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Apple Refused China Request For Source Code In Last Two Years: Lawyer (reuters.com)
Dustin Volz, reporting for Reuters: Apple has been asked by Chinese authorities within the last two years to hand over its source code but refused to do so, the company's top lawyer told U.S. lawmakers at a hearing on Tuesday. Apple general counsel Bruce Sewell made the statement in response to a line of attack from law enforcement officials who have attempted to portray Apple as complicit in handing over information to Chinese authorities for business reasons while refusing to cooperate with U.S. requests for access to private data in criminal investigations. Apple and the FBI returned to Washington to testify before lawmakers about their heated disagreement over law enforcement access to encrypted devices, highlighted in the case of a locked iPhone linked to a gunman in last December's Islamist militant-inspired shootings in San Bernardino, California. Earlier in the hearing before a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee, Captain Charles Cohen, commander in the Indiana State Police, repeated the suggestion that Apple has quietly cooperated with Beijing. But when pressed by Representative Anna Eshoo, a California Democrat, for the source of that claim, Cohen only cited news reports. "That takes my breath away," a visibly frustrated Eshoo said. "That is a huge allegation."In some other Apple news, the Cupertino-based company complied with 80% of U.S. law enforcement requests in the second half of 2015, its just released transparency report shows. U.S. law enforcement asked Apple for information 4,000 times, covering 16,112 devices in the second half of 2015.
In my mind, handing over source code might be less damaging than handing over encryption keys, which is what the DOJ was suggesting at one point in their brief/response to the All Writs Order...
The FBI is looking for a fig leaf to cover up the fact that they tried to establish a legal precedent through deceit. Your tax dollars at work.
can be seen as Treason and if come down to it trump may be the one to fire the shot.
I can't be that difficult to strip it down in a reverse engineering lab, and get at the binaries to disassemble etc.
The source code means fuck all if you can't recreated it and compare it to what's deployed on devices.
Time for them to be Made in the USA or they can be black listed from us GOV use.
You and I would. Everyone else would switch to Samsung.
Where they could all then enjoy that bastion of user privacy and security that is Android...
China routinely ignores copyright when it suits them. If Apple was to hand over the source code, I suspect that there would be, just a few months later, *EXACT* iPhone "clones" complete with 100% compatible operating system, except jail-broken of course, available for $100 each.
And then poof -- Apple is out of business.
And they would sport names such as "Arple IF-one" to really, really, make you wince. Right now, China is producing cars that look like BMWs, for domestic use within China. China is making $30 ham-radios that are clones of a Kenwood design, and the Kenwood is a $150 radio.
How are you going to compete with that? They do almost zero R&D, and then make cheap copies of existing products using the existing R&D of some other firm. When we get to the point of China making everything and all other companies are out of business, expect to see no innovation for decades that follow.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
You forgot: BURMA SHAVE.
We went through this with Japan, eventually the people/companies that become successful start making their own stuff because it's easier.
Regardless if they get there over time without cheating or cheat their way, eventually we are going to have to face a competition of competent Chinese businesses that can do the same things as the rest of the world. They are just shaving some time off of that process.
or maybe '...and, whitey's on the moon'.
it even fits the angst, too.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Watch the TV series "Continuum". No wonder why it got pulled before the story finished. I'm surprised it lasted as long as it did given its stoutly anti-corporate theme.
No sig for you! Come back one year!
How are you going to compete with that? They do almost zero R&D, and then make cheap copies of existing products using the existing R&D of some other firm. When we get to the point of China making everything and all other companies are out of business, expect to see no innovation for decades that follow.
Thats pretty much standard for any country trying to catch up to more advanced industrial nations. The US did it when we began industrializing and once we had enough homegrown companies developing technology we all of a sudden became big fans of patent and copyright protection. Once people start stealing form China they'll come around as well.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
No, it wouldn't.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
U.S. law enforcement asked Apple for information 4,000 times, covering 16,112 devices in the second half of 2015.
Which equals 4.028 phones per request. So it's like the gov is looking at groups of people more than individuals.
No sig for you! Come back one year!
Any more on that? They got in right? What'd they learn?
Cat videos.
And when other countries do the same, how many jobs in the USA go down the tubes ?
Quite apart from the fact that that will break a lot of trade agreements, or are you now saying the agreements/contracts the US signs can be broken because you say so. Exactly how does anyone trust the US again if you prove that contracts are worthless ?
Just remember the USA makes up 4% of the worlds population, and many of the large US corporations make more money by dealing with the 96% than they do with US customers. Also be prepared for the cost of everything in the USA to go up in price, unless you intend to force wages down to Chinese levels.
The EU is a BIGGER economy than the US and China if it is not already 2nd, it will be in the next couple of years.
And they would sport names such as "Arple IF-one" to really, really, make you wince.
What would really make me wince is: Aqqle iPhome 6 Prus
You forget what Jobs told Obama at one of their final meetings (and was reported in NYT): even if Apple wanted to charge the price of what it would cost to make it in the USA, they could never find the volume and quality (willingness) of a factory full of engineers to design and build with the flexibility they want.
"Those jobs are not coming back."
That is all true. I was thinking more from the security point of view. And it would be a hard choice -- compromise the security of all devices out there, or compromise the intellectual property of the company long term. In that hypothetical, it might be a decision to pull out of China altogether...
Well, your "something" was wrong, in no small part due to the fact that the OP was right.
If you don't do your own R&D, you'll never be able to produce anything *original*.
If you don't do your own R&D, your competitors will *always* make it to market first, so you give up 'first mover' advantage.
Those two reasons (among many others) are how companies build market share.
And by the way, the diversity of mobile phones in China (and Japan/Korea) is way beyond what we have here in the US, where Apple is pretty well regarded as superior to most other brands. In those countries, many other brands offer similar functionality -- and I would argue that Apple gets bought (partly) as a status symbol because of its price and Western cachet.
So having its IP copied to lower cost phones that look the same might not eat much into the (maybe limited) market that Apple could capture in China anyway. But when you're talking about a billion people, of course it adds up to a big market at stake.
Anyway, back to topic, I might argue that Apple would even prefer to develop a separate iOS and encryption key for China it it believed that someday it had to turn those over...
The difference is that there wasn't a global economy during those times (at least not on the scale we have today). During those times, If a company in Germany developed a very robust widget and an American company directly copied it, the impact wasn't catastrophic to the German company. Now, with R&D done in one country and manufacturing done in another, if your manufacturer goes rogue, he can cause real and potentially fatal harm to your business.
The difference is that there wasn't a global economy during those times (at least not on the scale we have today). During those times, If a company in Germany developed a very robust widget and an American company directly copied it, the impact wasn't catastrophic to the German company. Now, with R&D done in one country and manufacturing done in another, if your manufacturer goes rogue, he can cause real and potentially fatal harm to your business.
Solution: Stop outsourcing your production to third world shitbags for pennies -they will screw you to try and make a living.
Produce quality goods locally and sell them at a price that supports local workers.
The difference is that there wasn't a global economy during those times (at least not on the scale we have today). During those times, If a company in Germany developed a very robust widget and an American company directly copied it, the impact wasn't catastrophic to the German company. Now, with R&D done in one country and manufacturing done in another, if your manufacturer goes rogue, he can cause real and potentially fatal harm to your business.
There was a pretty robust global economy,it just took longer to ship stuff than today but the industrial,reveloutionnusheredcinna new era in global trade as countries industrialized and began mass production of previously hand made items.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Think about this, If China tells Apple hand over the code or the cost of making your devices will be going up or stop making them all together.
Where any technically competent person can protect their data and not rely on Apple, who are known government accomplices when it comes to handing over user data, to protect them. In fact by default the Android passcode system is far more secure than Apple's 4 digit numeric variant.
1. Apple is known government accomplices, hahahahahahaaaa. The Hate is strong in this one...
2. Apple's Passcode allows up to 52 alphanumeric and punctuation character Passphrases using iOS' 104 character keyboard. Here's an article that shows just what that means, time-wise. Add to that the increasing wrong-guess delay (not to mention the 10 try limit), and you have what might be referred to as "your basic impossibility". If you'd spent as much tiime reading the multitudinous posts on Slashdot that pointed those facts out as you do spewing Apple Hate, you'd know that.
You and I would. Everyone else would switch to Samsung.
Which is Made in America?
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
Note the the original patent laws denied protection for foreign patents. For further reading here are two sources:
https://www.techdirt.com/blog/innovation/articles/20130228/01324622146/yes-us-industrial-revolution-was-built-piracy-fraud.shtml
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2013-02-01/piracy-and-fraud-propelled-the-u-s-industrial-revolution
The bottom line is countries do what they feel is needed to catch up with the rest of the world. That's not to say the US wasn't innovation but even so they used various means to get an advantage by taking other countries ideas and copying them, and ultimately improving them.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.