[sneak]

It's intentionally vague because they want people to read that page and think "oh, it's all encrypted, it's safe", and not realize that they intentionally preserve this backdoor so that they can provide data to the FBI at any time, with or without a warrant, at the FBI's explicit request:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud-exclusiv...

Apple provided user data on over 30,000 users in 2019 to the US federal government without a warrant or probable cause, per Apple's own transparency report (see FISA orders). All the feds have to do is order the data from Apple, and they get all of it, on anyone they like.

You're going to be waiting a long time; it's a design goal for Apple (and by extension the feds) to be able to read your every stored text, iMessage, and iMessage attachment out of your device backup without your consent/knowledge.

It's not really that different from the situation in China, where Apple provides the same sort of backdoors to the CCP to be able to sell devices there. (There, the CCP requires that it be physically stored on state-owned and state-operated hardware, as I understand it.)

[viro]

> "the US federal government without a warrant or probable cause, per Apple's own transparency report (see FISA orders)."

Do you not know a FISA order is a court order?

[sneak]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intellig...

I said without a warrant or probable cause, which is accurate.

The FISA court is a bullshit, rubberstamp farce, to allow the state to pretend that they give a shit about the rule of law. The fact that they surveil everyone, inside and outside of the country, without warrants or probable cause, is evidence that they do not.

The FISA court issues orders without a requirement of probable cause, and its decisions and targets are classified. They are not warrants, and there is no due process. Calling it a "court" at all is a stretch.

Here's the FISA "court order" demanding 100% of all call records, every day, from Verizon, even local calls that start and end wholly within the USA:

https://epic.org/privacy/nsa/Section-215-Order-to-Verizon.pd...

This kind of overbroad stuff is precisely why we have the fourth amendment:

> The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

That's exactly the opposite of what the FISA "court" does.

[viro]

EVERY US company is legally required to comply with a FISA warrant. Stop acting like Apple has a choice, they don't. And also they are legally considered warrants. Did you read your link?

[sneak]

Apple has a choice about whether or not backups are end-to-end encrypted, using keys unknown to Apple.

Apple, at the request of the FBI, chose to preserve this surveillance backdoor by not deploying their end-to-end encryption system for iCloud Backup, thus making everyone's data available to Apple and potentially responsive to FISA orders. Seriously, read the link:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud-exclusiv...

They absolutely had a choice.

If that backup data (which includes all your iMessages and attachments thereto) were end-to-end encrypted, which was Apple's original plan, then FISA orders, real warrants, and all the rest would be fruitless as Apple could not decrypt the data. They'd be turning over opaque encrypted data in response to FISA orders and real warrants.