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Apple Messages Censoring?
- Thread starter macnicol
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How would Apple censor iMessage when it's end-to-end encrypted?
This problem seems to come and go.
Myself and others have experienced this over the last few betas and public releases.
Have heard nothing back from Apple on the Feedbacks submitted. Thankfully I have not had this issue since 14.4 RC.
12 ProMax.
Myself and others have experienced this over the last few betas and public releases.
Have heard nothing back from Apple on the Feedbacks submitted. Thankfully I have not had this issue since 14.4 RC.
12 ProMax.
you and the recipient(s) ...
iMessage and FaceTime & Privacy
iMessage and FaceTime are designed to protect your information and enable you to choose what you share.
support.apple.com
On device yes. In the iCloud no.
This is how LEO gets iMessages from Apple: they can turn these over unencrypted to authorities.
How would censoring the messages in an iCloud backup affect the delivery of iMessages in the first place? That doesn't make sense, does it?
Intermittent service issues happen. It's a bit strange to have a few messages fail to be delivered and immediately accuse Apple of censoring you.
I don't know. I was simply replying to the stated post that all iMessage keys reside with users.
You might want to read it in better detail. End to End (user to user) is encrypted and the user has the keys.
Nowhere does Apple state this is true for iCloud backed up messages. For backed up data on the iCloud, it is encrypted however Apple has a set of keys. Not sure if this is 100% with two factor turned on.
"Apple currently stores iCloud backups in a non end-to-end encrypted manner. This means that the decryption key is stored on Apple's servers. If a police entity comes to Apple with a subpoena, then the company has to give over all of the iCloud data — including the decryption key.Jan 21, 2020"
Yes, but unfortunately if you have iCloud Backup turned on, it might as well not be.
From the Apple support article:
Same. It’s 9/11 and a family member posted politically incorrect verbiage concerning the attackers of the towers including a profanity along with a video of an American flag. Although others commented, they never showed up in the thread, even though we were pinged on our iPhones (11) After 4 hours, new comments were able to be circulated.
Huh??? I'm not sure what the issue is you're describing, but it is impossible for your iMessages to be censored based on their content, since they are end-to-end encrypted (meaning no one between you and the recipient can decrypt and read your messages).
I guess you answered your own question. Apple can’t in real-time scan and block messages. They could only decrypt iCloud backups, after they are sent/received which would not affect delivery.
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Let's separate the, "I want to get people's attention" headline from the real issue here...
Communication of any sort has always included the challenge of getting the message from Point A to Point Z. It doesn't matter whether it was a runner communicating the results of a battle to the people of Athens (imagine if Pheidippides had stepped on a stone and wrenched an ankle along the way - the entire history of athletics changes), a team of dispatch riders passing saddlebags full of letters from one to the next, kids whispering a story from one ear to the next, ships hopefully not going down in storms, snow not pulling down telegraph or telephone lines, robbers intercepting mail trains or stage coaches, the misinterpretation of the meaning of words... Communication is a risky, unreliable business.
We're talking about wireless communications in this case. Low-power radio signals at the senders and recipients ends trying to make their way to/from cell towers/wifi routers - passing through walls, defying sources of electromagnetic interference - then passing through countless stretches of fiberoptic or copper cable, twice as many connectors, repeaters, routers, servers... often traveling thousands of miles. If the recipient's address becomes illegible, the packet is not going to reach its destination.
It's a miracle anything gets through at all. Yet, of course, as soon as some message does fail, people immediately think that some evil power (government, former lovers, "hackers" who have nothing better to do than persecute the aged and technically ignorant...) is actively monitoring and interfering in their communications.
Of course, the more reliable and pervasive communications becomes, the more demanding we are of perfection. Let's not lose track of the fact that all of this is a bloody miracle.
Communication of any sort has always included the challenge of getting the message from Point A to Point Z. It doesn't matter whether it was a runner communicating the results of a battle to the people of Athens (imagine if Pheidippides had stepped on a stone and wrenched an ankle along the way - the entire history of athletics changes), a team of dispatch riders passing saddlebags full of letters from one to the next, kids whispering a story from one ear to the next, ships hopefully not going down in storms, snow not pulling down telegraph or telephone lines, robbers intercepting mail trains or stage coaches, the misinterpretation of the meaning of words... Communication is a risky, unreliable business.
We're talking about wireless communications in this case. Low-power radio signals at the senders and recipients ends trying to make their way to/from cell towers/wifi routers - passing through walls, defying sources of electromagnetic interference - then passing through countless stretches of fiberoptic or copper cable, twice as many connectors, repeaters, routers, servers... often traveling thousands of miles. If the recipient's address becomes illegible, the packet is not going to reach its destination.
It's a miracle anything gets through at all. Yet, of course, as soon as some message does fail, people immediately think that some evil power (government, former lovers, "hackers" who have nothing better to do than persecute the aged and technically ignorant...) is actively monitoring and interfering in their communications.
Of course, the more reliable and pervasive communications becomes, the more demanding we are of perfection. Let's not lose track of the fact that all of this is a bloody miracle.
It's absolutely not a miracle anything gets through at all, if you know how TCP/IP protocol works. And on top of that there are whole lot of other redundancies on application level. A situation where some parts of communication seemingly disappear into another dimension (and the other side is not taking that into account) are not something that should be considered normal in this day and age. It's something that should be looked at.
I do not believe it's Apple censoring messages (given that they have no ability to do so), but comparing Internet to a sinking ship or runner not arriving is very, very wrong.
I do not believe it's Apple censoring messages (given that they have no ability to do so), but comparing Internet to a sinking ship or runner not arriving is very, very wrong.
I do know how TCP/IP works. Of course it's highly reliable, otherwise the Internet (and local networks) would not be practical.It's absolutely not a miracle anything gets through at all, if you know how TCP/IP protocol works. And on top of that there are whole lot of other redundancies on application level. A situation where some parts of communication seemingly disappear into another dimension (and the other side is not taking that into account) are not something that should be considered normal in this day and age. It's something that should be looked at.
I do not believe it's Apple censoring messages (given that they have no ability to do so), but comparing Internet to a sinking ship or runner not arriving is very, very wrong.
But you do get hyperbole, don't you? (The TCP joke you posted suggests you do get it.)
Ah... that's the nature of human communication - among other things, whether meaning and nuance are being adequately conveyed.
What we have here is a garden variety end-user complaint. Something malfunctioned, and they imagine that the cause must be exotic, rather than one of the myriad garden variety failures that can occur.
I've worked on both the technical and creative end of a wide range of communications media for nearly 50 years - not only am I fairly well-steeped in it's history, but I've been living with its realities. Theory is one thing, practice is another. Murphy's Law still rules.
I've stood in hallways outside operations centers with vice-presidents demanding, "How can we ensure that this never happens again?" There are times you have to reply, "First, let us get the system running again. We can analyze the failure later." Considering how many times those failures turn out to be one-offs that are beyond economic justification to prevent...
Of course failures should be looked at and analyzed. That's a key part of improving reliability. But a lot of failures are built into the system. Let's say the local cell tower has reached its maximum channel capacity, and the next available tower is too distant to establish a reliable signal... How often should the messaging application re-try before timing-out? Infinite re-tries are generally not a good idea (as the joke you posted points out).
In my current line of work a fair amount of what I do relates to communications that are not getting through - poor cellular voice/data and Wi-Fi connections, failure to connect to servers even when those digital data paths appear to be working, malfunctioning microphones and speakers, incorrect passwords, failing to properly understand the nature of the user's problem, etc., etc., etc., etc., etc....
I live in a world dominated by the imperfections, failures, and exceptions. 99.9999% reliability may be meaningless to the person in the remaining 0.0001%. They don't care that it's working well for everyone else. And the higher the expectation of reliability, the more disappointing and/or distressing the imperfections and failures may seem. It's human nature.
From my perspective my life would be easier if more people appreciated just how complex these systems are, and remembered (or understood) just how marvelous and yes, miraculous, it is that we can communicate so quickly and reliably in so many ways.
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