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I find these emails exchanges fascinating and a treasure trove when you consider a company as secretive and influential as Apple. What I don’t understand is ho
by tambourine_man 3y ago
I find these emails exchanges fascinating and a treasure trove when you consider a company as secretive and influential as Apple.
What I don’t understand is how they used an unencrypted form of communication for such important topics.
- extr 3y ago? It's not about encryption. These emails were subpoenaed.
- hgsgm 3y agoEncrypt the email, rotate and delete keys after 18months.
- judge2020 3y agoUnlike Google, Apple isn't trying to hide anything (post-High-Tech Employee Antitrust Litigation)
- rblatz 3y agoOr just set a company policy around email retention. Then delete anything older than that? Apple chose to keep these emails around because the value of the emails was greater than the risk of keeping them.
- macintux 3y agoThe company to whom I'm currently contracted has a 2-month retention policy on inboxes and it drives me crazy.
- detourdog 3y agoApple is secretive not sneaky they aren’t trying to trick anybody. They are working on human centric computing. They have had human interface guidelines and the preservation of those guidelines is maintained through app review. I’m sure that some form of side loading will appear soon. My guess is that all the privacy and integration will be held at arms length from the rest of the ecosystem and may just use webkit to access the user data.
- tracerbulletx 3y agoPublic companies are required by law to retain email for 7 years I believe.
- tambourine_man 3y agoThat would explain it. But then again, why not use Signal or something similar for sensitive topics.
- samspenc 3y agoSeveral employees of the world's largest banks actually tried this. Result? Almost $2 billion in fines. https://www.wsj.com/articles/wall-street-to-pay-1-8-billion-in-fines-over-traders-use-of-banned-messaging-apps-11664311392 https://www.wsj.com/articles/wall-street-to-pay-1-8-billion-...
- tambourine_man 3y agoThat’s interesting, thanks. Article is paywalled, but how can it be proved they’re using something like Signal? There must be at least some discussion available to be disclosured on request by law? How do they define if the subject is relevant enough to require a formal exchange between executives? The world of big public companies is fascinating.
- asveikau 3y agoI have to imagine any requirements on email retention would apply to signal too, and that your phone with its local plaintext database can be subpoenaed. The threat model for signal is not to get you out of your legal obligation to comply with court orders.
- Golden_Wind123 3y agoI don't understand? As long as someone has the relevant decrypted message chain it can be subpoenaed.
- maximilianroos 3y ago
- mvdtnz 3y agoSo why not just delete the emails?
- OJFord 3y agoHow do you recover a deleted unencrypted email?
- Andrex 3y ago> What I don’t understand is how they used an unencrypted form of communication for such important topics. ? What would encryption have changed? Apple were compelled to produce these as part of Epic v. Apple.
- tambourine_man 3y agoCouldn’t they’ve said they didn’t have the key anymore? Or automatically delete emails after two years or so? Seems reckless to keep confidential information like that, but I’m not familiar with the legal obligations large companies have, of course.
- smlavine 3y agoYes, they could have lied to the court if they wanted to. That wouldn't have gone well.
- tambourine_man 3y agoThat’s not what I’m asking or suggesting
- Golden_Wind123 3y agoA blanket auto-delete after 2-years policy is reckless from an institutional knowledge POV>
- pie420 3y agoIt is standard procedure in many large pharma companies
- Someone 3y ago> What I don’t understand is how they used an unencrypted form of communication for such important topics. How do you know they did? For all we know, this was on an internal mail system that encrypted messages everywhere, except when showing their content to humans (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_hole https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_hole) Also, FTA: “[This document is from Epic v. Apple (2021).]” I think that means they would have been forced to disclose this, even if it were encrypted (“we lost the keys” would be a viable defense to that, but would require a really, really good set of arguments supporting the claim that happened before a court order arrived)
- rblatz 3y agoWhat do you mean? Client to server on both sides is encrypted. I can’t say for sure, but it’s not unlikely to think the emails would be encrypted at rest on the email server. The server itself is owned by Apple and is fully trusted to be secure by the exec team using it.