Source: BGR.com
While Apple remains steadfast in its refusal to help the FBI unlock a pair of iPhones belonging to Florida shooter Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, the company did admit that it handed over to the FBI gigabytes of Alshamrani’s data, a haul that included his iCloud backups. This is possible because although iCloud backups are encrypted, Apple holds the master key. In light of that, a Reuters report from earlier this week alleges that Apple a few years ago was planning to introduce end-to-end encrypted iCloud backups, but ultimately relented due to immense pressure from the FBI. According to the report, the FBI told Apple that fully encrypting iCloud backups would severely “harm investigations.” The Reuters report reads in part: “Legal killed it, for reasons you can imagine,” another former Apple employee said he was told, without any specific mention of why the plan was dropped or if the FBI was a factor in the decision. Fast forward a few days and there are some folks who are starting to question the veracity of the initial report.
Leave a Reply