Comment by willtemperley

You restate my hypothesis adding your own words:

"also, making it easier to detect and prosecute criminals, and thus protect the citizens from physical harm."

Did this happen though? Whilst I agree with your philosophy, in reality the UK government are no closer to lawfully accessing our data, but our data are less protected from potential other threats (e.g. unlawful access to a data centre, rogue Apple employees).

It's what actually happened as opposed to the government intention that matters to the people affected.

So my statement "Lowering the data protection of it's citizens in comparison to the rest of the world" still stands, and I'd add "whilst the UK government achieved absolutely zero in its quest to lawfully access individual's data".