14 DAY TRIAL // A short-lived scandal erupted yesterday, with privacy groups accusing Amazon of not caring about today's state of encryption, all while Apple is desperately trying to keep the FBI away from its iOS operating system's encryption capabilities.
It all started with a tweet from a Fire Tablet user who had just received the Fire OS 5 upgrade. The user highlighted a paragraph in the Fire OS 5's user guide in the encryption section, which read, "Your device has encrypted data. However, device encryption is no longer supported in Fire OS 5. Follow the steps outlined below to save your data."
The tweet went viral because it got caught up in the whole Apple vs. FBI scandal that's been flooding the news lately, and many users jumped to the conclusion of "look at these Amazon guys, they're removing encryption to make the FBI's job easier."
Fire OS 5 removed encryption support last fall
To fend off the critics, Amazon had to come out and explain, or better yet, remind people that Fire OS 5, the operating system that powers Kindle and various Amazon Fire devices, was released last fall, and that's when encryption was really removed.
The user who sent out the tweet had only received a delayed Fire OS 5 upgrade on an older device, and the removal of encryption support had nothing to do with Apple, nor the FBI.
The company explained that it removed on-device data encryption because its internal telemetry data showed that very few people were using it, so it made no sense to bog down the OS with unused features.
Amazon also told customers that any data sent to their servers or other websites will still use encryption and that on-device encryption was only employed to protect locally stored data against unauthorized access or in case the device was stolen or lost.
While Apple fights the good fight, @Amazon removes encryption as option from FireOS 5 | @csoghoian @normative @eff pic.twitter.com/nggBdtFG7j — David Scovetta (@davidscovetta) March 3, 2016