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This is our best look yet at RCS working on an iPhone (www.androidauthority.com)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 5 months ago (1 children)

E2EE is not part of the standard and only exists as a proprietary Google extension, using Google’s servers. Implying that implementing RCS would get everyone cross-platform E2EE is misinformation.

[+] [email protected] -17 points 5 months ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago (1 children)

And why should apple (or anyone for that matter) be forced to use googles proprietary code for an “open standard”?

Also,

There is, naturally, a wrinkle here. The RCS standard still doesn't support end-to-end encryption. Apple, which has offered encrypted messaging for over a decade, is kind of a stickler about security. Apple says it won't be supporting any proprietary extensions that seek to add encryption on top of RCS and hopes, instead, to work with the GSM Association to add encryption to the standard.

https://www.techradar.com/phones/iphone/breaking-apple-will-support-rcs-in-2024

[+] [email protected] -12 points 5 months ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Well then why did you describe them not doing that as malicious compliance?

[+] [email protected] -10 points 5 months ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

To support E2EE in RCS?

[+] [email protected] -3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Apple offers first party E2EE messaging for their clients, via iMessage.

As part of China’s certification requirements, Apple has been tasked to support RCS, which, per the spec, does not have E2EE feature.

I’ll say this again: RCS does not support E2EE.

If that’s not registering: RCS does not support E2EE.

Come to the think of it, it would actually be surprising if China is mandating an E2EE capable implementation, but I digress.

In order to comply with this requirement, Apple implemented RCS per the specs of RCS. Again, RCS does not support E2EE. There is no specification of RCS that supports E2EE at this time.

Google runs a proprietary system that they’ve built based off of RCS, but is not RCS. This proprietary protocol, which is not RCS, has custom extensions of their own to offer E2EE. Apple is under zero obligation to implement against this, because this is not RCS. In fact, as demonstrated, even other Android systems don’t do this. They use the carrier RCS, which while fragmented and incomplete, consistently does not have E2EE, because, again, RCS does not support E2EE.

There are plenty of cross platform E2EE solutions available: Matrix, Signal, and WhatsApp, are a few major players that popped to mind. I’m sure there are plenty of others that I didn’t call out. They are cross platform which means they already exist on both iOS and Android platforms.

Neither Apple nor Google have any reason to implement those protocols, as, again, they already exist on platform.

How is Apple not implementing Google’s proprietary extension malicious compliance as you called it?

[–] [email protected] -1 points 5 months ago

To add to this: Apple is actively working with Google and the GSMA to add E2EE to the RCS standard. Apple can no do this on their own, as RCS is a standard set by the GSMA. They need to go through the entire slow and bureaucratic process to add a feature to RCS, so while this will appear eventually I wouldn’t hold my breath.

This also shows exactly why something like RCS cannot ever offer anything other than the bare basic messaging functionality. You cannot innovate on RCS because every change needs to go through a committee who’s all want to have a say in it and before you know it you’re spending years in committee meetings to add a single feature.

Meanwhile, Apple decides they want to add a feature to iMessage, they roll it out in the next iOS update and it’s available to billions of users pretty much overnight.