Surveilled #78 – Police stings, Basel and crypto, and Apple's new privacy features
It was Apple’s WorldWide Developers’ Conference last week, so the rest of the tech world was pretty quiet. Hence, only five links instead of six this week.
Six Five Links
The FBI and Australian Federal Policy ran an encrypted communications platform for several years. It ended up being used by criminals around the world, but the law enforcement agencies could read everything of course. Last week they proceeded to arrest 800 people on the back of the evidence obtained. Similar to previous operations like Encrochat and Sky Global, although those networks already existed and were compromised, rather than set up from scratch. This seems like a sensible approach, but I wonder if it weakens those same agencies' appeals to weaken security for all by installing backdoors etc. (The Verge)
Global streaming platforms are breathing new life in European content creation. The platforms like Netflix, Amazon, Disney+ etc. want local content across their global markets, and are able to offer production budgets often multiple times larger than what creators are used to. Overall this seems like a positive evolution, even if there are concerns about exaggerated uniformity in the results. It's also another illustration that the problems now confronting the streaming business are not tech problems, but media and culture problems. (FT $)
The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision has issued a public consultation on the regulatory treatment for crypto tokens. On the one hand, this seems like an important step to legitimacy for crypto as an asset class (not necessarily as a currency), but on the other hand, the proposed capital requirements are punitive, which is not surprising given the volatility crypto exhibits. The FT has a useful summary. (BCBS, FT $)
In other crypto news, El Salvador announced with great fanfare that Bitcoin is now legal tender in the country. Obvious shock value here but it's not clear that this will mark a watershed moment for Bitcoin adoption. Latin American countries have an ambiguous relation to their currencies anyway, after decades of inflation, devaluations or sovereign defaults. Rest of World has a typically sober take on the announcement. (CNBC, Rest of World)
Apple announced a suite of new privacy features at its annual developers' conference last week. Two stand out in particular, the Mail app will block "tracking pixels," that allow senders to track your IP address, location, when you opened etc., and Private Relay: this service prevents websites and your broadband provider from knowing who you are and what you do. This is similar to a VPN, but Apple added an extra layer. Whereas a VPN knows who you are and what you're doing online (making trust in the VPN essential), Apple's Private Relay knows who you are, but then passes on what you're doing to a third-party. Hence Apple knows who you are but not what you're doing, and the third-party knows what you're doing but not who you are. By design, this makes it impossible for anyone along the chain to pass on a complete picture of your activity to anyone, especially marketeers. All in all great features, and essentially free on top of an already existing iCloud subscription. The Verge has a good breakdown. (Apple, The Verge)