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Comment by llm_nerd | Hacker News Reader

It isn't really a precedent. Companies, even high-rolling American tech companies, have to abide by the laws and regulations of the countries that they operate in. I guess there is a question of whether this is a legal demand that they truly had to follow, or just a request, and whether they could fight it in court, but Apple seems to be hoping to adjudicate it in the court of public opinion (apparently the initial backdoor request was secret and it got leaked).

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> abide by the laws and regulations of the countries that they operate in.

In this case, the UK is seeking to use local law to change what is allowable on an international basis.

That's a bit different than a nation controlling the law on their own soil.

That was Apple's interpretation : That to comply with what the UK requested they would have to have the same thing everywhere.

But of course that is nonsense, and Apple could theoretically have a nation-specific backdoor (e.g. for accounts in a given country a separate sequestered decryption key is created and kept in escrow for court order).

I mean, Apple "complied" by disabling ADP just in the UK. They undermined their own "worldwide" claim, as ADP still works everywhere else, and the UK has no access.

> of course that is nonsense

Organizations like the EFF do not agree.

> most concerning, the U.K. is apparently seeking a backdoor into users’ data regardless of where they are or what citizenship they have.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/02/uks-demands-apple-brea...

So Apple is non-compliant, given that all they did is disable ADP in the UK.

Right?

IANAL but that's not for any of us to decide. Depending on their initial motivations, the UK might consider this to be enough to rescind the demand for a backdoor. If it's not then Apple will face going to court and in that case they could choose more extreme actions like ceasing business in the UK.

I think that's right, and I think the UK will tell them so, and the issue will escalate.

Perhaps, if the UK continues to push, Apple will indeed pull out of the UK, but it'll make it as public as possible and tell the world who it was that forced its hand and what the consequences are - and I don't think the UK government is going to like that result.

they're non-complient but they made it a lot harder for the UK to fight. by showing that the "backdoor" is disabling the feature, for the UK to pursue this further, the need a judge to rule that the UK has the authority to prevent an American company from providing a feature in America.

The keys are stored only in the Secure Enclave. Encryption and decryption are handled outside the standard CPU and OS. This is hardware-level protection, not just some flag on a cloud account to be flipped. The only way for Apple to break this system is to break it for everyone, since anything else would risk bleed over or insufficient compliance.

> They undermined their own "worldwide" claim, as ADP still works everywhere else, and the UK has no access.

Disagree. There is a difference between ADP being unavailable in one country and it working differently in that country. Implementing a backdoor would mean changing the way ADP works.

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