> But that shiny new button that governments get to press will never go away.
I think that framing is slightly counterproductive to be honest. The alternative are efforts that, from what I see so far, seem to fall on one of two sides:
a) sensible privacy defaults like the proposal by Google/Apple, open development, limited traction in the community and not well connected to political decision makers
b) company initiatives, closed developments and promises of openness while working on centralized solutions
I feel like your scenario would be more worrying in terms of privacy if Google/Apple didn't introduce this protocol extension. They are essentially forcing the b) group to adapt something sensible. Another positive is that this seems limited to the OS level, whereas both have more extensive infrastructure they could have pushed for but intentionally did not.
tl;dr: I think it is a beneficial proposal and well placed, the alternative would likely be worse for the user base.
I think that framing is slightly counterproductive to be honest. The alternative are efforts that, from what I see so far, seem to fall on one of two sides:
a) sensible privacy defaults like the proposal by Google/Apple, open development, limited traction in the community and not well connected to political decision makers
b) company initiatives, closed developments and promises of openness while working on centralized solutions
I feel like your scenario would be more worrying in terms of privacy if Google/Apple didn't introduce this protocol extension. They are essentially forcing the b) group to adapt something sensible. Another positive is that this seems limited to the OS level, whereas both have more extensive infrastructure they could have pushed for but intentionally did not.
tl;dr: I think it is a beneficial proposal and well placed, the alternative would likely be worse for the user base.