<story><title>The Apple letter to customers couldn&apos;t happen under proposed UK law</title><url>https://privacyinternational.org/node/751</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>madaxe_again</author><text>That wouldn&amp;#x27;t make a difference here in Airstrip One - the court order can be public, but you&amp;#x27;re still not allowed to respond, or even mention it, as while it&amp;#x27;s a matter of public record, it&amp;#x27;s also secret.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s a whole bunch of stuff like this. Turn up at a classified government site and ask to see the silos, and watch a press officer do impressive mental gymnastics.</text></item><item><author>ikeboy</author><text>The court order was public. Apple didn&amp;#x27;t reveal anything not already known. This article seems unaware of that fact.&lt;p&gt;Also, there&amp;#x27;s NSLs in the US as well.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>vidarh</author><text>The most hilarious example to me is that the BT Tower (originally Post Office Tower) did not use to appear on Ordnance Survey maps because its location was deemed an official secret.&lt;p&gt;In 1993, an MP finally &amp;quot;revealed&amp;quot; the location to draw attention to the idiocy by exercising parliamentary privilege and mentioning the location in parliament.&lt;p&gt;For those of you who have not been to London, or isn&amp;#x27;t aware which tower I&amp;#x27;m talking about, this is it (note the pictures showing it in the London skyline...):&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;BT_Tower&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;BT_Tower&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is rather hard to miss, given that it rises 177 meters above street level in a part of London where the nearest other highrise is a 117m building about 1km away...&lt;p&gt;It also had a viewing platform and restaurant &lt;i&gt;open to the public&lt;/i&gt; for 15 years while it was still an official secret...&lt;p&gt;The UK is quite fantastic at this. When you know about stuff like this, it puts UK comedy like Monthy Python&amp;#x27;s Dead Parrot Sketch[1] into very different perspective as a good illustration of behaviour that officialdom in the UK see as perfectly rational.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Dead_Parrot_sketch&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Dead_Parrot_sketch&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>The Apple letter to customers couldn&apos;t happen under proposed UK law</title><url>https://privacyinternational.org/node/751</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>madaxe_again</author><text>That wouldn&amp;#x27;t make a difference here in Airstrip One - the court order can be public, but you&amp;#x27;re still not allowed to respond, or even mention it, as while it&amp;#x27;s a matter of public record, it&amp;#x27;s also secret.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s a whole bunch of stuff like this. Turn up at a classified government site and ask to see the silos, and watch a press officer do impressive mental gymnastics.</text></item><item><author>ikeboy</author><text>The court order was public. Apple didn&amp;#x27;t reveal anything not already known. This article seems unaware of that fact.&lt;p&gt;Also, there&amp;#x27;s NSLs in the US as well.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ovi256</author><text>I get that you&amp;#x27;re using &amp;quot;the silos&amp;quot; as something uber-secret, but note that the UK does not have (and never had) land-based nuclear weapons, so does not have any missile launching silos. The only nuclear weapon the UK has is Trident - submarine launched missiles.</text></comment>