Apple's Best Option: Decentralize iCloud | Hacker News Reader

Apple's Best Option: Decentralize iCloud

mnot.net

109 pointsingve127 comments

Apple cares about profits, and only about users to the extent that it can profit from them. The touted security and privacy aspects of their service are useful for marketing, but they are not primarily why people buy Apple devices.

They already operate in China, allowing the Chinese government to access all "Chinese" user data. Non-Chinese Apple accounts also work perfectly well in China, which leads me to believe that the extent of data sharing is greater than has been disclosed (or dissidents could just use a foreign phone to avoid surveillance). I strongly suspect the CIA/FBI/DHS has similar access.

(Microsoft stuff also works fine in China, Google stuff does not. Draw your own conclusions.)

I think it's somewhat likely they'll just backdoor it and not tell the public, they can see this is just the way the world is headed.

If you want to message someone secretly, use an audited open source solution - don't rely on a megacorp to look out for your interests.

> Non-Chinese Apple accounts also work perfectly well in China, which leads me to believe that the extent of data sharing is greater than has been disclosed

Yes because people just use VPNs to access overseas e.g. US iCloud servers.

That has nothing to do with whether Apple is sharing data with Chinese authorities or not.

Non-Chinese iCloud accounts seem to work fine in China without a VPN. (A VPN is needed for Google's services, though.)

My iCloud account worked fine in Pyongyang.

> Google stuff does not. Draw your own conclusions.

It wasn't security related, they didn't filter search results for Winnie the Pooh.

I think you're being a bit unfair here. Apple does care about security and privacy. It's part of their culture.

The company culture is relatively malleable. Apple does probably care about security and privacy, but mainly because of profits. That does help in this case because they don't want leave themselves between two big portions of profits.

> Apple does care about security and privacy. It's part of their culture.

It is when it suits and/or benefits them.

I totally agree and disagree. Yes it’s their culture but it’s not unfair at all.

Its the only big tech company that sells privacy to consumers. They could do that because unlike the competition they weren’t an ad company and thus didn’t need to spy. (This is changing and no longer true, but that’s a different story).

This competitive advantage goes away if nobody can sell privacy because it’s illegal. A publicly traded corporation does not exit a large market because one of their products is banned, much less because of principles. Apple will comply just as they’ve done before, and while maintaining the blast radius to only introducing the backdoor on UK residents.

The article‘s author argues that this would be a slippery slope with secondary and tertiary effects that Apple might not be willing to risk.

I really hope so! I have no doubts they will fight hard, and that will be good for everyone. But going decentralized? No way. The motivation isn’t privacy for the sake of human rights, is what I’m saying. Heck, I’m happy as long as Apple thinks it still is valuable enough to keep selling in a world of omnipresent surveillance. But I’m not delusional about the ”values” of a public mega corporation.

You appear to have misspelt "marketing".

Chinese iCloud accounts operate on Chinese infrastructure running Apple’s software managed by a Chinese entity. The arrangements are well documented and public, no need to speculate wildly.

Both Apple and Microsoft do what the article suggests - they decentralize services in China and partner with a local company to operate in keeping with Chinese law. Google took the option of pulling out of China, because their incentives were different.

Why do you trust random open source developers?

> Non-Chinese Apple accounts also work perfectly well in China, which leads me to believe that the extent of data sharing is greater than has been disclosed (or dissidents could just use a foreign phone to avoid surveillance).

The Chinese state could make foreign iphones unattractive to dissidents fairly easily without needing to compromise icloud.

Simply discover the foreign iphones by a process of elimination, and make it clear that having one attracts much more surveillance.

The biggest downside of Option 2 is stated as:

> Perhaps more importantly, this is also a strategically worrisome direction to go in, because it plays into the narrative that Big Tech is more powerful than sovereign nations.

I don't buy it. I think it can be a fantastic win for them. Announce a leave date unless the government backs down and advertise it heavily on TV and everywhere:

Your government wants us to spy on you. We are not going to comply. Call your parliament members to <blah>.

This would make them champions of privacy and every other government will know how deep their commitment is.

This is what I'm hoping for as well.

Hoping for this and hopefully it will drip over to the EU as they keep trying this as well. Companies need to make a stand, although most won't.

Isn't it a criminal offense if they acknowledge the request? It was leaked to wsj, Apple refused to say anything about it.

Yes, the request itself is required to be kept secret in a similar way to National Security Letters (NSL) in the US (when used under the Patriot Act disclosure provisions).

Although an outside chance, one possible outcome is a shareholder suit.

This assumes that most Britons oppose their government having such powers.

Which maybe they do in abstract, but when the government reframes this as, "Apple prevents us from catching child abusers", I don't think Apple would win that match.

The government sucks at marketing. Apple is great at it.

That still presumes that as an entire voting population, Britons would choose freedom over convenience or perception of propriety. The current government there doesn't appear to reflect the former.

Then again, not a UK resident, so what do I know?

Britons really don't like their current government (this sentiment has applied equally for most administrations in recent past).

Do you think people are going to believe Kier Starmer or whoever is Home Secretary right now vs. Apple?

I don't think "people" are going to have a say in this at all. Their privacy is now between Apple and the UK government, two entities with less-than-favorable track records protecting their constituents.

The UK could have followed the EU's lead in forcing Apple to diversify their service offerings. They could have written their own consumer protection laws or leveled lawsuits about Apple's dubious privacy considerations whenever they wanted. But instead they waited until it was too late, because everyone thought; it would never happen to me, right?

I know people will call this a fatalist reaction, but Apple has fought hard to control their fate. Now you have to trust that Apple will do the right thing, while Tim Cook stands shoulder-to-shoulder with America's most radical leader in half a century. If this matters to Britons, they should vote with their wallets and ditch Apple themselves.

The odds will be massively in favour to Apple, the British government is broke, they can't afford the consequence of Apple leaving UK market, it will be a fatal blow to the chanceller's pro-business policy.

I think it would be suicidal for Apple to comply with that. It would open it to requests for many other countries demanding the same. Now this will create problems because now countries will start requiring Apple not to disclose their citizens information to any other party. Now you have two opposing requirements that will lead to Apple products to be banned in many countries if not all. I think Apple have much to lose by complying with UK that just withdraw and make UK users put pressure on their government.

And it is not classical west vs east. I think this is on much more fundamental concept of sovereignty. Many countries on both sides of ideological spectrum invest a lot on hacking and zero days exploits to obtain information on specific targets. UK is too lazy and demanding this privacy violation and internationally illegal action (just guessing) to be routine request.

edit: Fix typos

> Now this will create problems because now countries will start requiring Apple no to disclose their citizens information to any other party.

This is an excellent take and I couldn’t agree more with it.

It's not entirely clear to me what it really is that UK authorities have ordered Apple to do.

If this is just about iCloud advanced protection as some sources say then I don't see how it would be suicidal for Apple to comply by disabling this optional and off by default feature for UK users.

But other sources claim that the order goes a lot further and doesn't just affect UK users. Does it include E2EE for Apple's password manager for instance? Does it include E2EE for iMessage? Does it include 3rd party E2EE apps in the App Store?

Apple already did the right thing almost ten years ago against an arguably more powerful entity https://www.apple.com/customer-letter/

I suspect in the current climate their response may be different, they may bend the knee.

Unlike The San Bernardino Case in 2016, Investigatory Powers Act (IPA) does not allow any public entity, apple or not, to publicly discuss that.

Need to make a

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary

an automatic part of the user agreement/license status.

Decentralize iCloud doesn’t solve the problem because the majority of users (myself included) would want to keep using their hosted/“official” version due to the Apple subscription bundles we’re already paying for (the blog mentions this) and wanting the smoothest/most fully featured version. If the UK mandates some sort of encryption backdoor then that will follow anywhere the protocol is used (in the UK, that is. Apple would certainly use a non-backdoored version everywhere else it’s legal).

Apple already gives access to China for Chinese citizens so they will do the same for UK citizens. Though looking at how the tech bros are getting chummy with the current US government that has fascist tendencies they might get the US government to force UK hand but will they as I think the US government would like to do the same as what UK is doing has been trying for years. Now with supreme courts judges in their pockets, firing of any opposition from government departments at least trying to. Gutting all regulation and consumer protection bodies who will go after the tech robber barons and stop them from doing anything they want.

Please read the UK case again. UK is requesting apple to give them access to any user's data worldwide not only UK users or data within UK jurisdiction. Sorry to be the one to say that but China is better here.

Apple cant as GPDR makes it impossible for them to give european data no matter how much UK asks

As I said in another comment. Yes that will be the case as now EU and other countries will require Apple to not do this. There is no way Apple will comply with UK without risking being banned from most of the world. But this does not change the fact that this is literally what UK is demanding.

Incorrect. GDPR does allow foreign government, as long as they have similar protection as GDPR, process the data for law enforcement and criminal investigation.

I'm not talking about GDPR specifically but about the future development if Apple accepts that. EU will consider it a problem when UK and later another countries request the same from Apple eventually.

GDPR have exceptions for law enforcement and governments.

I agree, however for different reasons. "Decentralise" has several different levels, and what is in the article could be done badly or well — just like default browser options.

The problem here is one of politics. Apple can't refuse to play this game, nor can it use technology to think outside the box — if Apple removes the possibilty of assisting via decryption, they may find the demand becomes to perform screen recording.

As a non-sovreign multinational corporation, Apple is a servant of many masters. That used to work OK, but now it increasingly looks like it doesn't.

My current best guess, from an armchair and without multinational legal training, is one "decentralise" option that might work is changing the corporate structure, for each jurisdiction to get its own Apple — has to be the whole to avoid demand escalation — that is licensed the OS but cannot force locally demanded changes onto any of the other Apples.

iCloud china is run by a third party ( https://support.apple.com/en-us/111754 ) so perhaps they'll continue in that direction.

Apple needs to take the nuclear option here. They don't have to actually go through with it, just the mere threat would be effective. Starmer is unpopular and desperate for political wins, he has little to lose by conceding, whereas Apple has a lot to lose by conceding.

Their best option, and the option they will surely take, is to refuse the request

How does this play out? They pay a fine? Tim Cook is extradited? Something in between?

lol no way trump would let the UK extradite a US CEO.

Although I agree — and also left the UK in part* because this law was clearly going to blow up like this — I would add that the US and China are about equal now, so look at what gets done to Chinese tech firms that don't play nice.

* the other part being Brexit, whose saga still isn't over given the Reform party opinion poll rating and them wanting to also leave the European Convention on Human Rights which has bad things to say about government surveillance

Trump didn't let the UK extradite someone who killed a teenager in a hit-and-run, never mind a big tech CEO.

Tim Apple also made sure to pay Trump a cool $1 million for protect- I mean the inauguration committee.

How much has the UK given Trump, a man who views the world in terms of transactions?

The Five-Eyes agreement allows the UK and US to share any intelligence material immediately. This is 100% orchestrated with American intelligence agencies to allow them to get American data.

When push comes to shove, the US government will probably side with the UK.

Despots and tyrants are very unpredictable when things don't go their way, but lucky for the rest of the world, the UK is a has been state in full collapse, so whatever tantrum that Starmer will throw at a result will mostly be limited in impact to his own already severely opressed population.

“the UK is a has been state in full collapse”

What the heck are you talking about? Get off X.com, stop slavishly following what Elon Musk thinks, join the real world.

Obviously. The article is about the next step, what if they can't legally refuse, what's next?

Isn't the "advanced data protection" option already making it impossible for Apple to comply in cases where this is enabled? Of course this is not a perfect solution as it has to be explicitly enabled (and it has some usability drawbacks), but imagine that people who care about this stuff have this enabled already.

This article spawned because the UK is purportedly issuing a secret order under the Investigative Powers act for Apple to implement a backdoor encompassing Advanced Data Protection. Because these are secret orders it is illegal for Apple to disclose the fact they received any and what the content of the order is.

It is interesting to note that the UK is asking for this superuser privilege while also infamously silencing a literal epidemic of child sexual abuse for fear of its optics (i.e., Rotherham). It’s a difficult sell for me that the police need this to do their job when they wouldn’t do it with full knowledge of these horrible crimes being committed against literal children.

> infamously silencing a literal epidemic of child sexual abuse for fear of its optics (i.e., Rotherham).

When you say "silencing", what do you mean? There was an inquiry in 2013[0] and various media outlets have been reporting on this for years.

[0] https://www.rotherham.gov.uk/downloads/file/279/independent-...

You do realize it is called a scandal _because of_ the lack of response?

> Failure to address the abuse has been linked to factors such as fear of racism allegations due to the perpetrators' ethnicity; sexist attitudes towards the mostly working-class victims; lack of a child-centred focus; a desire to protect the town's reputation; and lack of training and resources.[25][26][10]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotherham_child_sexual_explo...

Pretty incredible mental gymnastics going on here.

> You do realize it is called a scandal _because of_ the lack of response?

There's a difference between a lack of response due to incompetence and uncaring officials (which this clearly was) versus "silencing" which suggests not only a deliberate ignoring of the problem but active steps to hide it - neither of which is the case because people kept bringing it up! Yes, higher-ups were incompetent and stupid and uncaring and probably hoped it would go away if they ignored it but that's a whole world away from an active conspiracy to "silence" things.

Apple's 1 billion+ users across the world should protest this ludicrous overreach of power since the UK is essentially declaring digital sovereignty over all of them.

In the meantime maybe consider alternative cloud storage providers.

The best option is to remove everything you have from any cloud at this point and stop bothering about the vendor’s policies entirely. I am in the process of doing that.

What I use it for now may be an issue if a regime changes. As evident from the US situation.

If someone wants your data they can come and get it, with a court order and due process, not a rubber stamp from whatever incompetent incumbent meanders into power and fucks stuff up. Then quietly via a side channel with no knowledge and effort.

Notably without iCloud my iPad is basically useless. So it’s going on eBay tomorrow.

Well what are the reasonable alternatives?

E2EE should normally solve these kinds of issues, but if the full source is not publicly accessible, and the vendor has the ability to silently push arbitrary updates, it's all only as good as their promise.

Sync is good. Backup is a must. Neither is trivial or easily solved (unless exactly with services like iCloud). Syncthing is great for photos or music libraries, but I dare you to try syncing your source code trees, conflict detection exists but quickly falls apart at the boundaries. Yes git solves that, but you need somewhere to host your code. Tailscale solves remote access to your homelab (which could be as tiny as a RasPi hanging by a cable from the ISP router), but that's again a vendor you must trust. Headscale exists, you can also go for raw Wireguard, but the setup complexity keeps rising, features disappear, and you do need NAT traversal. Oh did I mention ISP spying yet?

So which vendor do you trust with your backups? Good backup solution will offer E2EE; there's rsync.net, tarsnap, etc which are all excellent value for money and are important to consider (vs. homelab hosting) for diversifying geographically (natural disasters are getting more common), and peace of mind (last time a disk failed I just didn't bother replacing it; the next one that fails will have my backups lost). But then again, setup is more involved, and backing up your phone (which always will have very important data on it) is always complicated.

Then of course the OS itself. You can trust your OS vendor or distribution with the builds, or use something like NixOS (let's just say you need to learn a DSL). There's also no reasonable solution for your phone, if you e.g. still want to access your bank.

To what extent are you willing to trust different vendors? How do you assess the risk without deep technical knowledge? How do you implement these solutions without dedicating too much of your free time?

You're making it much harder than it needs to be because you're used to operating in 2024 mode. Roll back to 2004 mode.

You probably don't need to sync everything.

You probably don't need a backup vendor.

You probably don't need to change the OS.

You probably don't need a homelab or massive cluster to run all your stuff.

For me, all I've done is turn off iCloud sync for most of the stuff and deleted the data in the cloud. Backups are handled as before: on/off site rdiff-backup to physical disk. Email I moved to a local provider that runs IMAP and keep nearly all my folders offline. Code? You don't have to push it somewhere!

In 2004 you'd be shit outta luck trying to backup a mobile device as most were self contained and didn't interface to pc/mac. Also mobile devices back then had limited storage, didn't have cameras, weren't Internet connected, etc.

In 2025, it's near impossible to access your handset as a filesystem that you can simply sync off to your own storage.

I don't keep anything I can't replace on my phone.

Hell I still use paper for some stuff...

> In 2004 you'd be shit outta luck trying to backup a mobile device as most were self contained and didn't interface to pc/mac.

True but ..

> Also mobile devices back then had limited storage, didn't have cameras, weren't Internet connected, etc.

which also means they didn't have a lot of data worth backupping

2004 mobile devices are usually either MP3 players or PDAs. Both synced over either a USB cable (or fancy infrared stuff) and were mostly just downloading from a PC. Not much was lost if the device crashed except your Bejeweled progress.

Things back in 2004 had some pretty big weaknesses.

A manual backup once a month? Easy to lose a month's work. Or more, if you're forgetful.

A backup hard drive in your laptop bag? Easy to get the laptop and the backup drive stolen at the same time.

A network drive you can backup your files to any time you need to? Easy for a virus/cryptolocker to hit your computer and your backup at the same time.

Backing up your smartphone? What's a smartphone?

I'm not saying I like the complexity of modern backups, but there are reasons for it...

I'm not sure what you mean by "modern backups". Have you done a "modern restore?". Urgh.

I backup once a week. And both the machine and the disk are encrypted.

And the disk is entirely physically disconnected so there's no risk of cryptolockering it. And if that does happen, there's a 3 month rotation still on another disk.

This is not rocket science.

I'm a minimalist and retro-enthusiast, but...

> You probably don't need to sync everything.

Gladly, but I do need my email, calendar, reminders, contacts, and notes to stay in sync between my phone and my computer, because that's how I stay on top of things. In 2004 I was in high school, had a fixed weekly schedule, met all my friends every day in class. I wish I could go back to these years, but the world has moved on, and insists on moving forward. I'd prefer to save my effort for things that matter.

> You probably don't need a backup vendor.

True, and I still keep all of my personal backups on-site. But my 2004 photos would've been gone several times if I didn't start caring about backups at all at some point. Still I had to perform surgical data recovery, multiple times, because hardware keeps physically failing. Handing the problem over is a perfectly reasonable (even wiser) strategy.

Also no, I'm not printing 15k+ photos.

My future project is doing hi-res scans of all the stuff my mother keeps, some of it pre-WW2. "What's the point of keeping it?" Whatever, it will be gone like all of us someday, but in the meantime - there's a "Never Again" story behind it, and I want to retell it in full at some point. It may be relevant today.

> You probably don't need to change the OS.

True. Also, I like OS 10.5 better anyway. Problem is, even the high-end 2002 hardware kept in perfect conditions is slowly-but-surely giving up. <https://www.rollc.at/posts/2024-07-02-tibook/>

The more modern stuff puts you on an upgrade treadmill. It's not even that you can't put OS 10.15 on an M1 machine; the security patches dry up sooner than the interest in exploits, meanwhile every new release of macOS breaks more stuff than the previous. You can easily run a modern Linux/BSD on older hardware and enjoy it; we've hit an inflection point around 2010. Except all of my 2006-2013 Thinkpads are already dead, and my 2020 Mac runs circles around my 2019 Thinkpad (which doesn't matter - until you need to compile, render, or transcode stuff). It's like, there's no winning strategy.

> You probably don't need a homelab or massive cluster to run all your stuff.

True. I am running almost everything off a couple RasPi's, and most of it is for fun/experiments (like syncing my RSS feeds, in an attempt to move away from iCloud). The big box (a 2014 SOHO Dell) listens for WOL for the daily backups, and goes back to sleep when done, and that is the trade-off for not having a backup vendor.

Except in 2004 you couldn't buy a credit-card sized computer (!!!) for $50-100 (!!!) that'd provide an excellent price/performance ratio (!!!). The "2004 mode" was one PC per household (maybe with the 1997 still lingering around), sometimes resulting in arguments over time slots.

> [...] you're used to operating in 2024 mode.

Aaand it's 2025, and unfortunately the clock is not slowing down for some reason.

We know things now that we didn't 21 years ago. We've applied that theory to practical engineering, a lot of it achieved mainstream usage. CRDTs, personal SDNs, cheap storage, cheap tiny servers, all the building blocks for decentralisation of personal digital life are within reach. What I'm suggesting is a better path forward.

Why so extreme, I believe they only will have to stop providing their premium iCloud service to the UK as this is the one that have E2E encryption and thus would be affected?

As long as the company operates as a legal entity in the country, the government can force it to comply with its mandates. It doesn't matter if the specific service is offered in the UK or not.

Same applies to USA and clouds hosted in Europe.

Only real move way is to start creating local corporate structures. Maybe even entirely separate companies. And have the infra in those areas. So UK customers are served from UK servers by UK company. USA customers from USA servers by USA company. And EU customers from EU servers by EU company. Repeat for enough.

Maybe if some of these agree to play fully nice with legislation and privacy there could be some cross work. But seeing how even EU is moving, I am doubtful.

According to WaPo, the secret order demands blanket access to cloud data from any user anywhere in the world : http://archive.today/79dA3

> from any user anywhere in the world

Is that even legal? At the very least, doesn't it break some EU privacy laws?

Post-Brexit, I imagine that's a feature of the request, not a bug, at least from the UK's standpoint

Why would the UK Government care about that? They’re not bound by the EU’s laws. They’re trying to force Apple to secretly break the EU and other countries’ laws, and don’t care as long as they get what they want…

Wouldn't that warrant a reaction from the EU then? I haven't seen any.

I agree that decentralising is without any doubt the best option. The best option for consumers. But it's not the best option for Apple: they want to remain tightly and firmly in control.

But removing Apple entirely from the "cloud" integration would be the best bet. E.g.: take a path similar to IMAP and CalDAV, where any third party provider can be used.

Hopefully the first thing Apple do is refuse. The second I think needs to be some way to decentralise the system. Spreading Apple iCloud backups either with different providers or self-hosted will make it difficult to surveil anyone making it all pointless to try force Apple to add a backdoor

Apple's biggest income growth is services like iCloud. There is no way they are going to give up that money spigot. Decentralization would mean losing out on that sweet sweet service profit. Especially as other companies undercut them

I was out to dinner with a table of normies, my wife's friends, last year. Ten people, I asked who pays monthly for iCloud, nine hands go up.

It easy to see why. When you first open your new iPhone it backs up to iCloud, you get 5GB free and the first backup takes ~4.5GB. Now it will remind you endlessly that your iCloud is nearly full. It's only £0.99 a month to make them shut up...

> you get 5GB free and the first backup takes ~4.5GB

Not my OOTB experience at all; an iCloud backup of a new, nearly empty phone is vanishingly small.

That said, shoot a bunch of 48Mpx pics + 4K vids and you're going to fill those 5GB quite quickly.

Hmm good point. I did open a new iPhone last month and that was my experience but looking at it now I think the big factor was 3GB of WhatsApp data I imported from Android!

1 western monetary unit a month is still a LOT cheaper than getting the next level storage upgrade.

Rven the 200GB package (2.99€?) is only 36€ a year and should last most normal _families_ when shared.

This ignores Apple's leverage. What do you think happens to the political party responsible for driving the most popular smartphone manufacturer out of the country?

I mostly use iCloud for photo sync. It would be nice if there was some sort of API or something that third party applications could use to upload and download photos automatically in the background, like iCloud Photos does.

I use PhotoSync [0] to backup to my own self-hosted S3 on my NAS, it works pretty well.

[0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/photosync-transfer-photos/id41...

I use icloudpd

https://github.com/icloud-photos-downloader/icloud_photos_do...

No uploading new photos, though.

can this be handled by a "shortcut" ? more config I know, but there are essentially CRON triggers that could be used to upload new photos to some external system maybe?

You mean like WhatsApp does on iOS?

Doesn't the Google Photos app do that?

Do not try to solve legal issues with technology. They're not the same scope.

If the UK wants Apple to introduce a backdoor, the two options are to do it or not to do it. To not do it and invent some excuse leaning on technical details doesn't work. Apple has the keys to sign software for these devices at the end of the day. That includes software that betrays the user's trust. That previously data was incidentally stored unencrypted on servers is not relevant for the fact they're being compelled to make this data available - at least not with my understanding of UK law.

Isn't Option 3 (open up) basically the status quo? It's not called iCloud and iCloud does get some preferential treatment, but the APIs for 3rd party cloud storage and Files app integration already exist and are widely used.

I just wonder why any government would ban E2EE in iCloud but permit the use of 3rd party E2EE apps. As soon as those 3rd party solutions gain any traction, the government can simply tell Apple to remove them from the App Store.

At the end of the day all roads lead to the sideloading ban. That's what turns Apple into this convenient tool for authoritarian police states.

I wonder if Google has received the same request. If not then why not?

Option 4: Just move the UK data to China. If it's not end-to-end-encrypted then they get access anyway. No messing.

Moving the data to China is pretty much the same thing as backdooring the encryption, as we have seen.

Really though, decentralised is the way to go: Apple should allow custom endpoints for iCloud that users can set. If the UK or China wants to block a regional endpoint, they can.

Having user provided configurable iCloud servers might be a bit too empowering for Apple though, I suspect they would rather profit from their hosting services! But who knows, maybe they will be forced into empowering users?

Apple should just keep being Apple and things should just keep getting worse, so that people may finally realise that if all smartphones are operated by a duopoly they may understand that's something has gone horribly wrong and it may be time to build a completely new ecosystem

Someone enlighten me - what impact does this have - iCloud as in the iCloud my phone is backed up to? with that door they can clone my phone onto another iPhone etc? Huge pain to run macOS and iOS without iCloud but if they want to do that, fine - so be it.

If the UK gets their way (this is the case where Apple complies) they presumably will have backdoor access to iCloud encrypted data, which will no longer be end to end encrypted. Because it's a secret order and illegal to disclose I don't think customers will be forewarned or notified, we will probably only find out if Apple complied by success subpoenas of data.

This is the American company that censored Radio Liberty in Russia (a country they've "left" because of the war) at the request of Russian authorities. Expecting them to take a stand against UK is insanity.

But whats the best option for the endusers?

i personally dont care whats best for apple.

Write to your representative to sanction the UK.

I wonder what the European Commission has to say about all this, since this makes it somewhat difficult for companies with offices in the UK to comply with continental privacy laws.

People care more about security won’t use iCloud at the first place.

Providing a decentralized protocol probably doesn’t hurt the revenue, but increases the development cost.

> People care more about security won’t use iCloud at the first place

iCloud provides an excellent balance of security and usability - for people who care about both

Many are saying that Apple can't comply without breaking EU GDPR. Hence Apple has been put in the situation where they are forced to accept either operating in the UK market or the EU market.

So my question is (am genuinely not being snarky) why would the UK gov put Apple in this situation? The current leader (Starmer) is a lawyer surely he must have been aware of the legal predicament this would put Apple in, what is the intention behind asking for something that you are fully aware there is absolutely no chance they can comply with?

Starmer has a long history of authoritarian tendencies, he’s always sided with the police or establishment powers, even when there was public outcry over the circumstances. He’s going to bend to whichever powerful spooks are pushing for this.

Most notable are the cases of Ian Tomlinson, Student Fees Protests and Jimmy Saville. Generally though, he’s been in favour or instructed his party not to oppose the introduction of greater police powers.

Man is a snake.

What if they just sell a new Time Capsule appliance so anyone can setup their own local iCloud?

Keep dreaming. Part of Apple’s market cap is based on growth in their recurring services revenue, and renting space from Apple for backing up the device people use for many hours everyday is a linchpin of being able to sell higher priced recurring services.

I have said this many times. Make a new Airport (with Wifi 7 since it is the latest), with some type of WireGuard/Tailscale-ish type VPN and with some type of storage that is in sync with iCloud.

Call it Apple Cloud Edge or something. (One can dream)

What is the motivation of UK's lawmakers to push this forward? Why are they doing this?

More data for their spy agencies to comb through? Blackmailing politicians around the world? Or maybe they are planning on nixing any future independence referendum for Australia/Canada/etc.

They’ll take notes from Blackberry and give it to carriers like BIS.

Funny how this happens in a country which has GDPR as part of their law. At least you get the popups, though, those really keep you safe.

The US should sanction and embargo the UK for this, some illegitimate despotic regime that is in full economic and social collapse should not be able to access everyone's data.

Some people discussing how Trump/US could intervene to calm this situation - why would they? Presumably part of the US state would very much like access to this data, and with the security services of the US and the UK sharing lots of their intelligence (and with other five eyes nations) this would mean the UK becomes a one-stop-shop for gathering data on your own citizens without the need to trouble your own domestic legal system.

The UK's demand for access to _all_ apple users, not just UK citizens (a la China) indicates to me that it's at least possible this action has the backing of the US (though, obviously, there is not evidence for this - it's just hypothetical)

I worked for years on decentralization projects so I wish this would happen, but I think in the current climate there is a much simpler and more direct option that Apple is far more likely to take. Perhaps the author's politics prevent him from seeing it: Cook will talk to Trump, Trump will announce crippling sanctions on the UK unless they leave tech firms alone, the UK will fold with some excuse designed to save face (perhaps pretending they never issued such an order at all) and everything will continue as before.

This is by far the most likely outcome because it's consistent with everything we know about the new US administration:

• Trump loves tariffs, he believes they actually make people richer. The previously prevailing WTO order that tried to push tariffs down is dead and buried.

• He already forced allies like Canada, Columbia and Mexico to do what he wants by threatening to impose truly massive tariffs. They agreed to his demands within days. Trump is willing to break allied economies to get what he wants.

• Elon Musk is Trump's most powerful and dynamic ally. He hates censorship demands, especially from European governments. He also hates the current British government, and via X has been exposing the American right to the off-the-charts levels of political censorship and oppression that's been happening under Labour (e.g. people getting longer jail sentences for Facebook posts about immigration than for violent crimes or child porn). The right are spoiling for a fight with Labour at the moment, this would be free red meat to their base.

• The US right also holds Europe in contempt for its failure to produce a viable tech industry and are inclined to view its regulations as mere extortion by losers for crimes that the Americans did not commit. The last eight years appear to have turned Trump into a radical libertarian, a plot twist few saw coming. The Biden administration was ideologically aligned with the EU and UK on this, but they're gone and there is no built-in sympathy anymore.

• The UK is run by a very weak and unpopular government. Starting from a few weeks ago Reform (Farage's party) now outpolls all the other parties. New governments after a long period of incumbency usually have a honeymoon period, but due to the weird way they won the election this one didn't. They also didn't campaign on picking a fight with Apple. There's no democratic mandate here and this isn't the will of the British people. If Labour push ahead with this, Reform will make lemonade. "Don't break my iPhone" is the easiest political campaign in history.

> people getting longer jail sentences for Facebook posts about immigration than for violent crimes or child porn

Do you have a link for that? I read UK news pretty regularly and I've missed that one somewhere.

> due to the weird way they won the election this one didn't

What weird way? They got more votes than the Tories and a clear democratic mandate.

There are lots of such cases and they are famous, this is where the "two tier kier" nickname comes from. For example, Hamoud Al Soaimi who took part in the group rape of a 15 year old girl and also a 12 year old girl, was sentenced to 180 hours of community service:

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-tyne-68446855

versus Daniel Kingsley, a plasterer, who was sentenced to 21 months in prison for posting on Facebook:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c703e03w243o

Or compare Shaun Tuck, jailed for 15 weeks for posting comments online, versus Victoria Bowen who assaulted an MP (Farage) by throwing a milkshake at him, who wasn't jailed at all. There have been an endless parade of such cases. If you aren't aware of them it's because you get your news from sources who don't want you to know.

> What weird way?

They didn't take votes from the opposition. The right chose to withhold their votes in order to try and force a reset on the Conservatives, in some places abstention by those voters reached 50%.

For a party to win because the opposing party destroys its own base isn't normal. Normally the bases are stable and swing voters decide an election. This one was very different. That's why Labour were able to win despite getting fewer votes than they did under Corbyn.

> Hamoud Al Soaimi [...] was sentenced to 180 hours of community service

You're ignoring the other 3 men charged at the same time who got considerably longer sentences there but also ignoring that he was sentenced to two years suspended -with- 180 hours of community service. Two years is longer than 21 months.

> Daniel Kingsley [...] for posting on Facebook

Cute minimisation when he actually "admitted to stirring up racial hatred" which is somewhat more than just "posting on Facebook".

> Shaun Tuck, jailed for 15 weeks for posting comments online

Again, you're minimising with "posting comments online" when he was charged with malicious communication after he "posted racist abuse".

> Victoria Bowen who assaulted an MP (Farage)

She wasn't jailed, no, but she was "given a 13-week jail sentence, suspended for 12 months, must pay the MP £150 compensation, complete 120 hours of unpaid work and pay £450 in court costs." Also Farage wasn't an MP at the time but that is just splitting hairs.

> you get your news from sources who don't want you to know

The BBC but I guess I just don't place as much importance on the punishments for posting racial aggravation as you do.

> The right chose to withhold their votes in order to try and force a reset on the Conservatives

That's not a "weird way", though. "weird way" suggests coercion or cheating or some other shenanigans, not "the Tories weren't far-right enough for the lunatics who had a big sulk".

A suspended sentence doesn't take effect unless you commit further crimes, so that's irrelevant: my point is that people who post to Facebook are regularly spending more time in prison than people who commit violent crimes, and that point is correct.

I specifically didn't say what was being posted on Facebook, because that is - again - irrelevant to the point! When you argue with this and call it a "cute minimization", what you're saying is that you believe it's right and just that words are punished more severely than rape, when you personally disagree with the politics of the speaker. Putting aside the morality of that, whether you agree with the policy just isn't relevant to whether it exists.

> "weird way" suggests coercion or cheating

That's not a definition you'll find in any dictionary. The top definition of weird in Mirriam Webster is "of strange or extraordinary character", which is a reasonable description of an election in which supporters of the oldest political party in the world collectively decide it should be destroyed and the winner gets a landslide on fewer votes than the previous election, which they lost.

> you get your news from sources who don't want you to know ... The BBC

Exactly. The stories I linked to are on the BBC, because I suspected you wouldn't read them if I linked to alternative sources. But these stories aren't highlighted and the general trend of two-tier justice isn't discussed. The top result on the BBC site for the phrase is headlined "Two-tier policing claims are 'nonsense', MPs told" and which simply lets the police deny it all without any pushback. They want to keep you in the dark, confused and mystified about why other people act the way they do, and it works: you were completely unaware of any of this. You won't be able to understand international or even domestic events if you get your news exclusively from the BBC.

And this stuff matters. It's not about me, or you. These stories have had a huge impact on Trump, Musk and the American right in general. They hold them up as examples of what would have happened to America if the Democrats had won, and of course America isn't averse to wielding American power against countries that they think are or are becoming totalitarian. These judicial rulings are therefore a major influence on the stance of the UK's most important ally (or maybe now, unfortunately, "ally"). To write it off as a mere difference in personal news preferences is to show how badly the BBC's selective reporting is distorting people's world views.

> I suspected you wouldn't read them if I linked to alternative sources

Happy to read any alternative source that's got a reputation for decent journalism.

> what was being posted on Facebook [is] irrelevant to the point!

It isn't, though. You can't minimise "aggravating racial hatred in the middle of race riots" to "posting on Facebook" as if they're posting innocuous stuff about cats or their lunch. There are laws against it and if you break them, you'll get done.

> what you're saying is that you believe it's right and just that words are punished more severely than rape, when you personally disagree with the politics of the speaker.

Nope, haven't said that. All I pointed out was that you minimised one side and maximised the other. That's not arguing in good faith.

> you were completely unaware of any of this

No, I just don't believe that they're good examples of "two-tier policing". I do believe "two-tier policing" exists, though, just not in the "victimisation of white males posting on Facebook" genre.

> These judicial rulings are therefore a major influence on the stance of the UK's most important ally

I don't think they are, personally. The crazed ravings of Musk aside, obviously.

Oh, this is exactly the kind of ‘Think of the children’ policy that Reform will love to pursue

>There's no democratic mandate here and this isn't the will of the British people. If Labour push ahead with this, Reform will make lemonade.

The law that this order is based on was passed under the previous government. These things have a lot of support among MPs and I think also among voters.

When did they ever propose anything like this on the campaign trail?

This controversy has been going on for many years. Just google it. Both Labour and the Tories have been demanding variations of it. The differences between them are essentially nil.

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