Putin versus iMessage — round one to Apple.
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Russia is cracking down on U.S. technology. WhatsApp is being phased out for “violations of the law and the use of the service for illegal activities,” while the country’s telecoms regulator has also now banned FaceTime. Roskomnadzor says the video calling platform “is being used to organise and carry out terrorist attacks in the country, recruit perpetrators, and commit fraud and other crimes against Russian citizens.”
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But not iMessage. Despite even Snapchat being hit with new restrictions, it appears that Apple’s in-house, fully encrypted messenger has escaped unscathed. Quipping that “I’m sure the crime rate in Russia will soon plummet,” John Gruber posed the obvious question on his Daring Fireball blog. “I’m curious why iMessage isn’t blocked too.”
The likely answer came via Mastodon. It seems Apple managed to sneak iMessage in under the noses of the mobile network operators when it launched, undermining their own SMS platforms. iMessage runs on the same platform as iPhone’s push notifications, and these were a major USP back in the day. You can’t have one without the other.
Apparently, that’s the same reason push notifications works on messaging only in-flight Wi-Fi, even when the apps behind those notifications are not connected.
Watch this space. Encrypted messaging is now facing a hailstorm of proposed regulation and legislation, and not just in Russia. Europe is progressing its Chat Control, which seems to be the beginning of a long and worrying thread for the EU. While the U.K., fresh from its encrypted iCloud and porn bans, now wants to monitor cloud storage.
iMessage is a great platform. Its cross-platform, fully end-to-end encrypted architecture is arguably the best in the business. But it still has a gaping hole in its security. There is no way to send a secure message between iphones and Androids, almost a decade after WhatsApp made that possible. It’s now 2025, and that needs to change.
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While this explanation for iMessage beating Putin’s ban seems plausible, there are other steps Russia could take to disrupt encrypted comms between Apple users. But as with most countries around the world outside the U.S., iMessage is an also-ran to WhatsApp. So maybe Putin and his censorship cronies don’t care.