this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2024
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To support E2EE in RCS?
Correct
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?
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.
You didn't even need to say it once because I said it in the parent comment...
A lot of other people were under the impression that it was. I am not one of them. Please read better.
Yes they do. The reason is the same one that forced Apple to implement RCS and forced WhatsApp to interoperate as well.
I already answered this. Please read better.
Judging by the community response here… no, you have not, please write better.
I won’t bother replying anymore.
The community response does not determine whether or not I have provided an answer. The fact that I already answered it proves that I did. Literally just scroll up. It's not that hard.