[nonlocutor]

https://www.lawfareblog.com/legal-tetris-and-fbis-anom-progr...

“ The Australian Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment (Assistance and Access) Act 2018 (TOLA) allows government agencies to issue “technical assistance” and “technical capability” notices to providers of communications services. The notices require that the providers give the authorities help in conducting criminal enforcement intercepts, and that they make changes in their systems to ensure that they can give that help.”

…

“In any event, the FBI chose a curiously roundabout way of getting access to ANOM messages. For ANOM devices operating outside of the United States, “an encrypted [blind carbon copy or BCC]” of each message that a user sent was transmitted to a server located outside of the United States, which then decrypted and reencrypted the message with an encryption key known to the FBI. Those reencrypted messages were sent to another server that was owned by the FBI, outside of the United States.

In the summer of 2019, the FBI started negotiating to build the legal structure that would make this technical architecture work. In essence, the FBI went looking for a third country that would host the BCC server and could lawfully accept all of the decrypted messages and send the copies to the FBI. As the affidavit notes, “Unlike the Australian beta test, the third country would not review the content in the first instance.” This would have been a fascinating negotiation. Both participants wanted to make criminal cases and avoid privacy scandals. The U.S. would want to be sure that the third country had full legal authority to intercept the contents of every ANOM message, and that the country was also willing to share the full ANOM take with the U.S. in something like real time.”

[simondotau]

None of that explains how Australia could ever successfully coerce Apple into performing widespread surveillance of US citizens. The fact that Australia is a "five eyes" country doesn't make it any more plausible than if the demand came from China or Russia.

[vermilingua]

It explains how Australia could coerce Apple into performing widespread surveillance of Aus citizens. Then it’s trivial for the US to coerce Apple into switching that functionality on in the US.

[simondotau]

Any widespread warrantless surveillance of the private physical property of US citizens, performed at the direction of the US Government, would be an absolute clear-cut unambiguous breach of the 4th Amendment.

I'm not saying the US Government wouldn't care that it's unconstitutional—we know they'd ignore the constitution when they can get away with it. But they'd also have to convince Apple's lawyers to go along with unconstitutional surveillance. You don't think Apple wouldn't be itching for another opportunity to prove their strength against a Government? Especially now? Apple would love nothing more than to have more opportunities like they got with the San Bernardino iPhone.