Maybe. I think they'd have a hard time keeping that under wraps—governments aren't typically very careful (and the FBI is about as careful as a bull in a china shop) about not showing their hand when it comes to charging people. If you're strict about keeping certain info on certain channels, smart observers would notice if someone were snooping.

For instance, if someone shared something incriminating in a group chat and got arrested, and that info was only shared in the group chat, they'd have to silence everyone in that group chat to ensure that the channel still seemed secure. I don't think at least our government is that competent or careful.

But also, people wayyyy overhype how much apple tries to come off as privacy-forward. They sell ads and don't even allow you to deny apps access to the internet, and for the most part their phone security seems more focused on denying you control over your own phone rather than denying a third party access to it. I think they just don't want the hassle of complying with warrants. Stuff like pegasus would only be so easy to sell if you couldn't lean on the company to gain access, and I think it'd be difficult for hundreds of countries to conspire to obscure legal pressure. Finally Apple generally has little to gain from reading your data, unlike other tech giants with perverse incentives.

Of course this is all speculation, but I do trust imessages much more than I trust anything coming out of meta, and most of what comes out of google.

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sokoloff 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

> someone shared something incriminating in a group chat and got arrested, and that info was only shared in the group chat

“Only” is doing an incredible amount of work there.

Unless you concoct something incriminating solely for the purpose of testing this, the something incriminating being discussed in group chat previously happened in the real world. Ripples of information were created there and can be found (parallel construction).

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MangoToupe 3 days ago | parent [-]

Right, but parallel construction only works if opsec fails. Good luck with repeating that feat forever. You clearly have far more faith in the FBI than I do. Now repeat this feat for every dumbass in intelligence in every country.

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sokoloff 3 days ago | parent [-]

My position doesn’t require a lot of faith in the FBI.

If they fail in parallel construction, they always have the option to continue. For the vast majority of cases where opsec isn't 100% foolproof, we hear about them. For the few cases where it was foolproof, we just don't hear about them.

	▲	MangoToupe 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		It requires faith that they prioritize keeping such abilities a secret rather than prosecuting, and again, I do not share this faith.

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Terr_ 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> For instance, if someone shared something incriminating in a group chat and got arrested, and that info was only shared in the group chat, they'd have to silence everyone in that group chat to ensure that the channel still seemed secure.

Corrupt investigators can use parallel construction to pretend that the key breakthrough in the case was actually something legal.

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MangoToupe 3 days ago | parent [-]

See the sibling comment. The odds of nobody noticing still don't make any sense.

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const_cast 3 days ago | parent [-]

PRISM went undetected for a long, long time and it's essentially a wiretapping of the entire internet.

Clearly, you are underestimating the intelligence and capabilities of the US government. They have a lot of money. Like... A lot of money.

	▲	MangoToupe 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		What do you think I based this analysis on?