UK keeps forgetting that it's just a little country now. It can't play the big boy games like the EU and US any more.
this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2025
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You basically summed up the UK in a sentence. People here genuinely think we either are, or should be a world power like America.
The "big boys" were all pussies over sending western tanks and long range missiles to Ukraine, the UK was the first. There are very few things we can be proud of these days. But that is one of them.
UK is becoming a shit show very fast, this right after OSA.
It's maybe the time to block the UK from the internet and leave them "be safe" alone.
The whole having a backdoor to encryption is bullshit, that defeats the entire point.
I do understand that they want some kind of control on things like encryption, since criminals/terrorist/etc can abuse it as well. Keeping society safe is kinda important, and some level of transparency is used for that. This like deposited annual reports for example will help find companies/people funding terrorism.
But we should never completely compromise the privacy of individuals
They want a backdoor to your emails while terrorism has been clear as day and they still haven't done anything about it in Gaza.
They should allow a backdoor, but only on UK Parliament members' phones.
Could add cameras in their homes and work, so we can monitor them 24/7 with AI.
I've got a mate who's a delivery driver, his employer has a cab cam watching him all the time. We are employing these MPs, same principle.
By the way, nobody is forced to become a politician, so yes.
Ask them for a backdoor to their wives for "national security"
They might agree.
Only the US is allowed to backdoor every company globally! /s
There is no backdoor in Apple’s encryption. That’s the reason the US and UK governments have prosecuted Apple repeatedly. They can obtain iCloud data with a warrant, but are repeatedly pressing for real-time surveillance. The UK banned encryption without a backdoor, so Apple turned off encryption rather than compromising their standard.
The funny thing is, advanced data protection was optional, and not on by default. Apple just stopped offering it in the UK
https://support.apple.com/en-us/108756
When it’s enabled, they can’t access iCloud data at all, even with a warrant due to the fact it’s E2E with keys they don’t control. That’s what the UK got really mad about. But Apple shut the whole feature down for the UK in response to the backdoor ask.
It’s not different from the UK banning signal because it’s E2E encrypted and they can’t access it.
They’re likely only backing down now because of consumer/media backlash
Apple would need to supply the data if they had the encryption key right? So can we assume that even Apple cannot see the encrypted data?
Correct, standard iCloud data is accessible with a warrant. But the UK wanted their own backdoor so they have constant access without a warrant.
But with advanced data protection, Apple can’t provide the data because they don’t have the encryption keys, regardless of a warrant.
Important to note iMessage is always E2E encrypted though, so iMessages cannot be accessed even with a warrant. Advanced data protection just expands that to all iCloud data
Using iMessage with backups does mean the backups are unencrypted and accessible by warrant (unless you use advanced data protection)
Ah yes, that's true as well
Okay interesting, thank you for the info.
Who even uses iMessage these days? Pretty sure I turned it off completely because it was messing with the 5 SMS I send in a year ...
Out of my 10 most recent client contacts, only one has used SMS. The rest are all iMessage.
Sure, that’s anecdotal. But I’m in the UK and this is my experience.
iMessage is far more common in the US afaik. Whereas most people elsewhere will use WhatsApp or whatever, nobody in my extended family uses anything but iMessage to communicate
Ah, yeah right, the US is still stuck in the 00s with that (and payment methods).
But iMessage doesn't work on Android and by default the message will just fail if they have an Android phone and you use iMessage.
Really? Mine defaults to SMS if they don’t receive it as an iMessage message. I can’t recall it ever failing, only a long while back I would get a failure that prompts me to send as SMS - and I’d do it. It’s automatic now.
Not sure how long iMessage has existed, but it never properly worked for me on any iPhone, and neither for my partner. I also helped others change the settings to just default to SMS. By default it doesn't show that you need to send a SMS, and it definitely doesn't retry it, at least not in NL.
That is interesting. In Europe it just switches to text message automatically when sending to people with android.
In The Netherlands it doesn't and last time I checked we are still part of Europe lol
iMessage will use SMS for 2 person conversations with Android, MMS for groups (and if your carrier disabled MMS it doesn't work IIRC)
Yes it should, but by default it doesn't, at least not in NL
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