daring-rss

Joe Rossignol, MacRumors:

Starting with the upcoming iOS 17.2 software update, there is a
new NameDrop-like feature that allows an iPhone user to quickly
share boarding passes, movie tickets, and other Wallet app passes
with another iPhone user.

To use the feature, open the Wallet app and tap on the pass that
you want to share. Then, hold your iPhone near the top of
another iPhone, and a “Share” button will appear below the pass
on your iPhone. Finally, tap on the “Share” button to send the
pass to the other iPhone via AirDrop. Both iPhones must be
updated to iOS 17.2.

 ★ 

Joe Rossignol, MacRumors:

Starting with the upcoming iOS 17.2 software update, there is a
new NameDrop-like feature that allows an iPhone user to quickly
share boarding passes, movie tickets, and other Wallet app passes
with another iPhone user.

To use the feature, open the Wallet app and tap on the pass that
you want to share. Then, hold your iPhone near the top of
another iPhone, and a “Share” button will appear below the pass
on your iPhone. Finally, tap on the “Share” button to send the
pass to the other iPhone via AirDrop. Both iPhones must be
updated to iOS 17.2.

Read More 

Stephanie Saul and Anemona Hartocollis, reporting for The New York Times:

Support for the presidents of Harvard, the University of
Pennsylvania and M.I.T. eroded quickly on Wednesday, after they
seemed to evade what seemed like a rather simple question during a
contentious congressional hearing: Would they discipline students
calling for the genocide of Jews?

Their lawyerly replies to that question and others during a
four-hour hearing drew incredulous responses. “It’s unbelievable
that this needs to be said: Calls for genocide are monstrous and
antithetical to everything we represent as a country,” said a
White House spokesman, Andrew Bates. […]

Much of the criticism landed heavily on Ms. Magill because of an
extended back-and-forth with Representative Stefanik. Ms. Stefanik
said that in campus protests, students had chanted support for
intifada, an Arabic word that means uprising and that many Jews
hear as a call for violence against them. Ms. Stefanik asked Ms.
Magill, “Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Penn’s
rules or code of conduct, yes or no?”

Ms. Magill replied, “If the speech turns into conduct, it can be
harassment.”

Ms. Stefanik pressed the issue: “I am asking, specifically:
Calling for the genocide of Jews, does that constitute bullying or
harassment?”

Ms. Magill, a lawyer who joined Penn last year with a pledge to
promote campus free speech, replied, “If it is directed and
severe, pervasive, it is harassment.”

Ms. Stefanik responded: “So the answer is yes.”

Ms. Magill said, “It is a context-dependent decision,
congresswoman.”

Ms. Stefanik exclaimed: “That’s your testimony today? Calling for
the genocide of Jews is depending upon the context?”

The reckoning has come for the bizarro-world political climate that’s taken hold at these universities in the last decade or two. This patently offensive equivocation — when the correct answer was obviously an unambiguous “Yes” — makes sense in the context of the insular far-left worldview where the oppressed are viewed as inherently just, but comes across as absurd to everyone living in the real world. All three of these elite university presidents are obviously utterly tone-deaf and detached from the real world.

You can only pretend to live in a bubble for so long. Then the bill comes due.

 ★ 

Stephanie Saul and Anemona Hartocollis, reporting for The New York Times:

Support for the presidents of Harvard, the University of
Pennsylvania and M.I.T. eroded quickly on Wednesday, after they
seemed to evade what seemed like a rather simple question during a
contentious congressional hearing: Would they discipline students
calling for the genocide of Jews?

Their lawyerly replies to that question and others during a
four-hour hearing drew incredulous responses. “It’s unbelievable
that this needs to be said: Calls for genocide are monstrous and
antithetical to everything we represent as a country,” said a
White House spokesman, Andrew Bates. […]

Much of the criticism landed heavily on Ms. Magill because of an
extended back-and-forth with Representative Stefanik. Ms. Stefanik
said that in campus protests, students had chanted support for
intifada, an Arabic word that means uprising and that many Jews
hear as a call for violence against them. Ms. Stefanik asked Ms.
Magill, “Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Penn’s
rules or code of conduct, yes or no?”

Ms. Magill replied, “If the speech turns into conduct, it can be
harassment.”

Ms. Stefanik pressed the issue: “I am asking, specifically:
Calling for the genocide of Jews, does that constitute bullying or
harassment?”

Ms. Magill, a lawyer who joined Penn last year with a pledge to
promote campus free speech, replied, “If it is directed and
severe, pervasive, it is harassment.”

Ms. Stefanik responded: “So the answer is yes.”

Ms. Magill said, “It is a context-dependent decision,
congresswoman.”

Ms. Stefanik exclaimed: “That’s your testimony today? Calling for
the genocide of Jews is depending upon the context?”

The reckoning has come for the bizarro-world political climate that’s taken hold at these universities in the last decade or two. This patently offensive equivocation — when the correct answer was obviously an unambiguous “Yes” — makes sense in the context of the insular far-left worldview where the oppressed are viewed as inherently just, but comes across as absurd to everyone living in the real world. All three of these elite university presidents are obviously utterly tone-deaf and detached from the real world.

You can only pretend to live in a bubble for so long. Then the bill comes due.

Read More 

Rohan Goswami, reporting for CNBC:

Facebook and Instagram created “prime locations” for sexual
predators that enabled child sexual abuse, solicitation, and
trafficking, New Mexico’s attorney general alleged in a civil
suit filed Wednesday against Meta and CEO Mark
Zuckerberg.

The suit was brought after an “undercover investigation” allegedly
revealed myriad instances of sexually explicit content being
served to minors, child sexual coercion, or the sale of child
sexual abuse material, or CSAM, New Mexico attorney general Raúl
Torrez said in a press release.

The suit alleges that “certain child exploitative content” is ten
times “more prevalent” on Facebook and Instagram as compared to
pornography site PornHub and adult content platform OnlyFans,
according to the release.

This follows the recent and ongoing investigative reporting by The Wall Street Journal into child porn rings on Instagram, and the ways in which their content algorithms send these deviants further down their perverted rabbit holes.

Which in turn leads the Muskateers paying for Twitter/X to ask questions like “Why are advertisers still on Facebook and Instagram but have such a massive problem with X, which bans such content?”

No content is more electrifyingly objectionable than CSAM. No bones about it, Meta has both a content moderation problem and PR fiasco on its hands. They have got to stamp this out, or advertisers will start abandoning their platform. But there are huge differences between Meta and X. Meta does not want CSAM or even CSAM-adjacent material on its platforms. Their current content moderation infrastructure quashes a shocking amount of it already. They need to do better, and I think most people believe they want to. The objectionable material on Twitter/X, on the other hand — the racism, the antisemitism, the outright Nazism — is explicitly permitted in the name of “free speech”. And in terms of perception, which is what advertisers care most about, Twitter/X is defined now by its number-one user, Elon Musk.

Also, more cynically, ads on Instagram work — advertisers gain more in sales than they spend on the ads. That’s less true — and perhaps not true at all — on Twitter/X.

Meta’s big legal problem isn’t that they’ve looked the other way at CSAM material, but that they’ve deliberately looked the other way at under-13 users signing up for Instagram accounts, and purposely optimized their algorithms to engage teens. It doesn’t pass the sniff test that they’d want CSAM on Instagram; it easily passes the sniff test that they’d want to hook kids on the platform as young as possible.

 ★ 

Rohan Goswami, reporting for CNBC:

Facebook and Instagram created “prime locations” for sexual
predators that enabled child sexual abuse, solicitation, and
trafficking, New Mexico’s attorney general alleged in a civil
suit filed Wednesday against Meta and CEO Mark
Zuckerberg.

The suit was brought after an “undercover investigation” allegedly
revealed myriad instances of sexually explicit content being
served to minors, child sexual coercion, or the sale of child
sexual abuse material, or CSAM, New Mexico attorney general Raúl
Torrez said in a press release.

The suit alleges that “certain child exploitative content” is ten
times “more prevalent” on Facebook and Instagram as compared to
pornography site PornHub and adult content platform OnlyFans,
according to the release.

This follows the recent and ongoing investigative reporting by The Wall Street Journal into child porn rings on Instagram, and the ways in which their content algorithms send these deviants further down their perverted rabbit holes.

Which in turn leads the Muskateers paying for Twitter/X to ask questions like “Why are advertisers still on Facebook and Instagram but have such a massive problem with X, which bans such content?”

No content is more electrifyingly objectionable than CSAM. No bones about it, Meta has both a content moderation problem and PR fiasco on its hands. They have got to stamp this out, or advertisers will start abandoning their platform. But there are huge differences between Meta and X. Meta does not want CSAM or even CSAM-adjacent material on its platforms. Their current content moderation infrastructure quashes a shocking amount of it already. They need to do better, and I think most people believe they want to. The objectionable material on Twitter/X, on the other hand — the racism, the antisemitism, the outright Nazism — is explicitly permitted in the name of “free speech”. And in terms of perception, which is what advertisers care most about, Twitter/X is defined now by its number-one user, Elon Musk.

Also, more cynically, ads on Instagram work — advertisers gain more in sales than they spend on the ads. That’s less true — and perhaps not true at all — on Twitter/X.

Meta’s big legal problem isn’t that they’ve looked the other way at CSAM material, but that they’ve deliberately looked the other way at under-13 users signing up for Instagram accounts, and purposely optimized their algorithms to engage teens. It doesn’t pass the sniff test that they’d want CSAM on Instagram; it easily passes the sniff test that they’d want to hook kids on the platform as young as possible.

Read More 

Dave Pell, writing at NextDraft about Norman Lear, who died at the ripe age of 101:

From his tours of duty during WWII to his sensational, culture
changing television creations, to his political activism, to the
good, decent, kind life he lived, Norman Lear represented the
greatest of the greatest generation. I was lucky enough to spend
some time with Norman. Yes, he was a comedic genius and maybe
television’s most important creator, but he was also a deeply
interested, open, curious, people person. He was great, and also
good. He truly lived the lyrics of the theme for his show One Day
at a Time. This is it. This is life, the one you get, so go and
have a ball.

What a career. He didn’t just create some of the best sitcoms on TV during his prime, he created most of the best sitcoms: Sanford & Son (my dad’s favorite), One Day at a Time, Maude, Good Times, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, The Jeffersons, and, of course, his masterpiece, All in the Family.

Over at BoingBoing, Mark Frauenfelder has a 50-year-old All in the Family clip that, aside from Rob Reiner’s hairstyle, could have been recorded today. Archie Bunker was a more coherent Trump than Trump.

(With Charlie Munger dying at 99, Henry Kissinger at 100, and now Lear at 101, I’d be nervous if I were a famous 102-year-old.)

 ★ 

Dave Pell, writing at NextDraft about Norman Lear, who died at the ripe age of 101:

From his tours of duty during WWII to his sensational, culture
changing television creations, to his political activism, to the
good, decent, kind life he lived, Norman Lear represented the
greatest of the greatest generation. I was lucky enough to spend
some time with Norman. Yes, he was a comedic genius and maybe
television’s most important creator, but he was also a deeply
interested, open, curious, people person. He was great, and also
good. He truly lived the lyrics of the theme for his show One Day
at a Time. This is it. This is life, the one you get, so go and
have a ball.

What a career. He didn’t just create some of the best sitcoms on TV during his prime, he created most of the best sitcoms: Sanford & Son (my dad’s favorite), One Day at a Time, Maude, Good Times, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, The Jeffersons, and, of course, his masterpiece, All in the Family.

Over at BoingBoing, Mark Frauenfelder has a 50-year-old All in the Family clip that, aside from Rob Reiner’s hairstyle, could have been recorded today. Archie Bunker was a more coherent Trump than Trump.

(With Charlie Munger dying at 99, Henry Kissinger at 100, and now Lear at 101, I’d be nervous if I were a famous 102-year-old.)

Read More 

Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, reporting for TechCrunch:

On Friday, genetic testing company 23andMe announced that hackers
accessed the personal data of 0.1% of customers, or about 14,000
individuals. The company also said that by accessing those
accounts, hackers were also able to access “a significant number
of files containing profile information about other users’
ancestry.” But 23andMe would not say how many “other users” were
impacted by the breach that the company initially disclosed in
early October.

As it turns out, there were a lot of “other users” who were
victims of this data breach: 6.9 million affected individuals
in total.

In an email sent to TechCrunch late on Saturday, 23andMe
spokesperson Katie Watson confirmed that hackers accessed the
personal information of about 5.5 million people who opted-in to
23andMe’s DNA Relatives feature, which allows customers to
automatically share some of their data with others. The stolen
data included the person’s name, birth year, relationship labels,
the percentage of DNA shared with relatives, ancestry reports and
self-reported location.

Here’s a real shocker: 23andMe has updated their terms of service in attempt to prevent a class action lawsuit. Good luck with that.

 ★ 

Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, reporting for TechCrunch:

On Friday, genetic testing company 23andMe announced that hackers
accessed the personal data of 0.1% of customers, or about 14,000
individuals. The company also said that by accessing those
accounts, hackers were also able to access “a significant number
of files containing profile information about other users’
ancestry.” But 23andMe would not say how many “other users” were
impacted by the breach that the company initially disclosed in
early October.

As it turns out, there were a lot of “other users” who were
victims of this data breach: 6.9 million affected individuals
in total.

In an email sent to TechCrunch late on Saturday, 23andMe
spokesperson Katie Watson confirmed that hackers accessed the
personal information of about 5.5 million people who opted-in to
23andMe’s DNA Relatives feature, which allows customers to
automatically share some of their data with others. The stolen
data included the person’s name, birth year, relationship labels,
the percentage of DNA shared with relatives, ancestry reports and
self-reported location.

Here’s a real shocker: 23andMe has updated their terms of service in attempt to prevent a class action lawsuit. Good luck with that.

Read More 

Drew Harwell, reporting for The Washington Post:

Apple said in a statement that “the federal government had
prohibited us from sharing any information” about the requests and
now that the method had become public, it was updating its
upcoming transparency reports to “detail these kinds of requests.”

Apple’s Law Enforcement Guidelines, the company’s rules
for how police and government investigators should seek user
information, now note that a person’s Apple ID, associated with a
push-notification token, can be “obtained with a subpoena or
greater legal process.”

Neither Wyden nor Apple detailed how many notifications had been
reviewed, who had been targeted, what crimes were being
investigated or which governments had made the requests.

Law enforcement agents can issue subpoenas on their own, so there’s no oversight here. Google, on the other hand, requires a court order:

For U.S. requests of push notifications and other non-content
information, Google said it requires a court order, not just a
subpoena, that is subject to judicial oversight. With such orders,
federal officials must persuade a judge that the requested data is
relevant and material to an ongoing criminal probe.

Score one for Google here.

 ★ 

Drew Harwell, reporting for The Washington Post:

Apple said in a statement that “the federal government had
prohibited us from sharing any information” about the requests and
now that the method had become public, it was updating its
upcoming transparency reports to “detail these kinds of requests.”

Apple’s Law Enforcement Guidelines, the company’s rules
for how police and government investigators should seek user
information, now note that a person’s Apple ID, associated with a
push-notification token, can be “obtained with a subpoena or
greater legal process.”

Neither Wyden nor Apple detailed how many notifications had been
reviewed, who had been targeted, what crimes were being
investigated or which governments had made the requests.

Law enforcement agents can issue subpoenas on their own, so there’s no oversight here. Google, on the other hand, requires a court order:

For U.S. requests of push notifications and other non-content
information, Google said it requires a court order, not just a
subpoena, that is subject to judicial oversight. With such orders,
federal officials must persuade a judge that the requested data is
relevant and material to an ongoing criminal probe.

Score one for Google here.

Read More 

Raphael Satter, reporting for Reuters:

Unidentified governments are surveilling smartphone users via
their apps’ push notifications, a U.S. senator warned on
Wednesday. In a letter to the Department of Justice,
Senator Ron Wyden said foreign officials were demanding the data
from Alphabet’s Google and Apple. Although details were sparse,
the letter lays out yet another path by which governments can
track smartphones. […]

In a statement, Apple said that Wyden’s letter gave them the
opening they needed to share more details with the public about
how governments monitored push notifications. “In this case, the
federal government prohibited us from sharing any information,”
the company said in a statement. “Now that this method has become
public we are updating our transparency reporting to detail these
kinds of requests.”

Google said that it shared Wyden’s “commitment to keeping users
informed about these requests.”

From Wyden’s letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland:

Apple and Google should be permitted to be transparent about the
legal demands they receive, particularly from foreign governments,
just as the companies regularly notify users about other types of
government demands for data. These companies should be permitted
to generally reveal whether they have been compelled to facilitate
this surveillance practice, to publish aggregate statistics about
the number of demands they receive, and unless temporarily gagged
by a court, to notify specific customers about demands for their
data. I would ask that the DOJ repeal or modify any policies that
impede this transparency.

See also: Joseph Cox, reporting at 404 Media: “Here’s a Warrant Showing the U.S. Government is Monitoring Push Notifications”.

 ★ 

Raphael Satter, reporting for Reuters:

Unidentified governments are surveilling smartphone users via
their apps’ push notifications, a U.S. senator warned on
Wednesday. In a letter to the Department of Justice,
Senator Ron Wyden said foreign officials were demanding the data
from Alphabet’s Google and Apple. Although details were sparse,
the letter lays out yet another path by which governments can
track smartphones. […]

In a statement, Apple said that Wyden’s letter gave them the
opening they needed to share more details with the public about
how governments monitored push notifications. “In this case, the
federal government prohibited us from sharing any information,”
the company said in a statement. “Now that this method has become
public we are updating our transparency reporting to detail these
kinds of requests.”

Google said that it shared Wyden’s “commitment to keeping users
informed about these requests.”

From Wyden’s letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland:

Apple and Google should be permitted to be transparent about the
legal demands they receive, particularly from foreign governments,
just as the companies regularly notify users about other types of
government demands for data. These companies should be permitted
to generally reveal whether they have been compelled to facilitate
this surveillance practice, to publish aggregate statistics about
the number of demands they receive, and unless temporarily gagged
by a court, to notify specific customers about demands for their
data. I would ask that the DOJ repeal or modify any policies that
impede this transparency.

See also: Joseph Cox, reporting at 404 Media: “Here’s a Warrant Showing the U.S. Government is Monitoring Push Notifications”.

Read More 

Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac:

As first reported in October, Apple will discontinue the
standalone iTunes Movies and iTunes TV Shows apps on the Apple TV
box, starting with tvOS 17.2 The warning message seen above has
started appearing in the release candidate version of tvOS 17.2
beta, released yesterday.

Apple directs users to the TV app instead to manage their
purchases, and buy and rent from the store. At least as far as
Apple’s video content is concerned, the iTunes brand is on the
way out.

Apple has updated the TV app in 17.2 in preparation of the
migration away from the standalone iTunes videos app, bringing
across some functionality that was previously missing in TV. That
includes things like filtering by genre in purchased tab, and the
inclusion of box sets in the store listings. The TV app also
features a new sidebar design in this update, which includes a
dedicated store and purchases tab for quick navigation.

It’s the updates to the TV app that make this possible. It’s a good simplification overall: Apple’s own content — both iTunes purchases and TV+ streaming content — is in the TV app.

 ★ 

Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac:

As first reported in October, Apple will discontinue the
standalone iTunes Movies and iTunes TV Shows apps on the Apple TV
box, starting with tvOS 17.2 The warning message seen above has
started appearing in the release candidate version of tvOS 17.2
beta, released yesterday.

Apple directs users to the TV app instead to manage their
purchases, and buy and rent from the store. At least as far as
Apple’s video content is concerned, the iTunes brand is on the
way out.

Apple has updated the TV app in 17.2 in preparation of the
migration away from the standalone iTunes videos app, bringing
across some functionality that was previously missing in TV. That
includes things like filtering by genre in purchased tab, and the
inclusion of box sets in the store listings. The TV app also
features a new sidebar design in this update, which includes a
dedicated store and purchases tab for quick navigation.

It’s the updates to the TV app that make this possible. It’s a good simplification overall: Apple’s own content — both iTunes purchases and TV+ streaming content — is in the TV app.

Read More 

Mark Gurman, reporting for Bloomberg:

The iPad Air, which is the company’s mid-tier tablet, currently
comes with a 10.9-inch screen. For next year’s release, the
company will add a version that’s about 12.9 inches, matching the
size of what’s currently the biggest iPad Pro.

The company is also preparing revamped versions of the Apple
Pencil and Magic Keyboard accessories, which it will sell
alongside the new iPad Pro. The new Pencil — codenamed B532 — 
will represent the third generation of the product. The company
released a new low-end model in November.

The new Magic Keyboards — codenamed R418 and R428 — will make
the iPad Pro look more like a laptop and include a sturdier frame
with aluminum.

A big iPad Air is interesting, and I suspect will prove popular. No word, alas, on a new iPad Mini though. (I wish Apple would drop the “Mini” brand and just make the iPad Air in three sizes: mini, regular, and large, with identical specs.)

Gurman offers no details about the form factor for the updated iPad Pro models. Given that last year’s 10th-generation regular iPad moved the front-facing camera to the long side of the device — the appropriate location for a camera when the iPad is being used laptop-style — it seems like a safe guess that Apple will do the same with these next-gen iPad Air and Pro models. But the spot where that camera would go is currently the same spot where current iPad Pros have the magnetic attachment for a 2nd-gen Apple Pencil. So I think that’s why Apple is going to introduce a 3rd-gen Pencil — they might need an altogether new way of pairing, charging, and attaching Pencils if they move the front-facing camera to the long side. (Well, that’s one reason to create a 3rd-gen Pencil. Other reasons, of course, would include various ways of making a better stylus — the current 2nd-gen Pencil is now over 5 years old.)

I’m also quite curious about the purported reimagined Magic Keyboards. The current ones are transformative for iPads, functionally, but the rubbery surface material just isn’t durable enough — especially the white ones. MacBooks are remarkably durable; iPad Magic Keyboards demand to be treated carefully. On mine, the rubber is peeling away around my most-used keys. That shouldn’t happen with any keyboard, but it definitely shouldn’t happen with one that costs $300-350.

 ★ 

Mark Gurman, reporting for Bloomberg:

The iPad Air, which is the company’s mid-tier tablet, currently
comes with a 10.9-inch screen. For next year’s release, the
company will add a version that’s about 12.9 inches, matching the
size of what’s currently the biggest iPad Pro.

The company is also preparing revamped versions of the Apple
Pencil and Magic Keyboard accessories, which it will sell
alongside the new iPad Pro. The new Pencil — codenamed B532 — 
will represent the third generation of the product. The company
released a new low-end model in November.

The new Magic Keyboards — codenamed R418 and R428 — will make
the iPad Pro look more like a laptop and include a sturdier frame
with aluminum.

A big iPad Air is interesting, and I suspect will prove popular. No word, alas, on a new iPad Mini though. (I wish Apple would drop the “Mini” brand and just make the iPad Air in three sizes: mini, regular, and large, with identical specs.)

Gurman offers no details about the form factor for the updated iPad Pro models. Given that last year’s 10th-generation regular iPad moved the front-facing camera to the long side of the device — the appropriate location for a camera when the iPad is being used laptop-style — it seems like a safe guess that Apple will do the same with these next-gen iPad Air and Pro models. But the spot where that camera would go is currently the same spot where current iPad Pros have the magnetic attachment for a 2nd-gen Apple Pencil. So I think that’s why Apple is going to introduce a 3rd-gen Pencil — they might need an altogether new way of pairing, charging, and attaching Pencils if they move the front-facing camera to the long side. (Well, that’s one reason to create a 3rd-gen Pencil. Other reasons, of course, would include various ways of making a better stylus — the current 2nd-gen Pencil is now over 5 years old.)

I’m also quite curious about the purported reimagined Magic Keyboards. The current ones are transformative for iPads, functionally, but the rubbery surface material just isn’t durable enough — especially the white ones. MacBooks are remarkably durable; iPad Magic Keyboards demand to be treated carefully. On mine, the rubber is peeling away around my most-used keys. That shouldn’t happen with any keyboard, but it definitely shouldn’t happen with one that costs $300-350.

Read More 

Samuel Stolton, reporting for Bloomberg:*

Apple Inc.’s iMessage service looks set to win a carve out from
new European Union antitrust rules to rein in Big Tech platforms
after watchdogs tentatively concluded that it isn’t popular enough
with business users to warrant being hit by the regulation. […]

In order to fall under the scope of the rules, a service must
be deemed an “important gateway” for business users. EU
enforcers now consider this is not the case for iMessage,
according to the people.

If iMessage ended up being targeted by the Digital Markets Act,
Apple would have faced potentially onerous obligations to make
iMessage work with rival online messaging services, such as Meta
Platforms Inc.’s WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger — a move that
Apple has already strongly contested.

The elephant in the room with this particular issue is that the interoperability demands of the DMA between E2EE messaging platforms make no technical sense whatsoever. It’s all just hand-waving on the part of the EU bureaucrats who are demanding it. They have no idea what E2EE really means. They just want to demand that a WhatsApp user should be able to send a message to someone on iMessage or Facebook Messenger. Just make it happen.

Who would run key exchange, and manage the discovery and distribution of said keys, for E2EE messages sent across platforms? Key exchange and discovery is essential, and a difficult problem to solve within each platform itself. I think it’s impossible across platforms. Within each platform, the platform owner is in charge and handles these things. With this EU fantasy of mandatory interop across messaging platforms, who would be in charge?

Apple getting exempted from this, I think, will mainly benefit Apple by letting them ignore an impossible mandate. I don’t think this interop will ever come to fruition, no matter what the EU demands, because I don’t think it can, nor do I think it should. Would be nice to just avoid the debate.

* You know.

 ★ 

Samuel Stolton, reporting for Bloomberg:*

Apple Inc.’s iMessage service looks set to win a carve out from
new European Union antitrust rules to rein in Big Tech platforms
after watchdogs tentatively concluded that it isn’t popular enough
with business users to warrant being hit by the regulation. […]

In order to fall under the scope of the rules, a service must
be deemed an “important gateway” for business users. EU
enforcers now consider this is not the case for iMessage,
according to the people.

If iMessage ended up being targeted by the Digital Markets Act,
Apple would have faced potentially onerous obligations to make
iMessage work with rival online messaging services, such as Meta
Platforms Inc.’s WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger — a move that
Apple has already strongly contested.

The elephant in the room with this particular issue is that the interoperability demands of the DMA between E2EE messaging platforms make no technical sense whatsoever. It’s all just hand-waving on the part of the EU bureaucrats who are demanding it. They have no idea what E2EE really means. They just want to demand that a WhatsApp user should be able to send a message to someone on iMessage or Facebook Messenger. Just make it happen.

Who would run key exchange, and manage the discovery and distribution of said keys, for E2EE messages sent across platforms? Key exchange and discovery is essential, and a difficult problem to solve within each platform itself. I think it’s impossible across platforms. Within each platform, the platform owner is in charge and handles these things. With this EU fantasy of mandatory interop across messaging platforms, who would be in charge?

Apple getting exempted from this, I think, will mainly benefit Apple by letting them ignore an impossible mandate. I don’t think this interop will ever come to fruition, no matter what the EU demands, because I don’t think it can, nor do I think it should. Would be nice to just avoid the debate.

* You know.

Read More