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On the contrary, I'm starting to think forceful denials indicate the importance of either the Chinese market, or the impact China has as a manufacturing partner

On the contrary, I'm starting to think forceful denials indicate the importance of either the Chinese market, or the impact China has as a manufacturing partner, on their bottom line. I can't imagine China being happy with anything less than a forceful denial from companies. Or else, ...

eridius 8y ago
I can't imagine a universe in which Apple is willing to blatantly lie to their customers in order to please China (especially about such an important topic). That just doesn't seem to be in the realm of possibility. Amazon too I suppose. It's one thing for a company to issue a press release that has ambiguous statements, weak denials that could be interpreted multiple ways, or denials of very specific scenarios that doesn't actually deny the more general case. But that's not what happened here. Apple issued a very comprehensive and forceful denial, covering just about everything I can think of (even asserting that they're not subject to a gag order). Amazon's denial was shorter but still reasonably comprehensive. I just can't imagine either of those being a lie.
- sneak 8y ago
  Apple, a company that champions human rights to privacy, has allowed the murderous chinese government to wiretap all chinese icloud users. Apple PR said today “Apple has always believed in being transparent about the ways we handle and protect data.” The fact that iCloud in China is tapped by default is not transparently reported by Apple at all. Do not underestimate their incentives to outright lie or otherwise obfuscate the truth at the behest of the militaries of EITHER the US or China.
  - eridius 8y ago
    Or to put it another way: "Apple complies with the laws in the countries where it does business". That said, what you've described is wrong. The data is not "tapped by default". It was widely reported that Apple now contracts with a Chinese company to provide the data center, as well as stores the cryptographic keys in China. But the data center company doesn't have those keys, Apple does. The important difference here is that China can use their own legal system to compel Apple to hand over the keys for specified users rather than going through the U.S. courts. Presumably this does significantly weaken the protections here (as one can assume China's courts are going to be much more willing to approve government requests for this), but it's not the same thing as "tapped by default" because the Chinese government still needs to go through their own court system to compel access to data on specific users, as opposed to having unfettered access to data on all Chinese users. It also sounds like Apple co-brands iCloud accounts for Chinese users with the name of the Chinese data center provider, so they're not exactly hiding it.

eridius 8y ago

I can't imagine a universe in which Apple is willing to blatantly lie to their customers in order to please China (especially about such an important topic). That just doesn't seem to be in the realm of possibility. Amazon too I suppose. It's one thing for a company to issue a press release that has ambiguous statements, weak denials that could be interpreted multiple ways, or denials of very specific scenarios that doesn't actually deny the more general case. But that's not what happened here. Apple issued a very comprehensive and forceful denial, covering just about everything I can think of (even asserting that they're not subject to a gag order). Amazon's denial was shorter but still reasonably comprehensive. I just can't imagine either of those being a lie.

sneak 8y ago
Apple, a company that champions human rights to privacy, has allowed the murderous chinese government to wiretap all chinese icloud users. Apple PR said today “Apple has always believed in being transparent about the ways we handle and protect data.” The fact that iCloud in China is tapped by default is not transparently reported by Apple at all. Do not underestimate their incentives to outright lie or otherwise obfuscate the truth at the behest of the militaries of EITHER the US or China.
- eridius 8y ago
  Or to put it another way: "Apple complies with the laws in the countries where it does business". That said, what you've described is wrong. The data is not "tapped by default". It was widely reported that Apple now contracts with a Chinese company to provide the data center, as well as stores the cryptographic keys in China. But the data center company doesn't have those keys, Apple does. The important difference here is that China can use their own legal system to compel Apple to hand over the keys for specified users rather than going through the U.S. courts. Presumably this does significantly weaken the protections here (as one can assume China's courts are going to be much more willing to approve government requests for this), but it's not the same thing as "tapped by default" because the Chinese government still needs to go through their own court system to compel access to data on specific users, as opposed to having unfettered access to data on all Chinese users. It also sounds like Apple co-brands iCloud accounts for Chinese users with the name of the Chinese data center provider, so they're not exactly hiding it.