Comment by piyuv
1 day ago
When UK demanded a backdoor to e2ee in iMessage, Apple told them they’d rather get out of UK. Why not do the same here? You’re posing a false dichotomy.
1 day ago
When UK demanded a backdoor to e2ee in iMessage, Apple told them they’d rather get out of UK. Why not do the same here? You’re posing a false dichotomy.
> Apple told them they’d rather get out of UK
To my knowledge, Apple has always said that their response would be to withdraw affected services rather than break encryption.
> Apple has said planned changes to British surveillance laws could affect iPhone users’ privacy by forcing it to withdraw security features, which could ultimately lead to the closure of services such as FaceTime and iMessage in the UK.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jul/20/uk-survei...
True! Thanks for the correction.
IMO they could’ve categorized the whole iCloud service as “affected” and disable all of it.
My guess is that the order they received would have only effected encrypted device backups, at least so far.
Users in the UK do still have the option to perform an encrypted backup to their local PC or Mac.
What would that change, effectively, other than have Apple lose money?
The UK would still lose ADP (and then also just Apple products in general). A precedent would still be set.
Your posing a strictly worse third option. Sure, it's an option, I guess. Apple could also just close down globally, as a fourth option. Or sell off to Google as a fifth. But I was trying to present the least-bad option (turn off ADP), rather than an exhaustive list.
I totally get your point, but calling the UK's bluff could work. Are they really willing to ban Apple products in the UK? Maybe, maybe not
Depends on if the US emperor and his cronies have the UK's backs on this issue. If they don't, calling the bluff would work, there's zero chance the UK gov would ban Apple products without US approval. The backlash among the public would be far worse than the TikTok ban. Imagine all companies using Macs. The order of power here is US > Apple > UK.