&gt;Don&#x27;t you see that if Apple takes a hard line that they don&#x27;t backdoor their phones it is far easier than if they do it for the US (or US&#x2F;UK) but not for others.<p>&gt;[[...]<p>&gt;To what extent and with what side effects? If to access the phone they had to disable all security for all users would that be appropriate? [...] &#x2F;&#x2F;<p>I think I must have misunderstood the situation. As I understood we were talking about Apple having the capability to access their technology and them refusing to use it for individual cases following issue of a warrant and personal intervention of the SoS. That is an entirely different proposition to what you&#x27;re suggesting - the a company be forced to design a system with a particular back door. That doesn&#x27;t appear to be in the information I read about the IPB but I stand to be corrected as necessary.<p>If [as it appears to be the case here] Apple, say, have the capability to disable security on all phones then I can&#x27;t see how the findings in this case change the ability of another state - China, SA, Syria, as your examples - to demand that Apple push changes to disable the security of phones. It&#x27;s not like China will say &#x27;oh, USA courts found it unconstitutional so we better not ask Apple to do it&#x27;.<p>FWIW I don&#x27;t really trust the government; as you say &quot;Bully for [me]&quot; if I don&#x27;t have things to hide. But I was attempting to answer the comments saying &#x27;why isn&#x27;t everyone up in arms, they&#x27;re all sheeple&#x27;.<p>Another aspect is, your notional MP being snooped on for unwholesome reasons means that the entire fabric of the British legal and political system is corrupt. If we&#x27;re at that point then I dare say the Secretary of State will just call in Apple bosses and have their partner&#x27;s fingernails pulled until the bosses agree to push a firmware update.<p>48 man-weeks vs Apple&#x27;s tens of thousands of man weeks per day [from 115k employees] seems pretty small cost. There&#x27;s no reason Apple couldn&#x27;t&#x2F;shouldn&#x27;t be compensated for that time. TBH in the USA situation it would surprise me if TLA-agencies wouldn&#x27;t write the code (if they haven&#x27;t already), they really only need Apple for the distribution keys I expect.<p>Good points but I&#x27;m afraid I remain as yet unswayed.