11 ms·
iPhone crashing bug likely caused by code added to appease Chinese government
- koops 8y agoSure, companies have to adapt to markets. But inserting code like this, buggy or not, is a cowardly act by Apple. They should be ashamed, and apologize.
- pavs 8y agobut they are champion of privacy or something like that. And google who walked out of China because they refused to bend to their rules are the bad guys.
- brisance 8y agoYou do know that Hong Kong is technically part of China, right?
- wyuenho 8y agoYou do know Hong Kong is very different from China right? It's a separate jurisdiction, economy, language, culture etc...
- brisance 8y agoYes, which is why Google is still operating in Hong Kong, which is part of China, which is my point. Your's?
- pavs 8y agoJust having a point is not good enough. It needs to make some sense. China Hing Kong and China Mainland was always a separate entity. China Hong Kong Google site still remains blocked in China mainland (last I checked), because Google refuses to comply with China laws regarding privacy. Google has other business interest that doesn't require direct access to customer data and products that can be only developed for Chinese consumers. Google remains the only major company in the world that I know of that refused to do business with China over privacy concern.
- brisance 8y agoSo your argument is that Google values privacy, so it doesn’t operate in China. But if it were to operate in China, it has to obey Chinese laws. Agree or disagree? As for the first part, explain to me how Google values privacy when it circumvented Safari’s built in privacy protection and was fined for it. So how does your argument make sense? https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/aug/09/google-record-fine-ftc-safari https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/aug/09/google-re...
- pavs 8y agoNo that doesn't make sense at all. You don't seem to understand the difference. https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-differences-between-AOSP-stock-Android-stock-rom-Lineage-OS-and-TouchWiz https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-differences-between-AOSP-... https://www.quora.com/Will-Android-phones-work-well-in-China https://www.quora.com/Will-Android-phones-work-well-in-China Google Play store does not work on China, Apple app store works. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/17/google-misses-out-on-billions-in-china.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/17/google-misses-out-on-billion... Edit: You completely changed your original comment I replied to. That put my comment out of context. That's a very douchy move, esp you didn't mention that you changed your comment.
- brisance 8y agoI copy-pasted the wrong reply to the window, and corrected it while you were formulating your reply. There’s no way to edit a comment once it has been replied to, so there’s no way for me to put an edit reason. But thanks for the ad hominen attack.
- brisance 8y agoBTW, here’s a bonus question. Explain how the “champion of privacy that doesn’t operate in China” collects Android users’ locations even when location services are disabled. The practice was stopped only when they got caught, and this only happened last year. https://qz.com/1131515/google-collects-android-users-locations-even-when-location-services-are-disabled/ https://qz.com/1131515/google-collects-android-users-locatio...
- rrggrr 8y agoI'm having a hard time understanding what is cowardly about complying with Chinese law when selling products inside China. There are many laws in the US I don't agree with, but I'm obligated to comply with them for as long as I choose to live here and remain a citizen. For example, its essentially US law that Apple's officers have a fiduciary responsibility to shareholder's best interests. Not participating in the Chinese cellular market over principle violates that principal of law. If you want Apple to be "brave" then persuade the US Congress to require that Apple not comply with repressive Chinese law; or convince Apple's shareholders to prohibit the same. Short of those outcomes Apple is doing precisely what its supposed to be doing.
- wyuenho 8y ago> Apple is doing precisely what its supposed to be doing. Such as aidding and abetting authoritarian foreign governments to suppress freedom of speech. I'm having a hard time understanding why you are having a hard time understanding why this is cowardly, given that Apple is not particularly cowardly when it decided to stand up to US government surveillance.
- dewey 8y agoThat is such a simplistic view of things. Do you think they'd do it if there was another way? At that scale things are not that easy and you can't just break the law even if it feels "right" to you. Most users are probably never subject to government intervention and they are still protected by the encryption from thiefs, evil ISPs and other bad actors. If Apple would pull out completely and get banned in the country they'd maybe have to switch to other companies that are not that privacy minded.
- deathhand 8y agoWell traditionally tech companies leave open gaps for the average Joe to do the law breaking themselves. If the concept of Taiwan is illegal then it would be a add-on available from other sources. Given how closed source and how rudimentary text input is to an OS I do not know how feasible this is for an IPhone.
- beebmam 8y agoCooperating with China is cooperating with authoritarianism and human rights abuses.
- zajd 8y agoSo is working with the US, or Britain, or like 90% of the governments in the world (hell, probably closer to 100%)
- everdrive 8y agoYou're either extraordinarily naive, or an intentional troll.
- dang 8y agoThis breaks the site guidelines. Please read and follow them when commenting here, regardless of how wrong you think another comment is. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- craftyguy 8y agoIt's bad to ignore countries who are actively participating in human rights abuses, but it's not nearly as bad as actively participating in human rights abuses. Even though the US does participate to some degree (vast homeless populations, the whole separating families at the border thing, etc), it's no where near the scale/magnitude that you see in China.
- lovich 8y agoThe US has the largest number of imprisoned citizens despite China and India having populations that are multiples larger as well as how the US deals with collateral damage with things like drone strikes, actual concentration camps for children after it was taught in schools about how bad it was last time the US put japanese in camps, police black sites in Chicago, and various other abuses. China is not good but the US has zero ground on to say it's better. If you are a business operating in either nation you are actively participating in human rights abuses or you close down ala Lavabit
- bowmessage 8y ago> (his friend’s phone specified the region as the US and the language as English, followed by Chinese.) I use the Chinese keyboard as a very rudimentary Mandarin speaker. Does this mean the Chinese government was still getting information on my chat history even though I'm a US citizen?!
- phyzome 8y agoProbably, but that's unrelated to what the article is about. :-P
- toyg 8y agoit's not a keylogger -- it's a simple "if" branch to hide the Taiwan flag from the emoji set.
- Shivetya 8y agodo they hide offensive emoji's in other countries? would the hide the Israeli flag for phones sold in Middle Eastern countries? I would love to find a published list of what Apple does censor to accommodate specific country or regional issues.
- mjevans 8y agoI would feel less intellectually dishonest if plain text were unaffected (but the country in question were simply removed from the spelling suggestions), and if the Emoji were replaced with a hyperlinked reference and some kind of 'censored' emoji instead. The reference should be to a page explaining that in compliance with (links to guidelines / official diplomatic requests here) content that is required to be censored by the regulating authorities in a given region has been redacted.
- bangonkeyboard 8y agoApple Music literally disappeared scenes and mentions of Palestine from a Vic Mensa music video and interview. "You got, like, Charlottesville, you have scenes in Palestine, Standing Rock," [0] was edited to, "You got, like, Charlottesville, you have...Standing Rock." [1] [0] https://itunes.apple.com/us/post/sa.e79e61c0-f89d-11e7-8829-d320c2561bfe https://itunes.apple.com/us/post/sa.e79e61c0-f89d-11e7-8829-... [1] https://twitter.com/Beats1/status/952952704564838400 https://twitter.com/Beats1/status/952952704564838400
- andy-x 8y agoAs a bonus Apple should add a bug that crashes US-region messenger every time someone types Trump or reads Trump's tweets :)
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ThefinalResult 8y agolmao, the Genius of authoritarianism at work.
- parliament32 8y agoI thought Apple was supposed to be the great government-resistant pro-user-rights stronghold. Why is this code even present on US devices? Is the word "Taiwan" such a bad word in China that, instead of some reasonable action, it crashes the OS? Is the Chinese government so upset about Taiwan they're insisting manufacturers hide the flag from the keyboard? All aspects of this are mind-boggling.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y ago> I thought Apple was supposed to be the great government-resistant pro-user-rights stronghold. Only when they are sure that the government really can't punish them for it, and it gets them good PR. When dealing with a government that will ban the sales of the iPhone in that country, they roll over and make sure they do whatever they need to do to have friendly relations with them.
- MBCook 8y agoAnd the country is big enough. Maybe they’d stand their ground against Liechtenstein but China is WAY too important. They also said they’d do what the US government required. They didn’t like the idea of the gov being able to unlock any phone and lobbied against it but said they’d follow the law if it exists.
- kodablah 8y agoSo for consistency, surely we can read the blog post against similar issues like requiring icloud data locality? Otherwise, we need to be very clear where you're even allowed to publicly disagree or not.
- MBCook 8y agoThis seems like a sort of standard country customization/localization thing that just happened to have a bug in it. However because it’s China and Taiwan it’s a “thing“ because there’s a very heavy political angle. My original comment was meant to point out that Apple isn’t hypocritical here as many people want to claim. They said they’d do the exact same kind of things here if required by US law.
- Apocryphon 8y agoThey didn't even bother to swap the Taiwanese flag emoji with a custom one of the Chinese Taipei flag: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Taipei https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Taipei
- dep_b 8y agoGetting out of China is a move by Google I still admire. Perhaps “the old Google” but they never reversed that decision for the shareholders.
- earenndil 8y agoI thought they moved out because they were having difficulty getting penetration?
- brisance 8y agoUpvoted you. Google is still operating in Hong Kong, which is part of China.
- millstone 8y agoGoogle had a (rightful) chip on their shoulder after they discovered Gmail had been targeted and hacked by the Chinese government. Still I think it would have been better for Chinese citizens if Google had found a way to continue operating in China, even if partially censored. It's not good for humanity when the largest country in the world becomes increasingly inwards-directed.
- thorwwed9 8y agoI don't understand why China didn't just send a National Security Letter and request the information that way.
- tonylinn80 8y ago'cause it has no reason to copy what US government would do
- ubernostrum 8y agoToday you learned: even though you think Google is "out" of China, the borders and labels displayed in Google Maps still change if viewed from within China (and for many other countries, too, depending on their stances in territorial disputes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9ZMub2UrKU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9ZMub2UrKU
- ramblerman 8y agoCountries like Saudi and UAE have 'similar' software requests. Frequently they will request any map software either blanks out or overwrites Israel.
- mankash666 8y agoApple is generally full of shit. They'll refuse to unlock a terrorist's phone in the US but will get on all fours for the Chinese government's absurdly unreasonable requests. And they'll gladly throw users privacy under the bus in China by forking over iCloud China to a government backed/owned cloud. The next time they pretend moral superiority over some obviously inane topic, like protecting a terrorist, best get a supeona from China.
- JudasGoat 8y agoBecause of Apple's kowtow to China, human beings will be imprisoned, tortured, and executed from information gleaned from Apple devices. Not just common criminals but political and religous dissidents. I would imagine the other cell phone choices available are just as bad, but does that make it ethical to be part of CCP's surveilance?
- wmblaettler 8y agoReminds me of a method found in the SharePoint SDK called HideTaiwan() [1] [1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/office/developer/sharepoint-services/ms441219(v=office.12) https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/office/de...
- sofaofthedamned 8y agoSo hang on a bit here - i'm not an Apple fan, don't use their phones, ditched my MacBook etc. But this crash is a bit convenient. It smells to me like a teenager complying with the letter of the rules. Their QA, although awful recently, surely would have picked up this crash? So maybe Apple deliberately made the code crap to telegraph the fact they'd been coerced into writing the code? Assuming they'd been told by PRC to not give specifics of what they had to comply with?
- hyder_m29 8y agoKnowing fully that they would be heavily criticized for complying? I think not. If Apple wanted the world to know, they would simply release a statement.
- dang 8y agoThe original blog post is https://objective-see.com/blog/blog_0x34.html https://objective-see.com/blog/blog_0x34.html and has more technical information.