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Comment by yohannparis | Hacker News Reader

I mean, seems fair to have a huge US company with an history of giving most of their data to their government to not be used.

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History? You mean like all those times they refuse to open phones for the government? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%E2%80%93FBI_encryption_d...

If you read the link that you've posted, that was not about handing data over. They were already doing that. They didn't want to automate the process. They used the dispute as a pr campaign which you have faithfully repeated.

When it's a public request, and the people involved are already dead, there can be this kind of public spectacle. Apple was part of PRISM as per Snowden's leaks, and as cited in the wiki page, Snowden further claims regarding this specific case that the FBI was already perfectly capable of decrypting the device.

> In 2015 and 2016, Apple Inc. received and objected to or challenged at least 11 orders issued by United States district courts

Compared to the thousands of requests they received and fulfilled in that time: https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/us.html

Apple has a history of giving most of their data to the US government?

Did you mean to say “Apple has had to follow federal law when handed subpoena requests”?

The problem is when the data is related with foreign country that's been asked by the US govt.

Can apple not follow it, and will they protect it? Maybe someone with better knowledge on this topic can answer.

Apple doesn't have access to anything remotely to hand over data stored on your phone or in iCould, right?

What are they even handing over in subpoenas?

Until very recently, iCloud was not encrypted by default. So in the case of a subpoena, they handed over all your unencrypted iCloud files, chat logs, backups, etc. That's much more difficult due to changes that just happened this year.

You need to turn on 'Advanced Data Protection for iCloud' to have data encrypted. Mail, Contacts and Calendars are still not encrypted (Apple has key).

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303

> “Apple has had to follow federal law when handed subpoena requests”

That's no less of a problem for non-friendly governments

Yes this is what I meant. Thank you for the clarification as some people might not be aware of those United States of America federal laws.

For example the CLOUD act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act

Apple does not have a history of giving most of their data to the US government. I'd go so far as to say that they have given less than .00001% of their data to the US government and they were probably legally obligated to do so. Apple actually has a history of not bending over to the government.

Can you name some examples?

No, because the facts don't fit the narrative unfortunately.

81% turnover rate

https://www.techtarget.com/searchsecurity/news/252455036/Gov...

the CLOUD act: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act

I'm a Apple fanboy myself and praise their security features. But as a USA company they are not above the law.

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