[redserk]

> And withdrawing the product from the UK might not be enough to ensure compliance - the Investigatory Powers Act applies worldwide to any tech firm with a UK market, even if they are not based in Britain.

That's incredibly demanding for a country that's been desperately trying to cling onto relevance for decades.

[Longhanks]

To what extent is a country's relevance (whatever that even means) the decisive factor in determining what it is allowed to demand?

[ben_w]

Allowed? UK government can "demand" anything. Anything outside the UK's sovereign control, is necessarily only going to be given by those who have other reasons to do so besides the threat of being arrested by a police force that has no jurisdiction.

The company wants to do business in the UK, it has to follow UK law. UK law claims for itself the right to act globally, and has the power to arrest and fine the companies and officers of Apple that are based in the UK if they don't… but then the Pope claims supremacy over all Catholics* and gets ignored somewhat in this also, and for the same reason:

There are other governments involved, and they don't accept the UK's (/Pope's) jurisdiction exceeds their own.

And in this case, the laws of other nations seem to require Apple to violate this law, so Apple's officers have to decide between which country to risk having arrest their officers, or to leave the UK.

(I have no idea what's going to happen, because the intelligence community in every nation has reasons to want Apple to be forced to do this, so if Apple decides to agree with the UK and violate other nations' privacy laws, those privacy laws may get conveniently ignored).

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_supremacy

[jonathanstrange]

The problem is that I would like to visit the UK as a tourist again as a developer of end-to-end encrypted applications. Geo-blocking all traffic from the UK, not selling to UK citizens, and strictly prohibiting the use of my applications for anyone from the UK should suffice to fulfill the UK's totalitarian demands. Anything else sets a horrible precedent.

Are you ready to fulfill China's and North Korea's requirements as a UK company?

[ben_w]

> Are you ready to fulfill China's and North Korea's requirements as a UK company?

Quite.

There's two reasons I left the UK: this nonsense (the whole Act, not just this specific bit) and Brexit.

[redserk]

They can demand whatever they want, it doesn't mean their demands should or will be respected.

The UK only has ~70 million people.

[jimkleiber]

At some point I hope we get a government that governs global internet interactions. National governments are just making up silly jurisdiction rules because there's a customer that is currently in their place, overlooking the global nature or at least feel of the internet.

If I'm in one country and the person with whom im interacting is in another, whose geographical laws take precedence? Now imagine interacting with many many geographies at the same time.

It doesn't work and I hope one day we at least admit it to ourselves.

[bathtub365]

You want even more consolidation of power?

[jimkleiber]

Consolidatation of governmental power to balance the power of global corporations and global criminal enterprises? Yes

[pydry]

One of the ways it hangs on is by being a part of 5 eyes "mutual spying club" meaning that US intelligencies can bypass domestic legal protections.

[FuriouslyAdrift]

That just recently got ruled illegal by a Federal Court...

https://www.eff.org/cases/united-states-v-hasbajrami

[tene80i]

The U.K. is the sixth largest economy in the world. It’s hardly irrelevant, unless the only relevant countries are the USA and China.

[portaouflop]

large economy /= relevance

The uk economy is 80% services, mostly financial services and tourism, only 18% come from manufacturing

[miohtama]

The UK is a poor country with London attached to it

[tene80i]

Do you define relevance in terms of manufacturing?

[portaouflop]

Hard to say how to define relevance - but I think an economy based on manufacturing is more solid (relevant?) than one based on tourism

[tene80i]

It’s not based on tourism, it’s based on services, which includes tourism but isn’t dominated by it.

But regardless, it’s exactly because it’s hard to define relevance that I was challenging the original comment, which said, without explaining what it meant by this, that the U.K. is no longer relevant.

Regardless of your feelings about this Apple issue, it just seems like an absurd thing to say about a country that’s a large economy (even if wealth is concentrated in one region), has decent cultural exports, is a nuclear power, sits on the UN Security Council, etc.

It’s exactly because it can throw its weight around with Apple, and people are treating it seriously, that it clearly is relevant. If it was some tiny nation doing it, it would just provoke amusement.

[portaouflop]

True, imo the UK is very relevant in many aspects - for me it’s mostly in terms of culture. I think much of this is due to the empire and them colonising a major part of the world.

But just as an aside on your last point - I think it’s actually pretty amusing that they think they could force a backdoor on apple…

[christkv]

If they were to get this it's time to sue Apple for breach of GDPR.