5 ms·
This quote from "a Google spokesman" seems unambiguous and key: "We’ve never received an All Writs Act order like the one Apple recently fought that demands we
by samstokes 11y ago
This quote from "a Google spokesman" seems unambiguous and key:
"We’ve never received an All Writs Act order like the one Apple recently fought that demands we build new tools that actively compromise our products’ security.... We would strongly object to such an order."
- kuschku 11y agoEh, that doesn’t answer the question, though. "We never were forced to build an additional backdoor" could just as well mean "because we already had one" EDIT: 10min after posting already at -2? Seriously? Please post a comment why you disagree instead of just downvoting.
- oldmanjay 11y agoI didn't vote, and I don't disagree with you per se, but I also don't really know what you're saying. In the context of the quote, there was no question indicated, so it's very hard to tell what question wasn't answered.
- pg_is_a_butt 11y agohow about because someone else said the same thing before you? here, i'll try now... maybe google was able to say they didn't receive an all writs act, because they just received a "do this for us or else" letter, and they already had a backdoor, so they didn't have to build one. don't downvote me. ever.
- AnimalMuppet 11y agoI didn't downvote you either. But I'm guessing that the issue is the kind of "have you stopped beating your wife" twist you're giving to what the Google spokesman said. It seems like you're looking for a way to twist what he said to fit your paranoia, rather than giving an honest reading to his words. That said, your reading is within the possible meanings of his words... but I still think you're trying to read too much into them.
- enraged_camel 11y agoIs he? Company spokespeople tend to be extremely well-trained to say certain things just the right way. Note that the spokesperson in question could have started that sentence with, "We don't have any backdoors in our products and..." But they didn't.
- kuschku 11y agoConsidering that PR people are trained to say things in the most preferable way for the company, and considering what happened in the Apple case and in the previous years with PRISM, it’s not paranoia to assume that Google has a backdoor one way or another. It’s probably even expected in the age of NSL letters and secret courts. Overspecific dementi "We never had to add a backdoor" are usually a very good sign of a company under a gag order that still wants to notify the public.
- jonesetc 11y agoDevil's advocate, they might not have had to build a new tool.
- r1ch 11y agoSeems possible. Pretty much every Android device has disk encryption disabled by default for performance reasons.
- russell_h 11y agoDisk encryption is required to be enabled by default on any device shipped with Android 6 (Marshmallow). There is an exemption for very slow phones, but I'd guess that most new medium or high end phones have it enabled now.
- mentat 11y agoWithout hardware keystore for the key encryption key it's sort of pointless as you can extract and brute force with any PBKDF2 round count that will be acceptable for a mobile user.
- bduerst 11y agoHasn't Android supported that since 2012? http://developer.android.com/about/versions/android-4.3.html#HardwareKeyChain http://developer.android.com/about/versions/android-4.3.html...
- mentat 11y agoI'm not sure if / how that's integrated into encrypted disk nor how prevalent having a TPM like chip is. TrustZone has had a lot of vulnerabilities.
- bduerst 11y agoThe majority of Android 6.0+ phones have disk encryption enabled by default. Previous android phones didn't have the hardware to handle the workload.