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Apple Flies Top Privacy Executives Into Australia To Lobby Against Proposed Encryption Laws (patentlyapple.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Patently Apple: Last week Patently Apple posted a report titled "Australia proposed new Laws Compelling Companies like Facebook & Apple to Provide Access to Encrypted Messages." Days later, Australia's Prime Minister spoke about the encryption problem with the Australian press as noted in the video in our report. Now we're learning that Apple has flown in top executives to lobby Turnbull government on encryption laws. It sounds like a showdown is on the horizon. This is the second time this month that Apple has flown executives into Australia to lobby the government according to a Sydney publication. Apple executives met with Attorney-General George Brandis and senior staff in Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's office on Tuesday to discuss the company's concerns about the legal changes, which could see tech companies compelled to provide access to locked phones and third party messaging applications. Apple has argued in the meetings that as a starting point it does not want the updated laws to block tech companies from using encryption on their devices, nor for companies to have to provide decryption keys to allow access to secure communications. The company has argued that if it is compelled to provide a software "back door" into its phones to help law enforcement agencies catch criminals and terrorists, this would reduce the security for all users. It also says it has provided significant assistance to police agencies engaged in investigations, when asked. UPDATE 07/20/17: Headline has been updated to clarify that Apple is lobbying against the proposed encryption laws in Australia.
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Apple Flies Top Privacy Executives Into Australia To Lobby Against Encryption
It sounds like they are lobbying against laws which require them to provide a backdoor for the government through their encryption. I'd call this arguing for encryption, not against it.
Dear Afforementioned governments,
Do you even like it being possible for financial transactions to be made without massive massive massive amounts of fraud?
The current PM is already well-disliked by everyone in the IT industry by singlehandedly botching the NBN fibre-to-the-premises rollout project.
All Apple would have to do would say that they'd pull out of Australia if these anti-encryption laws went through. In fact, the laws would probably cause this through implication. The PM's popularity would plummet. He wouldn't be so stupid as to risk it.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
I hate that term. It should be replaced and removed completely. Commoners have zero clue what the f that meant from the start. When they don't understand, how in the world are they going to even care?
We should really be replacing it with 'locks', 'files lock', 'Computer files lock', because that's what it basically is. It locks the file(s) up and ensure those with the key can read it.
Not to mention when we put it back into context, we can now change backdoors into terms like 'secondary key' to the locks. It makes it easier to understand why this is bad.
-you have no control of the 'secondary key'
-your locks can be unlocked by someone else with the 'secondary key'
-the 'secondary key' can be stolen without you knowing
To actually start implementing it, we really need to start changing right from the technical articles, like using a simple parentheses into Encryption (files lock) and Backdoor (Secondary Key) would be 100% better for the commoners as a starter to understand.
The more people understand the issue, the better it is to resolve the issue.
It's lobbying to avoid a little scruffy mess. Look they want back door in the software you supply, so fuck em, don't supply the software, let someone else supply that from an offshore location. Than the user imports and install and in legal terms, they are now the Australian Supplier of their own encryption software, that they imported and distributed and now if they government wants a back door into their phone they have to apply to them for it. It is all that stupid, put in a back door to locally supplied encryption and instead everyone will source an encryption upgrade from overseas and there is abs-fucking-lutely nothing you can do to stop it or back door it. Bloody inconvenient and stupid. PS encryption software is tiny, tiny, quick download pretty much nothing but an algorithm, a lesson https://arstechnica.com/civis/.... They put in backdoor, we will take it out and make it public, especially a fucking software backdoor. Now I don't bother with too much encryption, better the government hacking your puter than your front door and your personally but they start fuzting with backdoors and I will encrypt every-fucking-thing without backdoors and work with others to the methods far and wide. When we get a backdoor into those fuckers, they can have one into us and not one fucking second before.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
As for backdooring encryption, the fact that governments can openly push for it without having their asses handed to them by the people at whose pleasure they allegedly serve, is so wrong in so many ways that it's simply mind-boggling.
Ah see what you're missing is that it's not that they don't care at all, it's just preventing the government and hackers from reading all your private info pales in comparison to the far more important issues that determine who people vote for, like which bathroom transfolks should pee in.