Comment by ben_w

I suspect it's worse than that.

Since the UK's Investigatory Powers Act 2016, I've noted that every web browser is necessarily an end-to-end encrypted communication system.

This isn't compatible with what all the spy agencies want. The US can kinda get past that with the reporting obligation for anyone publishing on an app store controlled by a US company. (As a British citizen living in Berlin, the corresponding checkbox when publishing apps is mildly infuriating).

Now that Apple is obligated to allow competitors, that doesn't work. Or perhaps the agencies finally noticed that this problem applies to websites and not just apps (perhaps web apps are finally good enough?)

So the agencies find another way — and this time it comes with an obligation to not report what they're doing.

This smells like that other way.

Might not be correct, but intelligence agencies' long-standing history means it's not paranoia.