Comment by troupo
1 day ago
> What concerns me more is that Apple is the only company audibly making a stand.
They are not making a stand. They roll over without a peep. And this is concerning users' privacy which they say is the core of the company.
Compare it to fighting every government tooth and nail over every single little thing concerning the "we don't know if it's profitable and we don't keep meeting records" AppStore
"Not making a stand" would be leaving everything as is, and handing your encryption keys over to the government. By loudly disabling ADP and saying this feature is illegal in the UK (they really should have said "illegal" instead of "unavailable" so people would know it was the government), they are at least making half a stand. By leaving it enabled in other regions and for visitors from other regions to the UK, they're making three quarters of a stand.
> By loudly disabling ADP and saying this feature is illegal in the UK
They didn't say anything loudly, or said it was illegal in the UK.
All they had was a single comment to a single (or perhaps a handful at most) comment to a media outlet that they disabled it.
They didn't even bother with a press release, or notify their users.
It's not even half a stand. It's a rollover
“ They roll over without a peep.”
What are you talking about? This is literally them doing the opposite, and there are multiple other public instances of them making a stand, not to mention in the design of their systems.
Truly curious how you see this that way.
"Literally doing the opposite" would be keeping encryption on.
Removing encryption for everyone is literally doing the opposite of making a stand
They had two paths to comply with the law. Silently backdoor the worldwide cloud serving every Apple device, or loudly tell people in the UK they don't get to have security because their government prohibits them. Between these two options, this is clearly "making a stand".
It's not as much "making a stand" as telling a major government that you have substantial seizable assets under their jurisdiction who is a major market you want to be in, that you're not going to do the thing that their laws say you are required to do, but it's hardly simple compliance either, instead of doing what the government wants them to do, they are making sure there is blowback.
Whether to try to fight it in court likely depends on details of case law and the wording of the laws they'd be contesting, I imagine much of the delay in their response to the demand was asking their lawyers how well they think they would fare in court.
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