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Comment by Angostura | Hacker News Reader

Except, in this case you have a US company that I honestly believe takes privacy seriously, fighting to prevent that stance being undermined by the UK government

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The problem is if you want to back up the content of your device securely. Without ADP, you’re stuck sending it into iCloud in a way that allows a government to access the data.

If you wanted to avoid potential prying eyes, you can’t backup the device over the internet to a storage location you own. You can sort of do this with photos, but it’s absolutely a kludge.

Apple is only one US law away from completely shutting down Advanced Data Protection for everyone.

> Apple is only one US law away from completely shutting down Advanced Data Protection for everyone.

The problem with this is that it's universally applicable.

Any cloud service that has end-to-end encryption today can be forced to break it if the jurisdiction in which they're based passes a law requiring it.

"So use a self-hosted open-source cloud backup system with a VPS?" Not a scalable solution. I genuinely do not believe there is a scalable solution to this problem.

All we can do is either pick the service we trust will remain safe the longest, or DIY it for ourselves and maybe those closest to us. And fight at the ballot box to end the era of ever-expanding government surveillance of everyone's digital data.

That is, by definition, not e2e encrypted.

Sorry, which "that" are you referring to?

If you mean this:

> So use a self-hosted open-source cloud backup system with a VPS?

then why not? It just needs to be set up to encrypt before upload, and decrypt after download, and have some means of sharing keys to other clients. Unless I'm being dumb and missing something?

> Any cloud service that has end-to-end encryption today can be forced to break it if the jurisdiction in which they're based passes a law requiring it.

If a 3rd party can be compelled to decrypt it, it’s not e2e encrypted.

"Break it" in the same sense as the UK is demanding of Apple: put a backdoor into their encryption that "only the good guys can use".

Before they do that, it is e2ee. After they do that, it is not.

Encrypted backups are an intractable technical problem. The key is on the device you’ve lost, so another copy of the key must be saved somewhere.

There has to be an element of trust, or else the actual use case that 99.9% of users have — I lost my device and want to restore my <whatever> - can’t be met.

It’s not like there’s some great alternative solution they’re intentionally neglecting.

> another copy of the key must be saved somewhere

Like a password you memorize? Or write down on a piece of paper and store it somewhere safe?

Both will inevitably get lost/forgotten, especially if it's a password that isn't used on a regular basis. Even for regular backups users rarely test recovery protocols. They just turn it on and call it a day. Heck, sometimes even companies don't even bother doing it, and find out that their disaster recovery protocols aren't up to snuff after they've been ransomwared.

There's nothing inevitable about it. If a user would rather risk forgetting/losing a password, than governments covertly and cheaply spying on them, they can do that, and the problem is perfectly tractable. It's only intractable under the demented requirements of delegating all security to someone else, and at the same time expecting to be secure against the entity you have delegated all security to.

>If you wanted to avoid potential prying eyes, you can’t backup the device over the internet to a storage location you own. You can sort of do this with photos, but it’s absolutely a kludge.

Use iTunes backup and then upload the files from your PC to an online storage provider of your choice?

That’s a workaround, that’s not a solution.

That is a solution for 2005 when the iPod wasn’t an internet connected device. In 2025 when devices are connected, performing network backups is overwhelmingly the correct answer.

You can still make an encrypted back-up to your local Mac - and I guess Windows box.

That's what I do - sync it to my Mac

Apple regularly comply with Law Enforcement requests for customer data though...

What else are they supposed to do? Defy court orders? That's why they introduced ADP, which avoids this problem by making it impossible for them to comply.

I wouldn't be surprised if it were made illegal. In fact, they probably have a deal with the government where they have a back door, and can still claim all these nice privacy things. I don't see any other way where this would be allowed.

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