Comment by jcarrano
1 day ago
The smartphone is a terrible platform. Something like this could never happen on the PC, where you can install any encryption and backup software that you want.
While Apple did the right thing by refusing to give the UK government a backdoor, they are responsible for getting users in this situation in the first place.
I'm not familiar with the iPhone and maybe there is already an alternative to iCloud ADP, although that would make this whole situation completely nonsensical.
The smartphone platform is the most secure by default personal computer most people own, largely because of the control enforced by Apple.
If we are saying "secure", we should talk about what we are securing and against whom.
A smartphone may be secure against malicious individual actors but its certainly not the most secure when it comes to your private data. Modern day smartphone is designed to maximize capturing your private information like location, communication patterns, activity and (sometimes) health information and pass it on to as many private players(a.k.a apps) as possible, even to governments without your knowledge. You don't have much control over it.
In that aspect it is less secure than your typical PC. A PC doesn't have that level of private information in the first place and whatever information it has will leak only if you opt-in or get infected by malware.(recent Windows versions without necessary tweaks may be considered a malware by some).
Plenty of people access their health records, etc. on a PC via files downloaded to random places on their computer. Are you trying to just say smartphones have a lot of sensors and are carried around in intimate places?
But along with that also comes a massive pressure point for rogue states to take advantage of. With a diversity of services this would not be nearly as possible.
Secure for Apple, not for the users.
> Something like this could never happen on the PC, where you can install any encryption and backup software that you want.
Microsoft wants to have a word with you regarding their Windows operating system that's installed on their device that you're renting.
I haven’t checked lately but since it launched the iPhone has allowed the owner to choose whether to back up to Apple’s servers (which would be affected by the UK order) or back up to their local computer.
> or back up to their local computer.
You mean back up to their Apple computer, yes?
I certainly can't back up an iPhone to my Linux computer.
Actually I think you can backup and restore your iPhone on Linux using libimobiledevice. They reverse engineered the protocols for the backup and restore service running on your iPhone.
https://libimobiledevice.org/
It's not an either-or, actually, even though the setting is worded like it is. But even if you have cloud backups enabled, you can still manually trigger a local backup.
Given that the most popular software of this kind is Dropbox I’m quite confident that nothing you’ve said is true.