UK Effort to Keep Apple Encryption Fight Secret Is Blocked

Users want their secrets to be secret.

Apple wants its users' secrets to be secret.

The UK wants the fact it wants Apple to reveal anyone's secrets to be secret.

There must be a healthy middle ground between mass untouchable criminal communication networks on the one hand, and full panopticon 24x7 for every civilian on the other. Or I don't know, maybe there isn't. But at least the debate should be public.

The problem is that the cats out of the bag when it comes to encryption.

Let’s just say we can wave a magic wand and make every phone manufacturer include a way that allows only lawful decryption with court orders and the like.

What stops the criminals spinning up their own service that doesn’t? Sure you could make such services illegal, but when has something being illegal stopped criminals from doing it?

All backdoors do is weaken security for everyone else while those who really want secure communications/ storage for their ill gotten gains will still find a way.

Refusing to decrypt is already a crime in the UK (iirc up to 2 years, 5 if the underlying suspicion is terror related).

Fighting encryption in my opinion is like treating the symptoms not the root cause of the problem.