Leaked Memo Says Apple Provides Backdoor To Governments

Leaked Memo Says Apple Provides Backdoor To Governments.

-- Tom

 

Uh oh. If true, I wouldn't be very surprised if RINOA/RIM, Nokia and Apple, will issue some press releases coming monday.
About how they all vehemently deny having ever f'd over their Indian customers with an Indian government mandated backdoor.
If there actually is such a tool, it's probably just a 'network problem diagnostics tool' and/or 'for improving the user experience', as always.

The linked ZDNet article mentions; "...The documents claim the existence of a system known as RINOA SUR. While I did not find what SUR stands for but RINOA is RIM, NOkia and Apple." link
SUR is likely short for surveillance, I'd gamble.
Let's see if these leaked documents can be verified by others/a 3rd party as original and not as a hoax. No news on 'RINOA' to be found on Indian newspaper websites so far.

 

Seems to be India only, and mentions nothing of OS X. This is pretty much completely isolated to phones and nothing to do with PCs, which should come as no surprise when the news of India wanting Blackberry to include a backdoor earlier in 2011. It's "to fight terrorists."

Debatably, using a closed source 3rd party ROM in your phone would prevent this, then there is no room for manipulation by a first party phone seller.

 

This is serious. If they would do this for Indian authorities, they would do it for the U.S. and other countries. One misstep on the part of any big company as far as allowing backdoors - and the sh stuff hits the fan. Unacceptable. Period. This shows a totalitarian mindset on the part of 'RINOA'. I would like to know if the same authorities in India attempted to blackmail any other companies the same way -- but were rebuffed(?!?) That would tell me more about them than the companies who buckled.

 

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