Apple May Have To Stop Selling iPhone In The UK If Surveillance Law Passes

Here’s the deal. The UK government is trying to pass legislation that will prevent anyone from using strong encryption. What it means is “any encryption we can’t break is banned”. So Apple , which has great security and makes it quite clear that it doesn’t want to see users data, will have to make a decision.

The options for Apple and WhatsApp, Facebook, Snapchat and any other service that encrypts user chats will be the following:

Let the UK government in through a back door

Do not use encryption for messaging.

To be quite clear, Apple can happily manage without the UK and barely notice a dent in its profits. Losing Europe would hurt, but the UK alone it could quite easily deal with. Europe, it seems, isn’t so interested in spying on its citizens. On the other hand, I suspect losing Apple would damage the UK economy quite a bit, Apple employs a lot of people here and a good many of us use Apple products to get our work done .... http://www.forbes.com