UK demands access to Apple users' encrypted data | Hacker News Reader

UK demands access to Apple users' encrypted data

bbc.co.uk

67 pointstooba34 comments

> And withdrawing the product from the UK might not be enough to ensure compliance - the Investigatory Powers Act applies worldwide to any tech firm with a UK market, even if they are not based in Britain.

That's incredibly demanding for a country that's been desperately trying to cling onto relevance for decades.

If they were to get this it's time to sue Apple for breach of GDPR.

To what extent is a country's relevance (whatever that even means) the decisive factor in determining what it is allowed to demand?

Allowed? UK government can "demand" anything. Anything outside the UK's sovereign control, is necessarily only going to be given by those who have other reasons to do so besides the threat of being arrested by a police force that has no jurisdiction.

The company wants to do business in the UK, it has to follow UK law. UK law claims for itself the right to act globally, and has the power to arrest and fine the companies and officers of Apple that are based in the UK if they don't… but then the Pope claims supremacy over all Catholics* and gets ignored somewhat in this also, and for the same reason:

There are other governments involved, and they don't accept the UK's (/Pope's) jurisdiction exceeds their own.

And in this case, the laws of other nations seem to require Apple to violate this law, so Apple's officers have to decide between which country to risk having arrest their officers, or to leave the UK.

(I have no idea what's going to happen, because the intelligence community in every nation has reasons to want Apple to be forced to do this, so if Apple decides to agree with the UK and violate other nations' privacy laws, those privacy laws may get conveniently ignored).

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_supremacy

The problem is that I would like to visit the UK as a tourist again as a developer of end-to-end encrypted applications. Geo-blocking all traffic from the UK, not selling to UK citizens, and strictly prohibiting the use of my applications for anyone from the UK should suffice to fulfill the UK's totalitarian demands. Anything else sets a horrible precedent.

Are you ready to fulfill China's and North Korea's requirements as a UK company?

> Are you ready to fulfill China's and North Korea's requirements as a UK company?

Quite.

There's two reasons I left the UK: this nonsense (the whole Act, not just this specific bit) and Brexit.

They can demand whatever they want, it doesn't mean their demands should or will be respected.

The UK only has ~70 million people.

At some point I hope we get a government that governs global internet interactions. National governments are just making up silly jurisdiction rules because there's a customer that is currently in their place, overlooking the global nature or at least feel of the internet.

If I'm in one country and the person with whom im interacting is in another, whose geographical laws take precedence? Now imagine interacting with many many geographies at the same time.

It doesn't work and I hope one day we at least admit it to ourselves.

You want even more consolidation of power?

Consolidatation of governmental power to balance the power of global corporations and global criminal enterprises? Yes

The U.K. is the sixth largest economy in the world. It’s hardly irrelevant, unless the only relevant countries are the USA and China.

large economy /= relevance

The uk economy is 80% services, mostly financial services and tourism, only 18% come from manufacturing

The UK is a poor country with London attached to it

Do you define relevance in terms of manufacturing?

Hard to say how to define relevance - but I think an economy based on manufacturing is more solid (relevant?) than one based on tourism

It’s not based on tourism, it’s based on services, which includes tourism but isn’t dominated by it.

But regardless, it’s exactly because it’s hard to define relevance that I was challenging the original comment, which said, without explaining what it meant by this, that the U.K. is no longer relevant.

Regardless of your feelings about this Apple issue, it just seems like an absurd thing to say about a country that’s a large economy (even if wealth is concentrated in one region), has decent cultural exports, is a nuclear power, sits on the UN Security Council, etc.

It’s exactly because it can throw its weight around with Apple, and people are treating it seriously, that it clearly is relevant. If it was some tiny nation doing it, it would just provoke amusement.

True, imo the UK is very relevant in many aspects - for me it’s mostly in terms of culture. I think much of this is due to the empire and them colonising a major part of the world.

But just as an aside on your last point - I think it’s actually pretty amusing that they think they could force a backdoor on apple…

One of the ways it hangs on is by being a part of 5 eyes "mutual spying club" meaning that US intelligencies can bypass domestic legal protections.

That just recently got ruled illegal by a Federal Court...

https://www.eff.org/cases/united-states-v-hasbajrami

Politicians living in dreamland again about what encryption can and cannot do. I thought this stupidity had died with our last excuse for a government. Sad to see this is back.

What do you mean? Do you have the key to your iCloud backups? You do not, your phone does. You know who has root access to your phone? Apple.

It would take a minute to set up some code to fetch the key, if they were legally forced to.

So, "Just please sign into your phone for us, will you, and install this software update that we push through the pipe."

The phones auto-install updates all the time with no user intervention or even notification.

I wish I was this naive.

Even AirTags receive firmware updates via Bluetooth. The iPhone when off has the capabilities of an AirTag.

If Apple wanted, they could. That's all I'm saying. If AUKUS & EU say "backdoor them or no more sales" you bet your safe encryption will be no more.

What I mean is they have this fantasy that they can weaken encryption in a way that only they can benefit from, and that if they’re given these keys they can realistically keep them safe.

Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42970412

Not dupe. Different report.

As an Apple user for decades and a UK citizen I would honestly rather they withdrew from the UK market rather than engage with this idiocy.

Apple could start with the UK politicians' iCloud backups, I am sure there is a lot of useful compromising information in them. That might cause a change in attitude.

Apple could be the first modern corporation to declare war on a nation-state. They have the resources to set the internet hounds on them & make them absolutely miserable. Looks like the Heinlein/Snowcrash/Stross corporate futures are in play.

Lawfare has some good articles covering the different perspectives on the encryption debate from the last 10 years. https://www.lawfaremedia.org/search-results?prod_search-inde...

And then in 90s

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_Wars

As a UK citizen, I'm hoping this is actually a backdoor effort by the US to hack into people's data rather then something our fine folks were pushing for.

Or at the very least, it's a starting point for negotiations around how best to stop bad actors without compromising user security.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com