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Fun: “what five things did you do last week?”
It’s a long time since I’ve seen one of these terribly useful automatic text generators: https://www.opmreply.com/ Via Cark
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France, too, pushing to make it illegal to have privacy online:
French parliament will consider a law that would require the installation of backdoors in VPNs and instant messengers like Signal or WhatsApp. Fine of EUR 1.5 million for non-compliance. https://www.senat.fr/amendements/2024-2025/254/Amdt_73.html Via:
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Biden Justice Department downplayed U.K. demand for Apple ‘back door’ | The Washington Post
This has been in the works for a long time; it doesn’t matter if it’s Conservative or Labour “in charge”, the UK Home Office hates private communication amongst individuals: The U.S. Justice Department told Congress in November that there were no major disputes with the United Kingdom over how the two allies seek data from
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Signal will abandon Sweden if the Swedish government’s data storage proposal is passed | SVT Nyheter
Via Google Translate, quote: The encrypted messaging app Signal is growing – now even the Swedish Armed Forces use the app. But the government wants to force the company to introduce a technical backdoor for the Police and Säpo. – If it becomes a reality, we will leave Sweden, says Signal’s head Meredith Whittaker, in
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Nice little blog post from Matt Green, although I’ll note he skipped the implicit Q2(b): “if surveillance was to apply only to UK persons, how would they be defined or distinguished?”
I’ve heard several times now: “Perhaps they could just spy on Britons?” — but given how easily folk are using VPNs & fake data to circumvent the ADP block, what would “a Briton” mean, and would establishing that not mean KYC-ing the whole world? Three questions about Apple, encryption, and the U.K. https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2025/02/23/three-questions-about-apple-encryption-and-the-u-k/
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James Ball on Twitter
What’s happening with Elon Musk and the centralised data of the US federal government is the kind of worst-case scenario Tony Blair and other ID card/central data acolytes have always dismissed as baseless fear-mongering, btw. https://x.com/jamesrbuk/status/1893694844578443327
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NB: you can’t call for big platforms like Apple to literally *break a law* like the Investigatory Powers Act, unless you are also content for them to wilfully break (e.g.) *GDPR*
This is something which I have had to explain to several civil society organisations in the past year; the general thinking is “it’s okay for $PLATFORM to break $SPECIFIC_LAW if I personally consider [that law] to be illiberal & misconceived.” But… The truth is: you expect platforms to obey the law, and if they don’t
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Government has made UK user data ‘less secure’ with Apple row – Experts | The Independent
“So actually, the only thing that the UK government has achieved in all of this is to disadvantage UK users … “They’ve made that corner of the internet less secure for us.” https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/apple-government-cybersecurity-data-protection-sky-news-b2702490.html It’s a bit of a change from the sales pitch for the Online Safety Act
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Twitter Poll: ‘Do you think Apple would be right to withdraw from the market a “strong privacy” product that contains a Government backdoor?’
Of course ‘right’ is open to interpretation, but that’s part of the point.
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Useful Phrase for anyone, today, discussing the UK/Apple/Encryption thing: “Comity of Nations”
Via Graham Smith* is this definition which basically means “states must balance whether they can pass laws or regulations which impact citizens of other jursdictions”, or to quote an actual dictionary: comity of nations noun phrase 1 : the courtesy and friendship of nations marked especially by mutual recognition of executive, legislative, and judicial acts
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Apple in 2016 | A Message to Our Customers | “…government has demanded that Apple take an unprecedented step which threatens the security of our customers…”
A follower on Twitter reminded me of the message that Apple published in February 2016; the nature of British surveillance requests will probably prevent them sharing similar to the UK today, but the sentiment should be the same: The United States government has demanded that Apple take an unprecedented step which threatens the security of
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