Personal Data Is Under Siege. End-to-End Encryption Is Our Most Powerful Defense
lawfaremedia.org
lawfaremedia.org
The author works for Apple.
Should personal data should be "in the cloud" under the control of third parties like Apple. Why does Apple want this data. The company competes with the likes of Facebook and other privacy-destroying "tech" companies. We know why Facebook wants such data. Apple's advertising revenue continues to increase.
Unfortunately, this submission reads like PR for Apple. And it coincides with similar propaganda from Facebook:
https://engineering.fb.com/2023/12/06/security/building-end-...
We know that Zuckerberg actually wanted to break WhatsApp encryption.
Encryption is a good idea if person A wants to protect against someon stealing their computer or storage device, or if person A wants to send data to persona B over the internet. But if all storage is on Apple's computers, and if sending data to person B requires sending it through Apple's computers, then Apple is the one controlling encryption, not persons A or B. Given that Apple is in the business of collecting people's personal data and metadata for profit, ideally below the user's awareness, e.g., encrypted in a way that the user cannot view their own traffic, that's not a good idea.
If we want security we have to fix government. No other industry can just expose SSN's, credit cards, personal details, and get a slap on the wrist. Software must be treated like an engineering profession and have the responsibility to uphold standards. If not, they get big fines that go into paying the victims and research into security.
This will not happen in the U.S. because bribery is legal and tech corps are all in on using it to make the world worse for everyone except themselves.
You need a different country to have a properly functioning industry. The EU is doing very well at this.