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Comment by insane_dreamer | Hacker News Reader

> I'm still missing how this could be enforced ?

By banning Apple from doing business in the UK.

The US used a similar strategy decades ago to break Swiss Bank Secrecy laws (either Swiss banks had to give up the info or they were going to be kicked out of the US).

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> By banning Apple from doing business in the UK.

As someone else here said, Apple would 100% call this bluff. And you can be certain the UK won't have the US to put pressure on Apple for them. All the would happen is the UK Apple users would be with an expensive paperweight.

That assumes that Apple's shareholders believe that Apple's privacy reputation (relative to other companies) is more valuable than access to the UK market.

All evidence that I have seen suggests that consumers by and large do not care about this kind of privacy. They do not buy iPhones instead of other phones due to the privacy properties.

Therefore Apple's shareholders could order Apple to stay in the UK market.

And if not, then Apple's customers could be compensated with money and other UK-held assets that the government could confiscate.

According to NASDAQ [1] the two main investors are Vanguard and Blackrock, but the two of them together are far away from 50%. There are a number of other large investors. I didn't do the sums but there must be probably 30 of them to get to 50%. Do some of them care about privacy of common people? Probably not. About the people in their boards? Probably yes.

[1] https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/aapl/instituti...

This is usually true of any corp. However, Apple is the one big tech company that has built its reputation on privacy more than any other, and Cook in particular is very strong on that -- and he's not prone to Zuck-like flip/flopping, at least not so far.

You may be right, of course. But if there's one tech company who _might_ say "no", it's Apple.

Counterpoint: Apple in China.

Most users don't care about that stuff, but I think a small but significant percentage do. I have never been an Apple fan but I am aware that they are significantly better than Windows and Andorid for security and privacy.

UK can just start fining apple billions of dollars if they dont want to fully kick them out of the country.

Actually, maybe this is what the government's end goal is. Free money!

Swiss banks didn't care - they didn't have a large Us presence anyway. Until the US started enforcing this by proxy, other banks couldn't do business with you and the US and overall the US is more important to the world than Swiss banks.

Not so sure. Yeah, they didn't have a large US presence but they did a lot of business with US banks and securities markets -- that's what was threatened. It's wasn't the ability to have branches in the US but the ability to conduct business in US markets.

Yep, and the US had a lot more leverage; out of the US translates into no access to US dollars either directly or via a correspondent bank, which essentially means bankruptcy.

> By banning Apple from doing business in the UK.

To use poker terminology: I think that if the UK made this bet that Apple would call.

I really hope so. I would love to see that showdown. Hopefully, "can't buy an iPhone in the UK and everyone knows why" makes the Snooper's Charter a radioactive mess that legislators fall all over themselves to repeal.

Exactly, imagine the legislatures facing their irate teen daughters for bricking Apple devices.

I don't see how closing Apple UK would mean "can't buy an iPhone in the UK". Importing is a thing.

In which case, Apple still wins by not having to put in a backdoor.

Apple stockholders would never allow that.

> Apple stockholders would never allow that.

Then they can vote in a board of directors that agrees with them, and have that board fire Tim Cook.

I would hazard to guess that you'll see an exodus of a lot of folks leaving Apple either because (a) they won't follow that order, or (b) in solidarity with those that are fired.

Reminder that privacy is feature that Apple touts (how much you believe them is up to you):

> On January 28, 2021, Apple CEO Tim Cook delivered remarks at Computers, Privacy & Data Protection Conference: Enforcing Rights in a Changing World. The virtual conference — hosted annually in Brussels, Belgium — is one of the foremost international privacy and technology conferences bringing together leaders from academia, government, civil society and the private sector. Learn more about the features and controls Apple provides users to safeguard their privacy at http://www.apple.com/privacy

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaLxTz1Yw7M

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HjDpPnxcP0

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YOi0r3vptQ

I don't know where your ideas are coming from - Apple easily folded and gave all data to Chinese government when commanded to do so under leadership of Tim Cook.

Where does your thinking that they'll suddenly forget about revenue from UK over this come from?

> Where does your thinking that they'll suddenly forget about revenue from UK over this come from?

* https://www.google.com/search?q=apple+china+revenues

* https://www.google.com/search?q=apple+uk+revenues

Probably the belief that the CCP would survive Apple withdrawing from China, but the UK government would not survive Apple withdrawing from the UK.

Shutdown by voluntary liquidation requires shareholder approval, cannot be done by the board alone.

They ban Apple from doing business and watch as the uk stock market goes into the toilet as companies scramble to get out.

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