The UK’s surveillance proposal is more draconian than China’s current treatment of Apple, though. FaceTime an iMessage work exactly the same in China as they do in every other country. They’re fully end-to-end encrypted and Apple’s logging of metadata is extremely minimal. China’s policies are deeply problematic they seem content to let Apple get away with the bare minimum of legal compliance, in contrast to local companies who bend over backwards to comply with every whim of the CCP. Could Apple make a principled stand against China? Sure. Would that make some self-righteous people feel good? Definitely. Would it do anything at all to improve the privacy of people in China? Absolutely not. They’d lose their most-private option. That’s the real-world outcome.
The UK, on the other hand, is actually still a democracy. A combative and principled stand against government overreach can actually change government policy and preserve end-user privacy.
The scenario where they’re lying would would mean they’re falsely responding to countless subpoenas for data by claiming they don’t have information that they do. This would be a massive globe-spanning crime requiring the coordination (“conspiracy” in criminal law) of hundreds or thousands of people, and also enormous civil liability. This would instantly wipe hundreds of billions of dollars off the stock and destroy their reputation, all so they could … what? It’s cheaper and easier for them to simply collect less data in the first place. Useless user data is nothing more than a liability for Apple.
The UK’s surveillance proposal is more draconian than China’s current treatment of Apple, though. FaceTime an iMessage work exactly the same in China as they do in every other country. They’re fully end-to-end encrypted and Apple’s logging of metadata is extremely minimal. China’s policies are deeply problematic they seem content to let Apple get away with the bare minimum of legal compliance, in contrast to local companies who bend over backwards to comply with every whim of the CCP. Could Apple make a principled stand against China? Sure. Would that make some self-righteous people feel good? Definitely. Would it do anything at all to improve the privacy of people in China? Absolutely not. They’d lose their most-private option. That’s the real-world outcome.
The UK, on the other hand, is actually still a democracy. A combative and principled stand against government overreach can actually change government policy and preserve end-user privacy.
has there been any independent audit on this?
The scenario where they’re lying would would mean they’re falsely responding to countless subpoenas for data by claiming they don’t have information that they do. This would be a massive globe-spanning crime requiring the coordination (“conspiracy” in criminal law) of hundreds or thousands of people, and also enormous civil liability. This would instantly wipe hundreds of billions of dollars off the stock and destroy their reputation, all so they could … what? It’s cheaper and easier for them to simply collect less data in the first place. Useless user data is nothing more than a liability for Apple.