Apple’s British Encryption Issues Spell Trouble for Global User Privacy
The British government demands that Apple create an encryption backdoor for their request, and they won’t be the last state to do so.
In 2016, Obama’s government gave Apple an excellent marketing opportunity. The press and culture had generally turned against large tech companies and their data-harvesting practices, and Apple was trying to stand out as a pro-privacy company. Posters and billboards only say so much, though; opposing the government gave them real credibility.
Namely, after the San Bernardino terrorist attack, the FBI asked Apple to build a “backdoor” into the two-way encryption of Apple’s iCloud backup system so that they could easily break into the computers and phones of terrorists and other criminals. Without it, the FBI could still get this information, but it takes far longer and requires far more effort. A “backdoor” would make it trivially easy.
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