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Apple still has legal entities in the UK. Pulling out cloud services would be insufficient to prevent the UK authorities from interfering with their activities.
by cmsj 2y ago
Apple still has legal entities in the UK. Pulling out cloud services would be insufficient to prevent the UK authorities from interfering with their activities.
- bilekas 2y ago> prevent the UK authorities from interfering with their activities I'm still missing how this could be enforced ? To my layman understanding, this reads the same as if China said : "Meta, Tesla, Valve etc has entities in China therefore we get to see all data they store in the EU and the US. The UK has Zero jurisdiction in Ireland for example where a lot of EU data may be stored.
- elashri 2y agoI have lived to the day that we give an example on china not doing something stupid a western democracy does about rights and freedom. Wild times to be alive. I am also surprised that they demand worldwide access and not just UK users data or all the data stored in UK jurisdiction. But this is going too far.
- mathw 2y agoAnd if you think China and the USA and Russia wouldn't want it... hey I've got this bridge for sale.
- idle_zealot 2y agoThe difference is that China and Russia have the sense to spy on foreign citizens with hackers, trackers, and other covert means. Somehow the UK feels entitled to Apple doing their espionage for them, and has the gall to ask publicly. Note that this is not China apologia: they do the same brazen shit locally, but they're an authoritarian regime. I have lower expectations for human rights there.
- shafyy 2y agoIf you, like me, didn't know where the idiom "I've got a bridge to sell you" comes from, here you go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_C._Parker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_C._Parker George C. Parker was a conman in NYC who multiples times sold the ownership of the Brooklyn Bridge to his victims. Among other cons.
- bilekas 2y agoI know we're going off topic but I remember hearing about this, and reminded me then a similar case in Paris where the Eifel Tower was being sold too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Lustig https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Lustig
- shafyy 2y agoAh, the good ol' days of conman. No, all we've got are crypto scammer =D
- guappa 2y agoHere's a whole movie on various scams https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qJuxxUoZRw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qJuxxUoZRw
- bluGill 2y agoThere are tensions in the US. Those who are charged with stopping cyber crime are very must against this. End to End encryption is one of the better protections they can give you against foreign hackers and they want you to use it. Meanwhile down the hall are people who are charged with investigating crimes someone in the country commits and they are want this. It is a lot easier to prove someone is involved in some crime if a warrant can get their data, but end to end encryption means they can only get random bytes. (of course they don't want warrants either, but that is a different issue not relevant here so they will specify warrants in this debate)
- jibe 2y agoChina has forced Apple to outsource iCloud in China to a state run company, so all data is just directly controlled by the government there. It’s an even worse situation. https://support.apple.com/en-us/111754 https://support.apple.com/en-us/111754
- agloe_dreams 2y agoThat is just China's general rules around tech. Awful? Yes. But not a global issue. Most non-chinese companies are forced to have their chinese properties ran by a chinese company. This is shown by companies like VW having cars made in china with effectively a license model, these cars are designed and built by a third party with a few interesting exceptions (VW actually licensed a design, the Taos, back and shipped it worldwide) The insane overreach was the UK wanting data on people not in the UK
- guappa 2y agoAt least the CIA doesn't get it… dunno which is worse.
- csomar 2y agoHow is this worse? This only affects users in China.
- lern_too_spel 2y agoAnd users who communicate with users in China using Apple services.
- GoblinSlayer 2y agoThey can send encrypted PGP messages, e2e was figured out in 1991.
- joseppudev 2y ago[flagged]
- Spivak 2y ago
- pjmlp 2y agoIt is worse than that, I never expected that most democracies would go back to foregone days, because people get sold out on populism and decided to ignore history lessons. As a child of Portuguese revolution, I am aware of plenty of stories, apparently many folks nowadays think those are stories to scare misbehaved kids.
- layer8 2y agoIt would be enforced by fining the UK legal entities (or worse, like charging their legal representatives) if they don't comply. If the UK is serious about this, the only alternative for Apple would eventually be to completely cease operations in the UK. By the way, this is similar to why for true GDPR compliance, data centers should be operated by EU companies that aren't subsidiaries of US companies, because even if the latter operate data centers located in the EU, they would still be bound to secret orders by the US government.
- miroljub 2y agoThat's actually the only thing that would keep Apple services usable to everyone else around the world.
- p0w3n3d 2y agoThe most horrible part of the discussion we're making is that we're arguing that UK intelligence should be able to access only UK related data, and not that UK intelligence should not undermine privacy of people
- idle_zealot 2y agoThe Overton Window has shifted.
- throw0101c 2y agoPSA: The Overton window is the range of subjects and arguments politically acceptable to the mainstream population at a given time.[1] It is also known as the window of discourse. […] The political commentator Joshua Treviño has postulated that the six degrees of acceptance of public ideas are roughly:[7] unthinkable radical acceptable sensible popular policy * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
- Mountain_Skies 2y agoThe Clipper Chip died a quick death back when the Clinton administration wanted it, as the push back against it was pretty strong. Now? Seems like a matter of time before every form of electronic communication has a dozen different back, side, and front doors into it.
- amelius 2y ago> I'm still missing how this could be enforced ? Basically by saying that if they don't comply, they can't do business in the UK.
- freetanga 2y agoIt is a relatively small market, and if Apple decides to shut down while flooding the streets of London with posters saying “We are forced by your government to shut down in order to uphold your privacy”, the UK Government would take a massive blow. Imagine Russian Oligarchs on android devices! Polonium will roll, I tell you!
- bluGill 2y agoThere are lots of different ways to do business. UK is unlikely to be able to ban the iphone, and I doubt Apple has much business in the UK. As such they can lay off all workers in the UK "because of legal issues" and the workers feel the pain. They can still sell in the UK through third parties, and go to the EU if you need warranty work
- gnfargbl 2y agoExcept perhaps for people living near the border in Northern Ireland, "going to the EU" for warranty work is a completely unfeasible suggestion. It's not exactly a short or cheap journey for most of us!
- patrickmay 2y ago"Europeans think 100 miles is a long distance. Americans think 100 years is a long time."
- genewitch 2y agoIt's ~40 miles round trip to go to a grocery store. And that's a crappy store, better ones are an additional 5-10 miles. In the US.
- 2y ago
- insane_dreamer 2y ago> 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).
- mohamedattahri 2y agoYep, 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.
- throw0101c 2y ago> 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.
- JoshTriplett 2y agoI 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.
- elcritch 2y agoExactly, imagine the legislatures facing their irate teen daughters for bricking Apple devices.
- chrisjj 2y agoI don't see how closing Apple UK would mean "can't buy an iPhone in the UK". Importing is a thing.
- JoshTriplett 2y agoIn which case, Apple still wins by not having to put in a backdoor.
- piltdownman 2y agoSadly jurisdiction has nothing to do with it. https://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/uk-spy-base-gchq-tapped-irish-internet-cables-1.2019492 https://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/uk-spy-base-g... This is not just a case of the British intelligence services secretly “tapping into” Irish telephonic and internet traffic via land and maritime cables. Rather in most cases they are being provided free (or commercial) access to the information by companies associated with the use, ownership or maintenance of these cables. Post-Snowden the Irish government retroactively legalised it...
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- pmontra 2y agoIt can be enforced in this way: police raids the local headquarters and jail a bunch of people because their company didn't comply with the law. The only way to prevent that is not having any local office, no employees, nothing. Sell physical objects only by the means of local 3rd party resellers which will import goods. Same thing for services. Of course they can ban imports and services or go after those 3rd parties. It depends how nasty they want to be.
- elcritch 2y agoI suspect the UK government would back down way before Apple. People aren’t politically active as those of years pass, but brick their iPhones you’d have a riot.
- hedora 2y agoThe US CLOUD act says something similar to your straw man (though it doesn't ban E2E encryption like the UK is attempting to do): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act Note that it the bar is having the ability to access the server, so this law is completely incompatible with most GPDR solutions: It's illegal to store European user data and then refuse to hand it over to US law enforcement, regardless of whether the data is stored in Europe or the request breaks European law.
- RobotToaster 2y agoI imagine they would fine apple a large sum of money. If apple refuse to pay they send high court sheriffs to confiscate any property they have in the UK to pay the debt.
- mattlondon 2y agoThe opposite is happening all the time - i.e. US demanding access to European data from Facebook and Google et al. It is not one-sided.
- sandworm101 2y agoMore importantly, apple has customers in the UK. The business from captured apple users is more valuable than apple's privacy reputation. This all seems very similar to RIM and the aftermath of the riots in the UK. The backdoors became too obvious for customers to ignore. Did not go well for RIM in the market afterwards.
- wqaatwt 2y agoWho has more to lose though? I mean any government that would do something as stupid as banning Apple because Apple didn’t allow it to spy on its citizens wouldn’t be very popular or last that long.. I mean this would be even more stupid than Partygate and the whole Truss debacle put together.
- thewebguyd 2y ago> More importantly, apple has customers in the UK. The business from captured apple users is more valuable than apple's privacy reputation. Is it though? I wonder how much of Apple's revenue is from the UK, probably around 5-6%? Apple isn't exactly as popular in the rest of the world as they are in the US. Would damaging their privacy reputation globally be more valuable than the UK market? I honestly don't know, but my hunch says no - they are likely to want to keep their reputation and dump the UK market. I think more likely is Apple is going to be able to get the UK to cave in. Apple is extremely competent with PR, and would be able to spin any kind of pull-out or degraded service in the UK as the government's choice and fault, to the ire of UK citizens.