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Apple Pulls Anti-Censorship Apps from China's App Store (fortune.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Fortune:Services helping Chinese users circumvent the "Great Firewall of China" have been pulled from Apple's Chinese App Store en masse. On Saturday morning, at least some software makers affected by the sweep received notification from Apple that their tools were removed for violating Chinese law. Internet censorship in China restricts communications about topics including democracy, Tibetan freedom, and the 1989 Tienanmen Square protests. The culling primarily seems to have affected virtual private networks, or VPNs, which mask users' Internet activity and data from outside monitoring. According to a report by the New York Times, many of the most popular such apps are now missing from the Chinese App Store.
It is the Apple way. Whether hiding taxes or helping repressive regimes, whatever Apple needs to boost profits, Apple will do. And Google, too. And Microsoft. And...
Yeah, my DAMN balls, and you nerds can suck on them
After all, they're only chinamen. Thanks Apple.
Oh, are you taking pre-orders for iPhone 8? Can hardly wait!
Not to put too fine a point on it, but doesn't the U.S. have laws that make it illegal to comply with demands like that? If not, why not?
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Psalms 115:15, “Ye are blessed of the LORD which made heaven and earth.”
Look at our amazing sun, dwarfed in comparison to the size of other stars. The Science Channel has been airing a very popular DISCOVERY mini-series of programs called, “HOW THE UNIVERSE WORKS!” I've watched the series, including the expanded edition, and it's some of the most Godless, offense, unscholarly and retarded speculation I've ever heard and seen in my life! They ought to rename the series to “HOW THE UNIVERSE DOESN'T WORK!”
How the Universe Works is a mini-series that originally aired on the Discovery Channel April 25, 2010 to May 24, 2010. The first season was narrated by Mike Rowe and the second by Erik Todd Dellums. It was released on Blu-ray on February 28, 2012. The second season of the show moved to The Science Channel, consisting of 8 episodes. The second season aired between July 11, 2012 and August 29, 2012.
SOURCE: How the Universe Works - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Our text verse from Psalms 115:15 from the Word of God proclaims that the Lord God made heaven and earth. In the picture above of our sun to the left, and Arcturus (mentioned in Job 9:9; 38:32) and VY Canis Majoris (the gigantic star to the right), VY Canis Majoris is 1,000,000,000 times bigger than our earth's sun. Scientists had never really viewed the magnificence of the stars until 2004 when the Spitzer space telescope was launched into space. It uses infrared to detect heat, finding discoveries that were previously impossible. One astronomer said, “All you need to make a star is hydrogen, gravity and time.” How arrogant, lame and unscholarly!
Only God can create a star! Genesis 1:16, “And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.” I love that... “HE MADE THE STARS ALSO”!!! Evolutionists and secular astronomers are idiots. They sound like total ignoramuses... “Oh yeah, making a star, no problem, you just take some hydrogen, gravity and time and Walla, presto magic... A STAR IS BORN! Only an idiot believes that stars formed that way! Where did the gravity come from? I feel sick when I listen to arrogant atheistic fools make such bold claims about HOW THE UNIVERSE WORKS, as if they know exactly what happened (they don't have a clue), when their best guess is that it all came from nothing by chance!
In sharp contrast, the Bible teaches that NOTHING in creation happened by chance. Isaiah 45:18, “For thus saith the LORD that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I am the LORD; and there is none else.” Isn't that beautiful? I am so thankful that God didn't leave us at the mercy of fool-headed reprobate university-trained liberals, scientists, evolutionists and astronomers who think the incredibly orderly, intelligent and brilliant universe all evolved by chance from a chaotic Big Bang.
They believe two rocks collided in space to form the earth and moon, somehow becoming rounded. So how did all the other planets in our solar system form and settle in their respective orbits? Did they all come from rocks colliding? How insane! Life, they say, started with cosmic dust striking the earth, which somehow formed water, somehow created life, somehow evolved into thousands of different species, somehow produced intelligent humans with spirits (but animals that do not), and they cannot account for the sin-nature or the desire to worship God in mankind's very being. This all happened by luck, chance and being in the right place at the right time? Seriously?
Their logo is an apple with a bite out of it.
Bad things resulting shouldn't really be that much of a surprise.
Apple just knows where their bread is buttered. If they piss off China, they might actually have to pay a company in the US or Europe to make their devices.
It is a two way street though. What prevents Apple from selling all the 24/7 location data they slurp up from iOS devices and handing it over to China?
We aren't at war with China, obviously. So how, exactly, would imposing the wartime rules you're thinking about work?
When you're in a country - your own, or someone else's - you are expected to obey their laws. If you choose to disobey them for any reason, you should do so knowing that the country will probably punish you if they catch you.
Seriously - how would it go over if the US arbitrarily said "other countries' laws do not apply to our citizens"?
#DeleteChrome
You either submit, or fight. There is no in between.
doesn't the U.S. have laws that make it illegal to comply with demands like that? If not, why not?
Because it would be bad for big business.
The original "great firewall" was built by Cisco for the Chinese government who then rewarded Cisco by setting up Huawei to compete directly against them.
It's all down to money, if you want to sell in that country you have to abide by their laws.
The Five Eyes are putting visible pressure on their governments to crack open encryption and provide back doors.
That'll be the real test for Apple, will they stand up to FVEY & it's governments or will they buckle?
NT
I'm glad Tim Cook is trying to protect the environment, and that he's trying to avoid using conflict minerals. But I wish he'd stop making things in China, as long as China's government was so repressive. I also wish he wouldn't invest in Chinese companies, or build a "new research and development center" there.
Suppose Xi Jinping repressed only people of a certain race, or only gay people. That would be outrageous discrimination. But since Xi severely limits the freedom of all of his citizens, that's not "discrimination" - it's just "unfortunate". However, it's not unfortunate enough to stop doing business there. (I'm talking about all American companies that do business there, not just Apple.)
I'm very glad to read about the Apple-related manufacturing plants that will be built in India and the US. I hope this is the start of a trend away from manufacturing in China.
And when the Chinese government massacre people in Tienanmen square you say "That's none of our business. The dead students should have expected to be punished."
And gassing the Jews was legal under German law.
Our Grandads fought tyranny. You applaud it. You make me sick.
doesn't the U.S. have laws that make it illegal to comply with demands like that?
No. We do not, and should not.
If not, why not?
It is none of our business and would be ineffective and unenforceable. America is not going to "fix" China. That is up to the Chinese people.
One of the reasons that Liu Xiaobo was so ineffective is that he was viewed by many Chinese as a Western sycophant. Reform in China may work better if outsiders keep their noses out of it.
That would be un-American. It's like banning people going to North Korea. Wow, stop encouraging a nanny state please. It's people like you that wants a tyrant government.
For a second I thought you might be inciting violence, but there's no wrestling gifs so I guess it's all good.
....letting that huge market get in the way of their alleged principles.
It is none of our business and would be ineffective and unenforceable. America is not going to "fix" China. That is up to the Chinese people.
Agreed; OTOH where should we draw the line regarding American companies assisting the Chinese government's abuse of their citizens? e.g. If China had a law on the books demanding that Apple immediately report any private message that mentioned democracy, so that the sender and receiver could be jailed and tortured, would it be morally acceptable for Apple to comply with that law?
IIRC IBM willingly assisted the Nazis with the IT tasks necessary for their roundup and attempted genocide of European Jews and other minorities, and IBM was rightfully criticized afterwards for having done so. How can we avoid a repeat of that sort of thing?
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
How would would it if "the US arbitrarily said "other countries' laws do not apply to our citizens", well apparently they accept it under threat of nuclear strike and genocide of their population. Is it quite legal as far as US law is concerned for US agents to break any law they care too in foreign countries and in point of fact, you in a foreign country report US agents breaking the law in your country and report it to the public, they consider you an espionage agent and will seek to prosecute you ie Julian Assange and wikileaks, in a foreign country, gained all sorts of information about the US government and it's agent criminals breaking all sorts of laws all over the place and reported it to the public, the US desired response, varied from extradition and prosecution, assassination and even a drone missile strike, the punishment for obeying the law at your location when you expose criminal activity by the US government at your location.
Then you have US bases in Syria, attacking the Syrian government forces, in Syria for approaching their own territory because, the US will start murdering the Syrian population including the US government allowed use of first strike nukes. How about arming Afghanis to collapse the Afghan government to drive out Russia so that the US could invade instead (I don't get that one, use terrorist to kill Russian troops to drive then out, so those very same terrorists could kill US troops instead, WTF was the purpose of that, spend my tax payer dollars, how much profit does the US war industrial complex make each time they kill an American in uniform, it seems to be quite a lot).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Have a built in VPN? Android does, and if I have to travel to that communist shithole for work, I use it to access the world through server in Hong Kong (not too slow because of proximity). Of course this will require a friend on the outside to set it up or paying a company for VPN server information though, but if you really care about privacy and avoiding the censorship this is the best solution.
This is the problem with letting a single entity control what software anyone may run on "their" device.
To preempt the oh so predictable reply, yes, it is true that a tiny number of technical people will find a way around it. But that isn't the point. The point is the vast majority of common people aren't going to jailbreak their iPhone and find a non-app-store VPN app and find an IP that isn't already blocked by the GFoC.
When you give someone else control over your computing, that means you no longer have it. Even if that party is temporarily seeming to be "on your side", they can be pressured by someone bigger, they can change their mind later, they can suffer bad times and sell out to new owners, etc.
Consider carefully what it means for control of "personal" computing to be taken away from the people, no matter who it is doing the taking, not just Apple in particular.
This is why I know Tim 'globalist' Cook is full of crap. He's all too happy to capitulate to oppression for Apple profits. Wouldn't bother me if he didn't present the face he does so very publicly. He's pretty much just a west coast corporate hypocrite as far as I'm concerned. Whatever, dude.
The US has some of the most stringent anti-bribery and anti-corruption laws for its businesses, and it enforces them quite strictly. US companies to not give bribes for contracts, or for expedited deliveries, or the like. If they do, the US punishes them - to the tune of billions of dollars There are a few dozen major, and hundreds of lesser, convictions every year. Including US congressmen.
This has actually been a longstanding complaint from US businesses that claim it makes it harder for them to compete with European and Asian companies that do give bribes.
IIRC IBM willingly assisted the Nazis with the IT tasks necessary for their roundup and attempted genocide
That is very misleading. During the war, IBM's German subsidiary operated independently, and was outside the control of both IBM's HQ, and American law.
Everything you said made sense. And yet I fear the world where any company will roll over and submit the moment the government wants something. A lot of modern rule of law is based on the assumption that a private entity like say your phone company has records and the government needs a warrant to see it. Whether that system is officially broken like in China or unofficially broken like with the NSA in the US, it's getting to the point where you should just assume any information given to any organization for any reason whatsoever is stored and passed to the government willingly or unwillingly. And since most of us have embraced civilization and is dependent on trade to survive it's pretty hard to avoid. It's depressing.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
If tech companies want to lecture the American public about morality, then it's time the public taught them the same lesson.
American Apple workers are not ( should not ) be in China so APPLE-corp can do any fecking-A thing they like to China without fear of reprisal. What you say ... USA investor profit lives in China? Then shoot-a-few such investors as traitorous azzwholes and such acquisitive pricks will have their greedy affection cured!
No... we are not at war with China. Yet common sense says that China's admiration of the Flying Tigers has severly faded with age. So here is the new regulation.. for the U.S.
http://taa-ups.eaton.com/USA/TAA/default.asp
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Old people fall. Young people spring. Rich people summer and winter.
Indeed. Many of the comments here seem to think the rest of the world is some sort of US colony.
US companies frequently have to censor things in various countries in order to adhere to local laws which are less liberal than those in the US. Facebook, Twitter, youtube, etc. all have special country-specific censorship in order to deal with government requests to block content. Germany particularly has stricter laws on threats and Nazi propaganda which end up being enforced by US companies on a regular basis.
You can't operate in China while breaking their laws. And despite China's crackdown on information, the net result of tech there is that the society and government are being forced to slowly liberalize their policies. Apple and other US companies' presence there is a net positive even when they are forced to abide by laws with which they'd rather not.
Old people fall. Young people spring. Rich people summer and winter.
Not true. IBM was sending employees once a month to repair and maintain the machines. The arguement that they didn't know what their customer was doing with their machine doesn't fly because they continued the maintainence schedule!
You"re seriously proposing that the U.S. should have laws that force a U.S. company to sell software to citizens of another country that has been deemed illegal by their government?!?! You _do_ know that that doing so would be reciprocal with other countries being able to impose upon U.S. citizens, right?
If you're proposing that the U.S. be able to impose their laws unilaterally upon foreign countries, by what right?
As you're the one proposing to upset the current status of international relations, _you_ are going to have to explain how that'll work, not just play fake innocent and ask "why shouldn't we".
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
"The US has some of the most stringent anti-bribery and anti-corruption laws for its businesses, and it enforces them quite strictly."
You are shitting us right?
Subprime mortgage - anyone in jail? ......
Bhopal disaster - Jail?
On the world corruption index (https://www.transparency.org/news/feature/corruption_perceptions_index_2016) USA is number 18....
Most if not all those story about pulling app or stopping software is solely about china censorship laws. Going to the crime against humanity was unnecessary for the argument.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Not very significant in China. They will continue using their rooted Android phones.
Indeed. Many of the comments here seem to think the rest of the world is some sort of US colony.
US companies frequently have to censor things in various countries in order to adhere to local laws which are less liberal than those in the US. Facebook, Twitter, youtube, etc. all have special country-specific censorship in order to deal with government requests to block content. Germany particularly has stricter laws on threats and Nazi propaganda which end up being enforced by US companies on a regular basis.
Indeed. And US companies often censor things in order to adhere to US culture, even if the local culture is more liberal than US culture. For instance Facebook and Apple routinely censor tits in Denmark even though they are not compelled to do so by Danish law or Danish culture.
The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head
"We have the power, the military, the police, and the firearms."
You real big cracker.
The lefts "view" of China is so fucked up.
They decry oppression and then decry the capitalism that is rapidly alleviating most of it.
Every country that has industrialized has gone through growing pains. The people that migrate to the factories were literally subsistence farming the previous day.
The suicide rates at Chinese factories that the left went ape-shit over just a few years ago... has never been as high as the suicide rate on American college campuses.
Today they are going ape shit over Trump telling the police to commit more acts of brutality, but are not going ape-shit over the applause and cheers that he got from the thousands of police officers that he was talking to. It was practically a standing ovation, but the left is crying about Trump and isnt saying shit about the reaction Trump got which is clearly a far more disturbing thing. The left are pretenders. Fake alarmism.
"His name was James Damore."
As in, is the app suddenly removed for the installed base as well?
The Chinese currently live in a weird dimension, in which they _think_ they are free because they have some workarounds like VPN, which they use to follow their favorite stars on facebook, more than learning about history.
In fact they are heavily brainwashed, and they do not see the conditioning they are subjected to. It is impossible to show them, as it would take professional psychological deprogramming. The Chinese government has created a closed psychological system within China, basically a cult.
They have political discourse, but it is limited, closed, blinded by a lack of information and a huge amount of fake news from their government, which unfortunately they are unable to critically dismiss. There is basically ONE main narrative in China, which does account for government skepticism, but does not realize how easily it is redirected by official media and government control.
It is just incredible what kind of weird stuff they believe, I have spoken with people from major cities in high pay jobs, and they have zero idea about the world outside of China, regardless of their precious VPN, and even the world inside of China.
Of all the people I talked to, ZERO of them knew anything about the death of Liu Xiaobo. They did not know who he was, and were not sure what the democratic movement in China was. And this is regardless of the VPN which would have given them access to foreign news, but they don't look at it, as it is outside of the narrative of their cult. They are completely incapable of escaping the conditioning, they are shells, minions, not responsible agents anymore.
Their usual response to any further restriction of liberty from their government is "but the Chinese people are smart, we can find a workaround".
Losing their precious VPNs would be a GOOD thing, as they would finally realize how much their government is encroaching on them.
It would be a shock and difficult to explain away. However, I do not think this will happen, because it would be actually BENEFICIAL to the critical thinking of the people. Some might wake up from the dream.
So what I think will happen is just a toughening of theoretical fines that will seldom be applied, and a strengthening of the narrative that "looking at unapproved news sources is a BAD thing. Even worse than before. See? We closed SOME VPNs".
Some way to access VPNS will still be there, so the population will still get their Facebook and Hollywood fixes, and can forget about the prison they are in.
Because which prison? We have VPN!!!!
After many years of following China, I have little hope for them. I think it is going worse and worse, and will become a huge problem for the whole world very soon.
And the maintenance contract was paid directly to Armonk, NY to boot.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Might makes right. We have forced many countries to change their laws to further our interests. See how Sweden has turned around on piracy. China is a different matter.
From yours also..\
Do you not realize that Apple has already changed China? Keep in mind that millions of Chinese citizens are using iMessage encryption to have communication that their government cannot read. The use of these apps is another good example.
IBM took a lot of Flak for assisting nazi Germany back in the thirties. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
IMHO, if IBM were to blame, the same principle applies to all companies doing business with totalitarian regimes, like China, Iran, and Saudi-Arabia. These companies aid the regimes suppressing their citizens, for profit. The right thing to do for anyone believing in democracy and human rights, is to boycott Apple and others.
Wtf do those have to do with the subject at hand? Try to stay on topic.
For giving in, to the Communist Chinese. See what happens when you put all your eggs in one basket? They pretty much "make everything". Piss off the Chinese, and all of a sudden there will be production delays, shipping delays on Apple products.
So if slavery was legal in China, Apple would be entitled to use slave labour to build its toys- according to the "their country, their laws" arguments of all you neo-liberal and neo-liberal cretins?
There is a clear distinction between different legal systems of nations- and nations that implement obscene policies against Humanity. Of course, today America, with the largest and most murderous killing machine in Human History, the US armed forces, is the planet's no.1 offender against greater Human Rights. So for NDA linked entities like Apple, things are more than a little confused here.
The current master of Apple loves to talk about 'gay' 'rights', while helping to ensure as many gays and others are mass murdered in target nations of the US military, like Libya and Syria. Apple is a corporation that not only has no morality- but is actually positively evil. But then that makes it no different from Microsoft, Google, Oracle et al. America, under neo-liberal and neo-con rule, is experiencing its darkest days.
America has exported wahhabi legal rule across as much of the muslim world as possible- and wahhabi legal rule means the death of female and homosexual rights. Iraq, Libya, North Nigeria have all experienced the death of secular rule under the post-911 PNAC plan from people like Clinton and Obama- and Apple has supported this atrocity 100% of the way.
Of course, cos the average yank is so thick, Apple (like Google) pretended otherwise for a time- but now think things have moved to far for it to be worth pretending any more. Clinton and her supporters in the Democrat AND Republican party can call for the outright destruction of Syria and Iran, and the US public no longer even blinks. Thickie yank now wants war at any cost in N Korea, Iran, Syria- hell even Russia- cos thickie yank no longer thinks there can be any downside to war- so long as 'the other' is dying in their hundreds of thousands, not the thickie yank his/herself.
And Apple operates in this new reality. US warmongering has liberated police state tendancies in nations across the planet. And the form of the police state varies nation by nation. In the UK and China- it is total censorship at point of access. In yankland, it is ensuring the absolute zionist control of all media, so the message is always 'correct'.
When Obama, or whatever other horror is in the White House, tells Apple not to sell its toys to the "sub-Humans" of Iran or Syria, Apple is happy to comply and the war loving idiots of yankland cheer. The days are dark, but they are about to get much darker again.
Seriously - how would it go over if the US arbitrarily said "other countries' laws do not apply to our citizens"?
They would probably use it as propaganda for recruiting Al Qaida and ISIS members claiming that the US is occupying them.
Well done repealing Obamacare. All these things you have didn't help much there did they, cupcake? lol.
I like how he feels the needs to add "firearms", as if police and military may or may not have these things. But then, he's a Trump supporter, so what d'you expect? He's a fucking simpleton.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
lol omg ... yea this is edgy ... like edgy and stuff, in soviet europe merkel would be on it and skinhead houses would be searched at this very moment looking for evidence of hatespeech ... and i dont know how far off that is and btw, the russians had molotov coctails and scorched earth, they still wiped the nazis ass with dysentery and "shit" like that
i guess apple is doing what in america and europe would be called "complying to the law" lol
sad but true huh ? so where's the factories with the million jobs ? they're still cook'in ?
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?