Technology

That's already the case with most corporate managed BYO device policies. The typical scenario is that an employer gives you the choice:

1. Use the company-owned and company-managed device. No root/admin access, no privileges to install unauthorized software, sometimes policies against personal accounts or files or use.
2. Bring your own device, but consent to the company's IT department managing your security and potentially monitoring your use. If you're going to connect this device to the company's LAN (through wifi or VPN or otherwise), you're going to let us lock it down.

It's a legitimate concern that these types of things would normalize corporate-managed devices in our personal lives as consumers, and worth resisting in that space, but I don't think it would actually change the status quo in the corporate world to go from proprietary device management lockdowns to some kind of public standard for lockdowns.

From the article:

"We work hard to build great products, and what consumers do with those tools is up to them — not Apple, and not broadband providers," Cynthia Hogan, VP of public policy at Apple

Prove it, then. Unlock the bootloader. Allow us to install our own apps. Let us install our own OS on the hardware. I get they don't want to open source their iOS, that's fine. They say "what consumers do with those tools is up to them", but then they lock those tools down TIGHT. Actions speak much louder than words. They say those tools are ours? They need to show us that this is true.

I'm sorry to disappoint you, but this is basically the same thing: https://blog.cloudflare.com/eliminating-captchas-on-iphones-and-macs-using-new-standard/

Then what's this? https://httptoolkit.com/blog/apple-private-access-tokens-attestation/

The details are a bit different. PATs use HTTP headers during a request while WEI is a JS browser API. But otherwise the general structure and end result are the same. A website requests an integrity check, an attester checks your device, and if the attester doesn't like your device then you're SOL.

There needs to be a unified fight against this, that involves not only browser companies but also the businesses running major websites. If it goes through and Google manages to persuade websites to use it, all the other browsers will be forced to implement it if they want to continue existing. And then no more freedom for web users.