“Apple has drawn a line in the sand over keeping its customers’ iPhones encrypted and secure,” Walt Mossberg writes for Re/code.
“The special software sought by the FBI — which Apple, with its marketing flair, is calling “GovtOS” — is, in essence, a back door to the encrypted phone, because the passcode is the user’s encryption key, and Apple has deliberately designed the iPhone so the company itself lacks any other key to decrypt it,” Mossberg writes. “Even before the court order in California ignited the current fight, I opposed the idea of any encryption back door on grounds that it could also help criminals and repressive foreign governments. And I stand with Apple in its dispute with the FBI over the demand for special passcode-cracking software, for the same reasons.”
Mossberg writes, “But there’s an exception, a loophole, in Apple’s unyielding stance on privacy and encryption: Its iCloud service and, specifically, iCloud Backup — the convenient and comforting automatic way in which iPhones and iPads back themselves up daily to the cloud.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote last month:
Apple, we want our iCloud backups encrypted in such a way as to be inaccessible by you via court order post haste.
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