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Comment by LuciOfStars | Hacker News Reader

Not gonna lie, I expected Apple to just kind of roll over and take the blow on this one. Interesting.

If any of the tech firms would resist, it would be Apple.

I wasn't sure which way they'd go.

While Apple especially under Tim Cook has done a lot questionable acquiescences under Cook for political expediences, they really didn’t have a choice here. It was the law.

Now going back on Twitter to get in the good graces of President Musk and bringing TikTok back to the AppStore even though it is clearly against the law is different.

> they really didn’t have a choice here

They did have a choice. They could have said they will just get out of UK. That would have resulted in enough political turmoil in UK that their government would roll back this stupid law. Apple chickened out.

Abandoning the UK market would hurt Apple more than it would hurt the UK. They are not a nation-state, Apple cannot wage diplomacy by threatening the government, they can only shoot their own foot off and say it was for the good of everyone.

It would also partially validate the EU's regulation if they abandoned the UK but stayed in Europe. Apple very much doesn't want to feed either side a line.

They could have started with not offering iCloud at all in UK. See how the blowback gets UK government to play ball and rollback the law.

It may have hurt Apple in the short term but helped in the long term.

Then instead of mandating a backdoor to cloud data, the UK would just mandate backdoor access to the devices themselves, again forcing Apple's hand to either comply or GTFO, if they want it bad enough.

We're losing the fight, and people are as apathetic as ever around privacy and security issues.

Besides, never trust E2EE where you don't control both ends, but everyone here should have already known that.

If the UK wants the law to change, that’s up to the citizens of the UK. These are the people they elected.

Don’t expect Apple to rescue the UK citizens to from their own choices.

So, Apple will just give in to whoever is in power? They were not this soft in the San Bernardino case when FBI asked them to unlock a phone.

The FBI doesn’t create laws. If Congress had passed a law then you would have a good analogy.

Yes Apple follows the laws of every country it operates in just like any other company.

There is an easy way to avoid having to follow laws of a country. Don't operate in that country.

If you don't want to be sued by activist investors, you need a good reason for that, and to be able to tell those investors what else you tried first before escalating that far if you eventually do pull out of a market.

Apple absolutely does not follow the laws of every country it operates in, else TikTok wouldn't be back on the App Store.

If only I had thought about that, I might have mentioned it.

Oh wait

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43128684

> Now going back on Twitter to get in the good graces of President Musk and bringing TikTok back to the AppStore even though it is clearly against the law is different.

Then why subsequently say that they follow the laws of every country they operate in? They don't, so whether the FBI makes the laws is not relevant.

The UK made the law years ago and someone in authority said they were going to start enforcing it.

In the case of TikTok, the law was passed a year ago and the executive branch said they wouldn’t enforce it.

> So, Apple will just give in to whoever is in power?

This is definitionally why a country is sovereign and a company isn't.

> They were not this soft in the San Bernardino case when FBI asked them to unlock a phone.

FBI has to follow the laws of the USA.

The UK writes the laws of the UK, which Apple (if they want to operate in the UK) has to follow.

They did. They've giving the UK Government a backdoor to all UK users.

Apple lost here.

Technically, they are leaving the front door open to all interested parties

But Apple is not giving the UK Government anything they didn't already have. Now iCloud encryption will function in the UK just as it has for years (decades?) before the inception of ADP.

They heavily compete on "privacy" and "security", so I wouldn't expect them to. Additionally, once you start rolling with one government, every one wants you to do something for them while offering you no additional money for the work and weakening of your project.

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