I think Apple could have raise it to the public without being too specific, like what they told Bloomberg today.
Though I don’t really thinnk it would stop UK government from doing this, as UK government is shameless enough to push through highly unpopular laws / policies, one after another.
I think that Apple is carefully treading the line already; notice how they discuss it in a roundabout way without ever addressing why they are making these changes and statements.
Yeah I mean they could have do the same once they received the “order”, not after pulling the plug, because as you said, they decided to tread the line anyway.
Honestly, I’m not shocked with anything on this. Apple is a company, the government of a country has the rights to request a company that operates in their jurisdiction to comply what they think is better for their public. Companies can always be corruptible in this system. It is even worst when you have no chances to even see the product that you are consuming.
No, I don’t believe UK government did it for genuine public interest. Not for a second.
I didn’t say they did. I’m saying that the government is the public representation and have the structure to push requests they believe to be better for the mass. The current system allows this.
What else could they do?
They are almost certainly the source of the leak which let the world know about the UKs insane demands in the first place.
Discontinue the service.
Well yes, that’s what they did.
Apple is not treading the line. It tries not to be criminally charged.
The office of the Home Secretary has served Apple with a document called a technical capability notice, ordering it to provide access under the sweeping U.K. Investigatory Powers Act of 2016, which authorizes law enforcement to compel assistance from companies when needed to collect evidence, the people said. The law, known by critics as the Snoopers’ Charter, makes it a criminal offense to reveal that the government has even made such a demand. An Apple spokesman declined to comment.
The leak is an unfortunate event. We (the people) are not supposed to know about the order. Apple didn’t acknowledge any orders from the UK government. It’ll be criminally charged if it does so. It just disables Advanced Data Protection.
As far as I’m aware, Apple is still offering the iCloud service in the UK without end-to-end encryption, which is what the UK government wanted; access to data given a warrant. They seem to have only taken away the feature while continuing to offer the service.
If they discontinued the iCloud service altogether because the UK wouldn’t allow them to offer end-to-end encryption, then I’ll need to re-evaluate my opinion of Apple and the company’s willingness to stick to its principles (and USP).
To be fair, Apple has said that it may have to stop offering security services in the UK back in 2023. 
This news should surprise no one.
Oh I missed this one completely, thanks.
I get what you are saying but is also not the role of corporates to make political decisions. I think democracies should set the boundaries not businesses.
Not to be rude, but they wont refuse, they also wont be loud about it
The UK, the old big empire, our mum, should publicly credit their little past colony Australia with this idea because we did it years ago.
Its just that about 3 wealthy ppl own our media and our legislative process has leveled up complexity to add a little less transparency in, its all still there when you look (they would rather you didnt) so Appled obvs agreed to play by those rules
Our TeleAct is in a state where its so fundamentally not fit for purpose, it shouldnt work because its doesnt make sense, but it doesnt need to when every different power structure including the courts involved decides they have the same feeling on what they want out of it and what direction that should go lol
I would be very supprised if many of them understand this, not mentioning care about it, definitely not mentioning go to the street protest against this.
Most recent episode of Security Cryptography Whatever podcast addresses this topic. Very interesting listen. Great podcast in general. I scanned the thread and couldn’t see this link posted yet, sorry if I missed it.
Some more new relevant info: