If Apple has been asked/told to open encrypted accounts, then the UK is likely talking to Meta, Signal, etc. about doing the same thing.
And Signal’s President, Meredith Whittaker is already on record saying “the organization would “absolutely, 100% walk” if the legislation undermined its encryption service”.
So if it leaves the UK, IMO, that should tell us everything we need to know.
What happens when the UK Government Site gets hacked and the billions of people’s backups are now on dark web. Who is responsible. The odds are pretty low but nothing is hack proof.
Probably nothing, if they are like the US Government.
I agreed with President Ronald Reagan when he said “I’ve always felt the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.”
Generally speaking, at least on paper, in the United States you can’t sue the government without the government consenting to it. That said, there are a bunch of situations in which they’ve legislatively “pre-consented.” It’s a minefield.
The underlying question though is whether they’re responsible for damages. That’s a much bigger lift, lawsuit-wise. It’s one thing for a court to mandate that the government fix their system going forward. It’s quite another for them to determine that the people who were harmed should be compensated.
Millions of Americans have had their data leaked or stolen over the years. Proving the data that caused me a loss was leaked from a specific government website would probably be impossible.
I’ve been notified of three data breaches, which is the only reason I know mine has been leaked from at least two credit bureaus and a healthcare site. 
Ultimately, the only way to handle this kind of crap.
Apple ought to just say no…or threaten to pull out of the UK, or remove encryption from all UK users.
There is nothing special about the UK government and they will back down.They are extremely unpopular in the UK. if they rob the middle classes of their beloved Apple devices, there will be repurcussions politically for them
Well, the government can issue obscene fines if Apple just “says no.” I’m guessing that pulling out of the UK would be impractical, as the UK would still claim rights over all existing iPhones, as well as rights over any iPhones purchased overseas and brought into the UK.
Apple would likely have to shut down iCloud services for every iCloud account with a UK address. Could they? Sure. Would the UK citizens see the connection with their government? I’m not so sure.
How many average citizens actually understand enough of the nuance for it to blow back on the government rather than Apple?
This is interesting. 
“Think of the children” seems to be about the last excuse they should try to use these days.
If it comes to Apple complying with UK. Then that’s it. I will disable iCloud Backup. NO more paying to iCloud.
I have very little in iCloud besides my iPad/iPhone backup, but I’d been thinking of turning off Messages in iCloud for the last month or two.
If Apple doesn’t leave the UK we may never know for sure what happened. In fact we wouldn’t know if the US government had already forced Apple to do something similar.
Do you use Advanced Data Protection right now? It’s not possible for Apple to offer a backdoor key to an intelligence agency.
If concerned about a secret iOS update that would smuggle your data off your device, bypassing ADP, that could technically happen even if you entirely disabled iCloud.
Yes.
So they say.
Sorry, I will drop it after this, but like I said in the part you didn’t respond to–if you are worried about that level of deception in the UI, network analysis and side-channeling, you shouldn’t even trust the phone in airplane mode with no connected services. I think that even can be a reasonable stance for some people targeted by zero days (Snowden et al.)
My comment was not caused by worry. I am well aware of how little privacy, IMO, all of us have. Let’s just say my trust in governments and big corporations is at an all time low. Removing iMessage from iCloud backup is just a personal vote of no confidence.
Only if I’m violating any rules of this group. I’m not sure so I asked the moderators if it violates then I’m fine with it being taken down.
@Nick, there you go. I deleted my post out of respect to this forum. I didn’t mean to disrespect any country simultaneously; I expect any country not to impose unrealistic laws demanding access to my data when I am not even in their jurisdiction.
No other country than the UK would dare to create a Permanent Record of people outside their jurisdiction 
.
I am actually surprised how for Apple got with their end to end encryption. To my knowledge they even offer it in China. I curious how well Apple will hold out if bigger markets request the same.
Thankyou - and likewise I have deleted my comments. I absolutely agree with your comments in this
I expect any country not to impose unrealistic laws demanding access to my data when I am not even in their jurisdiction
Indeed I made a post with a similar sentiment early in this thread.
It was not that that caused my irritation.
I shall move on from this thread now.