Apple Sells Privacy To Consumers. But It’s Quietly Helping Police Use iPhones For Surveillance.
Apple Sells Privacy To Consumers. But It’s Quietly Helping Police Use iPhones For Surveillance.
At Apple’s secretive Global Police Summit at its Cupertino headquarters, cops from seven countries learned how to use a host of Apple products like the iPhone, Vision Pro and CarPlay for surveillance and policing work.
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This title seems kind of clickbaity. Most of the native apps are for querying existing government and police databases. We’re talking about accessing records via CarPlay, as opposed to using a bulky Window’s laptop docked in a center console.
Apple is still not offering governments a backdoor into encrypted content.
Apple is still not offering governments a backdoor into encrypted content
You mean like they have to under the USA PRISM Act?
They’ll hand over unencrypted cloud data, but they are not decrypting E2EE cloud data. They literally can’t. They don’t have the key. If they had a key, it would be a monumental security vulnerability.
This is why governments and cops have dragging them into courts for years.
That key is not for locally encrypted data, locked devices or e2ee data.
https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/security/sec973254c5f/web
If you turn this on, Apple can’t not decrypt anything you have stored in the cloud with that key.
They've been doing it for data on device, not on iCloud (cloud data). They have full access to that.
Do you have a source for that?
Because Apple has had a lot of very prominent court cases about unlocking phones for cops, and they famously haven’t done that. They, like other cloud service providers, have forked over cloud storage data, that isn’t e2ee, when given a warrant.
Sure, here is the legal document from Apple by Apple of what they share with law enforcement.
Included inside is:
III. Information Available from Apple A. Device Registration B. Customer Service Records C. Apple Media Services D. Apple Store Transactions E. Apple.com Orders F. Gift Cards G. Apple Cash H. Apple Pay I. Apple Pay Later J. Apple Card K. Savings L. iCloud M. Find My N. AirTag and Find My Network Accessory Program O. Extracting Data from Passcode Locked iOS Devices P. IP Address Request Q. Other Available Device Information R. Requests for Apple Store CCTV Data S. Game Center T. iOS Device Activation U. Connection Logs V. My Apple ID and iForgot Logs W. FaceTime X. iMessage Y. Apple TV app Z. Sign in with Apple AA. Apple Push Notification Service (APNs)
https://www.apple.com/customer-letter/answers/
Quote below
Has Apple unlocked iPhones for law enforcement in the past?
No.
We regularly receive law enforcement requests for information about our customers and their Apple devices. In fact, we have a dedicated team that responds to these requests 24/7. We also provide guidelines on our website for law enforcement agencies so they know exactly what we are able to access and what legal authority we need to see before we can help them.
For devices running the iPhone operating systems prior to iOS 8 and under a lawful court order, we have extracted data from an iPhone.
We’ve built progressively stronger protections into our products with each new software release, including passcode-based data encryption, because cyberattacks have only become more frequent and more sophisticated. As a result of these stronger protections that require data encryption, we are no longer able to use the data extraction process on an iPhone running iOS 8 or later.
Hackers and cybercriminals are always looking for new ways to defeat our security, which is why we keep making it stronger.
That's an amazing strawman argument you have there. But please, let's stay on topic.
The topic was "Apple shares iCloud data with law enforcement, regardless of whether the iCloud data is encrypted or not".
They don't have to have a backdoor. They are most likely in possession of a master key to decrypt your data:
This is for non e2ee cloud data. If you turn e2ee cloud encryption on, only you can access your cloud data. A government or police agency can’t access it, but you’re also kind of fucked if you need Apple’s support to access backup. So maybe leave it off for old parents.