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Comment by michaelt

1 day ago

> If your company has data that the police want and they can get a warrant, you have no choice but to give it to them.

Yes. The thing is: Microsoft made the design decision to copy the keys to the cloud, in plaintext. And they made this decision with the full knowledge that the cops could ask for the data.

You can encrypt secrets end-to-end - just look at how password managers work - and it means the cops can only subpoena the useless ciphertext. But Microsoft decided not to do that.

I dread to think how their passkeys implementation works.

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michaelt

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parl_match  21 hours ago

> Yes. The thing is: Microsoft made the design decision to copy the keys to the cloud, in plaintext. And they made this decision with the full knowledge that the cops could ask for the data.

Apple does this too. So does Google. This is nothing new.

It's a commonly used feature by the average user who loses their password or their last device.

During set up, they even explicitly inform the user that their bitlocker keys are being backed up to the cloud. And, you can still choose to use bitlocker without key escrow.

  • SubmindAlpha66  20 hours ago

    Nah, Apple doesn't do this.

    If the user's MacOS FileVault disk encryption key is "stored in iCloud" it resides in the users iCloud Keychain which is end-to-end encrypted. This creates a situation similar to the iPhone, where Apple does not have the ability to access the user's data and therefore cannot comply with a warrant for access (which really annoys organizations like the FBI and Interpol)