maximumpc.com MAR 2020 MAXIMUMPC 13
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APPLE’S IPHONES PERIODICALLY make
backups to Apple’s servers, in case you
lose or break your phone. Unlike your
phone’s internal data, the encryption key
for these backups is held by Apple. Under
a court order, Apple can retrieve the data
for law enforcement agencies—it handed
over the contents of 18,000 accounts to
intelligence agencies in the first half of
last year. Two years ago, Apple started
working on a project to fully encrypt the
backups with the user’s own key. This was
to making hacking more difficult. Then it,
very quietly, didn’t. Why? It transpires
that the FBI, and others, weren’t happy,
and made that clear in private talks. Both
parties are being tight-lipped about who
forced who to do what, and when. Apple
doesn’t want to be seen as hindering the
pursuit of dangerous criminals, and
the FBI doesn’t want to appear to demand
that it can snoop on who it likes.
Apple isn’t popular at the FBI. Its
phones often hold materiel important
to investigations, and it was the first to
encrypt data on its phones, making it
difficult to retrieve without the owner’s
encryption key. Apple has, depending on
your point of view, been uncooperative
or protective. In 2016, the pair had a spat
over unlocking a suspect’s phone. The FBI
asked Apple to create a new version of iOS,
which could circumnavigate the security
features. Apple declined, and legal
proceedings to force it to comply were
instigated. These were dropped after the
FBI got a third party to hack the phone,
but was public about its disappointment
with Apple. It transpires that Apple took
the hint. According to “insiders,” it was
Apple’s legal department that pulled the
plug on the project. –CLFBI investigations made
easier by change of planAPPLE DROPS
ENCRYPTED
BACKUPS
Twitter’s Stolen
Pictures
An AI company called Clearview,
which claims to have the world’s
best facial recognition program,
has been scraping images from
Twitter, Facebook, and other sites
without permission. It sells its
services to the FBI, Homeland
Security, and over 600 other
law enforcement agencies. It
has amassed over three billion
images, and can track people back
to the site a picture was taken from.
Twitter has issued a “cease and
desist” letter, and demanded that
Clearview delete its images as it
violates its developer agreement
policy, which says content can’t
be used for surveillance. Current
legislation is inadequate to deal
with the rise of AI, and all the
material it
needs has
already been
posted. –CLChromium
Edge Lands
Microsoft’s Chromium version
of its Edge browser has finished
beta testing, and is available for
download. It’s been built using
Google’s Chromium open-source
platform; Microsoft has finally
ditched its own browser engine.
Not surprisingly, it looks and feels
a lot like Google Chrome, and
supports all the same extensions.
It also has a swish new logo. To
keep some business users happy,
it features an Internet Explorer
mode, for “legacy” websites. It
also blocks third-party cookies
by default, something Google
has promised to do, but not until- It boasts that it’s better
than Chrome at managing system
resources. It looks as though
Microsoft finally has a first-rate
browser. If you have Win 10, you’ll
be getting it as part of a Windows
Update soon. –CL
Intel’s Graphics Card in Testing
AMONG INTEL’S OFFERINGS at CES was our first look at its jump into the discrete
graphics card market. Intel is being cagey about the technical specs, but the first
hardware, the Xe DG1, isn’t built to show off Xe’s eventual power. There are no power
connectors for a start; it looks as if it can make do with the 75W the PCIe slot provides.
Early testers confirm that the card boots, runs, and has passed initial testing in-
house; it has now to moved to distribution, along with a developer’s kit, to third parties.
An early Linux driver had it listed as “UHD Graphics Gen12 LP DG1,” the same naming
convention as the integrated graphics on the upcoming Tiger Lake CPUs, which would
mean we’re starting with a basic card with 96 execution units and a 1080p maximum.
The Xe family will come in three main groups: Xe-LP (Low Power), Xe-HP
(High Performance), and Xe-HPC (High Performance Computing, the realm of
supercomputers). All will use the same basic architecture, and employ “Xe link,”
an interconnect system that makes it possible to put, as Intel claims, “thousands of
execution units” on a card. It will also features a scalable memory fabric on the more
powerful versions. The key appears to be the ability to simply scale the hardware
to match the task, whilst building it from fairly simple blocks based on Intel’s UHD
engine. The first commercial cards aren’t expected before the summer. –CLIt’s pretty at least.
Intel’s first
manifestation of the
Xe graphics project is
a basic low-power
card, but there is a
lot more to come.