terrorists, think of the racists, think of the disinformation, blah blah blah. there are a myriad excuses but only one true goal -- suppression of dissent.

the UK establishment in particular primarily feels threatened by unredacted coverage of the consequences of its immigration policy, which they know gives voters to Reform. not because Reform would reverse that policy -- every "far-right fascist racist nazi" party in Europe had at best slowed the influx, not halted or reversed it -- but simply because someone else would be receiving lobbyists' money, favors, and sinecures after retirement.

Border agents in America can search your phone or laptop without a warrant or sufficient suspicion at the border.

Jeff Gray is a man who regularly gets arrested and/or trespassed from public places for holding up a sign saying "God bless the homeless vets". Seems to happen nearly every time he does it at various locations.

Oh, and flock cameras and ICE aren't exactly a sign that America is this beacon of freedom that it likes to portray.

Back in the early 00s the UK seemed to go all in on mass surveillance, with massive amount of cameras in public places and all that. I still remember how shocking it all looked even from Canada. So these 1984 parallels are certainly not a new development.

At least it's not becoming 1933 like some other places.

It was 1984 when I left in 1998. Not missed.

You can change billing details to US and then activate US gift card that you can buy of Amazon.com.

But keep in mind you have to disable all subscriptions first and also your family group if you have one must also switch their accounts to US.

So yeah pretending you're US customer is no brainer with Apple and unlike Google they dont have automatic detection that will move your account to other region.

Beware you can only change account region once a year or something.

The quantity and quality of communications that have been externalized and become effectively searchable and retrievable has increased by many orders of magnitude since paper mail was invented. I think even if you agreed that the State might have had that right then (which not everyone would), it would be good to reconsider what that means with the communications and information systems of today.

A term I've seen thrown around is "good old-fashioned police work" and to me the clear distinction is that it can't be done en masse - a real human police officer had to spend time tracking down each known suspect. E.g. clipping a pen register onto someone's telephone wires, tailing someone, asking the hotel clerk if he's been there, unlocking someone's phone to read their messages, and even watching footage on airgapped CCTV systems are all tasks that can be done one-at-a-time and require human power proportional to how much of them you do. This forces the state to only use them on actual suspects instead of using them on everyone, but still doesn't prevent the state from catching criminals.

They can have the right to surveil, but I don't think they should have the right to demand understanding of my messages.

Even many dictatorship states, like many of the "socialist" countries, had in the past articles in their constitutions that guaranteed the secrecy of the mail and of the telephone communications (other telecommunications did not exist at that time). Thus it is false that there is some kind of established tradition that governments may have access to private communications.

In reality the secret police did not care about laws or constitution, so private mail correspondence was intercepted and opened, read, then closed again with care, trying to make this undetectable, and the telephone lines of persons of interest were tapped.

Nonetheless, it was understood that this surveillance is actually illegal, so it was hidden as much as possible.

Nowadays, the government institutions of most "free" states, like USA and UK have granted themselves far more rights to do surveillance of their citizens than the dictators of the past.

Detecting and prosecuting serious crime does not need any such general surveillance. The general surveillance just makes much cheaper the detecting of serious crimes, but in exchange it gives the means to the government employees to commit more serious crimes themselves.

> There’s a general regression towards fascist and right wing ideologies in the last few years

The “fascist” part (authoritarian/totalitarian tendencies) came long before the resurgence of the right, but most people seem to approve of those methods as long as they target those they dislike, so I won’t be shedding any tears for them when it’s their turn at last.

> Very well written article

It is self-evidently written by AI. You can tell from both tropes such as “To bring this into sharper focus” and the fact that it is entirely without an opinion or argument for most of the piece.

Heres a favourite of mine. Apple & Google were/still are syphoning off all mobile device push messages to US government. They flat out denied it for years until it got leaked from another source, as soon as it was out in the open they admitted and said they were doing it all along but weren't allowed to tell anybody due to government NDAs.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/cybersecurity/governments...

These aren't conspiracy theories, these types of secret agreements happen all the time.

EDIT: it seems the original poster I was replying to has deleted their post, and so this may not make as much sense in the thread now.

If it was irrelevant then why did the FBI make such a big deal about it? Are you saying the FBI did that just to make Apple look good? Why would they care about Apple's reputation?

If you didn't want it before, you probably never will. It comes with a convenience cost and the risk you may permanently lose access to your iCloud stuff if you lose your password. With the normal level of privacy, Apple is there to help you or your loved ones get access to your stuff. Most people need that much more than they need inviolable privacy.

Maliciousness.