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1/ Today Apple slammed the UK Government's latest surveillance proposal. Rather than comply, Apple says it would publicly withdraw critical security features from the phones of UK users. Here's a short thread explaining this absurd proposal

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-66256081

in reply to Privacy International

2/ The UK government wants the power to stop companies - anywhere in the world - from making security improvements to their services without approval.
in reply to Privacy International

3/ The UK Government already has the extraordinary power to issue 'Technical Security Notices' to companies. These are secret orders that could compel companies to weaken security. They're secret, so the company can't tell anyone about it.
in reply to Privacy International

4/ Imagine, you're using a service that has a security issue. The company that runs that service won't be able to improve it unless they've notified the UK Government of their intent, and has completed a review.
in reply to Privacy International

5/ The government could even stop the company from ever fixing that security issue through a secret order.
https://privacyinternational.org/explainer/4635/introduction-software-updates-and-why-they-matter
in reply to Privacy International

6/ In our experience, getting companies to take your security seriously is hard enough. Giving the UK Government powers to stall and halt security innovation anywhere in the world would likely chill progress on security for everyone everywhere.

https://privacyinternational.org/report/4965/we-looked-software-support-practices-5-most-popular-smart-devices-and-results-may

in reply to Privacy International

8/ In the coming weeks and months, we'll need all hands on deck - subscribe to our Technology and Security mailing list to find out what you can do to stop this in it's tracks:

https://action.privacyinternational.org/user/register

in reply to Privacy International

I've long realised that while I very much support your work, and others highlighting and pushing back on these issues, it will never be enough.

We also need to make it hard for governments and corporations to violate privacy, by building alternative technology that is fundamentally secure and not vulnerable to government dictat.

So I support secure autonomous #p2p solutions, with no gatekeepers so we can have

Secure
Access
For
Everyone

#SafeNetwork is in testing.

in reply to Privacy International

And note that end-to-end encryption services do not protect you.

The software on your end (and the other person's end) is provided by a company. That company can release new versions that send your unencrypted data back to the company, most likely without your knowledge.

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