<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>paulsutter</author><text>Not taking a postion here, but given motivations it&amp;#x27;s hard to know what to conclude&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; That&amp;#x27;s not what you do when you&amp;#x27;re trying to brush something off.&lt;p&gt;It &amp;#x2F;could&amp;#x2F; be what you do if good relations with the Chinese government are crucial to your business (true for both Apple and Amazon).&lt;p&gt;As for the UK NCSC, it&amp;#x27;s bizarre that they would comment at all. One possible motivation: eagerness to discover how to use such a backdoor themselves&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; “The NCSC engages confidentially with security researchers and urges anybody with credible intelligence about these reports to contact us”</text><parent_chain><item><author>tptacek</author><text>They&amp;#x27;re not &amp;quot;maintaining ignorance&amp;quot;; they&amp;#x27;re categorically denying it, and in significant detail. Both Apple and Amazon produced essentially &lt;i&gt;bulleted refutations&lt;/i&gt; of the story. That&amp;#x27;s not what you do when you&amp;#x27;re trying to brush something off.</text></item><item><author>beaker52</author><text>It could also be possible that these companies are legally bound by some sort of investigation-related order to maintain ignorance to the presence of the chips and that Bloomberg have just sunk an ongoing investigation&amp;#x2F;counter-espionage operation, potentially putting an associated intelligence network at risk.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>UK cyber security agency backs Apple, Amazon China hack denials</title><url>https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-cyber-britain/uk-cyber-security-agency-backs-apple-amazon-china-hack-denials-idUSKCN1MF1DN</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>Alex3917</author><text>&amp;gt; They&amp;#x27;re not &amp;quot;maintaining ignorance&amp;quot;; they&amp;#x27;re categorically denying it&lt;p&gt;What makes you think the people denying it know about it though? E.g. if the head of Apple security got served an NSL, wouldn&amp;#x27;t that potentially prevent them from telling the company lawyers or the executive team?</text><parent_chain><item><author>tptacek</author><text>They&amp;#x27;re not &amp;quot;maintaining ignorance&amp;quot;; they&amp;#x27;re categorically denying it, and in significant detail. Both Apple and Amazon produced essentially &lt;i&gt;bulleted refutations&lt;/i&gt; of the story. That&amp;#x27;s not what you do when you&amp;#x27;re trying to brush something off.</text></item><item><author>beaker52</author><text>It could also be possible that these companies are legally bound by some sort of investigation-related order to maintain ignorance to the presence of the chips and that Bloomberg have just sunk an ongoing investigation&amp;#x2F;counter-espionage operation, potentially putting an associated intelligence network at risk.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>UK cyber security agency backs Apple, Amazon China hack denials</title><url>https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-cyber-britain/uk-cyber-security-agency-backs-apple-amazon-china-hack-denials-idUSKCN1MF1DN</url></story>