The removal of the Advanced Data Protection (ADP) feature in the U.K. follows the British government reportedly issuing a secret legal demand to Apple to provide it with access to encrypted iCloud accounts.
Do what they did, and remove the feature for the UK only
Create a backdoor into their OS that can potentially be used by not just governments, but bad actors too, effectively crippling security for every single device they sell worldwide and bypassing the usefulness of on-device entirely.
Exit the UK market, which is not realistic and would leave millions of UK customers without any further recourse than to replace their Apple devices, which is incredibly wasteful and expensive (not to mention inconvenient).
Apple chose the lesser evil. What more could you possibly expect in this situation? If you want to protest, protest this government demanding this level of surveillance on their citizens.
So despite all the tough talk, they just roll over and capitulate. The only way to protest this is to move your stuff off Apple.
Apple’s choices here were:
Do what they did, and remove the feature for the UK only
Create a backdoor into their OS that can potentially be used by not just governments, but bad actors too, effectively crippling security for every single device they sell worldwide and bypassing the usefulness of on-device entirely.
Exit the UK market, which is not realistic and would leave millions of UK customers without any further recourse than to replace their Apple devices, which is incredibly wasteful and expensive (not to mention inconvenient).
Apple chose the lesser evil. What more could you possibly expect in this situation? If you want to protest, protest this government demanding this level of surveillance on their citizens.