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Home > Sex Tech > Can Apple’s New Lockdown Mode Safeguard LGBTQ+ Citizens From Government Spyware?

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Home›Dating & Relationships›Can Apple’s New Lockdown Mode Safeguard LGBTQ+ Citizens From Government Spyware?

Can Apple’s New Lockdown Mode Safeguard LGBTQ+ Citizens From Government Spyware?

By M. Christian
September 1, 2022
1561
0

iOS 16 includes a security feature designed to guard against state-sponsored cyberattacks.

In July, Apple announced that their upcoming iPhone, iPad, and desktop update includes an additional security feature intended to help prevent nation-backed hackers from illegally accessing personal data.

As described by Apple in a recent press release, Lockdown Mode will offer “extreme, optional protection for the very small number of users who face grave, targeted threats to their digital security.”

Some examples of those targeted users are human rights activists, journalists, and dissidents. However, other minorities, such as a country’s LGBTQ+ community, might also be defended by this update.

As many queer people are still routinely arrested by their governments, sometimes even receiving death sentences, this cannot come soon enough.

Barriers to state-sponsored cyberattacks

When activated, Lockdown Mode blocks links and attachments in Messages, disables WebAssembly, unrecognized FaceTime calls, and Mobile Device Management (MDM) requests. It also prevents locked iOS devices from connecting to a wired accessory or computer.

These are all known to be exploitable for state-sponsored cyberattacks. State-sponsored cyberattacks refers to government-funded mercenary intrusion experts hired to violate their fellow citizens’ digital privacy or to commit acts against another country.

Last year, the United States drew attention to the dangers posed by the rise of these attacks, particularly by Russia, in response to economic sanctions levied against them in protest of the Ukraine invasion.  

This call to arms included strongly suggesting tech companies like Apple increase user security. The result was the development of Lockdown Mode and the creation of a $10 billion grant for research into state-sponsored cyberattacks and other types of government-endorsed spyware activity.

Many dating apps are mishandling user data

In 2020, we reported Tinder added Traveler Alert, which notifies LGBTQ+ individuals when visiting a sexually repressive country.  

Unfortunately, other data apps and social media sites are not so considerate.  

Crisis 24, which specializes in online security risk management, points out that, “members of the LGBTQ community face a unique risk as government officials and anti-LGBTQ individuals abuse dating app location services to find LGBTQ users to assault, harass, or imprison.”

RELATED READ: Tinder Now Warns If You’re in a Sexually Intolerant Country

The overturning of Roe V. Wade has also highlighted how vulnerable tech companies have made us. Like Facebook assisting in the arrest and subsequent persecution of a Nebraska teenager who sought an abortion.

End-to-end encryption would have kept those incriminating messages secure. While available on Facebook and Instagram, it has to be manually activated. 

Supposedly, Meta, Facebook and Instagram’s parent company, plans on making end-to-end encryption a default. With their most recent update putting it at no earlier than 2023. However, that date was pushed forward from Meta’s original estimation. So it is pretty much anyone’s guess when it will be available.

The situation in Nebraska and other instances prove how Meta and other tech companies are handling, or rather mishandling, user security. 

Apple can do more for the LGBTQ+ community

Lockdown Mode is a decisive move forward in attempting to impede the growing proliferation of state-sponsored cyberattacks on people living under the shadow of arrest, imprisonment, or execution. 

That said, companies like Apple need to be doing more.

Even Apple extending the idea of using it to try and protect LGBTQ+ individuals would be a start. Their support of the right to love (or in some cases, even exist) sends an important message to those living in fear that they are seen and supported.

Homophobic governments might also get a message: The rest of the world is going to be keeping a careful watch on them.

Image sources: surasak_ch

M. Christian

M.Christian (they/them) loves nothing better than exploring the intersections of sex and technology—and speculating on the future of both. A highly regarded erotica writer they have six novels,12 collections, 100+ short stories, and 25 anthologies as an editor to their name. Their non-fiction regularly appears in many sites, but they're most proud of being a regular contributor to Future of Sex.

Of their erotic fiction, Tristan Taormino said that “M.Christian is a literary stylist of the highest caliber: smart, funny, frightening, sexy—there's nothing [they] can't write about… and brilliantly.”

Reflecting their unique ability to sympathetically and convincingly write for a range of genders and sexual orientations, their stories have appeared in multiple editions of Best American Erotica, Best Gay Erotica, Best Lesbian Erotica, The Mammoth Books of Erotica, and others. Their collection of gay erotic fiction, Dirty Words, was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award.

While a majority of their stories have been collected into books like Dirty Words, their fondness for combining sex and science fiction is clearly evident in collections that include Rude Mechanicals, Technorotica, Better Than The Real Thing, Skin Effect Effect, Bachelor Machine, and Hard Drive: The Best Sci-Fi Erotica of M.Christian.

As a novelist, M.Christian’s versatility is on full display with Running Dry, The Very Bloody Marys, Brushes, Painted Doll; and the somewhat controversial queer BDSM/horror/thrillers Finger's Breadth, and Me2.

M.Christian has worked on the industry’s production side as an Associate Publisher for Renaissance E Books and as a Publisher for Digital Parchment Services. The latter dedicated to celebrating the works of science-fiction legends such as William Rotsler, Jerome Bixby, Jody Scott, Arthur Byron Cover, Ernest Hogan, and James Van Hise.

Covering topics like BDSM safety, sexual education, senior sexuality concerns, queer and gender issues, plus reviewing a variety of sex tech products, M.Christian’s non-fiction has appeared on sites like Kinkly, Tickle.Life, Sexpert, Queer Majority, Sex for Every Body, and—of course—their ongoing work for Future of Sex.

If there’s anything M.Christian enjoys more than writing, it’s teaching. A featured presenter, sometimes with their friend Ralph Greco Jr, at national sex and BDSM events, they have lectured on kink play (with an emphasis on safety), polyamory, boosting sexual creativity, and erotica writing--for beginners or those wanting to go pro.

M.Christian is a cohost on two popular sex-education podcasts: Love’s Outer Limits with Dr. Amy Marsh and Licking Non-Vanilla with Ralph Greco, Jr.
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