Relax, a little more looking into this will probably show apple to be wrong yet again.

> Apple right about something?!?!?! ...

Only them and pretty much everyone else.

> Apple right about something?!?!?! ... I'VE FOUND A HERETIC!!! BUURRRN HIM!!!!

Full disclosure: I do not like Apple, Sony, Microsoft, almost all game companies, telecom.

That said, Apple's stance on back doors is correct. Thus proving the adage that even greedy assholes can be correct when their imperatives are threatened. Apple doesn't want their user base to be hacked and owned.

That's Apple's job.

Apple still pulled off a masterclass in marketing and redirection. Somehow they prevented anyone from asking the correct question. That correct question is "WHY is it even possible for a company to compromise the users encryption?". That is because they control it and they SHOULD NOT. Encryption plugins should allow the use of any encryption that the user chooses. Not encryption enforced by the creator that has the ability for them to give up the keys to the kingdom. Which encryption, and total control of k

hah yeah American company subject to American laws. Me thinks they doth protest too much and pose a little too hard :)

> apple can be right all it wants but that won’t change the fact that politicians are know-nothings that don’t give a rat’s ass about weakening security when there is an opportunity for grandstanding and appearing to “do something.”

Remember: it's for the children !!

Seriously, there is no reason at all to provide the government with backdoor access to anything. If the government suspects someone of a crime, they can get a warrant, and compromise one of the endpoints, install hidden surveillance, or whatever. Backdoors led to spying in this case, but how many times has weakened security led to hacking and compromised data? Europe is fighting this battle right now with "chat control".

It's not just the politicians, the journalists are no better. They are happy to use software like Telegram to protect their sources and avoid stories leaking. But when those same tools are used by 'bad people' it's a national scandal and the government needs to do something about it. They don't seem to understand that private communications work both ways.

As a previous poster noted, the government already has tools which can compromise the endpoints of secure communications, and legal opportunities to install them every time 'bad people' pass through a US airport. There's really no reason to install additional backdoors which can be abused by foreign governments/hackets.

politicians are just good at doing politics, when they draft laws they don't really need to know squat about the subject, they're just do what they're told to do.

now, the people who told them about this weren't stupid nor ignorant, they knew full well that these backdoors were a security threat for all, they just considered it as an acceptable drawback and risk if it allowed them to do the dirty little deeds they wanted.

btw the assumption that apple products don't have backdoors is pretty candid to put it v

The threat models are entirely different. Your describing a threat where Apple as a corporation distributes signed software that violated customer expectations and their previous promises, and that people can protect against by not installing the software update. If a third party manages to subvert the build process, Apple and users can just install the software version that fixes it.

That's an entirely different threat than having wiretap or search backdoors that silently give access to real-time communications (in the case of wiretap) or data stored on arbitrary devices (in the case of backdoors). Vulnerabilities in those mechanisms become hugely valuable to any threat actor, not only the company that created the backdoor.

> ... the security guarantees are the same and the trusted party is the same.

It's so easy, we need to do this for porn: Just pass a law that all porn is encrypted by a key unique to each adult. That will save little Mary from grown-up truths, for sure.

How do people as dumb as you exist?

if Apple made a deal with Uber then i am sure they are making deals with other companies too,

Wasn't exactly secret, it had a name and was in the manifest. Not like they needed to do some obfuscated port knocking to access it.

You really should read that article you linked to...

> It allows developers to read and write to part of the iPhone’s memory that contains pixel and display data.

write pixel data. For a completely custom renderer it even makes sense.

Not saying you're wrong to doubt the explanation, just that your doubting doesn't match what is in the article.

If the watch didn't yet have a map widget, but did have a display image API, one could hack together a watch map interface by rendering the map on the phone, recording the screen, and transmitting the image to the watch. It's not a conspiracy, just shitty beta software that no one bothered to clean up. Or maybe Uber was doing some underhanded telemetry gathering. Wouldn't put it past them.

And Apple doesn't have "secret" APIs, they are just undocumented internal use only, reserved for iOS and first party app

How about taking China to task, give all corporations a 2-year notice to move their manufacturing to another country, because that is when imports from China can be blocked. How long would it take for the Chinese economy to tank if the USA stopped all imports from China? The Trump approach was just to slap a tariff on things, without giving companies a chance to relocate their manufacturing. Telling the Chinese, "you've done this crap too many times, and it's time for you to actually get punished for

I suspect most CPUs have some kind of backdoor, intentional or not. They need to be tested during the manufacturing process, which usually involves secret op-codes and interfaces that let someone with the right knowledge probe the chip's inner workings.

There's also the risk that microcode signing keys are leaked. They are obviously high value targets and likely irrevocable.

There's no evidence it was a backdoor, which implies it was intentional. It was more likely an unintentional vulnerability, which has since been patched.

And honestly, as a citizen of the US, I'm far less concerned about being spied on by the Chinese government than I am by being spied on by my own government. I know which one can come get me in the middle of the night if they decide they don't like what I'm saying.

Statements like "The US government would never extrajudicially assassinate their own citizens" don't hold as much water as they did in, say, 2000.

> the right has done the same thing with surveillance for decades.

As you point out, this isn't partisan. Both of the partisan sides want more surveillance and less individual privacy. There is little to no representation for most folks who want their individual rights protected . The constituency is there, I'd wager most folks are in favor of personal privacy, but the representation is not. This is always a sign that your political system is breaking or broken.