Apple is Not Such a Freedom Fighter in China

LA Times/Slashdot ^

[Carismar]

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?

[Scrambler Bob]

iPhone was made in China.

So ... ‘force’ China to get data from San B terrorists’ phone.

They can get into it, right????

[Scrambler Bob]

Trouble is that the terrorists destroyed their own two phones.

The San Bernadino county phone ‘survived’. I suspect that there is nothing incriminating on it.

This is just an excuse to ‘back door’ all of us (obama loves to back door).

[Swordmaker]

LA Times: "Apple is Not Such a Freedom Fighter in China" -- All Old News. China insisted that Chinese Citizen's Data must be hosted on servers inside the borders of China for Apple to be able to sell iOS devices in China. Apple's devices are still encrypted and the data uploaded to those servers are still encrypted with the user's personally chosen passcode. That is no different in China than it is here.

Apps that are critical of the Chinese government are not permitted in the Chinese Apple App Store, and Apps that do not meet the peculiar Chinese moral code, ditto. Cost of doing business in a closed society.

As for the accusation that Apple allows "security audits", it is not what it seems. Last year the with the heavy news about the NSA having the ability to read everyone's email and have access into mobile devices, the Chinese press started spreading rumors that Apple iOS devices had backdoors that allowed the NSA unfettered access to users' data. The Chinese government immediately banned all iOS devices from government purchase and also halted iPhone and iPad sales pending a "security audit" to prove Apple's claim there were no "backdoors" in Apple's products. Apple agreed to allow Chinese security specialists the chance to try to break in to the current iPhones and iPads. Four days later, after the Chinese experts found No backdoors, the sales halt was lifted and Apple products were again allowed in!

This is no where nearly the same as what Microsoft did when they gave the Chinese government the entire source code to Microsoft Windows.

The meme that is being pushed now by these articles that somehow Apple is allowing the Chinese access they do not allow the US government is FALSE! -- PING!

Pinging dayglored, ThunderSleeps, and Shadow Ace for their ping lists.

Apple Security and China
Ping!

The latest Apple/Mac/iOS Pings can be found by searching Keyword "ApplePingList" on FreeRepublic's Search.

If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me

[Swordmaker]

Seeing how Cook is acting, it’s no wonder they tried on their own without asking for Apple’s help. I would imagine Cook is doing this on his own. I would guess that the bulk of Apple Employee’s disagree with him.

Apple has been assisting the FBI with the iPhone in question after the FBI screwed the pooch and changed the AppleID password. Apple has also provided everything in the Terrorists' iCloud accounts.

The vast majority of the tech community agrees with Apple on this. Apple has worked for years to build an unbreakable security on the iPhone and iPad and they are being ordered to hack their own creation. This would destroy years of work and billions of dollars of R&D not to mention the security and trust of 800,000,000 current iOS ecosystem users who rely on the ABSOLUTE unbreakability of that system. There is NO way to guarantee this HACK would NOT be released into the wild once it's created.

Just a few years ago the courts demanded the same thing from RIM, make a tool to unlock the Blackberry's security to open a child molester's Blackberry to get the evidence to convict him. RIM was guaranteed the tool would remain inviolate and secret, maintaining the security of all RIM devices. They believed the court and developed the tool. They retrieved a couple thousand kiddie porn pictures off the device. The molester was convicted. After the trial, the media demanded from the trial judge the code for the Blackberry unlocking and the idiot Judge, ruling that the public had a right to it, RELEASED IT! However, it was ALREADY in the wild, because the DEFENSE had been granted access and their computer experts had kept copies and given it to their friends, who gave copies to their friends, and so on.

Apple was helping the FBI. . . and was stabbed in the back by the FBI with this Court Order. It has NOTHING to do with narcissism except from you anti-Apple hate brigade members. Your response with its knee-jerk homophobic reaction is your usual fare.

[Swordmaker]

Apple will protect dead killers in the U.S., but will offer up live freedom fighters in China.

PROOF of your ridiculous accusation? None.

[Swordmaker]

iPHONE..SMARTPHONE OF CHOICE OF WORLDWIDE JIHAD

Nope, it's not. The terrorists had BURNER phones. The ones the used for their actual plotting were destroyed, smashed, along with their computers, the hard drives smashed separately, and then all were thrown into a lake. The iPhone was not, because it was NOT the choice of worldwide jihad. ISIS has a website where they recommend the top 33 encryption software apps for their fighters to use. . . on Android Burner phones.

These Apps are only available on Android phones or JAILBROKEN iPhones. Nice try, Gay State Conservative, but it doesn't fly.

[Swordmaker]

All that matters to them is making a PR gain out of this. They don't give a rat's patoot about protecting individual privacy. They do care very much about keeping their profit margins high, though, and catering to China while "standing up" to the FBI is exactly the sort of shell game Apple has always excelled at.

That's false. Apple has been taking a stand on customer privacy for years.

The FBI already has all of the call data from that iPhone. It was his WORK phone supplied by the County of San Bernardino. The call logs show that the only phone calls on it were to work related contacts, with a few, during working hours to/from his monster wife's regular phone, basically normal. The only email on the iPhone was the County business email. Texting was business oriented. The strong likelihood is the he did not do any terrorist oriented activities on that iPhone because it was owned by, and controlled by employer, and they could, at any time pick it up, download things from it, etc.

The terrorists did not smash it because they knew they had nothing incriminating on it. They may have kept it with them to use the GPS on the getaway or for directions to their nest attack target. If there was information incriminating for any compatriots, it would have been destroyed and sunk with the others.

I would also suggest another motive. Destroying a property that did not belong to him may have struck him as somehow immoral, in a twisted religious fashion. Killing is ok, but theft is not. He can destroy HIS property, but not his employer's property. That may be off the wall, but these are religious fanatics, and he has to be ritually clean to meet Allah. Killing is OK with his weird Moon God, but theft is not. It is also trivial to wipe an iOS device to Factory Clean status in just five minutes, with no data recoverable at all. The same is not true of Android phones.

The only people they're providing privacy protection for are the friends and contacts of the terrorists, not anyone else, not the public at large.

As for protecting others, you are wrong. There are 800,000,000 users of Apple iPhones who rely on the security of those devices. They keep their ApplePay, passwords, identity data, personal photos, many things they do not want revealed. They bought their iOS ecosystem because of that security guarantee. For Apple itself to "HACK" into the iOS protections and create the means to break that invulnerability, would destroy the trust and security those 800 million have come to rely on. Apple has spent billions of dollars and years of effort designing this break proof system, and the government is DEMANDING they tear it down.

[Swordmaker]

I for one don’t mind the govt accessing the data from dead Islamic killers

And Apple provided what they had custody of. They don't have custody of what is on that iPhone.

[Swordmaker]

iPhone was made in China.

So ... ‘force’ China to get data from San B terrorists’ phone.

They can get into it, right????

No. They don't have the blueprints of the chips, which belong to Apple. Nor do they have the software, which also is Apple's.

[AZLiberty]

why are the Feds so hell bent on getting a backdoor into iPhones?

Because they want us to be just like Communist China.

[Scrambler Bob]

That is my point.

Getting into Apple’s chips or software is like the govt trying to get into my brain.

They know they want the info, but it will take torture.

[Laser_Ray]

Dear Freepers: this is the reality of doing any business at all in a Communist nation.

Until recently I worked for a massive financial company, and you know the training course that everyone laughed at? Not the ‘diversity’ one, not the ‘sexual harassment’ (aka whiny ugly whores complaining to HR) course...the ‘anti-bribery and corruption’ one.

Why?

Because it was openly discussed how ‘payments’ were literally the only way to get anything done not just in a couple third-world countries but in several supposedly civilized European nations.

Apple can resist Uncle Sham’s demands ONLY because they are relatively sure that doing so won’t result in their executives being mass-arrested and the army confiscating all their factories. In China? NOT SO D@MN MUCH.

[central_va]

Suicide nets around FoxConn Chinese facility.

[Swordmaker]

Suicide nets around FoxConn Chinese facility.

The suicide rate at FoxConn was far lower than the suicide rate in the Chinese population in general, Central_va. In fact, at the HEIGHT of the spate of suicide at FoxConn in 2010, SIX YEARS AGO, the suicide rate was less than 1 per 100,000 per year.

The suicide rate among the same age cohort of students at US Ivy League University Students in the same year was 11 per 100,000 per year. In other words a young person was ELEVEN TIMES less likely to commit suicide working for FoxConn than they were attending Harvard.

In 2013 FoxConn had ZERO suicides among its 1.4 MILLION employees. In 2014, there were three.

Even at the height of the suicides at FoxConn in 2010, outside investigators from labor organizations who sent in psychologists, it was found that the of 18 suicids over a period of 18 months none were related to work conditions. Several were related to mental health conditions, two were related to love triangles, two to home-sickness, and several to financial pressures and the fact that Terry Gou, the CEO of FoxConn had been making it a practice of giving the families of workers who died at FoxConn between twenty to twenty-five times their annual salaries as a bereavement payment. Some workers figured they were worth more to their families dead than alive and working, sending money home. Gou ceased making such large bereavement payments, instead making the normal workers' compensation payment only for accidental deaths, and the suicides STOPPED.

Make that "DELIBERATE IGNORANCE", central_va.

Because you already know not a single suicide occurred at a FoxConn plant making Apple products. The spate of six was at a plant making Microsoft X-boxes, Nokia Cellular phones, HP-Computers, and Sony Playstations.

So exactly what was your point in posting this non sequitur on this Apple thread -- for the umpteenth time? It's not as if you haven't been told all these facts, you have. So, this has to be your anti-Apple hate brigade irrationality coming to the fore, right?

[central_va]

I must have hit a nerve.. Thanks for verifying.

[Swordmaker]

I must have hit a nerve.. Thanks for verifying.

No, central_va. You keep posting this propaganda hit piece. I keep slapping your LIE down. You post it as an innuendo which has NO connection to reality. I prefer truth. So, central, there's no "nerve" to hit.

Why don't you post it in dayglored's Microsoft Ping List threads, since Microsoft Xboxes were what the majority of workers were assembling where the spate of suicides occurred in 2010 at the FoxConn plant?

So, I again ask, what purpose do you have in extolling the amazingly LOW suicide rate of 1 in 100,000 per year at FoxConn and CEO Terry Gou's efforts to reduce even that remarkably low rate and his effectiveness in lowering suicides to ZERO among 1.5 million workers just three years later? Are you that in awe of such an achievement?

[dayglored]

> Why don't you post it in dayglored's Microsoft Ping List threads, since Microsoft Xboxes were what the majority of workers were assembling where the spate of suicides occurred in 2010 at the FoxConn plant?

Well, of course any FR member can post a thread.

I personally don't consider these regular hit pieces about Chinese worker conditions and events even remotely reliable, whether they're about Apple, Microsoft, or anyone else. Everyone involved has an agenda. True facts are awfully hard to come by and verify halfway around the world, in a land where misleading statements, obfuscation, falsification, and outright lying are rife.

So post away, but I can't promise to ping my list to anything I consider grossly unreliable, regardless of topic or source.

Also, those types of threads often generate flame wars, and I'm in no mood to fight, especially about something where there is a total lack of reliable data in my opinion.

There are SO many more productive ways to spend one's time. I'm going to start posting this cartoon whenever I get called to these things. :-)

XKCD, of course

[Swordmaker]

There are SO many more productive ways to spend one's time. I'm going to start posting this cartoon whenever I get called to these things. :-)

BINGO.

[SZonian]

I know I haven’t replied to any of your pings from the ping list, but know that I’ve appreciated you and swordmaker for at least TRYING to make a positive impact.

I’m very grateful for your posts, your knowledge and your willingness to share it.

FRegards,
SZ