Will Apple Block UK Users From Apple Services?
Like other countries, UK politicians are wrestling with how to deal with encryption. After all, the U.S. has been dealing with it since they arrested Phil Zimmerman for creating PGP encryption and they haven’t resolved the issue either.
The UK wants to, basically, ban end to end encryption in the name of “protecting the children”.
It is true that if they ban encryption it will make it harder for pedophiles to share CSAM, the current term for kiddie porn. But it will not stop them. They will just go further underground. A few low hanging fruit pedophiles will get arrested and prosecuted and then the rest of them will lay low until the figure out what the next platform is that is safe.
It is also possible that whatever the next platform is won’t actually be secure and they will arrest a few more.
But the cat and mouse game will continue.
Most of the end to end encrypted messaging apps like WhatsApp and Signal, among others, are raising the warning flag.
Signal has already said that they will not comply if this law is passed. They won’t compromise the security of 99 percent of their customers to allow the one percent (UK residents) to use a non-secure version of their app and compromise the rest of their customers. They have said – and who know what they will actually do – that they will instead geo-block the app so that if UK residents try to send a signal message they will either get an error or nothing at all.
WhatsApp has also said that they will not lower its security standard for any government.
The government’s response is “but, it is to protect the children”. Which, of course, it won’t do. It will just make it harder to find and arrest the pedophiles – except for the stupid ones.
If this bill is passed and providers comply with it, it will allow governments to snoop on anything on your phone. Potentially copy anything and send anything to government servers.
If you don’t believe that governments can abuse their powers, you don’t have to look any further over the fight over the renewal of Section 702 of FISA here in the US. Neither the left nor the right trust the government not to abuse their powers.
WhatsApp has also said it will leave the UK if the bill becomes law and Apple, always looking at their stock price and executive bonuses, is hedging their bets right now but suggesting that they might have to leave rather than being labelled as Apple’s spyware. You may remember that they proposed to scan content on user’s phones about a year ago. The backlash over the PROPOSAL was so loud that they abandoned it before they ever implemented it.
I can just see the ad campaign now. Buy your Apple phone now and give the government a back door into everyone you talk to, everything you look at and every picture you have on your phone. That should sell well.
Putin has already banned iPhones for that reason and they haven’t even implemented this yet. Apple does NOT want to become a pariah.
Stay tuned.
Credit: Gizmodo
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I wonder how they think that will mess with their privacy laws. I would think that would go against the security clauses and make it easier for the cybercriminals to still data.
Remember that GDPR, one of the EU’s major privacy laws, does not apply to the EU’s security apparatus, it only applies to other countries’ security services, so I am guessing they will say that it is “to protect the children”, so it is covered by this exception: “GDPR does not apply to government agencies and law enforcement when data are collected and processed for the prevention, investigation, detection, or prosecution of criminal offenses or the execution of criminal penalties or for preventing threats to public safety”. Whether the CJEU agrees with that is still to be determined.