> On the other hand I appreciate the hackability, and it is your data.
I really think this is the wrong attitude and the result of boiling frogs. Having access to data on our devices should be a given. To me it makes me think of the non-touch iPods of yesteryear. Music files were obfuscated on the device by shoving into human-unfriendly folders and filenames. The argument that this was to avoid music piracy is laughable since we originally had DRM'd music for downloads. The database was proprietary and undocumented which meant the only real way to get music on the device was through iTunes. It also meant that unless your ID3 tags were really good and you went through the process to copy all the tracks off and rename them, your music was locked to your device.
Even then, at least you _had_ a way of getting your music back. I'm not going to say E2EE isn't good or that the security protocols put into place for modern OS's isn't important, but imo it's eroding ownership of data and killing third party businesses. Everything has to be done through a web API now, which means your data has to exist in the cloud. This isn't good.
> I really think this is the wrong attitude (…). Having access to data on our devices should be a given.
I don’t get your post. You quote a part to disagree with but everything after that agrees with it. I did say you should have access to your data. I did not say you should have DRM, or that your data should exist in the cloud, or that you should have to access it through an API. I also said “feels to me the correct solution in this case is”. In this case where we are discussing personal, private, possibly sensitive conversations. That has nothing to do with downloaded music, purchased or pirated.
> the result of boiling frogs.
That’s a myth¹, but it wouldn’t apply anyway. I don’t agree with Apple’s decision in the case you presented, but I do agree with it in the other instance. It isn’t incongruent to believe you should have access to your data while also believing it should be reasonably protected from snooping bad actors.
¹ From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog: “While some 19th-century experiments suggested that the underlying premise is true if the heating is sufficiently gradual, according to modern biologists the premise is false: changing location is a natural thermoregulation strategy for frogs and other ectotherms, and is necessary for survival in the wild. A frog that is gradually heated will jump out. Furthermore, a frog placed into already boiling water will die immediately, not jump out.”
I really think this is the wrong attitude and the result of boiling frogs. Having access to data on our devices should be a given. To me it makes me think of the non-touch iPods of yesteryear. Music files were obfuscated on the device by shoving into human-unfriendly folders and filenames. The argument that this was to avoid music piracy is laughable since we originally had DRM'd music for downloads. The database was proprietary and undocumented which meant the only real way to get music on the device was through iTunes. It also meant that unless your ID3 tags were really good and you went through the process to copy all the tracks off and rename them, your music was locked to your device.
Even then, at least you _had_ a way of getting your music back. I'm not going to say E2EE isn't good or that the security protocols put into place for modern OS's isn't important, but imo it's eroding ownership of data and killing third party businesses. Everything has to be done through a web API now, which means your data has to exist in the cloud. This isn't good.