There are days when I sympathise with the Klingon mantra: “today is a good day to die”.
Across the Atlantic, the lingering effects of the Trump administration continue to reverberate, with citizens confronting service reductions and leadership that confuses authoritarian regimes with democratic governments. Meanwhile, Britain’s policymakers demonstrate technological naivety through security proposals like mandated encryption backdoors – measures cybersecurity experts universally condemn as disastrous vulnerabilities. This pattern of myopic governance suggests institutions worldwide are failing to address 21st-century challenges with necessary nuance.
Today Apple has annouced it is to remove the Advanced Data Protection system for UK users. ADP is used to encrypt iCloud data and keep it safe. This is generally a good idea, though if you do this, you can’t access many Apple iCloud services via the web. So will it affect everyone? Possible not – but that’s not the point. Apple have done this in order to comply with a secret order to put a backdoor in its ADP encryption so that the UK government can access anybody’s iCloud data. And to repeat: anybody’s iCloud data – regardless of whatever citizenship they may be, and be located anywhere in the world.
This government policy is likely to affect other services such as WhatsApp and anything else that uses end-to-end encryption. It seems that the government doesn’t realise this kind of technology is also keeping its secrets in check, and should (and indeed will happen, because it inevitably does) the backdoor or encryption key is compromised – everybody is utterly fucked. Fucked. With a capital F. I cannot stress how important this issue is.
Of course the good guys using encryption also means that the bad guys are also using it. Goes without saying. But the argument that by weakening or breaking/disabling encryption entirely in order to protect a country and its citizens is the most pathetic, uneducated, misinformed, stupid and lazy excuse I’ve ever come across in my career.
Needless to say this is going to trigger a letter to my local MP. I’m in fighting fuckwits mood at the moment, so now is as good a time to do so. The age of stupidity continues unabound! What next?
DURR, I wonder what happens if I gently keep tapping this unexploded WWII bomb with this 5 pound lump hamm.. <EXPLODES>