Comment by nozzlegear
8 months ago
Wouldn't Apple have just done exactly that when they faced public and state pressure to unlock the iPhones of mass shooters, such as the San Bernardino shooter or the Pensacola shooter? That was their golden opportunity, but instead they refused, went to court, and forced the FBI to pay third parties to break into the phones. That's the opposite of your espionage scenario.
If Apple never decrypts a user's data, then this debate will never resolve, because there will always be people who insist that Apple's teetering on the precipice of logging decryption keys and decrypting a user's data – or worse, that they've already done it and we're just waiting for another heroic whistleblower to reveal their corruption.
> Remember, Apple is the same company that cooperated with the NSA to secretly log and feed user data to the NSA starting back in 2012, as revealed by Snowden's heroic disclosure of the PRISM program (which was ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge).
PRISM compelled Apple to provide the NSA with access to cloud data they already held under FISA orders. Apple was not installing spyware on people's devices as you seem to be implying.
>PRISM compelled Apple to provide the NSA with access to cloud data they already held under FISA orders.
Cloud data that's supposedly encrypted with encryption keys Apple pinky promises they don't have, right?
>Apple was not installing spyware on people's devices as you seem to be implying. I am very clearly not implying this is currently happening - just that there is nothing theoretically preventing this from happening, and the company already has a history of secretly cooperating with illegal government surveillance programs to provide cleartext user data - user data that they love to present an image of protecting vigorously.