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Comment by VvR-Ox | Hacker News Reader

1. Yes, they have to. At least in the US any company has to cooperate with the law enforcement as you might know. The only choice to do business in the US or based on US governed soil is to comply with them.

2. Apple at least put some effort into this matter because otherwise there would not be so much media attention to breaking into iPhones. To get data from android on the other hand seems to be no problem at all.

3. We are already in hell but we do not yet see the flames surrounding us.

4. If collective choice matters so much we are all doomed and you know it. Try telling the Joneses about encryption etc. - they will still use WhastApp, Facebook and the likes because it is so convenient over a way of burden and hard work to get there or even live without all these "magical devices and services".

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We do not have to cooperate with law enforcement. Encryption is still legal, even if law enforcement would prefer service providers not ever use it.

We have to comply with court orders. That’s it.

Please tell me why do organizations use canaries[0] then to tell people they where not forced to cooperate?

The funny thing is that I just read a bit of the linked Wikipedia article to find this: Companies and organizations who no longer have warrant canaries

  The following is a list of companies and organizations whose warrant canaries no longer appear in transparency reports:
  * Apple
  * Reddit
  * Silent Circle

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary

on 1.: Are there actually US laws that could prevent Apple from offering end-to-end encryption for backups to their user?

That is something very different from cooperating with a specific investigation.

Why did Apple not fight this in court?

Could Apple keep the backups outside the EU, like Microsoft did for email in the Dublin case?

I do not think so and AFAIK only the export of strong encryption is prohibited by law in the US.

But it is not about prohibiting encryption but the possibility and/or necessity that Apple has another key to decrypt your data with.

It does not matter where they keep the data as long as the companies headquarters are on US soil.

One of my wild guesses could be Apple wants to mine the data. Blaming it on having to comply with court orders could be a useful limited hangout.

Re: 1

Google gives their customers the option for end-to-end encryption of uploaded data and I'm sure they have to play by the same rules as Apple.

"... they have to play by the same rules as Apple"

Now this does not exactly help me feeling more comfortably about this issue.

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