A look at the reaction to Apple's E2EE news: the FBI is “deeply concerned” and says the change “hinders” its work while the EFF and others applaud the feature
Apple yesterday announced that end-to-end encryption is coming to even more sensitive types of iCloud data …
The opposing reactions fit Apple’s longer privacy-and-safety policy tension: related coverage found its child-safety announcement had already complicated efforts to balance safety and privacy in encrypted products.
First-order effects
iCloud users gain an encryption option for more stored data, while Apple limits its own ability to access that protected material.
The FBI loses a source of provider-accessible iCloud data for users who enable the feature; the EFF and other privacy groups gain a concrete win for their preferred model.
Second-order effects
Apple’s decision renews pressure on law-enforcement agencies to argue for access mechanisms, while privacy advocates can point to a major cloud service adopting stronger protection.
The earlier withdrawal of backup encryption makes the new rollout a sharper test of whether Apple can sustain a privacy position amid the same investigative objections.
Third-order effects
If Apple maintains and expands this approach, the encryption debate shifts further from device access to cloud-held data, making providers’ control over recovery and access policies a central policy fault line.
The unresolved tension between encrypted services and child-safety policy, highlighted in the prior child-safety debate, is likely to keep privacy groups and law enforcement on opposing sides of product design decisions.
The trend: Major consumer platforms are extending end-to-end encryption from communications into cloud data, intensifying the conflict between provider-controlled privacy protections and law-enforcement access.
New: FBI responds to Apple's encryption announcement today, says it needs “lawful access by design” in tech to do its job effectively https://twitter.com/...
To paraphrase Gibson: The past is here, it's just not evenly distributed. Apparently, inside the FBI building it's still five years ago. https://www.justsecurity.org/ ... https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/ ... https://twitter.com/...
Is the FBI saying they haven't been doing there job effectively for the past decade? Because we've been encrypting average Americans' phones, laptops, and communications for a very long time. Chicken Little makes this complaint every year but the sky still hasn't fallen https://t…
You have to feel for them. There's the political pressure of recent years, the awesome responsibility of catching terrorists, and on top of that they have to take the extremely lonely position of arguing there is too much internet security.
When the FBI find something like this “deeply concerning” you can probably bet it's a net-good for society. (Unless it's all performative and they have a back door 😜) https://www.macrumors.com/...
HUGE news, Apple is finally rolling out E2EE for iCloud! I've reported in the past about how FBI pressure reportedly caused Apple to back out of e2ee years ago. They're now pushing ahead anyway, and this is going to mean a MASSIVE increase in privacy for a LOT of people. 👏 https:…