Comment by otterley
1 day ago
If they say they don't, and they do, then that's fraud, and they could be held liable for any damages that result. And, if word got out that they were defrauding customers, that would result in serious reputational damage to Apple (who uses their security practices as an industry differentiator) and possibly a significant customer shift away from them. They don't want that.
The government would never prosecute a company for fraud where that fraud consists of cooperating with the government after promising to a suspected criminal that they wouldn't.
That's not the scenario I was thinking of. There are other possibilities here, like providing a decryption key (even if by accident) to a criminal who's stolen a business's laptop, or if a business had made contractual promises to their customers, based on Apple's promises to them. The actions would be private (civil) ones, not criminal fraud prosecution.
Besides, Apple's lawyers aren't stupid enough to forget to carve out a law-enforcement demand exception.
Cooperating with law enforcement cannot be a fraud. Fraud is lying to get illegal gains. I think, it's legally ok to lie if the goal is to catch a criminal and help the government.
For example, in 20th century, an European manufacturer of encryption machines (Crypto AG [1]) made a backdoor at request of governments and never got punished - instead it got generous payments.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG
Absent the source code, it's incredibly difficult to disprove when the only proof you have is good vibes.
There are many things you can't prove or disprove in this world. That's where trust and reputation comes in - to fill the uncertainty gap.
You mean, trust and reputation of Apple? They're not exactly high:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26644216
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Apple has the number 1 marketing team in the world. They got away with PRISM and terrible security.
They are immune to reputation damage. Teens and moms don't care.
Terrible security... compared to what? Some ideal state that exists in your head, or a real-world benchmark? Do you expect them to ignore lawful orders from governments as well?