4 ms·

China already got golden keys for Chinese iPhones. Apple handed them iCloud.

NieDzejkob 7y ago
I'm not saying you're wrong, but I haven't been able to find a source for this - only mentions of a new datacenter in China. A citation would be nice.
- trevyn 7y ago
  https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208351 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208351
  - coldtea 7y ago
    Well, China issues aside, that should be the case in every country -- such services should be local, governed by local laws, and not giving a free-pass to foreign countries/governments (foreign as to the users of the service) to enforce their laws/surveillance. E.g. I would like the EU iCloud to be hosted in EU.
    - JoshTriplett 7y ago
      > that should be the case in every country -- such services should be local, governed by local laws So a cloud service that's available worldwide should store and process data locally in every country (or perhaps even every sub-jurisdiction of every country) just so that that jurisdiction can serve warrants to it and others cannot? Or worse, people in multiple countries should have to use different services and hope those services interoperate with each other, just so that they can "shop local"? The Internet does not and should not work that way. If we're going to go to the trouble of building interoperable, federated services, it should be to put them in the control of individual users, not in the control of governments.
      - coldtea 7y ago
        >So a cloud service that's available worldwide should store and process data locally in every country (or perhaps even every sub-jurisdiction of every country) just so that that jurisdiction can serve warrants to it and others cannot? Simply put, yes. You are maybe concerned with the technical issues / problems to the service provider. I'm more concerned with the decentralization, surveillance, and data sovereignty. >Or worse, people in multiple countries should have to use different services and hope those services interoperate with each other, just so that they can "shop local"? Yes. In fact, this decentralized nature, and resilience, was an early vision about the internet itself, and not just some hippie dream, even in its army-research origins... And of course all the way to ideas such as XMPP, Diaspora, and so on. Nobody dreamed a Facebook silo somewhere gathering all the world's data... >The Internet does not and should not work that way. That it does not, it's obvious. That it should not, less so. (And of course, if one's county is the one doing the data-gathering/policing of data for the rest of the world, it's "naturally" all A-OK to them that it is so). >If we're going to go to the trouble of building interoperable, federated services, it should be to put them in the control of individual users, not in the control of governments. Notice how I didn't propose putting them "in control of governments". They already are in control of at least one government (the one of the country of Facebook, Google, MS, Apple, Twitter, etc). So what I proposed is already de-centralized: putting each users data under democratic control in the places where they themselves are (and vote, have rights, etc), as opposed to a central place, where they don't vote, don't have any right or resource as foreigners and are "fair game" to the whims of both the service-origin government and the service company. If they're going to go to control of individual users, even better. But stopping the control of a single foreign government is already a good first step. (Exceptions could be made for non-democratic countries -- no reason to give control of a service's local data to a dictatorship).
        JoshTriplett 7y ago
        > Simply put, yes. Feel free to build such services, if you wish. > You are maybe concerned with the technical issues / problems to the service provider. Not just that (though I certainly don't consider it reasonable to expect a service to have thousands of servers in thousands of jurisdictions and deal with thousands of legal systems; frankly, I want services to expose themselves to as few jurisdictions as possible). I'm concerned about the usefulness of the service to its users. As a user of a service, I will not accept partitioned and walled-off services where I cannot interact with people elsewhere in the world. That's my choice, and the choice of people and projects I collaborate with, and I choose to use services that allow me to collaborate with those people and projects. > And of course all the way to ideas such as XMPP, Diaspora, and so on. I did specifically say that: If we're going to go to the trouble of building interoperable, federated services, it should be to put them in the control of individual users, not in the control of governments. If you have the capability of interoperability and federation, then where you host your data should have nothing to do with jurisdiction, and everything to do with who wants to store and control the data.
GhettoMaestro 7y ago
That is technically incorrect. As I understand it, the iPhones are generic (global), but the iCloud service is what the Chinese authorities have full snooping rights to. Apple doesn't cut a custom firmware with special/additional golden keys or anything of that nature, as I understand it, for anyone. The iPhone in this case is safe, assuming you don't use iCloud, in China.
- modeless 7y ago
  > assuming you don't use iCloud But most people use iCloud, right? Apple forbids you from using competing full phone cloud backup services. The built in backup software continuously sends iCloud copies of most user data on the phone.
  - __david__ 7y ago
    As far as I understand, they send an encrypted binary blob of the data on your phone, and the keys stay local. That’s much different.
    - modeless 7y ago
      This is not correct. Apple's page explaining their iCloud encryption states that they use end-to-end encryption only for a few specific types of data, and only if you enable two factor authentication. iMessage in particular explicitly sends its encryption keys to iCloud (so that iCloud can unlock your messages if you lose your device, but of course this means iCloud can unlock your messages for any other reason without your knowledge). https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303

I'm not saying you're wrong, but I haven't been able to find a source for this - only mentions of a new datacenter in China. A citation would be nice.

trevyn 7y ago
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208351 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208351
- coldtea 7y ago
  Well, China issues aside, that should be the case in every country -- such services should be local, governed by local laws, and not giving a free-pass to foreign countries/governments (foreign as to the users of the service) to enforce their laws/surveillance. E.g. I would like the EU iCloud to be hosted in EU.
  - JoshTriplett 7y ago
    > that should be the case in every country -- such services should be local, governed by local laws So a cloud service that's available worldwide should store and process data locally in every country (or perhaps even every sub-jurisdiction of every country) just so that that jurisdiction can serve warrants to it and others cannot? Or worse, people in multiple countries should have to use different services and hope those services interoperate with each other, just so that they can "shop local"? The Internet does not and should not work that way. If we're going to go to the trouble of building interoperable, federated services, it should be to put them in the control of individual users, not in the control of governments.
    - coldtea 7y ago
      >So a cloud service that's available worldwide should store and process data locally in every country (or perhaps even every sub-jurisdiction of every country) just so that that jurisdiction can serve warrants to it and others cannot? Simply put, yes. You are maybe concerned with the technical issues / problems to the service provider. I'm more concerned with the decentralization, surveillance, and data sovereignty. >Or worse, people in multiple countries should have to use different services and hope those services interoperate with each other, just so that they can "shop local"? Yes. In fact, this decentralized nature, and resilience, was an early vision about the internet itself, and not just some hippie dream, even in its army-research origins... And of course all the way to ideas such as XMPP, Diaspora, and so on. Nobody dreamed a Facebook silo somewhere gathering all the world's data... >The Internet does not and should not work that way. That it does not, it's obvious. That it should not, less so. (And of course, if one's county is the one doing the data-gathering/policing of data for the rest of the world, it's "naturally" all A-OK to them that it is so). >If we're going to go to the trouble of building interoperable, federated services, it should be to put them in the control of individual users, not in the control of governments. Notice how I didn't propose putting them "in control of governments". They already are in control of at least one government (the one of the country of Facebook, Google, MS, Apple, Twitter, etc). So what I proposed is already de-centralized: putting each users data under democratic control in the places where they themselves are (and vote, have rights, etc), as opposed to a central place, where they don't vote, don't have any right or resource as foreigners and are "fair game" to the whims of both the service-origin government and the service company. If they're going to go to control of individual users, even better. But stopping the control of a single foreign government is already a good first step. (Exceptions could be made for non-democratic countries -- no reason to give control of a service's local data to a dictatorship).
      - JoshTriplett 7y ago
        > Simply put, yes. Feel free to build such services, if you wish. > You are maybe concerned with the technical issues / problems to the service provider. Not just that (though I certainly don't consider it reasonable to expect a service to have thousands of servers in thousands of jurisdictions and deal with thousands of legal systems; frankly, I want services to expose themselves to as few jurisdictions as possible). I'm concerned about the usefulness of the service to its users. As a user of a service, I will not accept partitioned and walled-off services where I cannot interact with people elsewhere in the world. That's my choice, and the choice of people and projects I collaborate with, and I choose to use services that allow me to collaborate with those people and projects. > And of course all the way to ideas such as XMPP, Diaspora, and so on. I did specifically say that: If we're going to go to the trouble of building interoperable, federated services, it should be to put them in the control of individual users, not in the control of governments. If you have the capability of interoperability and federation, then where you host your data should have nothing to do with jurisdiction, and everything to do with who wants to store and control the data.

GhettoMaestro 7y ago

That is technically incorrect. As I understand it, the iPhones are generic (global), but the iCloud service is what the Chinese authorities have full snooping rights to. Apple doesn't cut a custom firmware with special/additional golden keys or anything of that nature, as I understand it, for anyone. The iPhone in this case is safe, assuming you don't use iCloud, in China.

modeless 7y ago
> assuming you don't use iCloud But most people use iCloud, right? Apple forbids you from using competing full phone cloud backup services. The built in backup software continuously sends iCloud copies of most user data on the phone.
- __david__ 7y ago
  As far as I understand, they send an encrypted binary blob of the data on your phone, and the keys stay local. That’s much different.
  - modeless 7y ago
    This is not correct. Apple's page explaining their iCloud encryption states that they use end-to-end encryption only for a few specific types of data, and only if you enable two factor authentication. iMessage in particular explicitly sends its encryption keys to iCloud (so that iCloud can unlock your messages if you lose your device, but of course this means iCloud can unlock your messages for any other reason without your knowledge). https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303