Why do pro-privacy tech folks on here act like Apple is some charity? Apple is a business. It won't fight a citizen's fight on your behalf. It is on citizens to use their democratic power to ensure their representatives act as the voting base wants. Apple's goal is to make money. The government is a representation of your will.
> Apple is a business. It won't fight a citizen's fight on your behalf.
Being a business does not remove ethical considerations. And I’m an environment where corporations are considered people, it seems reasonable to expect some degree of alignment with normal citizens.
> Apple's goal is to make money. The government is a representation of your will.
The government is increasingly not a representation of the collective will, and is instead captured by those corporations.
I can’t help but feel the “but they exist to make money” line too often ignores the many ways this is not a sufficiently complex explanation of the situation.
Corporations are people in the legal sense not in any other philosophical way. Just like non-humans proposed for personhood, they are not entities expected to behave ethically. Like a dog, you set rules and apply punishments when they breach it. You don't argue ethics with a dog because they are not relevant to them
People always get this wrong. Corporations are not people. They just have certain rights like owning property. Corporate personhood != full personhood.
lol. It literally does. This is a great example. You believe this is an ethical issue. Other shareholders (you are a shareholder, right?) could disagree and now there is a lawsuit. “Complying with national law” seems like an easy win for them.
Because while a business goal is to make money, it is not necessarily, unlike what you have 80% of the people here believe, to make the most money possible. Ethics can exist in businesses too.
This, plus privacy is in Apple's brand. Without this and other Apple-esque things (lack of bloatware etc.) you may as well get a Samsung for 2/3 price.
I mean they could have tried not complying, and fighting a lawsuit at the ECHR (right of every person to a private life). Takes money and time but more attractive than the other options.
They could pull out of the UK, and to hell with the consequences, but then if the EU decide to do the same thing, or the US, or China says "hold my beer", then the problem becomes much larger.
Losing the UK market wouldn't impact Apple that much - it'd be a hit to the stock, of course, but as a fraction of worldwide business, it isn't that huge. Larger markets would be a bigger issue.
When UK demanded a backdoor to e2ee in iMessage, Apple told them they’d rather get out of UK. Why not do the same here? You’re posing a false dichotomy.
To my knowledge, Apple has always said that their response would be to withdraw affected services rather than break encryption.
> Apple has said planned changes to British surveillance laws could affect iPhone users’ privacy by forcing it to withdraw security features, which could ultimately lead to the closure of services such as FaceTime and iMessage in the UK.
What would that change, effectively, other than have Apple lose money?
The UK would still lose ADP (and then also just Apple products in general). A precedent would still be set.
Your posing a strictly worse third option. Sure, it's an option, I guess. Apple could also just close down globally, as a fourth option. Or sell off to Google as a fifth. But I was trying to present the least-bad option (turn off ADP), rather than an exhaustive list.
Depends on if the US emperor and his cronies have the UK's backs on this issue. If they don't, calling the bluff would work, there's zero chance the UK gov would ban Apple products without US approval. The backlash among the public would be far worse than the TikTok ban. Imagine all companies using Macs. The order of power here is US > Apple > UK.
So, perhaps this is a bit of a dangerous precedent, but it was the least-bad option.