> Why wouldn’t they [US Citizens] be subject to UK laws like any other person living in the UK?
Yes, anyone in the UK is subject to UK law. But there is no UK law criminalizing the choice of a UK resident to enable Advanced Data Protection (or, if it’s already enabled, to not disable it).
They’re threatening Apple, not its users. Sure, Apple is subject to UK law (although it’s debatable if they’re even violating it). But they’re not immune to lawsuits in the US just because another country told them to violate their implicit contract with users.
> As someone using ADP the risk of this led me to manually disable it at the time.
That’s precisely the opposite of what you should have done. I was (and am still) using ADP in the UK. If I disabled it then I would no longer have the option to enable it. Nothing is forcing me to disable it – where is the threat of data loss? It’s only a risk if I don’t disable it, which I can do at any time in the future. You surrendered your only form of leverage for no reason and made yourself less safe in the process.
Maybe, but any reasonable person would expect some clear, explicit notice of when that would happen. Until they “give me that period of time,” I have no reason to disable the safety feature that I won’t be able to re-enable…
And disabling your iCloud Account doesn’t mean that they would stop you from disabling ADP. It would probably be a red icon in settings that says “iCloud sync is paused, disable Advanced Data Protection to resume.”
(But I’m not sure I’m even subject to this, which is why I asked my original question… what’s a “UK user?” I have the US App Store active right now. I can switch to the UK store but that cancels all subscriptions, presumably including Apple Care+, which I could not re-purchase without buying a new device.)
Yes, anyone in the UK is subject to UK law. But there is no UK law criminalizing the choice of a UK resident to enable Advanced Data Protection (or, if it’s already enabled, to not disable it).
They’re threatening Apple, not its users. Sure, Apple is subject to UK law (although it’s debatable if they’re even violating it). But they’re not immune to lawsuits in the US just because another country told them to violate their implicit contract with users.
> As someone using ADP the risk of this led me to manually disable it at the time.
That’s precisely the opposite of what you should have done. I was (and am still) using ADP in the UK. If I disabled it then I would no longer have the option to enable it. Nothing is forcing me to disable it – where is the threat of data loss? It’s only a risk if I don’t disable it, which I can do at any time in the future. You surrendered your only form of leverage for no reason and made yourself less safe in the process.