Apple’s decision to withdraw the safest cloud storage service from the UK is just a turning point in a battle that was heading between American technology companies and successive British governments for some time.
Conflict centers On the encryption from one side to the endA way for safe contact that only enables the sender and the future to display messages.
The ministers have long argued that technology, in its current form, prevents law enforcement agencies from hunting criminals, including terrorists and children.
but, apple Along with its colleagues, technology companies say they are not ready to alleviate the privacy obligations they made to all their customers to meet their demands.
Whitehall is trying to address this issue for some time.
Under the online safety law 2023, she tried to provide a customer survey. This would have forced technology companies to scan private messages before encryption.
Dead WhatsApp and Signal threatened to get out of the UK market in response, as the latter said he would “walk 100 %”. The government later rowing again.
“Snoopers” charter
I have now used the IPA Law, the so -called “SNOOPERS”, to try to force Apple to allow safety authorities to access the encrypted cloud data, which does not see Apple itself.
Instead of creating the background of the government, the technology giant said it will disrupt the protection of advanced data (ADP) in the UK completely. This is the most advanced and comprehensive safety tool to the cloud.
When using ADP, account holders only can see images and other documents that they have stored on the cloud.
UK Apple users lose an additional safety layer
This means that Apple is now compatible with the law, and in this sense, the government has obtained what it wants, but this means that users in the United Kingdom have lost an additional layer of security.
The government believes that the approach is necessary. In 2023, the Ministry of the Interior published instructions, which stated that crimes related to inappropriate for children have increased by 13 % during the previous year.
He referred to the Yougov poll, which suggested that the general support of the opinion that technology companies must develop technology that allows them to determine sexual assault on children in the encoding applications from the party to the party.
However, technology companies and security experts say that the “back door” is not possible without undermining safety and privacy for all users. Experts have been trying to develop one over the past thirty years, with little success.
Some technology companies who return to activists
Not only technology companies fighting this angle.
When reports on this last effort appeared for the first time last week, 109 civil society organizations, companies and cyber security experts published a joint letter to the Minister of Interior YVette Coper, who said that the request “exposes the security and privacy of millions, undermines the UK technology at risk, and puts a dangerous precedent For global cyber security. “
Activists also argue that this step can threaten global privacy rights. Human Rights Watch described it as “disturbing” that is not commensurate.
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The group said: “People rely on safe and confidential communications to exercise their rights. Access to backups of devices is to access your phone completely, and a strong encryption to prevent this access should be the criterion by default.”
In the United States, Senator Ron Widen and a member of Congress Andy Biggs condemned the plan, describing it as “dangerous” and “short -sighted”.
However, the United States government has previously asked Apple to break its encryption to help its criminal investigations, with little success.
Apple can appeal the decision, but in the face of major American technology companies, the UK government suffers from a great battle at its hands.