Re: The end of Apple
These companies cannot afford to become silos and conduits for illegal, unsavory and dangerous content
Ah, but you're trying to put Facebook and Apple in the same corner. Nice try, but there is rather a lot of difference between a service provider whose main business is the acquisition and (ab)use of personal information to which it ALWAYS has unfettered access and a hardware manufacturer who has added services as an incentive to sell more, and who has done its engineering well because their business depends on it. Or, shorter: Facebook has access to every bit (literally) of data flowing through it, Apple does not unless it changes a password - which is what you would notice as a user.
What you're asking is that companies by default run surveillance for law enforcement, which is NOT their role because they have neither the authority for it, nor the legal protection (get it wrong and your business will be sued into the ground for slander). As a matter of fact, in most countries a company doing that would actually BREAK the law.
Companies DO have a duty to collaborate with law enforcement where possible, but that does not include destroying their own business because a few bad guys use their equipment too, otherwise you have found the PERFECT argument to finally fix the problem with US gun abuse, and anyone selling crowbars ought to really be shut down too.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
