Apple has a staunch ally in this campaign to overturn European laws: Donald Trump has threatened the EU with tariffs unless it halts its attempts to regulate US tech giants like Apple, whose billionaire CEO Tim Cook gave Donald Trump $1m in exhange for a seat on the dais at Trump's inauguration and then traveled to DC again to hand-assemble a gilded participation trophy as a gift to America's fascist would-be dictator:

usatoday.com/story/news/politi…

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Tim Cook appeals to Trump’s love of gold with a 24-karat base for Apple plaque

President Trump hosted Apple CEO Tim Cook at the White House as they announced new US investments. Cook also gifted Trump a plaque with gold base.

^{, USA TODAY (USA TODAY)}

This is a painfully stupid threat and the EU should call Apple's bluff. The company claims that it is acting in the interest of European owners of Apple products. Apple claims that by blocking Europeans from using their Apple devices with third-party software and hardware, they are protecting their customers' privacy.

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This is nonsense. While it's true that Apple protects its customers' privacy from some external threats, Apple *also* spies on its users, without their consent, in order to gather behavioral data that's used for Apple's ad-targeting system. When this came to light, Apple lied to its customers about it:

pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/lux…

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Apple has used its exclusive control over which software can operate on its devices to expose *every Chinese iOS user* to unrestricted government surveillance. Apple removed all working VPNs from its Chinese app store:

cnet.com/news/apple-removes-vp…

The company then backdoored its iCloud backup for unrestricted access by Chinese authorities:

nytimes.com/2021/05/17/technol…

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Apple removes VPN apps from China App Store

The country is continuing its clampdown on the use of virtual private networks to get around its notorious internet filter.

^{Anne Dujmovic (CNET)}

Then they removed the ability to anonymously share messages via Airdrop to curb the tool's usage to spread opposition messages during a wave of mass protests in China (they took away this functionality for *every Airdrop user in the world)*:

cnbc.com/2022/11/30/apple-limi…

The idea that Apple is so committed to its users' privacy that it will exit a major market rather than expose users to surveillance risks is an obvious lie - just ask China.

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Apple limited a crucial AirDrop function in China just weeks before protests

AirDrop has become an important tool in protestors' efforts to circumvent authoritarian censorship regimes over recent years.

^{Karen Gilchrist (CNBC)}

Why would Apple tell this lie? Because it wants to protect its profits - not its customers.

Apple lies when it claims that control over its platforms is primarily about protecting users. The App Store is "teeming with scams":

msn.com/en-us/news/technology/…

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However, by forcing Apple customers to get apps from Apple's own store, the company can skim a 30% commission on every dollar its customers send to an app maker, a Patreon performer, a news outlet or any other app supplier - a business that's worth $100b/year to Apple. Remember, in the EU, the cost of processing a payment is between 0% and 1%.

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Apple claims that it protects its customers from privacy risks by blocking third-party repair depots and by requiring its customers to pay through the nose for official repair. But Apple's own repair technicians have been caught plundering and sharing nude images of its own customers, stolen from phones that were sent to Apple:

vice.com/en/article/pkbkey/she…

This has happened repeatedly:

washingtonpost.com/technology/…

All over the world:

9to5mac.com/2016/10/12/apple-a…

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Apple 'investigating' explicit photo-sharing ring run by employees at Australian Apple Store [U] - 9to5Mac

Update: Apple says its investigation has found no evidence of ‘inappropriate data transfers’ of photos from customer phones – via CNET....

^{Chance Miller (9to5Mac)}

(And of course, these are just the instances that we know about).

Apple protects its customers from privacy threats, but not from Apple's own predatory, privacy-invasive, rent-extracting conduct. Apple also gets to unilaterally decide which scams are permitted on its platform and which ones are not, and they alone get to decide when to allow secret, pervasive surveillance of Apple customers.

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Apple's threats are lies, but the privacy risks of interop are real. It's entirely possible to plug something into a secure tool that renders it insecure. It's nice when companies test third party add-ons and warn their customers about defective or risky aftermarket mods, and to the extent that Apple does this, it's doing good work. But Apple has an irreconcilable conflict of interest when it comes to vetoing its customers' decisions about which non-Apple products they use.

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Apple has some genuinely *stonking* margins on its payment processing, repair, and other lines of business, and Apple's CEO has openly boasted about using deliberately engineered incompatibilities to drive people to switch to Apple products:

businessinsider.com/tim-cook-b…

How do we get Apple to protect its customers' privacy without picking their pockets or invading their privacy? B

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Tim Cook's 'Buy your mom an iPhone' remark part of DOJ's Apple case

Tim Cook told someone to "Buy your mom an iPhone" in response to complaints about green messages and sending videos to Android users.

^{Alex Bitter (Business Insider)}

By removing the company's veto over who can make software and hardware that works with Apple's competing offerings. The ultimate decision about which products are too dangerous for Europeans to use can't be vested with Apple - instead, it should be vested with expert agencies working for democratically accountable governments.

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This is the point that Bennett Ciphers and I made at length in our EFF white-paper "Privacy Without Monopoly," which has a whole section explaining how the EU's big, muscular privacy law, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), makes this an especially attractive proposition in the EU:

eff.org/document/privacy-witho…

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Privacy Without Monopoly: Data Protection and Interoperability

privacy_without_monopoly.pdf

^{Electronic Frontier Foundation}

It's also a point that EFF board member and infosec legend Bruce Schneier made in his open letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, discussing opening up app stores:

eff.org/document/letter-bruce-…

Apple isn't going to exit a market with half a billion affluent consumers. If it does, expect its shareholders to wreak swift and terrible vengeance on the company. You know how people are always complaining that investors are only interested in short-term returns?

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Letter from Bruce Schneier to Senate Judiciary regarding App Store security

schneier_letter_to_senate_judiciary_re_app_stores.pdf

^{Electronic Frontier Foundation}

It's true and here's a place where that cuts in our favor: shareholders aren't going to accept a half-billion-person market exit tomorrow in anticipation of forcing the EU to capitulate next year and thereafter safeguard Apple's continental scale rent-extraction racket.

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They want returns to their capital *tomorrow*, not in some hypothetical future in which Tim Cook tears out Henna Virkkunen's still-beating heart with his bare hands and parades it through Strasbourg, brandishing it at legions of trembling, vanquished eurocrats.

But let's say Apple *does* exit the EU.

*Good.*

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