> So what?
The title felt like there was a greater issue with Apple specifically. There wasn't. There was a greater issue with the new UK laws and cloud storage systems. I think people deserved a clarification before getting wound up about it before reading the article.
> UK citizens are largely ok with that, as evidenced by them keeping to elect such governments
I don't think that's true. I think plenty of UK citizens do want better privacy rights and data protection, as evidenced by the very large petition against national ID cards for example.
It doesn't win the vote because it's not the most important factor when it comes to voting, because there are bigger issues people care about more.
Many people are somewhat despondent, due to economic decline, ever-increasing pressures and poor prospects for so many people. There's no choice of party which simultaneously supports privacy rights at the same time as other things most UK citizens appear to care about more, which can also survive the intense tactical voting pressure under the FPTP voting system. Consider that most people who voted Labour in the "landslide" last election appear to have done it tactically to "get the Tories out".
So issues like privacy which aren't at the top of people's concerns, end up not having much influence over voting decisions.
The Lib Dems and Greens are the nearest to that, imho. Of the major parties, they seem the most aligned with privacy rights in their DNA, as far as I can tell.
Reform are getting some political benefit from talking up privacy at the moment, and they stand a real chance of winning next time. But I doubt very much if Reform would ever implement real privacy rights. I think it's just opportunistic dodgy politician talk in their case, and that real privacy isn't in their DNA at all, because they don't believe in universality of human rights. They are openly eager to remove the Human Rights Act and strip many people of those rights, after all. Strong online privacy also clashes with one of their core missions, to find and deport vastly more people than before; privacy clashes with that both on grounds of investigative capabilities, and on grounds of principles and rights. I could imagine Reform trying to offer strong privacy only for approved citizens, alongside mandatory reporting on other users, but the contradictions in that are too much.
> It doesn't win the vote because it's not the most important factor when it comes to voting,
This implies there's a vote for and against it, but is there? I didn't see any party or serious political movement raise this as an important issue. Why? Because they assume it won't bring them any additional votes, because their potential voters don't care. If they don't care, they get what they get.
> So issues like privacy which aren't at the top of people's concerns
So, you are agreeing with me. If you say "sure, I'd like some privacy, maybe, but I don't care enough about this to bother to tell my rep that I'm even interested in this" - then you are "ok with that" as I said.
The issue is with Apple specifically in the sense that they have been offering a superior E2EE cloud storage service that will soon be denied to UK residents (IIUC, E2EE isn't offered by their competition e.g. Google, Microsoft). But the article goes out of its way in its first section to note that Apple isn't in the wrong at all here:
> But I will say that the shutdown of ADP is Apple being on the right side of the geopolitical fight, as inconvenient as that may be to you and me.
It is, if you care about the issues the author evidently cares about, "time to start de-Appling". I am a satisfied ongoing customer of Apple and I didn't find this headline to be the least bit inflammatory. It is, at worst, minor clickbait—but it's not really bait at all, since the contents of the article match the headline.
FYI, this is not about a law, this is about a Technical Capability Notice. This is a thing the UK government is able to issue to a specific company or companies, that require them to implement technical measures to enable data collection. This applies only to the company/ies that the notice is issued to.
That could be one of them, some of them or all of them, but it's not really a law that automatically applies to all of them.
Everything a government does is about a law, but, even if only Apple had received this notice, why would it change the unfairness of singling out Apple? Did UK government issue this request as their final request of this kind? Did they forbid any further requests to be made? Did they single out Apple out of something specific to Apple Inc (or, say, United States) or did Apple happen to be just too visible?
Singling out Apple in the article's title sends the wrong message here. The author should have gone with something along the lines of "UK residents should stop using E2EE cloud services". Current title implies there might be a safe E2EE service in the UK. Heck, they even claim that in the article: "If you need an e2ee service try Proton" as if Proton is exempt from getting a notice from the UK. It's not.
Yes, it's nothing to do with Apple per se - any major E2E provider would be under the same attack. The problem here is UK government is drunk with power and doesn't want their citizens to have any privacy rights, and UK citizens are largely ok with that, as evidenced by them keeping to elect such governments. Apple is just the most prominent target of the attack - eventually, they will try to attack smaller targets still, and make usage of the strong encryption as hard as possible, maybe outlaw it completely and mandate government key escrow. They already tried it in many countries, and UK seems to be very ripe to try again.