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Apple Is Not Such a Freedom Fighter In China (latimes.com)
mi writes: Though loudly resisting the American government's attempts to make it help break into the phone of a dead scumbag, Apple is very accommodating of the Chinese government's attempts to keep tabs on the citizenry's communications. Apple has censored apps that wouldn't pass muster with the Chinese government, moved local user data onto servers operated by the state-owned China Telecom, and submitted to Chinese audits. According to James Lewis, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, "I can't imagine the Chinese would tolerate end-to-end encryption or a refusal to cooperate with their police, particularly in a terrorism case." Why the accommodation there?
At best, they're pretending to be a freedom fighter.
And it'll fool the same folks that bought Google's "Don't be evil" bullshit.
But you cannot compare the two. Citizens of the US are guaranteed certain freedoms and liberties. Citizens in China are not. That's China's problem, not Apple's. If the people of China want the same protections, they need to do something about it.
Go ahead and check my history. I'm a huge BlackBerry supporter and generally dislike Apple products. But Apple is 100% correct here.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
Who ever thought Apple was a freedom fighter? They use essentially slave labor to assemble their iPhones. Bizarre.
FaceTime rarely works between China and the US, and both our phones were purchased in the US. I suspect deep packet inspection and forged packets forcing the app to disconnect the sessions.
https://www.techinasia.com/app...
Life is not for the lazy.
I expect that it's the cost of doing business in China. Also note that none of the infrastructure relates to the device itself.
What can I say? Business is business. This 'freedom fighter' stuff makes for good soap opera and draws a few more customers, but not much else.
Regardless, we shouldn't be depending on any large company to protect our interests. If you want privacy, you're on your own.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Apple pretty much has to cooperate with the governments of places where it wants to do business. That is why they keep trying to make a phone that even they can't hack. A government can demand anything it likes, but they can't make Apple do the impossible.
If you are worried about your data getting out, it pays to find out which features to turn off and which to turn on to protect yourself. Apple is just an electronics company.
Angleyne: You can't bend that girder - it's unbendable! Bender: Well I don't know anything about lifting, so that ju
Apple does the same things for US law enforcement they do for China.
China has NOT (yet) asked Apple to build a custom version of the OS that (a) bypasses the unlock count check, and (b) provides for an automated way to try pin code entry.
That is all Apple is baking against, being compelled by the government to write custom software, to fundamentally weaken iOS security.
On a side note, China would damn well not have reset the users iCloud password. That's the worst part, the FBI is asking Apple to spend significant coding resources (Apple said seven people for up to four weeks) to fix a problem the FBI created.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Because: $$$
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Because Apple wouldn't be allowed to sell phones in China if they didn't play ball with the government. Whole different set of rules than the USA.
Try harder. You can imagine anything if you try.
In the US, you can fight government requests in the courts. If Apple loses its court battle, it will comply with FBI demands.
China is a totalitarian regime with no real due process. If you don't comply with their demands, they will kick you out of the country. Or jail you. Or kidnap you. Or just shoot you.
You've worked so hard to make your governement weak that you forget how it works in the rest of the world. Some people think corporations shouldn't make the rules.
Chinese citizens and American citizens are guaranteed different protections under each of their respective sets of laws. Asking why Apple wouldn't do the same thing for Chinese citizens as it has for American citizens is just silly. It's apples and oranges. Two completely different sets of regulations and two completely different sets of protections. I'm assuming that Apple would operate within the bounds of the law to protect Chinese users as much as the Chinese legal system allows.
According to James Lewis, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, "I can't imagine the Chinese would tolerate end-to-end encryption or a refusal to cooperate with their police, particularly in a terrorism case." Why the accommodation there?
Kudos to the article submitter (& braindead slashdot "editor") for the Apple hatchet job by innuendo. Apple hasn't done anything for the Chinese gov't that it has refused to the US gov't. Everything the article fearmongers is about the "potential" of what the Chinese gov't will ask Apple, if the DOJ gets their way. There is no compelling reason for China to request modifications to degrade the phone security. Only rich chinese citizens can afford to own an iPhone, and they're all joined to the hip with party leadership.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
Why the accommodation there? - To protect personal freedom. No?
...the author wants America to be more like China. Congrats on seeking such a huge step backwards...
Yes, the U.S. government is trying its best to change that, but for now in the U.S. you can still have this fight. Apple can use protecting customers' privacy as a selling point. It can compete on privacy. It does not have that freedom in China.
Implying that Apple should act the same in the U.S. as in China is implying that the U.S. should be as shitty as China.
It's weird that Apple is always pointed out for using "slave labor" when every other manufacturer of consumer electronics is at least as bad.
BTW: have we now fully accepted the redefinition of "slave labor" to mean "voluntarily working at a job which pays the at or above the typical prevailing wage of the area in which the job is located"? Because "slave labor" used to mean something...different.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Awaken
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Approach
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Ms-20
What do you think bros?
It's more free than Appl.
Shows just how far we've slipped down the hole to tyranny.
It used to be we would point to things done by the governments of China and other communist/repressive regimes and show our superiority that we maintain an orderly and law-abiding society without resorting to such nefarious, underhanded activities against our own citizens. Why, backdooring hardware, warrantless wiretapping, sneak and peek raids? Those are things done by tyrannies! Who would ever....in America??
Now, we ask why a private company won't give our own government the same things it gives to a repressive tyrannical regime. It should go without fucking saying why a private company would hold it's own, supposedly above board and representative government, to a higher standard than a third-world dictatorship! Are we all really so dense that the question even needs to be asked?!
Now, we can wax intellectual about whether the United States government has ever been a representative one or if freedom ever really has existed, but that's a philosophical conversation that has no place in this discussion. The fact remains is that the line we're all sold, since the day we're born, is that America is the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, and our freedoms are the envy of the world and it's what makes us stand out as a beacon of liberty in an otherwise oppressive world. And now that an organization with a little bit of money and power is asking the powers that be to put their money where their mouth is, we get to see the true colors of the establishment, in all it's disgusting, ugly, hypocritical hues.
Simple as that.
Overwhelmingly Apple makes their money by selling real products to real customers--they have essentially 0 interest in selling your private information to anyone.
When you want to sell in China, you need to decide if you can follow their rules. If you can, then you can sell there. In the USA, where Apple was formed, you can follow the rules also, and Apple has helped the police and FBI with plenty of warrants and probably non-warranted assistance. But when you see the FBI making a request that is against the counties constitution you than make a choice. Do you ignore it and let your own country become as low as the worst places in the world, like China, or do you fight it and show the courts and the citizens what assholes and terrorists we have running the three letter agencies.
Don't forget, it's only this "ONE" phone. Except they could only keep that lie going for a day before they mentioned the other two phones that they would like cracked next, not to mention the hundreds that the New York police have lined up waiting next. When everything the FBI mouthpieces speak is shown to be a lie, then the courts should reject any argument they put forth as probable lie and throw them out of the court, if not directly into jail.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
According to the article:
"The move was seen by some analysts as a concession to calm fears that Apple's infrastructure was compromised by U.S. intelligence."
OK, possibly not unreasonable, and strike one for USA... And:
"Apple, one of only a handful of U.S. tech giants that have flourished in China, said the move was necessary to improve services for its growing Chinese user base. It added that all data on the servers were encrypted and inaccessible to China Telecom."
So, it seems that they're not exactly handing un-encrypted data to the state. I was ready to be wowed by incongruity in Apple practices, but wasn't. Plus, as previously noted, we don't want to, and shouldn't expect to, be like China, even if Apple conduct there were more obviously egregious.
Just because all the companies do it doesn't mean it's good.
In this case we are talking about apple being a freedom fighter, not other companies.
The summary creates a strawman "Apple would probably break end-to-end encryption for the Chinese if that asked Apple to" and then chastises Apple for hypocrisy. You, like a good little lemming pipe up with "Because $$$".
It would be like if I said: "publicly wjcofkc is against pedophilia, but privately he is probably a pedophile--while is wjcofkc such a hypcrotical pedophile?".
Apple is being ordered to do something that China has NEVER ordered Apple to do - to create software to let them censor.
There is a huge difference between refusing to let someone sell encryption, and allowing them to create and sell encryption, then demanding they break it.
If Apple obeyed the US in this task, then China would demand they do the same. In the end, China would end up having the same espionage ability that the US demanded.
Look, the phone should have it's encryption broken. But the NSA should do it themselves instead of trying to get a private corporation to do it for them.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Apple: Good morning, Apple Computer. ... ... ... I mean, hold on ... ni shi wo de xiao ping guo.
Customer: Hello, we need certain data on one of our citizens who is one of your customers. Name of "Syed Rizwan Farook".
Apple: And you are
Customer: The FB-- uh, the MSS.
Apple: Just a moment, please
Apple: We've transferred the information to your Tencent Weiyun inbox. Will there be anything else?
Customer: No, thanks. Y'all have a good
Apple: We strive to be. Let us know if you need more help, and thanks for calling!
Because Apple employs many lawyers and understands very well the laws of the municipalities in which they do business. It's not even an apparent contradiction.
I mean - do you even have to ask the question? China owns enough now that they can make Apple sit up, roll over, play dead, anything they want. And, guess who gave China all that money? Yep, us.
It's quite simple, the US is supposed to be a democracy and no such expectation exists for China......
The other way of seeing is that Apple is choosing which battles to fight. You can't win them all and you would be foolish to try.
Apple is an American company, in the USA, a country that has strong ideals about civil liberties, so fighting this in on home turf makes a lot of sense. China is more complicated, since it is not a country with strong ideals about civil liberties, it is not Apple's home turf and it probably wouldn't take much for Apple to be excluded from that market, not mention potential diplomatic issues. If Apple can't win a civil liberty fight back home, what chance does it stand in China. Remember what happened to Google.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Or are they and the plank who wrote this piece left it out.
B/c Apple desires to do business in a foreign country and as such must pander to that country's gov't, they should do the same here where there are actual constitutional rights at stake?
The fact that Apple is fighting for encryption where it's possible to potentially win and not where it isn't is not a conflict of interest with their supposed goal of increasing data security. Smart people pick their battles, they don't often act entirely unilateral or ideologically and attempt to apply one solution to all case. Instead you craft a solution out of the possible variables while predicting reasonable outcomes. Apple decided now is a good time to fight for encryption, in the US. I'm sure if Apple could make world law they would change a lot about China, but that's hardly their position in the world. They also have that silly legal obligation to stockholders to not block/ignore trillion dollar markets due to ideological/governmental or political differences of opinion. So.. actually there is no abnormal hypocrisy to see today. Just the normal ones, like people being more worried about their iCloud data than the near slave labor and inhumane conditions used to make those fabulous phones. It's privacy vs slavery via fiscal inequality, but the slavery is really far away, so yay privacy! I guess I will take a win if I can get one, but to me it's really not an issue that deserves national or global attention like it has gotten. There can't be one universal privacy model when you have so many different governments. On top of that laws are dynamic, some nations will require backdoors, some could ban any end to end encryption since it interferes with their justice system. However.. the reality here is that 99% of the data out there is worthless or soon to worthless. It's not as important as it seems to have end to end encryption or for a government to have the capacity to spy. Nobody is actually as important as they think and nobody is more important than the nation. You should always expect that government can flip on mass spying programs or change laws as they see fit to meet changing times. Everytime terrorism or war threatens people, they will surrender a certain level of rights and privacy based on how threatened they feel. Fear is quite motivating stuff and as solid as the support for privacy may seem at any one day, it can quickly swing with full public opinion suggesting we allow more spying. Certainly 911 is not the last time this will happen in significant way. The point is whatever changes we make, whatever protection we think we have, we cannot bet on them. You cannot ever fully trust remotely stored data as much as you can locally stored data, nor can you fully trust a modern OS opensource or not. You have to accept the limits of immature technology.Putting too much data into the severs of google, ms and apple is, in itself, a horrible security and privacy model. If you think Apple making a stand matters, your missing the bigger picture. Apple, MS and Google are all data mining you and their concept of security and the convent use of the cloud is just a huge security risk. The other half of that is that you should never have anything that private on any of those platforms and your data probably isn't important to anyone anyway. If your data truly was important you'd never have put it on the cloud anyway. MS, Apple and Google are still fighting resistance to features and cloud storage that they would love customers to want and grow to need. Their stance against the FBI is quite convenient from the perspective of boosting people's confidence in cloud services. Of course, the reality is that the android platform is probably the most insecure mass used platform on Earth right now. Security and privacy means shit when you allow and app access to all that with one click or even without a click. I would say most of these platforms are barely even secure enough to need end to end encryption considering how often they get exploited. This is the NSA/FBIs real problem, they have no idea who to actually spy on. They tried mass data collection but just wound up with piles of data and no good algorithms to pinpoint terrorists. In many ways the program will wind up being pretty harmless, ineffective and not rea
Liberal shitrag that distorts the truth in favor of political agendas based on fear and lies is trying to dis someone else over freedom fighting? Fcuk they squarely in the ass.
Because the US isn't gonna ban outright every Apple products, China on the other hand, totally will. Apple doesn't want out of that massive market.
The difference here is that in China the rules were spelled out from the beginning, not attempting to change the rules midstream in a way that runs counter to existing law and precedent and the Constitution itself or attempting to perversely use an overly broad, vaguely worded "all writs" act that was never intended for use with the object in question (the iPhone).
Companies make decisions primarily based upon the impact to profits and shareholders. Given this fact it is quite easy to understand how Apple is supporting two contradictory positions with regard to privacy.
It's weird that Apple is always pointed out for using "slave labor" when every other manufacturer of consumer electronics is at least as bad.
This is true, but Apple is the biggest of all those companies so they get more attention.
BTW: have we now fully accepted the redefinition of "slave labor" to mean "voluntarily working at a job which pays the at or above the typical prevailing wage of the area in which the job is located"?
It's only "voluntary" in the strictest definition of the word. Why do you think they have such a problem with workers commiting suicide? Why did they have to put up nets to prevent people from killing themselves by jumping off the roofs of buildings? Because quitting and going to work somewhere else IS NOT AN OPTION .
If you want a job, you have exactly one choice -- 16 hours a day for a few pennies, under the worst possible working conditions and living in a barracks next to the factory. That qualifies as slave labor very nicely.
People travel, people change citizenship, and people don't deserve different ethics. The objection shouldn't hinge on whether one likes Apple or not. The argument should hinge on what Apple has done and how it treats its customers. Apple has long been a censor regardless of the country in which it does business, see the section labeled "Apple practices censorship. Here are a few examples.", and given how long it takes to fix security issues it knows are being exploited one can't say the company cares about user's security either, see the section labeled "Apple spies on its users, and helps others spy on them.". If Apple cared about "protect[ing] our customers' personal data" as it claims to Apple wouldn't distribute proprietary, user-subjugating software to its users.
Digital Citizen
They have nice offices in Cupertino, Ca, but so do a lot of foreign companies.
Well some hardtime for the VP's and CEO's will change there ways. Maybe trump can them to bend.
Hell why just jail then for helping china. they did that to the nazis.
Why is it the government can't desolder the flash chips from the phone, put them into a custom circuit, extract the encrypted data then brute force attack the data until they guess the key, all without even using iOS? They can tap into undersea fiber optic cables but can't do this?!? Something smells fishy to me.
Apple's claiming that "creating the tool would be a backdoor" ... but they already built it and handed it over to the Chinese government. Steve Cook is lying, and he's doing it merely for the PR gain. There is no principled stand here. In fact, it's plausible that they've already delivered it with a gag order to prohibit the FBI from admitting that they have it.
It's weird that Apple is always pointed out for using "slave labor" when every other manufacturer of consumer electronics is at least as bad.
Nothing weird about it. All companies get called out on their actions, but many more get called out on their statements. Apple became a target when they started trumpeting their practices as being above all other companies. It's only fair to call them out on their bullshit and punish them for it.
FYI, BlackBerry did NOT use low cost manufacturing houses at any point until John Chen came along. At that point the low cost manufacturers were already cleaning up their act after the Foxconn suicide nets hit the news.
except of course, that Apple was presented with a properly requested and granted writ, which was not hidden under a gag order. We have no idea what mechanism the Chinese government used because they still deny it, though they've clearly used data extracted from more modern iPhones.
Subject says it all.
That's an oxymoron.
Ignore the submitter, named "mi". Posting history shows that mi is just a haughty bitch that spends time telling people all about how they're wrong.
The submitter just used loaded language to pick fights here. Nothing to see; move on.
If Apple didn't do what China said, Apple would have to take their manufacturing elsewhere. Clearly not here to the USA - Steve Jobs said those jobs are never coming back. He hated the American worker and did not believe they have value.
So the Chinese government says "jump" and Tim Cook says "how high master?" because China provides cheap labor.
If Apple cared about "protect[ing] our customers' personal data [apple.com]" as it claims to Apple wouldn't distribute proprietary, user-subjugating software to its users.
Conveniently Forgetting, of course, it's massive contributions to several F/OSS Projects, and it's release of several NEW F/OSS Projects (Bonjour, WebKit, LaunchD, GrandCentralDispatch, Klang, OpenCL, Swift, etc).
So, you can just FOAD, Neckbeard!
Now, go back to your Mom's basement and leave us grownups alone.
The suicide rate at Foxconn, even at the height of their "suicide problem," was lower than that of the overall Chinese population. It was also lower than that of the US population for the same time period. In other words, Foxconn workers - for all of their supposed slave labor conditions - were LESS likely to kill themselves than the average Chinese or American person.
Yep, huge problem there. Foxconn and Apple were abusing those employees so much that they committed suicide at a lower rate than the overall population.
Get real, ass-clown. The reason Foxconn and Apple had such a "suicide problem" is that there was a rash of suicides that caught the eye of some editor with an axe to grind.
Because some shithead read a sensational story and concluded "AMG, this means Foxconn is abusing its employees! SLAYVE LABURRS!" And since impressionable shitheads like you don't fact-check what you're spoon-fed when it comports with your own biases, you ate that shit up.
Given that the people who didn't work at Foxconn were committing suicide at a higher rate, perhaps self-preservation - not "lack of choices" - is *exactly* why people choose to keep working there. It's like somebody bemoaning the "lack of choices" available to a doctor who works lots of hours and makes, comparatively, very good money and has very good working conditions. Yeah, he could quit being a doctor and go flip burgers - but why the fuck WOULD HE?
Just because all the companies do it doesn't mean it's good.
It also doesn't mean it is bad. Over the last 30 years, factory jobs in China have lifted hundreds of millions of people out of abject poverty. Anyone who thinks that is "bad", has never done 16 hours of stoop labor in a mosquito infested rice paddy. Because, for most of these people, that is the alternative.
It is absurd to call it "slave labor" just because a flabby white American wouldn't want the job.
As interesting tangent...
I'm listening to news radio. It turns out that Samsung just managed to win in court. Two patents were ruled as invalid and one was ruled as non-infringing. This will obviously be appealed.
At any rate, I want to hope that there's no connection and that they're being given justice in their other court cases but it wouldn't surprise me to find out that the judge just figured he'd make life a little more difficult for Apple. Maybe they were directed to do so, to show them who is in charge or similar. I hope not but, sadly, that wouldn't even remotely surprise me.
And no, I'm not saying that there is a connection - just that it wouldn't surprise me. I imagine that if someone wants a story to go green, this might be a valid subject. I don't submit much and I'm pretty lazy. This was not the rounded corner, design patent, case. This was about automatically linking URLs, slide to unlock, and some push something or other. Two were found invalid and the other's sure to be appealed - I didn't memorize it.
It'd be sad but not surprising.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Yeah, how dare they avail themselves of the legal system in order to fight a legal order from a judge within the legal system. What a bunch of USA-bashing terrorist-conspiring fascists!
Seriously, take a big step back and think about what you've said there. Because they don't fall in lock step behind some district court judge without question, they all deserve to be sent to prison? Have you even READ the Constitution, or any history behind that document's creation, or the people who wrote it?
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
It's only "voluntary" in the strictest definition of the word. Why do you think they have such a problem with workers commiting suicide?
2010 was by far the worst year for suicides at Foxconn with 14 suicides (the next worst year had 4 suicides) among its 930,000 employees in China at the time, which gives a suicide rate of 1.5 per 100,000.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_suicides
For comparison, China's national suicide rate is 7.8 per 100,000, and the US national suicide rate is 12.1 per 100,000.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate
Even in 2010, which is by far the worst year of suicides at Foxconn, the suicide rate among Foxconn employees is still far below both the Chinese and US national average.
1. Even during the worst stretch the suicide rate at Foxconn was lower than that for China or the US.
2. I'm not sure why it is Apple's fault that China has a lower quality of life. If Apple pulled their business from China and instead built the phones using robots in the US, do you think that would help the average Chinese person? The average Chinese worker IS getting a raw deal, but that blame rests squarely on the shoulders of their economic system & government.
3. Obviously a "few pennies per day" is hyperbole. Can you find a way to make your point without lying?
4. You still seem to have no idea what "slave labor" is. Just to be clear, you are saying that slavery as practiced in the 19th century in the US was no worse than what is currently happening at Foxconn in China?
Bad spelling and grammar, typical of right wing morons
The quick would be to formally charge, arrest and arraign Mr. Cook and a few others of complicity to conspiracy against the USA, sedition, aiding and abetting murder (14), aiding and abetting a terror act, interfering with a Federal criminal investigation, evidence tampering and treason.
With Mr. Cook's friends in ISIS and the Communist Central Party of China, maybe Mr. Cook does have excellent reasons for his engineers to brick the Federal property iPhone that was used by one of the perpetrators before the Feds had a change at the data.
With Mr. Cook arraigned and in prison, the IRS can go after the billions in China and Ireland banks (including Bahamas).
This would make for great show-trial viewing since Watergate. Seeing Timmy wearing orange and in shackles would be great!
Ha ha
Unless the host is the US, when you can walk in and do business whenever you want to because past aggression colonialism white people suck.
>1. Even during the worst stretch the suicide rate at Foxconn was lower than that for China or the US.
Looks like those suicide prevention nets at the plants and window barriers on the dormitories that house the 300 to 400 thousand workers have really done their job!
>3. Obviously a "few pennies per day" is hyperbole. Can you find a way to make your point without lying?
Oh, you're right. They make $17 dollars a day working 70 hours/week on average. Foxconn CEO net worth? 5.6 billion.
There's more, but to an corporate apologist like yourself it would waste both of our time to continue.
If you want a job, you have exactly one choice
Nonsense. If you actually believe that, you should get a passport and go to Shenzhen. There is factory after factory, about 100m apart. There are plenty of options, and labor is in short supply.
16 hours a day for a few pennies
More nonsense. A typical factory worker in Shenzhen earns about $30 for an 8 hour day. Many work overtime, but no one is required to. In surveys, the factory workers biggest complaint is that they want to work LONGER hours, so they can earn more money faster. Many of them are women separated from their children back on the farm, trying to earn as much money as they can, as quickly as they can, so they can go back home to their families. Stop trying to project your values onto people you don't understand, who have very different priorities.
under the worst possible working conditions
Chinese factories are nowhere "the worst". They are far better than the farm jobs these people left behind.
and living in a barracks next to the factory.
The dormitories are provided as a convenience for migrant workers. No one is required to live in them, and many do not.
That qualifies as slave labor very nicely.
Hogwash.
What a bizarre situation, if the Chinese government have more knowledge of how to get into an iPhone than the FBI do.
That is the actual situation is it not?
since if they're not motivated by a love of freedom then they'll change their tune the moment somebody makes it worth their while. My take? Apple doesn't want to have to spend millions maintaining expert programmers to write a back door, millions more trying to keep that backdoor out of the hands of blackhat hackers and then millions more repairing the brand damage when one of the backdoors leaks. This is about money, pure and simple. Which is why China gets a pass on e2e encryption.
Apple could choose to not do business in China. It's not like they're hurting for money and they have enough clout in the world to enact real change. I'm not saying I expect that out of them. And I think it's fine and dandy that Apple's interests here just so happen to align with my own. But I'm under no illusions that freedom is even a passing concern for them. Richard Stallman they ain't.
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My guess is because the US Constitution doesn't apply to China that Apple is forced to operate in that country differently. I suppose you can call them hypocrites for not sticking to their ideals in China, but every business who has done that has been shutdown and pushed out of China. Holding to your ideals in the US doesn't usually result in the termination of your business.
In China you can either do things the Party's way, or you can GTFO.
So, Apples behaviour in China is exactly the same as their behaviour in the USA. When given a legal court order they hand over the information they have access to.
All the rest is rumour mongering and innuendo.
I am sure that Tesla would love the America you describe.
America is heavily regulated, with huge subsidies paid to various groups.
While I find Apple bowing to political pressure in China for the government to be able to snoop on their citizens I do acknowledge the difficult position that Apple, or any technology company really, must be in.
There is a reason that we see a lot of electronics built in China. Their rules on mining of rare earth minerals makes them very cheap. In the USA and most other nations the mining of rare earth minerals is inhibited on the rules of handling radioactive materials. What does radioactive materials have to do with making cell phones? The valuable minerals needed to make power dense batteries, strong magnets (for speakers, buzzers, and microphones), and such tend to collect in the same places as thorium and uranium. If you mine one then you are mining the other.
If you mine anything radioactive in the USA then it must be cataloged, traced, secured, and disposed of in facilities designed to contain radioactive materials. This is in spite of the fact that this radioactive material is already present in the ground and the miners have no intent of doing anything with the radioactive material other than put it back in the ground where they found it. These radioactive elements typically exist as oxides, something much like glass, sand, or clay. This stuff does not dissolve into ground water, blow away in the wind (it is very dense), or react significantly with plants or animals. Most of this radioactive material is radioactive in an almost theoretical sense, the half life of this stuff is in the millions or billions of years, and poses no real hazard to the public.
China has leveraged this near monopoly on rare earth elements and demanded that it not be shipped out in its raw form in any significant quantity. If you want to make a cell phone that is light, inexpensive, fast, small, and durable then you have to make them out of rare earth metals and do so where the country that supplies them allows you to use them. That means China also has a near monopoly on the manufacture of cell phones.
If the US federal government changed the rules on the handling of rare earth metals and the radioactive minerals that come with it then Apple would not have to play nice with China. Apple and everyone else could be building cell phones in the USA. Apple could also leverage that position to perhaps get the Chinese government to play nice with its citizens. Apple could demand that China allow them to sell the wiretap proof phones like we get in the USA or they don't get the latest tech. Then China would have to choose between treating their citizens more like those in the USA or more like those in North Korea.
As a bonus to some sane laws on handling thorium in the USA, beyond bringing technology manufacturing to the USA, is that perhaps we could see a renewed interest in nuclear power. Thorium is a great fuel for a molten salt reactor. Thorium is also worthless for making weapons. The US government knows this, at least on some level, since they tested thorium and uranium-233 (an isotope derived from thorium) in nuclear weapons a long time ago. The thorium and U-233 bombs were considered duds. If the bombs did not also contain an ample amount of U-235 or plutonium the bombs would not have detonated at all. An interest in liquid thorium fuel reactors (LFTR) should also created interest in a related technology, the waste annihilating molten salt reactor (WAMSR).
LFTR can destroy existing nuclear waste by using it as a small portion of the fuel but WAMSR runs on existing spent nuclear fuel with little added to the mix to make it work. What is holding up the development of these technologies is US federal government policy on mining thorium.
Oh, perhaps I should mention that China is stockpiling their mined thorium in open air pits, because thorium does not blow away, wash away, or dissolve away. They fully intend to build LFTR style reactors before the USA does. If that happens then they gain leverage on emerging nuclear energy technologies.
Citizens of the USA, there is your federal government at work. They fuck you once by forcing phone makers to allow them to listen in on your phone calls and then fuck you again by keeping cheap, clean, and reliable nuclear energy from you.
God bless America?
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
It's who the people are that influences Apple's decisions:
In America the people are the consumers. They put the money in Apple's pockets. The government not so much.
In China the people are the workforce. The government puts the money in Apple's pockets by making them a very cheap workforce.
Of course they're siding with the Chinese government.
Work is not voluntary if you need to eat. The wage you work at is not your choice if you have no choice but to work.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
You get no where being a "freedom fighter" in China. You either kowtow to Chinese internet laws or you don't do business in China. Period. So this is irrelevant nonsense trying to cast aspersions on the principled and important stance Apple is taking in the US. Don't try this crap again.
Lotsa damage control work, there, dude.
Do they pay you overtime? Or are you an unpaid cultist?
.. in the USA your freedom is under heavy attack.
And isn't anybody else supprised about the fact that the USA - which detest - undemocratic and human rights voilating - countries like China, try to setup the same machinery as China.
Why isn't Apple a freedom fighter in China?
Because the USA are not China!
Let'em take encryption only, out of your cold dead hand.
Why isn't Apple a freedom fighter in China?
Because Apple has nothing to fight for in China - except money that flows back to the USA.
China doesn't have the illusion of freedom to defend..
Heck, they follow even secret law to spy on people.
What they are not doing is to follow illegal orders.
So some blogger claims "I cannot imagine that Apple wouldn't do this". And that's what this whole thread is based on: His lack of imagination.
The simple facts of the iPhone 5C case are: The FBI has a legal search warrant. Apple obeys the laws of the country and has handed over all the information that it holds, according to the legal search warrant. The FBI wants the information stored on the phone, can't get it, Apple can't get it, so they ask Apple to create a backdoor that would allow the FBI to get the information that they want, and every hacker in the world the ability to hack into your phone, and Apple refuses.
Apple has given in to Chinese demands for security audits. That's for example what any open source software gives you automatically; anybody, including security experts, evil hackers, and the US or Chinese governments, can do a security audit of any open source software. Well, the Chinese government did an audit of Apple's software. What harm would you expect from that?
It wouldn't be unexpected if Apple respected legal search warrants from Chinese courts. Would you complain about that?
And lastly, if China asked Apple for a backdoor to break iPhone security, then this guy cannot imagine that Apple would say "no". I can imagine they would.
It's only "voluntary" in the strictest definition of the word. Why do you think they have such a problem with workers commiting suicide? Why did they have to put up nets to prevent people from killing themselves by jumping off the roofs of buildings? Because quitting and going to work somewhere else IS NOT AN OPTION .
There are people who are brainwashed, and there are those who don't have a brain in the first place.
In the worst year ever, 21 people out of a million employees at Foxconn committed suicide. Every year, about 40,000 people in the USA commit suicide. That is about eight times the suicide rate at Foxconn. There is a number comparable to the suicide rate at Foxconn in that year: The number of retail employees in the USA who are murdered on the job every year.
However, the company has taken actions. Councelling, suicide nets, and so on. Suicide nets are of course great for the haters: The company putting them up just admits that they are at fault. But they work. There are fewer suicides. I think one or two in the last year (less than 50 times the US suicide rate). Of course haters want to hate, while Foxconn has worked to reduce the suicide rate.
Your suggestion that suicides are caused by bad working conditions is also nonsense. Most suicides are caused by mental problems. Hardship doesn't turn people to suicide. People who are forced to work and work and work don't have time to think about suicide.
And what of the pro-Apple argument that "once you make a backdoor for one device" then you made it for all. The general point Apple and supporters are advocating is that even if they help open one device, they are compromising the security of all iPhone users everywhere.
The argument is factually wrong. Apple could add code that limits the revised iOS/firmware to one specific device. The FBI, the Chinese, the blackouts, etc ... could not more alter that code than they could alter the current passcode code. Apple's digital signatures locks down any published code. Any tampering with the code and the digital signature breaks and the iPhone hardware refuses to run the code.
"Made for one == Made for all" is false. However "Done for one == Done for any" is true. The real problem is that if one court in one case can order Apple to supply this technical assistance than any court can do so.
Apple is a China based company from the perspective of manufacturing. If China and Apple get into a legal battle in China then the Chinese government may lock down Apple's factories. While that would certainly hurt China, it would hurt Apple far far more. Possibly kill them.
Before you reply that this would drive companies out of China consider that only companies planning to fight the government would have such a fear, and that every company going into China knew that playing by the rules and cooperating with the government, possibly partnering with them, would be necessary. They knew crap like the above could happen, plus a lot of other crap too (google fellows paper shredders china), and they still decide to go.
If Wall Street caught even a whiff of a rumor that Apple was considering leaving the Chinese market the stock price would plummet.
And the stock would plunge farther and Apple possibly fail if the Chinese government announced they would shut down the Apple factories in China if Apple continues to defy Chinese court orders.
It is just business. You don't get rich by even pretending to be anti-Government fighter in China - you would get jailed very quickly or kicked out of the country without money. No business case here, better to comply and don't ask questions.
While in US, there are plenty of folks who may applaud you even if fight is just a publicity stunt. So you can do it, it is safe and adds popularity (=money).
No. Google, Samsung, HTC all have this built in option to allow for external sources, even in the Chinese Market.
Anyone at any time can install any non-government sanctioned software. They can follow the rules and still get away with allowing the user to power to do / install whatever dissident behavior they want.
The i fans are always quick to point out that they have more money than most nations while other device manufacturers have much smaller margins. As such, most companies cannot afford more expensive manufacturing costs.
However with hundreds of billions in the bank and massive profit margins for taking years to improve their hardware / add new features (nfc? Low resolution screen? Etc), what excuse do they have for remaining in China? They could literally buy an island and fly all the workers and families there and still have enough for a Scrooge Mcduck money vault.
No. Google, Samsung, HTC all have this built in option to allow for external sources, even in the Chinese Market.
Anyone at any time can install any non-government sanctioned software. They can follow the rules and still get away with allowing the user to power to do / install whatever dissident behavior they want.
Why would this particular Chinese Regime allow that kind of behavior?
I haven't forgotten them, but I'm not willing to accept that they should cloud the argument most proprietary software users face today, particularly on trackers (cell phones, mobiles) where nonfreedom is rampant and for which Apple takes full responsibility.
I enjoy CUPS, for instance, now just as I enjoyed it before Apple bought the software and thus took over the copyright from EasySW. But CUPS isn't commonly found on trackers as far as I know. It'll be interesting to note if the contribution to Clang you point out continues when Clang gets to a point where Apple is satisfied with its utility. Brad Kuhn has said he expects that contribution to end once the software is good enough to let Apple remove the GNU Compiler Collection ("GCC", Apple's long-time multi-language compiler) entirely (probably due to Apple's perverse anti-GPL zealotry which is rooted in not getting away with copyright infringement against the Free Software Foundation back when Steve Jobs ran NeXT). We've already entered a time when Apple's compiler basically can't be used in freedom. This is hardly the testament to Apple's contribution to software freedom you tried to make it out to be.
And I know that proprietors and their sycophants in the open source movement are keen to cite marketshare/popularity as an important topic (mainly because they're both eager to distract people away from talking about software freedom where they know they have nothing to offer). So it's ironic to note how unpopular LaunchD, Bonjour, GrandCentralDispatch, and Swift are. LaunchD & Bonjour aren't needed on free systems due to free reimplementations of their functionality elsewhere. Bonjour doesn't even wholly qualify as free software; only some of it is licensed under an Apache license. Your namecalling and bullying attempt at distracting people away from talking about the lack of software freedom for iThing users is falling apart.
Digital Citizen
So he can't imagine this would happen there but he has no knowledge or evidence that anything contrary to their position in the US has happened anywhere else in the world? Please note, this case is not about expression, or app censorship, or whatever... This case is about privacy and protecting data. If you have some evidence that they have broken their encryption for the Chinese than present it (you don't). Otherwise, STFU. Seriously.
As long as their company name is Apple, sure. Same with "walled gardens" - how many wankers on Slashdot whine about Apple's "walled garden" and then fire up a game on their PS4 or XBone later that evening?
Hateboi bullshit. None of you wankers actually care about Chinese workers, you're just looking for an excuse to whine about Apple.
Why don't you just commit suicide, just like many Foxconn's workers did? The only right place for neoliberal sociopaths is the cemetery. And please don't ruin mankind's genetic pool by having kids. Just die.
+1 uber informative
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway