181–190 of 1001 posts
The writing is on the wall for the UK, has been for long, and the Labour government is going out of the way to ensure there can never be any reform, even if they have no mandate. There is one way they want to go, and they will drag their population along kicking and screaming. Anyone who can should get out.
The question is increasingly becoming “where?”. Every place seems to be moving in this direction.
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> The UK doesn't have the geopolitical clout it once did, especially not after Brexit. Aye. But (1) I don't think the UK government really understands that, and (2) for intelligence operations, they might still have enough . Everyone else has the exact same dichotomy of simultaneously wanting all the computers safe from other hackers while also hacking everything themselves, and many also want the added extra of guar…
Sure. But if one country (or one group of countries) legally requires Apple to do this worldwide and another country (or group of countries) legally forbids Apple to do this even within their own national borders, then Apple has to decide which country (or group of countries) it cares more about. It's not obvious to me how that would shake out, but the UK certainly can't assume it would like Apple's decision there, e…
I also don't know which way this will go, and indeed this is a big part of Apple's brand.
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> 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.
> 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.
Imagine Russian Oligarchs on android devices! Polonium will roll, I tell you!
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No, sorry, I've read too much history to buy into this line of reasoning. Authoritarians are a concrete threat to people's safety and they have a long history of abusing sensitive information about people to do so.
I think maybe we're talking past each other. I'm saying that when advocating for privacy, an effective framing (if winning privacy rights battles is the goal) is to make it "us" vs. "them" instead of some kind of party based push. If it's associated too strongly with a specific party it alienates too many people to ever get mass support and become a fundamental value that "everyone" agrees on
It's no good having people arguing for "privacy for me but not for thee", which is what it will boil down to. Ultimately authoritarians will use anything which gives them influence and control, with digital privacy violations being one of the easiest to rationalise (no violence, no physical theft).
So I don't see it as worthwhile trying to include such individuals in such a consensus. It's like trying to include foxes in a discussion about how we should best secure hen houses.
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> 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.
I 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.
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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.
> 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.
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).
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I'm in the UK pretty much only use iMessage/Snapchat. I had a look at the stats though and you're probably correct about WhatsApp being default, although we do have a surprisingly diverse and competitive messenger market: https://www.statista.com/forecasts/997945/most-used-messenge...
Id be very interested to break that data down by age. I'd hypothesise people who grew up during the dawn of social media (late 00s, early 2010s), will be strongly aligned with whatsapp whereas younger generations might be more iMessage/snapchat whatever else is out there these days. The most interesting generation would be gen X'ers. I guess theyll be a jumble of all solutions, including SMS
I also suspect international social structures could play a big role. In the UK many people have friends & family that emigrated to iMessage counties like the US & Australia. But many have links to WhatsApp countries like India or even Telegram countries in Eastern Europe.
Given recent polling, we have to assume that what is MI5's today will be Reform's tomorrow. We have to ask what our government and judiciary are doing putting our privacy in the hands of the far-right.
What's new here? As mentioned in the article, Salt Typhoon and the recency of this request by the UK. At this point they should know better. My pet theory is anytime the US wants to do something illegal under US law, they simply ask the UK to do it and vice versa. That's why Salt Typhoon isn't and never will be a lesson learned.
It is actually Australia where the US goes to test out far-out legislative ideas before implementing them at home.