Time to start de-Appling
(heatherburns.tech)574 points by msangi a day ago
574 points by msangi a day ago
Who would want to be an iron clad gate keeper when the world is descending into authoritarianism?
Powerful people don't think this way. They think they can leverage the authoritarian regime to their own advantage. They're biased to ignore risks and seek out opportunities. That's what got them to their position of success!
They ARE the authoritarian regime.
This myth that capitalist perpetuate that the rich are not the government is the best lie out there.
The rich are the government. They are the national interests, countries' industries' is their property.
Yeah there was this great cartoon many years back where a guy is on his computer and the FBI is looking over his shoulder at his screen. A character named 'Facebook' is pushing him aside and says "Let me show you how to do it". When you look at the cartoon for a minute or so you see in the shadow in the back of the room this robot labeled 'Google' and he's just quietly observing.
People unknowingly help big corporations destroy smaller competitors by demanding more regulations. In reality, those same corporations often fund the very laws and "anti-corporate" movements that claim to restrain them using lobbying and fake grassroots[1][2] campaigns to shape rules that raise costs for smaller rivals and secure more market share.
This shouldn’t be surprising. Political competitive advantage is even taught in business schools, as Michael E. Porter explains in Competitive Strategy.
The only way to counter it is through competition: support companies that offer substitute services and stop playing into Google’s and Apple’s hands by calling for more regulations.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/30/how-google-and-amazon-bankro...
[2] https://www.iccr.org/resolutions/lobbying-expenditures-discl...
I think the fact that Apple is having to fight this fight is evidence of why they were right to make a secure walled garden. I don’t know of any other service I would recommend my mother use for securely backing up her phone.
I think the UK is ultimately going to roll back this law. I don’t think this means that iCloud E2E is hostile to Apple or its users. I think Apple is going to win.
The war isn’t won by telling people to use GPG https://moxie.org/2015/02/24/gpg-and-me.html
> The war isn’t won by telling people to use GPG
Tangent, a friend and I started using Delta Chat with a chatmail relay and it's incredibly friendly to get started, and hides the fact GPG tech is being used from the user; one can export a bundle of the key data as needed and easily copy the key profile to a second device over local wifi (I was impressed at how smooth it was).
Not that I've kept track, but Delta Chat's UX is probably the first easy, no-nonsense implementation of using GPG tech as a foundation but keeping it away from the user experience I've encountered (and liked). It has it's pain points but I mean it just works and my buddy and I chat all day over it using a public relay.
yeah guys, we don’t win by using free and open technologies, we win if we all buy {NAMECORP} devices, that’s true victory right there, backed by a real warranty, that’s what grandma wants
I've had files in Apple's iCloud for 14 years now (had to look that up) and they're still there. I have no reason to believe that they won't still be there after I am dead. Apple is a big company with a big reputation to protect.
I can't say the same for the smaller services.
I don't have any grandmothers still alive but would certainly suggest iCloud for all family members.
(But, FWIW, I copy down everything from iCloud annually and store on a portable 1TB drive to have my own cloud-backup.)
If you have a free and open technology that is sufficiently user-friendly that grandma isn't going to lose all her photos, I'm all ears
Didn't Apple already open up all their services to a backdoor in China? Was it ever really about privacy or is privacy just a convenient excuse to have a selection of elevated Apple solutions with privileges above 3rd parties.
Android has been a fraud for a long time now. Let's not pretend that the "open-source" mobile OS that was supposed to free us all from vendor and telco tyranny ever approached that promise.
Did they even really try?
As far as iCloud "alternatives" go... Android doesn't offer ANY legitimate syncing infrastructure to compete with iCloud, open or not.
I switched to Android from iPhone because the sync options for iPhone are garbage.
I mean, I think the answer to this is the very simple: they think it will lead to more money.
I'm sure someone in a board meeting saw something about GrapheneOS and LineageOS and Cyanogen and feels like if they de-open Android, some (or most) of those users will move to vanilla Android, and that will lead to profits.
I'm not saying that they're right about this; I think ultimately very few (if any) people actually know how to run businesses and it's all about giving an appearance of maximizing profitability, and as long as it leads to a potential short term stock boost then these executives get their huge bonuses and they can just blame the next guy when things break.
This isn't really theoretical; look at how Jack Welch took one of the most respected companies in the world, more or less integrated ponzinomics to temporarily bump the stock prices, and 20+ years later GE is kind of a joke and isn't even on the S&P500 anymore.
I don't dispute that at all. I don't think it matters, it just needs to look like they're doing something to avoid forks and the like.
That said, there might be stuff that's actually using open source Android for profit. For example, the Nook Glowlight Plus, which runs a modded version of Android, doesn't appear to have any direct or even indirect references to Android anywhere (and I had to contribute a bit to the discourse to even get the rooting to work [1]). I have no ideas about the inner dealings of Barnes and Noble, but it wouldn't surprise me if they're running a completely forked version of FOSS Android and aren't paying a dime to Google for it.
I suspect these are the things that Google is trying to crack down on.
[1] https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=360563&pa...
Yes. They have 99.9% of the mobile phones.
The phone was the end of open computing, the tech companies obtained an iron grip on the platform, this time with fully accepted total monitoring and data collection down to everything you say, hear, everywhere you go, and with smartwatch biosensors, everything you feel. The only thing left is to get smart glasses and they will know everything you see. Smell they can probably interpolate.
It happened over a decade ago, and that might as well be 100 years ago in modern attention spans. All the governments have to do is pay the companies money, or simply force-legislate, or threaten under the table for all that info, and for permanent forever access to active tracking and monitoring.
AI provides all the analysis they need to watch the firehose. It's all there.
At this point it doesn't matter if an alternative comes. It'll be such the minority, that the social graph will fill all the holes. And they can simply track your IMEI regardless from the towers, listen in with other nearby microphones/phones. There is no escape.
All that remains is for the key to be turned for worse-than-1984 authoritarianism. It's right there, ready for the AI-empowered 50% of consumption controlled, 90% of stocks owned oligarchy to use.
Open computing still exists. It's just overshadowed by the prevalence of locked mobile devices because those are convenient and good enough for the vast majority, who would rather use those than a less convenient desktop, laptop, or even raspberrypi.
Surveillance on the internet is challenging to avoid, but internet surveillance and tracking doesn't extend to (outside-of-browser) local compute.
simply i will be starting using Linux distributions on the devices which support them. Usually the gsm wcda etc are too much buried in patents and mostly closed source, but eventually how android bloomed initially as it was open source. I believe one day Linux will be there and again google and apple can have something to worry about and they will again open. One major thing is why google allowing people to use Linux apps on their android 16-17 by default i guess is because of this.
This whole idea of conflating a closed system like Apple has created with authoritarianism is silly. If anything authoritarianism is the UK trying to force Apple to open up (so they exploit it to monitor their citizens).
Apple created a product, not just the iPhone but a whole ecosystem that’s supposed to help the user feel secure. There’s isn’t the only product out there and as long as they’re not preventing new competitors, everyone needs to back off.
They're not conflating them, they are pointing out that the closedness of the system and the control it gives Apple will be a useful tool to authoritarians who can force Apple to exert their power in certain ways.
Everyone who is not a public service is just "making a product", but when your product is actually half of all endpoints for digital services and communication and you insist on not handing control to the users, then you effectively control half the infrastructure.
Apple do everything in their power to prevent competition: forcing Safari, forcing payments to go through Apple so they can take their cut etc...
Apple does everything in their power (as allowed by governments who want to have that power) to protect their customers: forcing Safari, forcing payments through Apple, etc…
lol
Tech bros helped Israel genocide Gaza. Tech bros are pro-authoritarianism.
> If Apple had supported open iCloud alternatives for backup and other services from day one, it woudn't even be a discussion now
Why does Apple need to do extra work and increase support? The average user really doesn't care and choices just make it more complicated.
> The UK probably wouldn't have thought of the idea of
The UK has lost the plot long ago. It's been drama after drama.
Taking inspiration from the East India Company, Apple should colonize the UK and take over the government - the iGovernment, if you will.
Citizens will regain their right to e2ee privacy, they will not have to deal with voting for mediocre politicians to lead them. Instead, Tim Cook will be their new leader, and every morning over the mandatory installation of HomePods in each home, citizens will be greeted with an ecstatic "Good morning!" to get them energized for the day ahead.
Voting will be done via iPhones, where FaceID will verify the eligibility of the voter before the vote has been submitted.
Wanted to go shopping but iPass wouldn't open the gate on account of insufficient prostrations before the Steve Jobs iShrine.
I have wondered why the likes of McKinsey, KPMG, and PWC do not put up candidates (don't even sponsor them, just say you're electing _well known consultancy_).
1. Why would McKinsey etc be interested in a well-functioning government? Best argument I have is that if the economy grows then government (and private) spending on consulting may grow.
2. Note that the consulting firms already managed to get the legislation they most cared about – creation of the LLP as a kind of entity – despite not having any candidates
3. If the government is too associated with a big consultancy then (a) they may be pressured out of giving them contracts (not good for McKinsey!) and (b) failures by that consultancy will be highlighted more than usual in the news (also not good!)
4. I mean plenty of people would go through the consultancy meat-grinder before becoming politicians. If you are training juniors to think similarly then that may carry over after they leave.
That was basically Rishi Sunak, but going beyond that voters really hate it when you make the corporate control obvious.
However, they don't ask questions, so one layer of money laundering is completely fine. Nobody asks where the funding for Farage's various projects comes from, for example.
maybe they do?
you just don't hear about which candidates are theirs
“Introducing, Apple Governance, a truly magical experience, and the best government Apple has ever made!”
Our plan is to install our government under the tyrannical rule of a dictator, then fire that dictator, slowly collapse for a dozen years, and then rehire the dictator. Then we just sit back and let him cook.
Very clever image and caption (right at the bottom of the page)
> Header image by me: Alan Turing memorial, Manchester, where he reminds you why keeping data private can be a matter of life and death.
The image shows a close up of a statue of Alan Turing, his hand holding an apple.
The very Wikipedia page you link explains in great detail why, although we can never know for sure, it's actually unlikely that he committed suicide, and more likely that his death was an accident.
The suicide story will probably never go away, because it's too good a story. It fits so neatly into popular culture.
The government chemically castrated him. Is that not bad enough?
Even if he didn't kill himself and even if it was an accident, he still was very much fucked over by the British government. They stripped his security clearance and made him a felon and made him take female hormones. This guy cracked the uncrackable code and basically (co)invented Computer Science, but all they cared about who he had sex with.
From the wikipedia article: > Turing may have inhaled cyanide fumes from an electroplating experiment in his spare room
How would he have put himself quietly to bed if he had gotten a fatal dose of cyanide in the spare room where the electroplating was taking place? Wouldn't there be very fast respiratory distress?
A highly acute dose could kill in seconds, but a lower dose can cause confusion, headaches, dizziness and more prior to inducing a coma and death.
It is not outside the realm of possibility that he became confused and in pain, decided to lie down to sleep it off, then died in his sleep. My own father in law suffered a significant blow to the head and, despite knowing all the signs of a concussion and what to do about them, got up and slept it off- the very last thing one should do. He was simply too confused to do anything else.
His story had a happier ending than Alan's, but it goes to show that the accidental death theory isn't implausible.
I recommend reading his nephew's biography, Prof. He makes a strong case for why it was probably suicide.
From the article:
> Otherwise, please make sure you de-Apple, de-Google, and de-American Stack yourself when you have time, clarity, and focus to do it. Start today.
I don't understand the core of this advice. So if you're in the UK and do all the above, can you suddenly get similar E2EE cloud storage from a different provider without a UK government-mandated backdoor?
The first two are reasonable positions. The third, on the merits of the argument in the article, is absolutely bonkers. It's the UK government that is unleashing this stupidity on the world. There is no European alternative that is any safer, and it's the UK's own hands that are at fault in the first place.
Not that there aren't other reasons to be skeptical of American companies' right, but it's just so easy to fall into nationalistic prattle instead of fixing the real problem.
> but it's just so easy to fall into nationalistic prattle instead of fixing the real problem.
Right. This, right now, is 100% a UK problem. De-Americanising your tech stack isn't going to fix the political issues domestically. Hence Apple pulling ADP out, they made the choice of not complying with the UK and not offering the service instead of compromising the service for everyone else in the world.
UK citizens need to direct their attention inwards against their own government.
Last time I was in the UK, the news (BBC) was bizarrely 90% American politics. Trump this, Trump did that, etc. People there knew American politicians better than the people who actually represent them.
> There is no European alternative that is any safer
How do you figure that? If you're worried about your privacy in the UK, keeping your data in a Five Eyes country cloud provider is a very bad idea, arguably even worse than keeping it in a UK cloud provider where it becomes a domestic legal matter where you at least get a day in court, not a foreign intelligence matter where you don't. And the US is a pretty bad place for anyone's data given a) its lack of robust privacy laws (and large commercial data-trafficking ecosystem) and b) the National Security Letter system.
While there is no perfect country, somewhere like Germany or the Netherlands seems a much better bet.
>The first two are reasonable positions. The third, on the merits of the argument in the article, is absolutely bonkers. It's the UK government that is unleashing this stupidity on the world. There is no European alternative that is any safer, and it's the UK's own hands that are at fault in the first place.
Disagree. Australia and also likely Canada have identical these laws. And once the capability is in place, its likely that the US can all writs access to the same tool. Apple is unique in that it has a semi legal canary, in choosing to withdraw the services instead of complying.
You cant trust any tech company that remains located in the 5 eyes nations.
I am not aware of good alternatives, but worst case you can run up a VPS with Owncloud or something.
It's not a backdoor per se. UK just banned using E2EE (at least for Apple users' data). I don't think though they can ban E2EE in general - like, if I upload a binary blob to a data store, how would they know whether it's encrypted or not? Short of banning all strong encryption completely (which even UK yet is not stupid enough to do) it's not possible to prevent. But they did not build a "backdoor" into encryption - they demanded that, and Apple refused, so there's now no encryption at all for UK users. There's no door.
They are just going for service providers that make E2EE easy for users - clearly betting on the fact that people they want to surveil would be too lazy/incompetent to use a custom solution providing strong E2EE encryption. And they may be right - most iphone users would keep using the same services even with the knowledge that the data is now widely open - and eventually of course will be breached and available to every kind of criminal, as it happened many times already with other massive data warehouses.
But I believe even is the UK you still can encrypt your own backup and upload it, e.g., to rsync.net and nobody would be able to stop you. Just most people won't.
E2EE cloud storage is not some kind of magic that only tech bigcorps can provide. I de-Dropboxed a few years ago, replacing it with Syncthing running on a local NAS with e2ee backups in Backblaze and Wireguard VPN out to my mobile devices. Sure, this is not the sort of thing most people can set up for themselves, but I don't think that's particularly relevant in context.
Syncthing and e2e is great but the issue is that the law force you to give away your phone and your password if asked. Meaning, they have the encrypted data on your phone and the password to unlock it.. same for computer ofc.
If you're in England and have to keep things secured (including from government eyes), i have no idea how you can do. They soon will be allowed to put a camera in your small room and watch you take a dump.
it definitely is. talking to non-tech people, even a password manager or adblock extension for a browser are magic. installing a basic OS is magic. freaking debugging something which isn't working is magic.
i've had to show people that they have to plug in their HDMI cable into their GPU instead of the motherboard, that they have to manually set the Hz in windows settings. how to install basic drivers.
so many more easy examples we IT-workers or nerds just take for granted. taking this to the extreme, my grandma asked me if i could search recipes online for her, because [insert your favorite search service] seemed too complicated.
So next to these examples, setting up syncthing with a VPN is next to impossible :( and even if they manage to set it up, good luck when you run into issues after a couple of months.
My new high-privacy, high-control data management solution revolves around pen & paper. As far as I am aware, these implements have not yet been banned in the UK.
I don't know why everything must be digital. If you don't put it on a computer, it's almost as if it doesn't exist. If you do this often enough, it is almost as if you don't exist.
Party members were supposed not to go into ordinary shops ('dealing on the free market', it was called), but the rule was not strictly kept, because there were various things, such as shoelaces and razor blades, which it was impossible to get hold of in any other way. He had given a quick glance up and down the street and then had slipped inside and bought the book for two dollars fifty. At the time he was not conscious of wanting it for any particular purpose. He had carried it guiltily home in his briefcase. Even with nothing written in it, it was a compromising possession.
The thing that he was about to do was to open a diary. This was not illegal (nothing was illegal, since there were no longer any laws), but if detected it was reasonably certain that it would be punished by death, or at least by twenty-five years in a forced-labour camp. Winston fitted a nib into the penholder and sucked it to get the grease off. The pen was an archaic instrument, seldom used even for signatures, and he had procured one, furtively and with some difficulty, simply because of a feeling that the beautiful creamy paper deserved to be written on with a real nib instead of being scratched with an ink-pencil. Actually he was not used to writing by hand. Apart from very short notes, it was usual to dictate everything into the speak-write which was of course impossible for his present purpose. He dipped the pen into the ink and then faltered for just a second. A tremor had gone through his bowels. To mark the paper was the decisive act. In small clumsy letters he wrote:
April 4th, 1984.
I've thought of going back to a palm pilot for the same thing. There are tons of Handspring and Palm Pilot Tungsten versions on ebay for under $40.
I believe the Palm T2 and T3 had bluetooth so would be interesting if you could connect the two to keep contacts and appointments off your smartphone. I'm seeing Handspring Treo 650's for under $100 as well.
Of the major consumer tech companies, isn't Apple still the leader in terms of privacy? (yes, that's a low bar)
And, it's just ADP being affected by the UK mandates? What % of users bother enabling ADP? I probably should, but haven't bothered (am I being foolish?).
I'm sort of out of the loop as a US citizen....Does the UK really have the ability to enforce every E2EE storage solution on GitHub to comply?
Even if you monitor downloads, every VPN, every ISP..... can't I copy paste the source code?
Isn't SFTP already E2EE? They're not going to come down on SFTP....right? I really hope not...
The simple answer is: Money.
If you're making money in the UK, they have a lot of legal authority over you.
If you're based in the UK, they have a lot of legal authority over you.
If you're neither of those things, they might complain, but the actual consequences are close to nil.
And they're not banning the tools (this is arguable, but they "can't" logically, as you point out). They're banning businesses from providing the tools.
Thats reassuring...but still frightening, just less so I guess.
Most of my homelab is self-hosted (Cloudflare and Tailscale stop me short of saying it's 100%, plus an Oracle VPS for a Minecraft server if you count the WHOLE stack I guess)...and you tell yourself its 'better to own your own data' or whatever your personal mantra is, but it's bizarre to see this play out
The UK (same as the US) has lots of extra territorial laws. Enforcing them is another matter.
It’s easy to make Apple budge because they have money ties to the Uk.
This works less well for unsavory websites not complying with UK law. See https://prestonbyrne.com/2025/10/16/the-ofcom-files/
With Signal they provide a toolkit you can use to verify that the checksum for your App Store download matches that of the public build or one that you compile yourself.
edit: This is apparently currently not working for Apple and MS builds.
https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Desktop/blob/main/reprod...
Why compromise Signal when Apple is an American company
# Encrypt a file openssl enc -aes-256-cbc -salt -in secret.txt -out secret.enc
# Decrypt openssl enc -d -aes-256-cbc -in secret.enc -out secret.txt
Wow that was hard.
You may think you're being sarcastic, but you are just stating a true fact here. For about 99.9% of this planet's population, it's not just hard, it's something they'd never ever know how to do and have no intention to ever learn. Like it or hate it, but that's what it is.
And, for 99.9% of people who know how to do that, they'd still be too lazy to do it properly (hint: where do you keep secret.txt exactly? What happens if your dog eats it?) and will use some third-party solution instead.
> where do you keep secret.txt
Reminds me of using Ansible Vault and preciously encrypting every secret (so we can say that repos doesn't contain any secrets), then just putting ~/.vault_pass in plaintext on every Ansible controller to be taken by anyone with access to the servers.
The author of AGE has a great point in the below blog post [0]:
If you use something like SOPS or just check age secrets into a git repository next to source code, you need an authentication story for the whole repository. Having authentication for the secrets will do nothing if the attacker can change the source code that decrypts and uses them.
That story can simply be “we trust GitHub” like most projects. Encrypting secrets with age will keep them confidential even if the project is Open Source, and anyone wanting to replace them will have to make a PR even if they can generate a new valid age file.
>where do you keep secret.txt exactly?
Hidden. Encrypted. And the passphrase is: at 5,21 which is the 5th line on page 21 of your favorite book. Which you have more than one copy of, because you like it that much. And you need copies to lend. Or you have the PDF from Gutenberg.org?
And 5/21 might be the birthday of your first child, or your wedding day, or whatever?
It might be a favorite quote, like "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." Augmented by the above date if needed?
> it's something they'd never ever know how to do
There are hundreds of millions of people who have memorized megabytes of baseball statistics, pop song lyrics, celebrity relationship trivia, vehicle model data, sitcom character biographies, comic book plots, makeup shades, travel routes, mixed drink recipes, MtG card modifiers, etc.
At a certain point, one has to realize that pulling the "normie card" is not a viable excuse, given the wide array of knowledge that humans routinely pack into their brains.
The double entendre occurred to me, I don't disagree.
But the relative ease does not merely apply to users, but to the barrier of entry for alt products as well.
Consider that the current paradigm is contingent on the "blind trust" users have held in tech for a long time. It's possible that a new kind of app will thrive in a different paradigm.
For example, is there any reason we couldn't have a simple "message wrapper" which only sends encrypted payloads via SMS or Email and decrypts on the fly in a secure sandbox? Easy for the user and hard to regulate.
I think that's what Silence was (for SMS): https://f-droid.org/packages/org.smssecure.smssecure/
Yeesh, this seems like a good example of the fact that a feature (encrypting a file) is not a product (an E2E encrypted storage solution.)
And you trust openssl to not have a backdoor or flaw because?
Nice.
Now explain how my mum can select that in settings of her phone, thx.
Threat modeling is important of course. The UK government does have tools with which to punish people who don't turn over the cleartext of targeted documents once it's directly investigating them, but that's not scalable. The method the grandparent comment proposes greatly reduces one's exposure to mass surveillance, criminals, and abusive service providers.
>Not all of those companies will loudly object in the way Apple does.
This assumes that Apple has loudly objected to every government request for backdoor access and also that they have never acquiesced to any of those requests.
Hopefully pretty soon Apple will have to provide the same functionality iCloud monopolizes so you can have an equivalent service. But right now you can do an encrypted transmission to a privately-owned NAS like Synology and then E2E cloud storage provider of your choice, with the caveat that things like background syncing are strategically monopolized and no app may backup your full phone.
https://www.catribunal.org.uk/cases/16897724-consumers-assoc... (hearing in 9 days)
It's a bit like the famous HN post where somebody said that Dropbox is not needed if you have rsync and friends.
Technically this can even be correct. You can build and operate a good, secure solution for yourself if you have time and skill to build. Could make sense for a company handling sensitive data. Would hardly make sense for most individuals who are not professional SREs / SWEs. (To check how it feels, an engineer can try to sew themself a pair of pants to wear daily, or do something similarly mundane in what they are not skilled.)
A solution that can reliably work for non-experts is very important.
Probably easy to do with a Mac, but iOS is a different question. Way too restrictive if you don't use iCloud.
On personal level, you have to choose whether your priority is privacy or convenience. If its privacy, no whining about 'I want this and that and I am too lazy to rollback' is relevant.
Never trust US services, 3-letter agencies are endlessly greedy to fill your profile with another tens of thousands of data points. As do all advertisers all around the globe. As do (with various success) all other governments and private companies who have something to gain, HDD storage has never been cheaper and all personal data are worth gold and beyond.
Or if you have to use them, use your own encryption with strength to not be broken for next few hundreds of years, to stand a chance. That is, if you actually have something to hide, but I have never met a person who really doesn't :)
It seems like the real solution is de-UK'ing, a wise move for a number of reasons. Move to the continent, to Ireland, or the US (or Australia for that classic British expat experience), but leave the sinking ship. Ideally the time to leave was when the passport was still in the EU, but now is better than never.
>when you have time, clarity, and focus to do it.
i thought this a joke, lol
I have done all this. All inhad to do was provide my passport scans, fingerprints, photos of my face, phone number so now I can use tencent cloud in china! /s
Sounds more like people need to de-UK. It's going to be a problem with any company or technology.
It's more likely to be a problem with Apple (and Google) because they have put themselves in a position where they are a gateway to everybody. There are multitudes of online storage providers outside of the UK's reach and jurisdiction but 0% of iPhone users back up to them because of technical limitations that inhibit iCloud competitors or any compatible storage solution.
> 0% of iPhone users back up to them because of technical limitations that inhibit iCloud competitors or any compatible storage solution.
To clarify, by "technical limitations" here you don't mean "it's not possible with our current technology", you mean "Apple purposely blocks this".
Allegedly it's deliberate, according to a pair of legal actions they face in the UK (hearing in 9 days) and US (hearing in August 2026).
> 13.1 a set of technical restrictions and practices that prevent users of iOS from storing certain key file types (known as “Restricted Files”) on any cloud storage service other than its own iCloud and thus ensuring that users have no choice but to use iCloud (a complete monopolist in respect of these Restricted Files) if they wish to meet all their cloud storage and/or back up needs, in particular in order to conduct a complete back-up of the device (“the Restricted File Conduct”); and/or
> 13.2 an unfair choice architecture, which individually and cumulatively steer iOS Users towards using and purchasing iCloud rather than other cloud storage services, and/or limit their effective choice, and/or exclude or disadvantage rivals or would- be rivals ( “the Choice Architecture Conduct ”). See further paragraphs 6 to 9 and 97 to 132 of the CPCF.
https://www.catribunal.org.uk/cases/16897724-consumers-assoc... (via summary of ruling of the chair)
> 30. By sequestering Restricted Files, and denying all other cloud providers access to them, Apple prevents rival cloud platforms from offering a full-service cloud solution that can compete effectively against iCloud. The cloud products that rivals can offer are, by virtue of Apple’s restraints, fundamentally diminished because they can only host Accessible Files. Users who want to back up all of their files—including the basic Restricted Files needed to restore their device at replacement—have but one option in the marketplace: iCloud.
> 31. There is no technological or security justification for Apple mandating the use of iCloud for Restricted Files. Apple draws this distinction only to curtail competition and advantage its iCloud product over rival cloud platforms.
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/68303306/felix-gamboa-v... (via document 1 the complaint)
> There are multitudes of online storage providers outside of the UK's reach and jurisdiction
Not according to the UK, lately. The problem is still domestic. UK wants to exert this control over any service a UK citizens happens to use, whether they have a UK presence or not. Same with the ID/Age verification stuff.
Moving away from Apple and Google probably is something they should do, but it's not going to be a solution to the problem of the UK government's overreach.
UK citizens need to turn their attention inward against their government.
Readers may be interested to know what my MP had to say when I got in touch about this:
Thank you for your email.
The UK has a strong tradition of safeguarding privacy while ensuring that appropriate action can be taken against criminals, such as child sexual abusers and terrorists. I firmly believe that privacy and security are not mutually exclusive—we can and must have both.
The Investigatory Powers Act governs how and when data can be requested by law enforcement and other relevant agencies. It includes robust safeguards and independent oversight to protect privacy, ensuring that data is accessed only in exceptional cases and only when necessary and proportionate.
The suggestion that cybersecurity and access to data by law enforcement are at odds is false. It is possible for online platforms to have strong cybersecurity measures whilst also ensuring that criminal activities can be detected.
It should be noted that the Home Office cannot comment on operational security matters, including confirming or denying the existence of any notices it has issued. This has been the longstanding position of successive UK Governments for reasons of national security.
I support the responsible use of data and technology to drive economic growth, create new jobs, and empower individuals. It is essential that data is used safely and wisely, and that individuals remain in control of how their data is used.
Additionally, I welcome the Government’s transparency regarding how data is used, including on the algorithms that process this information. Several algorithms have already been published for public scrutiny, with more to follow—as resources allow—across multiple departments.
Thank you once again for contacting me about this important issue.
To be clear, Apple and Google both have huge UK presence. I don't know the extent of Google, but Apple has offices with thousands of people working in them. Compliance with what the UK wants in this regard is not optional.
What the original poster does is completely misplace blame under the guise of "clever" writing - blame should be assigned squarely on the idiotic policies of the UK government.
> because of technical limitations that inhibit iCloud competitors or any compatible storage solution.
ah thats not quite true is it now?
> they are a gateway to everybody
They are, and most time this allows them to abuse you. But what do you think happens once you that gateway is blown open, isn't your front door next?
> There are multitudes of online storage providers outside of the UK's reach and jurisdiction
What I said above means that once you normalize the situation that providers have to open the gate to your yard whenever the state comes knocking, the state will just come knocking directly at your door. In other words I'm not sure the state will stop in its pursuit of access to your data when it can just incriminate trying to evade the law by storing it out of reach.
> But what do you think happens once you that gateway is blown open, isn't your front door next?
Yes this is the way policing should work, if they think you have done something they knock on your door rather than go to Apple and Google and compromise the entire population all at once through the convenience of their monopolies. Bonus points if a judge needs to grant them the privilege of knocking on your door too.
It's an Apple problem, because with libre tools you can run your own software to circumvent this law.
My (grand)parents like their FOSS launcher, gallery, and chat client just fine. I've had zero questions about how Signal works, but a bunch about how to deal with the OS' pre-installed garbage spawning notifications about this or that update. They can't tell the difference between an advertisement pushed by some commercial app they want and a smartwatch firmware update notification
From my POV, it's the commercial software that has fundamental usability issues due to misaligned incentives (not completely different either, but not as aligned as FOSS). They just have a better lobby and marketing budget. Chrome didn't become this ubiquitous on mobile by having to be downloaded from f-droid, but by making a deal that device manufacturers cannot refuse
People need to hold the UK government responsible for its crimes against humanity. Until the AUMF and similiar policies across the Wetsern hemisphere which resulted in the utterly reprehensible "War on Terror", are rescinded and the crimes committed under their enactment fully prosecuted, the authoritarianism will continue.
Remember, people, these are WAR CRIMINALS driving these policies forward. To expect this class of individuals to adhere to democratic, western values, is naive in the extreme.
The same people who have no problem with genociding a million people in the middle east enemy-state-de-jour are not going to give one fig of care to the local human rights violations that they are also getting away with.
The West has a war criminal problem. Until we solve that we cannot do a damn thing about our human rights problem.
Ah yes, 70 million people find a country they are eligible to move to, quitting their jobs, uprooting their families. Definitely the most straightforward fix. Thankfully other countries have no problems either, or they'd have to leave from those too!
The actual straightforward fix isn't available to us - namely, we aren't due a general election until 2029 and right now the "good guys" are in power, so it's not at all clear that anyone would even offer to reverse this TCN if they were elected instead, in 4 years time.
At least the US hasn't postponed the general elections to keep the unpopular party in power.
https://www.local.gov.uk/our-support/devolution-and-lgr-hub/...
> You need to start that because, as we recently learned, at some point in the very near future Apple is withdrawing its Advanced Data Protection (ADP) feature from the UK altogether as a result of the Home Office TCN through the Investigatory Powers Act.
So, a UK-only advice, and it strangely assumes that any other service in UK wouldn’t be bound by the same laws.
I can encrypt anything and store it in anything that provides storage. Why are people acting like "end to end encryption" is a feature you need a cloud service to provide to you. Rather the opposite - it's really something you can only do yourself.
The closest I've found is VeraCrypt, which is near the edge of what I'd call layperson-friendly. But if you store a VeraCrypt drive on the cloud, you'll need to re-upload the entire encrypted file--usually quite large--every time you change anything at all. That's a _lot_ of bandwidth, and likely to be quite slow to sync.
https://github.com/restic/restic
not exactly for a "layperson", to be honest, but easy enough for someone familiar with a command line
So entirely unusable by any layperson, or the majori of the population.
And you must then give the password to your data.
https://thblegal.com/news/can-i-be-prosecuted-for-failing-to...
https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/in-edicola/articoli/2025/01...
etc.
In the extremely unlikely event that I'm compelled to by a judge, yes. Or if someone chooses to beat me with five dollar wrench, of course. And even then A) it can't happen without my knowledge and B) I have the option of refusing and bearing the consequences.
I didn't say it solves every problem, just that it's the only way to have proper end-to-end encryption.
This seems like a job for a truecrypt style system. Either you do it at a file-level, or you have it split into (say) 10MB file chunks, and if you want to access a certain file you have an encrypted local db that acts as a magic decoder ring ("file test.csv is spread across CLOUD1.DB CLOUD3443.DB CLOUD132.DB").
Combine that with steganography (Enter real_password, and test.csv is a list of bank accounts, enter fake_password, and test.csv is a list of apple store locations, enter random_password, and it decodes junk). Maybe combine that with multiple layers of passwords (one ring to rule them all, except certain files).
Obviously, you'd want to steganographize the decoder ring as well.
> So, a UK-only advice, and it strangely assumes that any other service in UK wouldn’t be bound by the same laws.
I suspect it's because whilst other services would be affected we only know about Apple currently and, thanks to iOS and Mac, a large percentage of the population will be using Apple by default for the services impacted. Only Google (Android) and Microsoft (Windows) really overlap in that regard.
> So, a UK-only advice
So what?
> it strangely assumes that any other service in UK wouldn’t be bound by the same laws.
From the linked article:
> I’m not going to tell you where to move your stuff other than to say that if you’re moving it from one big tech company to another, you’re just being daft. Likewise, if you’re moving your stuff to a non-e2ee service, don’t bother. If you need an e2ee service try Proton. They have a Black Friday sale on.
> So what?
The title felt like there was a greater issue with Apple specifically. There wasn't. There was a greater issue with the new UK laws and cloud storage systems. I think people deserved a clarification before getting wound up about it before reading the article.
Yes, it's nothing to do with Apple per se - any major E2E provider would be under the same attack. The problem here is UK government is drunk with power and doesn't want their citizens to have any privacy rights, and UK citizens are largely ok with that, as evidenced by them keeping to elect such governments. Apple is just the most prominent target of the attack - eventually, they will try to attack smaller targets still, and make usage of the strong encryption as hard as possible, maybe outlaw it completely and mandate government key escrow. They already tried it in many countries, and UK seems to be very ripe to try again.
The issue is with Apple specifically in the sense that they have been offering a superior E2EE cloud storage service that will soon be denied to UK residents (IIUC, E2EE isn't offered by their competition e.g. Google, Microsoft). But the article goes out of its way in its first section to note that Apple isn't in the wrong at all here:
> But I will say that the shutdown of ADP is Apple being on the right side of the geopolitical fight, as inconvenient as that may be to you and me.
It is, if you care about the issues the author evidently cares about, "time to start de-Appling". I am a satisfied ongoing customer of Apple and I didn't find this headline to be the least bit inflammatory. It is, at worst, minor clickbait—but it's not really bait at all, since the contents of the article match the headline.
FYI, this is not about a law, this is about a Technical Capability Notice. This is a thing the UK government is able to issue to a specific company or companies, that require them to implement technical measures to enable data collection. This applies only to the company/ies that the notice is issued to.
That could be one of them, some of them or all of them, but it's not really a law that automatically applies to all of them.
Everything a government does is about a law, but, even if only Apple had received this notice, why would it change the unfairness of singling out Apple? Did UK government issue this request as their final request of this kind? Did they forbid any further requests to be made? Did they single out Apple out of something specific to Apple Inc (or, say, United States) or did Apple happen to be just too visible?
Singling out Apple in the article's title sends the wrong message here. The author should have gone with something along the lines of "UK residents should stop using E2EE cloud services". Current title implies there might be a safe E2EE service in the UK. Heck, they even claim that in the article: "If you need an e2ee service try Proton" as if Proton is exempt from getting a notice from the UK. It's not.
> > Otherwise, please make sure you de-Apple, de-Google, and de-American Stack yourself when you have time, clarity, and focus to do it. Start today.
So American companies are complying UK laws, and the conclusion is that UK citizens should "de-American"...?
Am I reading it wrong?
No, you got it right. Anti-Americanism is one of the few canards that the UK government can use as a boogieman to force through their most questionable policies.
One of the most shocking things about Europe when I have visited is what your average European (or Brit, since I guess they don't call themselves European anymore) thinks the US is like (even ignoring politics, just basic standard of living stuff). They've never been and probably will never be able to visit so all they know is what they've been told. When they do visit, they return with a much poorer opinion of how their country is doing. That's why the "I was lied to..." clickbait is so common in European made US travel videos now.
What are they being told, and how can it take hold, when there are so many movies, YouTube videos, tv shows, news outlets, etc that show what it’s like in the US?
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Unfortunately the user friendly non-Apple alternatives like Google devices and services are dramatically worse than Apple’s when it comes to privacy.
Years ago when I was still giving Android a chance I found that things like banking apps refused to work if I loaded a custom ROM or IIRC even if I enabled superuser access on the stock ROM. Those things are probably even more tightly controlled now, so de-Googled Android doesn’t seem worth trying again.
Too bad other truly OSS mobile options are in their infancy, heck I couldn’t even get all the drivers configured stably on a work provided laptop with Linux support supposedly validated by the manufacturer. It could be years before we get good OSS phone and tablet software, if it ever comes at all.
Both Apple and Google guarantee you a total _breach_ of your privacy: They are known to share most or all of your data, that's on their servers / comm lines, with branches of the US government, en masse, pursuant to agreements or compelling arrangements. This is the PRISM program, revealed last decade by CIA whistleblower Edward Snowden.
As for other uses of your data, and what they "send back home", there you might be right about the differences between Apple and Google, but I would again not put faith in either.
.site-content .post has `overflow: hidden;`, .site-content .entry-content has `max-width: 965px;`, and .wide-content has `margin-right: -34.0740%;` Disabling the margin-right or, preferably, the max-width rule will fix the layout. Or make your browser less than 1700px wide.
(Crazy rats nest of CSS rules, I assume this is a wordpress/wordpress template thing.)
Ahh, just saw this after posting my comment. Yes, it appears that at 1700px or greater it cuts off text. Shown in this video: https://cs.joshstrange.com/BB60xzBW
Apple obeys the law. Policians set the law. You vote for politicians.
So nu, it makes no sense to blame Apple here.
The right way to respond to this reality would be to stop UK government from being insane by electing a more sane government. Stopping using iphones is going to help only for a short term - once encryption is de-legalized, they will come for everybody who they deem worth coming for, sooner or later. If it'll require introducing licenses to run encryption software and mandating key escrow, they'd do that. Yes, you still would be able to sneak in encrypting software on USB drive hidden in your... let's say, pocket. But the mere fact of using it would make you a criminal then. That's the natural progression of where it is going, unfortunately.
That isn't a reasonable response because governments can't be changed in a whim and aren't controlled by a single person, two good things.
UK government had been consistently working in this direction for decades. It's not "on a whim", it's a known and consistent policy, and yet there's no substantial resistance and pushback. The only reasonable conclusion is that the majority of the population is OK with what's going on.
> But I will say that the shutdown of ADP is Apple being on the right side of the geopolitical fight, as inconvenient as that may be to you and me.
I don't think there's any blaming of Apple going on here. This is about dealing with the practical realities of the circumstances for people in the UK.
It must be nice to live somewhere that has politicians that represent the will of the people enough to have a take like this. Where I live, your vote only counts if you have enough money.
You're asking for a monkey's paw.
The current ruling party in the US has given its voters exactly what they think they wanted, and it's a fucking disaster.
My day-to-day life has never been impacted by who is in the White House. Where is the disaster?
Because no matter who they vote for, they get this. The previous ruling party hasn't had a real primary since 2008 (and didn't even go through the motions in 2024.) H. Clinton makes a fairly good case that even that one was fixed (because they knew the best horse to bet on.)
No matter who you vote for you get Hillary Clinton's governance, though. She's become very complimentary about Trump's foreign policy.
Wrong or painfully naive. Politics has to deal with realities. If the net wasn't engineered to be resistant to censorship, we probably wouldn't even be talking accross borders right now.
Apple obeys the law. They operate in countries where you can not vote.
England has been speedrunning the dystopian surveillance police state for a while now, through numerous governments. Voting is pointless.
Same (but different) in Denmark where politicians vote to give themselves more money[1], snoop on everything[2], violate our constitution unpunished[3], delete evidence of corruption[4], open the borders[5], etc. etc. etc. I used to care - a lot - I really did. But I'm done.
[1]https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/politik/ny-aftale-politikeres-loen... [2]https://www.justitsministeriet.dk/pressemeddelelse/i-dag-tra... [3]https://www.information.dk/indland/2020/12/jurister-ja-grund... [4]https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/politik/politisk-flertal-presser-m... [5]https://integrationsbarometer.dk/tal-og-analyser/INTEGRATION...
it keeps people divided and against each other, rather than united against the rulers
Did you read the article? She doesn't blame Apple.
Sixth paragraph: "But I will say that the shutdown of ADP is Apple being on the right side of the geopolitical fight, as inconvenient as that may be to you and me."
> Apple obeys the law
No, they don't:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45854441
I think it’s a stretch to say the author is blaming Apple in the title and she explicitly calls out in the very first section:
> But I will say that the shutdown of ADP is Apple being on the right side of the geopolitical fight, as inconvenient as that may be to you and me.
I have this idea that constantly retreating, away from desktop, away from phone, away from google, away from apple, is just going to leave people in a tiny corner, until the corner goes away too.
How would we go about actually exerting political pressure in the other direction? Expanding rights and expanding freedoms outside one small corner, so that more people become aware of them and start exercising them.
A corner of what? Were people in a corner in the 1970s?
If you still want/need cloud storage, but don't want to roll your own (with the warts that brings), Cryptomator is an excellent tool for source encrypting your data before uploading them.
It works transparently, and has clients for Mac/Windows as well as iOS/Android.
It's also open source, and "free" (IIRC there's a one time fee for the mobile client).
There's also the `crypt` remote for rclone: https://rclone.org/crypt/
Rclone works fine, but the main difference to Cryptomator is that their mobile apps integrate well into the phone filesystems, essentially allowing you to modify the contents of an encrypted vault from mobile, desktop or wherever.
It’s basically cloud storage (works on local drives as well), but fully source encrypted.
I don't understand. Apple is being forced to disable E2EE due to UK legislation. This legislation does not just apply to Apple, so presumably any service you switch to (e.g. Proton was suggested in the article) will be subject to such orders as well.
Seems like it is time to de-Britain, rather than de-Apple.
I know this is a tangent but honestly, this is why the Google decision to de-openify Android is insane even from Google's point of view. Who would want to be an iron clad gate keeper when the world is descending into authoritarianism? You just paint a giant target on your back for the authoritarians to come after.
If Apple had supported open iCloud alternatives for backup and other services from day one, it woudn't even be a discussion now. The UK probably wouldn't have thought of the idea of mandating against E2E encryption because it would be self evident it would actually just churn people to alternatives where they have less leverage and visibility. But Apple couldn't resist bricking up the walled garden and now it's hostile to both them and their users, and to be honest, everyone on the planet since it is obvious that once this happens in the UK it will be silly for every government everywhere not to follow suit.