[treesknees]

> Yet

I keep seeing this jump. There's no evidence this will happen. Apple can already technically do anything they want to compromise the security of your device in the next software update, so could Google or Samsung or any other company. But when in Apple's history have they done this? There is zero reason to believe this is the next step other than speculation and fear mongering.

[RHSeeger]

> Apple can already technically do anything they want to compromise the security of your device in the next software update

But they're making it easier for governments to come along and force them to do more. Or even for themselves, but I tend to think they're less of an issue.

I know "it's a slippery slope" gets overused... but if you keep taking baby slips down that slope, it only gets slipperier. You should avoid taking as many of those steps as possible.

[ryandrake]

Anyone can imagine a hypothetical future feature and oppose it. What if Apple one day replaces all my music with Best of ABBA? That would be terrible, but they haven't done or proposed it, so why argue about it?

[emptysongglass]

Because that's not what's being argued here. Nobody in power cares enough to mass load ABBA onto your phone. But there's very powerful nation states who care, more than they care about anything else, to maintain power at any cost.

[sharken]

Could anyone have imagined law enforcement using Corona contact-tracing data for other purposes ?

Because that actually happened, and in a democratic country even.

So it's not hard to imagine what less democratic countries could demand of Apple.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-29/queensland-coronaviru...

[nicce]

> But they're making it easier for governments to come along and force them to do more. Or even for themselves, but I tend to think they're less of an issue.

It is as easy as always been. Only problem is that this might give them new ideas. As the most of the politics are probably non-tech people, they don’t know what is possible.

For tech person, functionality like this (on-device scanning and flagging) is super trivial to add. Antivirus engines have existed decades.