Edward Snowden hails Apple as 'pioneering' for iOS 8 security measures

[Opcode]

security is something that apple does very well. my note 4 is encrypted but i wished it was by default to protect the people who dont know what encryption is

One thing that has to be taken into consideration is hardware. This is why Android ships with encryption enabled by default but a lot of devices don't have it enabled by default. This is entirely due to the hardware used as not every SoC supports hardware accelerated crypto. Enabling it would only make devices much slower due to having to rely on software encrypt/decrypt. Apple can do this because they not only deploy the OS solely to their own products but they also make them. Android cannot do this because of how the OS is deployed and the market share that they hold (e.g. hundreds of different devices). In which they simply cannot enforce encryption down everyone's throats because it may have adverse effects on a wide scale of devices. Although they do ship their own Nexus products with it enabled by default (interestingly not leveraging HW crypto).

[Guest Kloaked]

When I see news like this, I can't help but wonder, how does a man who is running from an entire country (or maybe more) have time to sit down and appraise a smartphone OS?

 

Whether you agree with him or not I sometimes wonder whether the funds he needs to stay alive don't come from corporate sponsorship?  If so then well done to Apple for supporting someone who could be considered a PR risk, if not well done to apple for getting noticed by someone who has bigger issues at the moment.

 

He had time to sit down with John Oliver for that semi-comedic interview.

[Opcode]

An error in how a notification handles unicode text has nothing to do with device encryption and security... 

Actually it relates more to security than you would think. If I can trigger a killswitch on your device that jeopardizes the runtime of the OS then the integrity of your data is also at stake. The idea behind security is for the potential cause of harm. If I can kill your device with an unicode string (which is ridiculous as no one relies on ASCII anymore) that means I can potentially corrupt data on the device. You'd have to debug exactly what happens during the crash to weight the severity of it although any kind of system crashes that happen immediately are never good (no memory dumping).

[mr moose]

... fairly sure apple is not sponsoring a wanted fugitive....Just putting that out there.

 

At least not officially.  fairly sure they can't siphon a little cash from one of their foreign tax dodges through a weird business transaction with a sympathizing embassy that might be looking after said fugitive,  just putting that out there.

[Hexram]

Why have it and not have it enabled? It's like OS X shipping with firewall disabled, it's so mind boggling.

Encryption can cause a performance hit so if you store things that are not private e.g. Game files or want more performance it would be better not to encrypt these things. If you are selective with what you encrypt you'll get better performance. Although with today's hardware the performance hit you get from full disk encryption is not that big a deal.

[LAwLz]

security is something that apple does very well. my note 4 is encrypted but i wished it was by default to protect the people who dont know what encryption is

1) Apple has historically been awful in terms of security. Slow patches, ignoring issues until they become very serious, instructing their employees to pretend like problems exist if someone asks for support and so on.

2) Encryption is on by default in Android starting with 5.0. (For performance reasons old devices upgrading to 5.0 won't have it on by default, but new 5.0 devices are).

 

 

 

When I see news like this, I can't help but wonder, how does a man who is running from an entire country (or maybe more) have time to sit down and appraise a smartphone OS?

 

Whether you agree with him or not I sometimes wonder whether the funds he needs to stay alive don't come from corporate sponsorship?  If so then well done to Apple for supporting someone who could be considered a PR risk, if not well done to apple for getting noticed by someone who has bigger issues at the moment.

I doubt that he said it because of sponsorship. iOS 8 encryption was all over the tech world for a while so he probably just saw it. If he was sponsored he would probably have talked a lot more about Aplle specifically, but all he did was give Apple as an example of one of the many companies now taking encryption seriously, and he probably picked Apple as the example because they are really big and it will affect a lot of people.

 

I think the title is a bit sensationalist. I wouldn't describe:

"Basic technical safeguards such as encryption — once considered esoteric and unnecessary — are now enabled by default in the products of pioneering companies like Apple, ensuring that even if your phone is stolen, your private life remains private"

as

"hailing Apple as pioneering for iOS 8 security measures".

 

I think it's more like "Snowden praise companies like Apple for enabling encryption by default".

 

 

 

 

It's been there since September. It's only noticed just now because Apple doesn't bother to advertise it and its competitors do not have it. 

Ehhh... It was all over the news last year when Apple announced it.

Here are a few articles about it, all of which are over half a year old.

BGR

Apple Insider

MacWorld

Entrepreneur.com

ArsTechnica

Slate.Com

Wired.Com

MacRumors

LinusTechTips

And many more.

[mr moose]

 

 

I doubt that he said it because of sponsorship.

It's alright, I wasn't really being serious,  it was more a passing thought in regard to the many discussions and opinions on snowden over the last year.   It just seems funny (humorous) in some regards.

[spartaman64]

1) Apple has historically been awful in terms of security. Slow patches, ignoring issues until they become very serious, instructing their employees to pretend like problems exist if someone asks for support and so on.

2) Encryption is on by default in Android starting with 5.0. (For performance reasons old devices upgrading to 5.0 won't have it on by default, but new 5.0 devices are).

 

 

 

I doubt that he said it because of sponsorship. iOS 8 encryption was all over the tech world for a while so he probably just saw it. If he was sponsored he would probably have talked a lot more about Aplle specifically, but all he did was give Apple as an example of one of the many companies now taking encryption seriously, and he probably picked Apple as the example because they are really big and it will affect a lot of people.

 

I think the title is a bit sensationalist. I wouldn't describe:

"Basic technical safeguards such as encryption — once considered esoteric and unnecessary — are now enabled by default in the products of pioneering companies like Apple, ensuring that even if your phone is stolen, your private life remains private"

as

"hailing Apple as pioneering for iOS 8 security measures".

 

I think it's more like "Snowden praise companies like Apple for enabling encryption by default".

 

 

 

 

Ehhh... It was all over the news last year when Apple announced it.

Here are a few articles about it, all of which are over half a year old.

BGR

Apple Insider

MacWorld

Entrepreneur.com

ArsTechnica

Slate.Com

Wired.Com

MacRumors

LinusTechTips

And many more.

i mean recently i dont know apple's security record in the past. and for my note 4 it wasnt on by default i had to enable it in settings

[iwasaperson]

Geee, how do you like Linux? What's your preferred flavor?

I use Arch on my desktop and Trisquel on my laptop. I dual-boot Windows on my desktop for games and whatever doesn't run in WINE, but that's about it.

[MrDynamicMan]

At least not officially. fairly sure they can't siphon a little cash from one of their foreign tax dodges through a weird business transaction with a sympathizing embassy that might be looking after said fugitive, just putting that out there.

At least this proves there's an optimist left in the world.

[mr moose]

At least this proves there's an optimist left in the world.

 

Off all the responses I was expecting to my post, this was the last.

[Mightyinvader]

In snowden we trust

[linuxfan66]

Microsoft and Google also have full-disk encryption, but with Windows 8 it's not enabled by default and only a few Android tablets have full-disk encryption enabled. So do their competitors have it too? Yes, but it's not enabled by default on most devices.

I leave off by on non mobile devices because people dont backup thier data if its encrypted it can never be recovered. encryption removes the ability to recover lost data in case of emergency. i so dont recomend it on on pcs without a reason. the only reason my macbook pro has it on is i have online backup