ptwiggens

The update confirms it is the NSA.

It is incredible, even the most generous estimation of the NSA's capabilities before the Snowden disclosures now look conservative. This is the stuff conspiracy theories are made of.

IMessage absolutely does pass the mud puddle test.

What fails the mud puddle test is data stored in iCloud backups.

If you don't use iCloud backups, say goodbye to your I messages because they are only stored on the device.

"a number civil rights in Australia automatically disappear if you were in the midst of committing a crime while trying to claim them."

That doesn't make sense to me. You haven't "committed a crime" until you've been convicted.

You seem to be saying that you lose the rights merely by being suspected of a crime.

If that is the case, those rights don't actually exist in the first place.

In the US, they have successfully prosecuted people for "fiddling" just like the FBI did here.

I think that the intelligence agencies would rather have the vulnerabilities for their own use and roll the dice on being on the receiving end rather than buy up everything and close it, making it so they can't use it either.

That is completely unusable on mobile.

As someone who consistently needs my passwords on the go, a password manager is really the best way to go.

This is really easy. You have one good password for 1pass, and one good password for iCloud.

If you can manage to memorize one, you can memorize two.

Dropbox isn't ideal for backup at all.

Look into Crashplan. Client-side encryption, unlimited versioning, never deletes files, and only $6/month for truly unlimited backup.

Google has been suing for years. One of the few companies who has consistently gone to court for users privacy.

Skype specifically refuted that rumor after it came out. That being said, based on everything that has come out in Snowden's documents and other reporting, I now believe all Skype communications are compromised.

They take a photo of the front and back of every piece of mail that is sent. Your content is safe, but they still get the metadata.

NSL's come with a gag order. There wouldn't have been any backlash as no one would have known about it.

He shut it down because that was the only way to legally prevent the government from spying on his users.

Generally speaking countries don't extradite their own citizens.

"Depending on the strength of their encryption though, and the key used"

I trust that Apple is competent when it comes to encryption at this point. I agree that the statement was ambiguous as to whether the data was actually taken.

I highly doubt the hackers plan was to get email addresses and try to brute force from there... just doesn't make sense.

If you search Google, people are all the time receiving password reset emails going back years, even repeated ones.

Email addresses are in the clear all the time, and I've never heard of them being considered sensitive before. You should assume everyone has your email address.

How exactly would that be harmful?

If a patent troller wants to find out who is behind an app, they would go through the legal system and use a subpoena.

Literally no reason whatsoever for them to hack a website to get it.

Your post basically amounts to a conspiracy theory.

"It took them 3 days to tell us something happened. Obviously this means they would have kept it secret if it were at all possible."

It takes time to figure out what happened in a breach. That doesn't mean that Apple is some evil company trying to hide the fact that there was a breach.

Unsalted MD5 has been extremely easy to crack for years. Not sure why the claim would be impressive at this point.

What use is the list without passwords?

What use would changing passwords be if passwords weren't stolen?

If you think having your email address out there means you are at higher risk of being attacked, I've got news for you...

"I'm pretty sure."

No, they likely took the portal down as soon as they knew there was a breach. Highly unlikely they left it up while they investigated, and it takes time to figure out what happened and how much information was taken.

What motivation would there be to wait anyways?

How are names, mailing addresses, and email addresses sensitive personal information?

I would imagine that for most of the people signed up, it wouldn't be that hard to track down their name and email just from knowing the name of their app.