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.

Comments

IOS and now iOS

[seoras]

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?
 

Re:Material support for a hostile foreign governme

[Jeremi]

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?