BTW, Apple is missing a great opportunity in my opinion. They don't need a ton of user data to make money and could evolve into the secure consumer device company. I see only upside for Apple if they work towards making as secure as possible devices.
They don't have this option. They are too big to not cooperate the US law enforcement and intelligence communities. They must cooperate, it's given. There are just way too many pressure points that can be exploited to make them cooperate, even against their will. If they start selling themselves as a secure and trustworthy device manufacturer you can rest assured it's just lip service and pure marketing.
There's another reason this won't happen: very few users really care.
If users really wanted it and clamored for it and showed a clear market preference for secure and privacy-respecting companies, then you might get somewhere.
but they DO have the option of designing their hardware and services to minimize trackable data, to get as close to "zero knowledge" as possible. The government cannot force them to collect data, only share data that they have collected.
Governments can force them to do anything: they know where Tim Cook lives and can ruin his life six ways from Sunday. Really, other than all the selectively enforced laws that exist already, all governments have to do is start passing laws that say "all communication systems must be interceptible by the government". Indeed CALEA already does this, but it's (again) selectively enforced.
I don't know where this ends, but I suspect it ends up with lots of computer programmers rotting in jail, others going underground and everyone just accepting that they live in a totalitarian state run by the military, which constantly brainwashes its children to believe they live in the best country in the world.
Lavabit shown the government can demand installation of their own surveillance equipment on a company's premises to gather that data themselves. I wonder if they could make the same demand on a company like Apple to install their own back doors if Apple decided not to collect that information themselves.
I disagree...Apple's size makes it ideal for resistance - the government has been very pro-business for the last decade, and congress has been way too receptive to lobbying groups. If Apple, Google, and a few others really put some muscle into it, they could make a real difference.
Lobbying against environmental or financial regulations is one thing. Taking on the national security state is something else entirely. I don't think it's loony or hyperbolic to say that the military/intelligence world really runs the U.S. at many levels. The U.S. has been a national security state at the highest levels since WWII transformed America from a civilian-centered economy to a military one and created what Eisenhower called the "military industrial complex." The whole topic makes for very interesting history... look into the national security act of 1947 for a starting point.
At lower levels you have a vestigial democracy and true "independent" free enterprise, but when you get to be a company the size of Apple you are too big to blend in with the ordinary civilian economy. Getting that large results in immediate audience before the king, which in America is the military/intelligence shadow state. I'd be very surprised if one can ascend to the billion-dollar stratum in America without some very interesting closed-door meetings with strict NDAs. I'm also sure that all kinds of next-level stuff kicks in when you start to become a major international corporation that does heavy business overseas, as Apple is.
There are endless forms of soft power that can be brought to bear against a large company, especially a publicly traded one. You've got the standard issue tax evasion practices of every major corporation for starters. Don't want to help us spy on users? How about a high-resolution IRS audit and some "offshore banking reform" specifically targeted at you? Then there's anti-trust, which is obviously selectively enforced. Does Apple have anything that could be called a monopoly or a monopolistic business practice?
Whilst I see your point, and I would love a major mobile device manufacturer to enter that space, there's a large barrier for Apple: the underlying operating system is not open source. Whilst that remains the case, the question of security ultimately breaks down to Apple saying "Trust Us". Given recent revelations, that's not something that should be afforded to any company that fails to demonstrate a commitment to protecting the personal data of it users from everyone including itself.
A 3rd party audit of the source would go some way toward building that trust, but falling short of a publicly available code-base allowing independent verification, I doubt it would be enough.
BTW, Apple is missing a great opportunity in my opinion. They don't need a ton of user data to make money and could evolve into the secure consumer device company. I see only upside for Apple if they work towards making as secure as possible devices.