alt Hacker NewsThere is one non-technical countermeasure that Apple seems unwilling to try: Apple could totally de-legitimize the secondary access market if they established a legal process for access their phones. If only shady governments require exploits, selling access to exploits could be criminalized.
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It would not completely de-legitimize it. Maybe a government doesn't want anyone to know they are surveilling a suspect. But it definitely would reduce cash flow at commercial spyware companies, which could put some out of business.
Your opinion is that Apple should have just handed over Jamal Khashoggi‘s information to the Saudi Arabian agents who were trying to kill him, because then Saudi Arabia wouldn’t have been incentivized to hack his phone? I think you’ll find most people’s priorities differ from yours.
As many people in this space have found out recently, there is no real thing as a non-shady government.
We have a word for this: a backdoor. It wouldn't de-legitimize the secondary access market. It would just delegitimize Apple itself to the same level. Apple seems to care about its reputation as the defender of privacy, regardless of how true it is in practice, and providing that mechanism destroys it completely.