What the NSA doesn’t have: iMessages and FaceTime chats

[steve2470]

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/06/what-the-nsa-doesnt-have-imessages-and-facetime-chats/

Since The Guardian began leaking top-secret National Security Agency (NSA) documents just 11 days ago, several tech companies responded to the revelations about the PRISM program. The likes of Google, Facebook, and Apple objected to the tone of the press coverage, saying that any suggestion they've ever given a government agency direct access to their servers is false.

Over the weekend, tech companies started responding with additional transparency too. Facebook and Microsoft revealed ranges of how many government information requests they're getting about how many accounts.

Late Sunday, Apple joined the transparency club. The company published a blog post stating that in the past six months, it has received between 4,000 and 5,000 US law enforcement requests for information regarding 9,000 to 10,000 accounts. "The most common form of request comes from police investigating robberies and other crimes, searching for missing children, trying to locate a patient with Alzheimer’s disease, or hoping to prevent a suicide," notes the company.

Conversations which take place over iMessage and FaceTime are protected by end-to-end encryption so no one but the sender and receiver can see or read them. Apple cannot decrypt that data. Similarly, we do not store data related to customers’ location, Map searches, or Siri requests in any identifiable form.

[longship]

1. Strong encryption and transparency rules.

NSA cannot do anything about that, especially when server logs are dumped and personal info is purged.

One of the iconic Internet maxims:
"The Internet views censorship as damage and routes around it."

Another might be:
"The Internet views snooping as damaged protocol and adapts to eliminate it."

[justiceischeap]

2. Apple's way of hinting at what form of communication one should use on the iPhone

to stay safe from snooping NSA agents?

[TeeYiYi]

4. I wonder if text messages on Android are encrypted...

...in route to the receiving end? Or, are iMessages different from text messages? Maybe it's an instant messaging app for Apple?

I'll be the first to admit, my online presence has changed in light of the NSA scandal. I don't want to call, email, text or say anything by phone. Sad.

Even comments on DU get extra scrutiny now. I'm grateful to Snowden for bringing attention to this issue. No, it's not new information but it's high time we shined a light on it again.

Hi Agent Mike.

TYY

[FreeState]

7. Does android have its own messaging system?

Text messages are not encrypted - even on the iPhone. iMessage is not a text message, its a message sent via the message app to another iPhone or Mac device. (Text messages are green, meaning they are sent via the phone company and iMessages are blue, meaning they are being sent via Apples servers and are encrypted.) Unless Android has its own messaging system that bypasses the phone companies its probably not encrypted.

[TeeYiYi]

9. They have Yahoo Messenger...

...which I don't use. Maybe there's a third party messaging app.

Do you know about Snapchat, Instagram or Vox? I wonder if they are encrypted. I'll bet Snapchat is unsnoopable.

Thanks for the info.

TYY

[treestar]

5. Apples way of selling new iphone6

with anti-government encryption.

[FreeState]

8. Actually Apple announced this over two years ago

iMessage via apples server is part of the iOS5 - it came out almost two years ago - was announced in June 2011. (before that all messages via iMessage were text messages through the phone company).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMessage

[Honeycombe8]

3. And, of course, all chats and conversations in real face time and not on the internet. nt

[usGovOwesUs3Trillion]

6. They should capitalize on this feature