The nuclear option is probably to just stop selling their products in Australia. The population of Australia is only 25 million people. It would be a huge hit but not insurmountable, and then the Australian politicians would face significant backlash and probably walk back the law.
Someone needs to. With EU laws, Australian laws, US laws, and more and more every day, the internet is rapidly becoming a tool of the least common denominator. In other words, whatever country has the toughest laws will govern the planetary internet system as all others will have to follow by extension. Apple, for example, can't make an iphone for every country to comply with that countries individual laws that differ from every other country, which also change with a regular basis.
Of course though, there will always be hackers skating on top relatively free. We're becoming a two-tiered internet. The relatively few who know how to get around the restrictions, and everybody else.
All Apple has to do is float the possibility they may not sell their products in Australia anymore, and point out why. The rest would take care of itself.
All they'd really have to do is announce that they are considering it. Just write up an analysis and stick it on their website. The world will notice, immediately. How many hours do you think it would take before it was a major news story everywhere?
The golden times for the internet are over anyway. It went from an optimistic dream of free expression of information to a platform for delivering ads.
The Internet serves people all-over the world and must respect local laws, because it serves the local people.
Also, free expression is stronger than ever before. You can now even claim your opinion is a fact.
These new voyuer laws in Australia are obviously much more severe, but there is precedent for a company to customise phones by jurisdiction.
One is a law requiring phones to try to alert people whose privacy is being invaded in some circumstances.
The other is a law requiring phones to invade people’s privacy in some circumstances.
I think it is quite reasonable to follow the former, just as it could be reasonable for laws to require phones to broadcast tsunami warnings or meet various antitrust requirements.
A law that restricts my freedom to customize my device. Plus their privacy was being invaded from the moment that I looked at them, taking a photo would not change anything.
> just as it could be reasonable for laws to require phones to broadcast tsunami warnings
As long as it is configurable, sure.
Since Apple sold iPhones only through carriers initially, they complied with this agreement.
A better example of this would be Apple disabling FaceTime on phones sold in the UAE, which is the result of a law, and the feature stays disabled even if the region is changed from/the phone is removed from the UAE.
Well, they can. You can do a lot when you're a trillion dollar company. It's just grossly inefficient and ugly and they'll try to avoid it if they can, sharing as much as possible when they can't, the same way everyone deals with multiple possible configurations they have to support. I too hope they put their foot down, though.
I'd hate to think of what a special iPhone would cost just for the Australian market, which is relatively small, should Apple (and others) decide to not foist this on everyone else world-wide. Just come out with different hardware that's easier to hack just for Australia - only to be sold in Australia, and charge appropriately. Make them pay more to be less secure. It would be justifiable if the hardware was different for a smaller market. It's no different than if they came up with their own cellular system that was incompatible with international standards. It would cost more to build for it because it's a small market with unique requirements.
Disclosure: I work for Apple.
Values are useful, but not as useful as an attractive stock-price.
This is a dumb, untenable, largely unenforceable and pointless law.
Even if Apple were to start delaying product releases in Australia by six months to do "legislative compliance reviews" or some such. With telcos on-board, this might encourage our politicians to listen to actual experts when touting this kind of legislation.
The stupidy here crosses the isle.
I suspect Apple can trivially walk away from Australia as a market if they think it's for a very good cause. It won't be a huge hit, it's a small hit (~1.7% of annual global iPhone sales).
Australia is worth maybe $6-$7 billion per year in total sales to Apple. They sell about four million iPhones per year there (9.2m smartphones sold last year, Apple has 44% of the market), then throw in Macs, iPads, watches and services.
It's an affluent market and it would suck to give it up, as it'd be very difficult to regain the market share afterward. I'd worry that the reality would be that easy product substitution would make the move meaningless in terms of benefiting Australians (even though it would still be an important moral stand for Apple to take). There would be short-term blowback about it and that would pass in a matter of weeks.
They could potentially stop selling software products and disable service access entirely.
What if all customer photos on iCloud become inaccessible, all iTunes and App purchases become inaccessible and OS updates stop. Then Apple stores shut down, customer support or repairs become unavailable, thousands of jobs are lost. I feel like the blowback would last much longer than a few weeks.
That's an extreme response, but if Apple really wanted to get the point across they can easily include it alongside any other threatening proposals.
Why? They clearly have cooperated with countries' requests even if it seemingly went against their principles (e.g. Chinese laws around iCloud data). And they also have a history of not even making it known they disagree, fought against it, or anything via public statement. You won't know whether they comply or not, may not know whether they are OK with it, and judging from history they probably will comply.
This is version 1.0. The law can be redrafted to remove any doubts. Once Australia gets it, so will USA and others via sharing agreements (5 eyes).
Or sell a clearly-branded Australia version without the Secure Enclave.
- Criminals and people of all types would use imported iPhones.
- To counter this the carriers would have to use IMEI filters to only allow approved phones.
- Intl visitors would have to get a local handset (probably not such a drama as their corp wouldn't allow bringing the IT gear to Australia anyway, much like going to China).
- So you use a local phone for Wifi hotspot and run an imported phone using iMessage/Signal etc.
- Carrier locked devices disable hotspot? Special Apple app to only allow sharing to registered devices? Extra madness.
OR:
- Apple has Australian hosted iMessage zone, when you roam here it tells you and your contacts that your messages might be intercepted by the Au Gov, Click Okay to Continue?
- Same for FB/WhatsApp etc.
- Non-compliant apps are banned from launching in Australia, baseband asks carrier for updates to this list (bloom filter) daily.
- Criminals continue to operate encrypted comms from black market wifi devices, like the old contraband 'unlocked' Raspberry Pi, even though possession of one results in 5y in gaol.
- Mandatory GPS location reporting from phones, for public safety.
- Warrant requirement is dropped for AI access. Messages flagged by AI get auto warrants.
- Spook's are unable to sort wheat from chaff, terrorist attacks continue.
Phase 2
- Political activists start getting convicted for conspiracy to plan illegal gatherings, spreading Fake News, etc, based on their messages.
- Social credit system to crack down on car hoons, welfare cheats and drug users, has full access to your messages and location.
- Undesirable elements are send to rural areas for compulsory education and 'work for the dole'.
- SoCred made public to Shame those misbehaving.
- SoCred expands to include 'disrespecting religion', 'mocking the PM'. Companies lose contracts if too many of their staff have low SoCred.
- Banks, insurance, schools, employers use SoCred in deciding whether to deal with you.
- China and other regimes thank Australia for lighting the way.
- The end of the 3rd Age of Crypto.