Comment by Lio

It's also worth noting that one of the ways the five eyes get around domestic spying laws is to spy on each other's citizens. So the CIA spy on British citizens the UK government want to spy on, and GCHQ spy on American citizens the US government want to spy on. So this would indirectly allow the US government to spy on US citizens (even more than it already does, anyway)

Why are you using Russia and China as examples of the bad guys here. They're not asking for global access to everyones data, the UK is. The UK are the bad guys.

The thing is, most people think that governments wants new tools for surveillance. The fact is, they had this power for a very long time (see Crypto A.G. and history of NSA and others), and practical and verifiable E2EE took these capabilities away.

Now they want their toys back. This is why the push is so hard and coming from everywhere at once.

What stops them is one of two things:

Option 1: they operate a separate shard in that country and that shared is only accessible by that country. Companies like Apple, AWS, Cloudflare etc. have been doing it this way in China for a while now. Result: they can spy on the stuff in their country, but the only stuff in their country is their own stuff.

Option 2: no longer operate in an official capacity in that country. Have no people and no assets. Mostly works when the country is not a significant market. This usually means some things are only available grey market, black market or not at all. This is why certain products have lists of "supported countries" - it's not just ITAR stuff but also "we don't want to deal with their regime" stuff. Result: country gets nothing, no matter how loud they ask. Side-effect: you can't really risk your employees visiting such a country as they will be "leveraged".

> If Apple can provide the UK government with foreign data, what's to stop Russia or China making them provide data on UK minister's phones, or more likely dissidents in exile?

nothing

the first precedence of not-draft law here was Cloud Act I think

through I would be surprised if China doesn't "de-facto" requires Chineese companies operating outside of China (including Subsidiaries) to cooperate with their secret service in whatever way they want

and if we go back to the "crypto wars" of the ~2000th then there is a lot of precedence of similar law _ideas_ by the US which where turned down

similar we can't say for sure that there aren't secret US court orders which already did force apple to do "something like that" for the FBI or similar, SURE there is a lot of precedence of Apple pushing back against backdoor when it comes to police and offline device encryption, but one thing is in the public and the other fully in secret with gag orders and meant for usage in secret never seeing the light of courts so while it's somewhat unlikely it would be foolish to just assume it isn't the case, especially if we go forward one or two years with the current government...

Anyway UK might realize that now they have left the US they have very little power to force US tech giants to do anything _in the UK_ not even speaking about regulation which is a direct attack on the sovereignty of other states to own/control/decide about their population(s data).

IMHO ignoring the US for a moment because they are in chaos the EU, or at least some key EU states should make a statement that a UK backdoor allowing UK to access EU citizen data would be classified as espionage and isn't permittable if Apple wants to operate in the EU (but formulated to make it clear it's not to put pressure on Apple but on the UK). Sadly I don't see this happening as there are two many politcans which want laws like that, too. Often due to not understanding the implications undermining encryption has on national security, industry espionage and even protection of democracy as a whole... Sometimes also because they are greedy corrupt lobbyist from the industry which produces mass surveillance tools.

There are tangentially similar precedents already, such as the American FACTA law. It is obviously a quite different context, as it just relates to financial information, not all information - but it's a law from the US government, that demands foreign companies send information back to the US.

The wild thing is that foreign companies actually do it. To avoid annoying the US, a lot of other governments ensure that the data is reported.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Account_Tax_Compliance...

> what's to stop Russia or China making them provide data on UK minister's phones, or more likely dissidents in exile?

Realistically: Apple is a US company (with lots of foreign entanglements) with US leaders, and the US and UK are close allies with extradition treaties and the like. I'd expect the US government to put lots of pressure on Apple to prevent it from acting on such requests from Russia or China, and I wouldn't be surprised if Apple execs would get slapped with espionage charges if they didn't head the warnings (especially if they "provide data on UK minister's phones").

We are watching the redefinition of the idea of territorial sovereignty that emerged from the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. We in the US see our expectations of privacy shaped in the UK, and the reverse.

Imagine Kim Jong-un goes to a few police stations in North Korea. It might not work on the first try, but eventually, he manages to trick one officer into believing that Trump threatened him on Facebook. Now, the police of a given country can legally request Apple to provide all information from Trump’s iCloud for an "investigation" into threats of violence— even if they are completely fabricated.

Or what's keeping the US from asking for Data, too.

What if Apple just stops operating in the UK? They could start selling "English language" iPhones in France, let people go on a day trip if they wanted to buy them. There are ways of sidestepping this bullshit if you're an international company. Supposing they have any integrity, I mean. How far will the UK double down?

You lost me at "government thinks". ;-)

At what point is this just extortionary cash grab from U.S. tech companies?

Want to fund some expensive grand program? Find a reason to fine U.S. companies.

Give me that sort of commitment to privacy and translucent colorful cases for future Macs and Tim Apple's got my money for the next five years at least.

Give Apple a big enough incentive to negotiate with and they may very well cave. If I've learned anything about corporations, it's that money and incentives always speak louder than their purported values.

Yes, this would be something i would love to read

In China, Apple limits end to end encryption and stores user data on state-owned servers. The Chinese app stores censors apps like the New York Times and Washington Post, disallows privacy apps like Signal, or any VPN that might bypass the great firewall.

I think the odds that they quit trying to earn the ~$100B annual revenues they get from the UK over this is closer to zero than 1

They obviously don't care about privacy enough to fully withdraw from the UK! That would be insane.

Tim Apple has been on inauguration, so very possible.

I have bad news for you...

So at least we don't have to worry about anything. Apple can give them access to LLM generated SQLite rows and call it a day. Nobody would notice.

Yes but no, post WW2 the UK was one of the most liberal places in the world. Somehow things took a turn in the past two decades or so. And then around the 2020s the decline started to rapidly accelerate. The stories that have come out lately are really insane.

Perhaps. Another possibility is that the same societal shift that drove the UK to give up the right to be armed also pushed them in the direction of giving up other rights.

Poland broke the Enigma code .. and built the first Bombes.

Maybe you're thinking of William Thomas Tutte breaking the Tunny (sawfish) code?

The war on terror was a big thing in the UK long before 2001—largely because there was in fact quite a lot of terrorism going on there, to be clear.

As Apple isn’t based in the UK and owes no fealty to their government. I don’t agree that your citation is relevant here. Apple is a US company. Bribing local officials to overlook the gay founder is sensible corporate practices, however uncomfortable that is to consider. Revoking privacy guarantees globally, reversing years of public opinion gains overnight, is not. The UK cannot do anything to materially harm Apple in any way that Apple can’t afford short of sending a double-oh to Cupertino.

Of course Apple doesn't have principles, they're a for-profit company. What's in question here is whether they believe the UK is financially worth opening this can of worms. Following US government whims is good business for them in almost all cases, but that math isn't the same for the UK.

For $1 million, you’re promised intimate access to Trump and his inner circle. This isn’t just about tradition or unity-it’s about buying influence and maintaining power. In a world where we’re supposedly pushing for fairness, equality, and transparency, this feels incredibly hypocritical. It’s as if we’re endorsing a system where money talks louder than public interest or ethical considerations. It makes you wonder where the line is between modern capitalism and a system that operates more like an oligarchy.

Google had shareholders in 2005 too or thereabouts when they publicly decided to abandon the Chinese search market for soft, fuzzy reasons (i.e., not because they were losing money on Chinese operations).

And as far as I know, they're still absent from the Chinese search market.