The UK keeps trying to throw their weight around only to find out they aren’t that big. The CMA with Xbox and now this. They aren’t large enough for Apple and Microsoft to make massive changes just to accommodate a relatively small market.
The UK with Brexit are starting to find out very quickly how insignificant their nation is and how easy it is to route around the oversized egos of their so-called leaders.
Most governments deserve a good helping of scorn including my own, despite our best efforts to persuade them otherwise. I find most people in the UK quite agreeable. I recommend not taking criticism against your government personally.
While I’m glad the rather embarrassing empire thing is on the wane I really don’t see how that is relevant here.
The UK isn’t trying to tell anybody what they can do in any other country. It’s just laying down the law for what happens within its own borders which it’s entirely within its rights to do.
Equally why you would think an American company could or should tell the British government what to do is surely itself an example of empiricism is it not?
It is not that the UK can’t set the rules for their own country; it is just that they need Microsoft and Apple more than Microsoft and Apple need them and so the government has little leverage here.
Further, they aren’t large enough to block the deal so they will only make things worse for their own citizens as it will just deny citizen access to certain products and services or create or otherwise cause companies pull out of the market causing businesses and citizens to look for sun par alternatives.
Apple and Microsoft can’t tell the UK government what to to, but the power dynamic is still what it is and the reality of what blocking the deal will actually accomplish is still the reality.
Individually no, but in aggregate... A few games here, iMessage, Facetime, Whatsapp maybe, some other internet products, etc
Does it boast something else to make up for the loss of these things? Trading something for nothing always feels kinda bad. And if the trade is "We stood up for the right thing with respect to Cloud Gaming monopolization", you constituents might be kinda pissed after a while.
You know the old adage "Bread and Circus". Well you gotta make sure the circus is running well.
The question is this: is the law good in principle?
Meaning is the law good regardless of what Apple decides to do? Or is it only good if it forces Apple to break encryption?
I think the answer is obvious. Its not a principled law. Its just a threat. They wouldn’t rather lose access to facetime and iMessages than have access to them but encrypted. Thats just crippling themselves.
Hard to tell about the principles of the law itself.
I don't hold any of the British government departments in high regard, so I will assume malicious power-seeking on their part regardless of anything else.
But for the principal of forced decryption?
Most non-criminal organisations don't know how to secure their communications properly, so while organised criminals that hire decent IT can trivially secure their communications, I don't expect criminals to be generally capable of keeping out of sight of the authorities.
Non-professional criminals will probably all get scooped up easily by a surveillance dragnet.
And the only way past the competent criminals is old-fashioned intel gathering.
But the British government can't actually act on dragnet-scale information anyway:
They've been cutting back on police, court buildings, magistrates, public lawyers, prison buildings, prison staff, and parole boards.
Even if they hadn't, surveys of drug use alone suggest they'd be criminalising a double-digit percentage of the population they can't afford to put through the police let alone the courts. Given what the UK counts as "extreme" porn, I'd guess that's also a double-digit percentage of the population.
Maybe it does boast something else. I am genuinely unsure whether being able (after a judge orders it) to unlock encryption, similar to a front door, is a bad thing. I don't like it, it stinks, I'd hate to experiment with things like this and so I'd vote against it, but is it going to end up worse for the greater good? Can't we still just use proper/steganographic encryption when an authoritarian regime gains power, and until then is it better? I can't say that beyond reasonable doubt. That safer society can be argued to be a boast that makes up for it (I'm not saying it definitely is. I'm unsure. Very unsure).
And for the other, anti-monopolistic market authorities, the "boast" is a level playing field.
The point isn’t that it has judicial safeguards. Everyone thinks judicial safeguards are a good thing. The point is, once you weaken encryption to enable the bypass even through judicial safeguards, you weaken encryption for everybody and bypasses will be made, with absolute certainty, without judicial safeguards. If you enable encryption to be overcome through legitimate means, it will be overcome through illegitimate means. Which means encryption is effectively dead.
