Comment by ckcheng

> Any solution Apple develops that enables "disable E2E for this account" makes it harder for them to claim that implementing that would be compelling work (or speech, if you prefer)

I think it’s really speech [0], which is why it’s important to user privacy and security that Apple widely advertises their entire product line and business as valuing privacy. That way, it’s a higher bar for a court to cross, on balance, when weighing whether to compel speech/code (& signing) to break E2EE.

After all, if the CEO says privacy is unimportant [1], maybe compelling a code update to break E2EE is no big deal? (“The court is just asking you, Google, to say/code what you already believe”).

Whereas if the company says they value privacy, then does the opposite without so much as a fight and then the stock price drops, maybe that’d be securities fraud? [2]. And so maybe that’d be harder to compel.

[0]: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-26/everyt...