Apple in the UK is threatening to shut down Facetime and iMessage due to the surveillance bill sent to Parliament. The measure, which could affect the communication of users of this operating system, is to avoid complying with the legislation, in case it is approved.
The company’s claim is that the bill undermines the security and privacy of its customers. If the legislation passes, Apple would prefer to terminate the apps, rather than weaken the security of the apps.
What is the project that would affect Apple applications?
The bill that could be approved is related to the Investigatory Powers Act, which allows law enforcement agencies to interfere with privacy in pursuit of investigations. Apple’s reluctance to comply with this potential legislation is because it guarantees end-to-end communications in its applications. In this way, messages sent in applications such as Apple’s iMessage and Facetime can only be read by those in the conversation.
As Apple sees it, complying with the legislation would mean weakening the security of its customers’ communications. This is something he is not willing to concede. In addition to the possibility of obtaining information on the messages, the legislation obliges companies to provide information on the safety of their products. They will also have to implement changes such as offering a login option for the final encryption.
The sum of these actions is what Apple considers to be a weakening of the security of its products. The company led by Tim Cook stated that the potential law is a serious threat to data security and information privacy. This is what leads to the desire to deregister applications in the UK, if and when the law is passed.
What should Apple customers in the UK do?
At the moment, the bill is in the so-called consultation period, so there is still a long way to go before any kind of definition. It should be considered that other applications have also complained about what this law would imply, such as Signal, Whatsapp, Wire, Session, among others. This would mean that Apple in the UK would not be alone in taking action against law enforcement. For example, Signal posted on its official Twitter account that they will not back down on providing private and secure communications.
The Ministry of the Interior, for its part, assured that the objective of the law is to protect the public from sexual abusers, criminals and also terrorists. Regarding the claims of companies such as Apple, he assured that the law is still under review and no decisions have been made yet.
If the law is finally passed, Apple users located in the UK will not be able to use Facetime or iMessage on their iPhones. This will undoubtedly be a great inconvenience for your communications and will surely generate more than one complaint from your customers.
