As a Brit I feel you may have a point there.

Right, after all the docs leaked by Snowden et al? After it has been shown time and time again that Apple give any customer data to the US government that they ask for? Trump as your president?! Thats right, the UK is the creepy nanny state!

Why can't they both be bad?

All governments are bad when it comes to citizen privacy, I think we can all agree on that.

Because Apple is an American company. They should feel protected, enabled even, to resist censorship and surveillance under American law. American regulation should stop Apple from exporting harmful or substandard cryptography. American researchers should be working with Apple to discover dangerous exploits. America doesn't seem to care about any of that, which is why it's primarily America's fault for exporting backdoorable cryptography to the UK.

Instead, Tim Cook is writing checks to the NSO Group's favorite President, fighting regulators, suing security researchers, and turning a blind eye to Elon illegally collecting secret Apple testimonies despite his declared opposition to Apple's business.

The UK is begging for scraps, America has been mass-manufacturing dragnet surveillance for years. And Apple even keeps shut about it: https://www.macrumors.com/2023/12/06/apple-governments-surve...