Comment by Spooky23

1 month ago

Nah, you’re just not reading carefully. You must parse everything about this stuff carefully as the words are always crafted. It’s usually more productive to read with a goal to understand what isn’t said as opposed to what is said.

They said “legal order”, which includes a variety of things ranging from administrative subpoenas to judicial warrants. Generally they say warrant if that was used.

A “request” is “Hi Microsoft man, would you please bypass your process and give me customer data?” That doesn’t happen unless it’s for performative purposes. (Like when the FBI was crying about the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone) Casual asks are problematic for police because it’s difficult to use that information in court.

What exactly was requested sounds fishy as the article states that Microsoft only gets 20 a year, and is responsive to 9 or fewer requests. Apple seems to get more and typically is more responsive. (https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/us.html)

The other weird thing is that the Microsoft spokesman named in the Forbes article is an external crisis communications consultant. Why an use external guy firewalled from the business for what is a normal business process?

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Spooky23

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seemaze  1 month ago

>the article states that Microsoft only gets 20 a year, and is responsive to 9 or fewer requests. Apple seems to get more and typically is more responsive.

That just makes me think that Windows is generally less secure and there are likely a larger number of instances where the AHJ doesn't have to request help from Microsoft to access the data.

  • TeMPOraL  1 month ago

    Apple has a long history of automatically uploading (and/or "backing up") all documents and media of its customers to iCloud. Microsoft started doing that with OneDrive and OneDrive backups only recently. That + the work Apple put in locking down its phone from users and attackers alike, basically breaks down like this:

                     | Apple         | Microsoft  |
  ---------------+---------------+------------|
  Users with     | approximately | small but  |
  data in cloud  | everyone      | growing    |
  ---------------+---------------+------------|
  Access to      | denied via    | easily     |
  data on device | cryptography  | available  |
                 | by default    | by default |

  • Spooky23  1 month ago

    Definitely possible.

    It just seems like a very low number considering the hundreds of millions or billions of Windows devices.