Our prurient friends across the pond have secretly ordered Apple to create a backdoor into everyone's iCloud accounts. And in classic authoritarian fashion, they've threatened Apple with criminal penalties for even acknowledging the order exists.
Into this privacy dumpster fire steps our new Director of National Intelligence Tulsi "Never Met A Dictator She Didn't Like" Gabbard, who's received a notably bipartisan letter from Senator Ron Wyden and Rep. Andy Biggs. When those two agree on something, it's either the apocalypse or Congressional perks are under threat.
But surely His Majesty's Government knows better than Apple CEO Tim Cook, who's been explaining for years that encryption backdoors are like invitation cards to hackers. Just ask the victims of the recent "Salt Typhoon" hack, where Chinese intelligence helped themselves to U.S. government phone calls by taking advantage of intentionally designed backdoors that were put in place to comply with the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA).
With Gabbard at the helm of this crisis, we might as well hand our encryption keys directly to Beijing and Moscow. At least we'd cut out the middleman.
The good news? This means the spooks haven't cracks AES yet!
Previously:
• Windows 10 covertly sends your disk-encryption keys to Microsoft
• As Apple fights the FBI tooth and nail, Amazon drops Kindle encryption
• As FBI war on crypto intensifies, Facebook, Google, WhatsApp to intensify use of encryption
• Theresa May wants to ban crypto: here's what that would cost, and here's why it won't work anyway
• Why do encryption tools suck?
