Yes, and companies like Apple(and many others) have been successful - or at least appeared to be - at denying such requests by saying that there is no technical way to break the encryption built into their devices and communication. Now, there would be a way - once it's built it's built, there is no going back.

> companies like Apple(and many others) have been successful - or at least appeared to be - at denying such requests by saying that there is no technical way to break the encryption built into their devices and communication.

This is incorrect. Last time it went to court, Apple used very different arguments.

> Now, there would be a way - once it's built it's built, there is no going back.

Then why is the British government not asking for the system Apple designed? They are asking for something far more intrusive. Apple’s system is irrelevant to that.

You can also meaningfully resist spying by reducing the amount of sensitive user info you hold or building a transparent system. Apple has not done that, so they are now in a position where they have to reconcile what "fair data collection" even means.

If you're just asking me, they bungled it. MacOS shouldn't have ever gotten stuck in the Windows 8 Software as a Service trap, because it radically redirected their trajectory from "well-made personal devices" to "golden handcuffs". Don't believe me? Just try to install a freedom-respecting OS on your iPhone. You can't. It's a goose-chase, because Apple insists they don't even make computers in the first place. It's an iPhone, running a very special superior version of UNIX you're not entirely allowed to look at, but you can trust is secure.

So of course an authoritarian regime can compel spying regardless. They've probably been doing it for the past decade, given what we know about FIVE EYES and PRISM. When you're a company like Apple or Microsoft, they just update the software with the requested backdoor/vulnerability installed and push it to the closed codebase. Even Apple's proposed E2E encryption could be backdoored. Nobody would ever know the wiser.

If you want the reason I'm mad, it's because it echoes the reasons I left the ecosystem with MacOS Catalina. The idea of Apple defaulting to you trusting them on so many things is kinda sickening. They've had the opportunity to build groundbreaking trustless systems with unparalleled openness and plausible deniability for all user data. Now the users are bartering for a better (but also closed) E2E system with a company that doesn't want to hear them out. It's not my jam, I'm not going to be held hostage by my computer because Apple has a fetish for making extreme decisions on the behalf of their users.

Absolutely, but by normalizing scanning on local computers it takes you one step closer to authoritarianism. Every time politicians get a little more power, it only accelerates their desire for more control and inflates their sense of elitism that much more into thinking they're special and above us peasants.