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Apple Shared User Data With Governments, Says WikiLeaks Email (dailydot.com)
"Please know that Apple will continue its work with law enforcement," reads an email from Apple's vice president of Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives, who reports directly to CEO Tim Cook, according to new documents this week on WikiLeaks. An anonymous reader writes:
In the email the Apple executive writes "we work closely with authorities to comply with legal requests for data that have helped solve complex crimes. Thousands of times every month, we give governments information about Apple customers and devices, in response to warrants and other forms of legal process. We have a team that responds to those requests 24 hours a day." The email was addressed to Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.
But the context is missing, and could show a larger attempt to soften Hillary Clinton's position on encryption. While Jackson writes that at Apple, "We share law enforcement's concerns about the threat to citizens," she later writes "Strong encryption does not eliminate Apple's ability to give law enforcement meta-data or any of a number of other very useful categories of data."
The email also compliments Clinton for her "principled and nuanced stance" on encryption in a December debate against Bernie Sanders. Clinton had said "maybe the backdoor is the wrong door, and I understand what Apple and others are saying about that. But I also understand, when a law enforcement official charged with the responsibility of preventing attack...well, if we can't know what someone is planning, we are going to have to rely on the neighbor... I just think there's got to be a way, and I would hope that our tech companies would work with government to figure that out."
But the context is missing, and could show a larger attempt to soften Hillary Clinton's position on encryption. While Jackson writes that at Apple, "We share law enforcement's concerns about the threat to citizens," she later writes "Strong encryption does not eliminate Apple's ability to give law enforcement meta-data or any of a number of other very useful categories of data."
The email also compliments Clinton for her "principled and nuanced stance" on encryption in a December debate against Bernie Sanders. Clinton had said "maybe the backdoor is the wrong door, and I understand what Apple and others are saying about that. But I also understand, when a law enforcement official charged with the responsibility of preventing attack...well, if we can't know what someone is planning, we are going to have to rely on the neighbor... I just think there's got to be a way, and I would hope that our tech companies would work with government to figure that out."
Closed source encryption = faith-based security.
That was my exact first thought. I'm far from an Apple fanboy, but why the hell is the story framed to sound like they're surreptitiously sharing customer data with the NSA or something
Exactly! Metadata is things like IP addresses of logins or names of accounts. These are things they have to have in order to operate and it's not something they can deny a valid warrant. AOL, Google, Yahoo!, and many many other companies respond to these requests. But if they cannot get at the data they cannot turn it over. Some companies, like Yahoo! apparently, give way more than others but if they couldn't get to the data they couldn't and Apple claims they no longer can. Put a good password on your account, your backups, and good grief don't use the cloud. How hard is that? Non-story unless they can show that Apple is breaking the most recent crypto...
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
metadata AND "any of a number of other very useful categories of data"
in other words.. apple can get at whatever they want to.. encrypted or not, locked device or not.
"any of a number of other very useful categories of data"
Phone number ?
Customer who bought the phone , their name, and address ?
Credit card used to buy the phone ?
Balance on their iTunes account ?
Last time it was accessed ?
There is a heap of data Apple has which does NOT include any data that is on the phone, and when given a valid warrant, Apple and every other company in the world will comply and hand over that data.
This is entirely consistent with Apples stance on protecting user privacy, by encrypting the end users data with keys they do not have they can not hand anything over, likewise with end to end encryption, Apple is not privy to any chat data and can therefore not hand anything over.
So, you have any PROOF to say otherwise, please give it, paranoid delusion is not proof.
Metadata doesn't exist, all data is data.
The government doesn't really care if you just asked for direction, if you are in contact with someone they don't like you are a criminal.
They even kill people just based on "meta"-data.
Ex-CIA director – We kill people based on metadata
And here is a YouTube clip if you think that veteranstoday just made it up.
Former NSA boss: "We kill people based on metadata"