• Data Protection

  Backdoored backup? Apple lifts iCloud encryption after the FBI complained

  Posted by Nigel Brown on 24 December 2020 at 5:26 pm

  Apple was barred from offering customers encrypted iCloud storage because US intelligence agencies insisted on maintaining open access to users’ files, their primary means of evidence-gathering, sources claim.

  The FBI quashed a planned feature that would have allowed Apple users to encrypt their iCloud storage, claiming that it would cut the agency off from its best source of evidence against iPhone-using suspects, according to Reuters.

  Apple reportedly went along with the agency, hoping to avoid being made an example of in the media or used as the test case for a draconian new anti-encryption law, and the program was put to bed two years ago – yet the crusading surveillance state returned in the wake of the Pensacola naval air base shooting to demand still greater incursions on user privacy.

  When Apple tipped the FBI off to the new feature (codenamed “Plesio” or “KeyDrop”), which would have fortified users’ data against both hackers and governments so that even Apple wouldn’t have been able to access the information, representatives from the FBI’s cybercrime and operational technology division told Apple to reconsider the plan.

  The agency was apparently getting too much good information out of iPhone users who kept their files in the cloud for Apple to derail the gravy train with petty privacy concerns.

  A year after the FBI representatives met with Apple to dissuade it from encrypting iCloud, the company had obeyed, sources told Reuters, explaining that management didn’t want to be raked over the coals for “protecting criminals” or sued for hiding data from government agencies. Appeasement carried the day, even for supposedly privacy-conscious Apple.

  Apple customers should realize they’re getting Google-level privacy for Apple-level prices, the days of Apple fighting the government for your privacy are over, they are allowing them access to your data.

  

  Nigel Brown replied 3 years, 9 months ago 1 Member · 0 Replies
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