Apple has said planned changes to British surveillance laws could affect iPhone users’ privacy by forcing it to withdraw security features, which could ultimately lead to the closure of services such as FaceTime and iMessage in the UK.
Everyone commeting here saying “good, we will switch to X” is absolutely stupid. This law means no iMessage, no Signal, no WhatsApp, no Telegram, no secure encrypted messaging for anyone.
People completely missing the point for an opportunity to shit on Apple is on brand though. Lol.
Great! If you’re technical and not have iOS. That’s already 50% of British market not using it.
Besides, it won’t help you if that’s a government mandate, and Google will be forced to take it down for the UK market from the store. Not a lot of people are installing apps from outside the Play Store.
Bullshit. Open source distributed messaging clients will always exist. The key is to federate and host in other countries.
Okay, try explaining it to my 51 years old father. Or someone who really isn’t into tech in general.
Federated stuff will work for you and I - technically knowledgeable people. But we are a tiny fraction of population. The success of WhatsApp lays in its super simplicity.
Click this link, type email and password. Federated services are just as easy from UX side. The complexity is the backend.
Good. Let’s all move to signal
Signal have already said they will withdraw completely from the UK, as have WhatsApp, Session and a few others.
If and when Signal is packaged for F-Droid, how is the British government going to stop people in the UK from using Signal?
Knowing this gvmt, they’ll try and prevent access at the ISP level. They’ve already started making noises about tackling ‘the menace of VPN’s’.
For real, wish I lived in the UK so I could get all my friends to adopt signal finally lol
The UK cannot believe every tech company will allow the govt to pre-approve updates instead of just pulling out.
I think you underestimate the deep stupidity and tech-ignorance of our politicians, coupled with their burning desire to know everything that we do. This is a set of people who think hidden == illegal.
Unfortunately both big parties tend towards authoritarianism too. The ‘nanny state’ is popular with voters.
This is a set of people who think hidden == illegal.
This is a fundamental shift in mentality that has occurred over the last 30 years and it’s startling how many average people have bought in. There doesn’t need to be a reason for something to be legal, rather there needs to be a compelling reason for it not to be. People have stopped viewing freedom as fundamental right, but rather as something granted to them by the government on a case by case basis.
No normal person would think every tech company would, but our politicians are bloody idiots if we go by their history
Why do they not see that encryption can happen in any form of communication even if they do get their backdoors? Are they going to make all encryption illegal?
I’m pretty sure that’s the end-game, yes. At least as far as communication based tools go, which would include chat apps, VPN’s, cloud storage etc etc. The ruling classes in the UK are very nanny-state and genuinely believe that a persons right to privacy comes a distant second to being able to rule over us and control us more effectively.
The issue for non-UK countries is that when world governments see that its possible to pass these sort of laws, they’ll be keen to do the same. And most people are not tech-savvy, they’ll have no real idea why it’s important or invasive. It’s difficult enough to get people to switch to Signal. Imagine trying to explain why breaking encryption is a bad thing for them.
Do apple users in Europe actually use iMessage? I thought most users in the EU used Whatsapp or Signal
As a 40yr old Android user… I live without these apps. Hell, I might have even used them once in history…
