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Tim Cook’s Company-Wide Email on Hkmap.live Doesn’t Add Up

• artfulhippo 7y ago
  Apple caved under pressure from China. The explanation Cook gave is not just an embarrassment, it calls into question the veracity of all of his other statements. Why should users believe that (closed source) iMessage encryption is free from backdoors when we know that Cook will dance around sensitive truths? And why should the US government be satisfied with a fully encrypted iMessage given that Apple will cave to demands given enough pressure?
  • opn7d7 7y ago
    Because Apple has already gotten away with giving the US government the finger over cracking iPhones at the request of the FBI and they backed down. American politicians are in their pocket. Chinese not so much. Users buying what you’re asking on the other hand :man-shrugging:
  • mistersquid 7y ago
    I agree that Apple's stated rationale for removing the HKmap.live app is embarrassing and the removal is a capitulation to China's government. The reasons China's government has decried the app are bogus, but those false reports and allegations do not originate with Apple. However, Apple appears to be accepting those reasons at face value and probably because Apple is kowtowing. Regarding whether iMessage is free from backdoors, Apple has given no reason for anyone to believe they are outright lying about the technical features of their software and hardware or their position regarding privacy. In other words, Apple appears to be caving into pressure from the Chinese government and Apple are openly admitting this surrender. However, Apple has not to date lied about what they are doing and we do not yet have a reason to doubt their representations about the security of their encryption.
    • capableweb 7y ago
      > Regarding whether iMessage is free from backdoors, Apple has given no reason for anyone to believe they are outright lying about the technical features of their software and hardware or their position regarding privacy. Except if you live in China and have backups/storage on iCloud used by the various things you do with your iPhone.
    • cromwellian 7y ago
      You can lie by omission. iMessage depends on IDS Directory Servers for two phones to exchange public keys. If China can spoof or run their own IDS Directory Server, they can potentially execute a man-in-the-middle attack.
    • evrydayhustling 7y ago
      So you are saying that an organization that supports false accusations by others, but is not known to originate them, should be given the benefit of the doubt about assertions they originate. Here is another model: an organization that supports falsehoods to placate someone powerful in a small matter, like hosting an app, can be trusted to placate the powerful in a more important matter.
    • karmakaze 7y ago
      OT: Appropriately TIL kowtow is a word that came from China early 19th century: from Chinese kētóu, from kē ‘knock’ + tóu ‘head’.
    • dilippkumar 7y ago
      > However, Apple has not to date lied about what they are doing and we do not yet have a reason to doubt their representations about the security of their encryption. Today, they showed that they are willing to lie under sufficient influence. This sole data point is sufficient to tarnish what was assumed to be a perfect record. There is no such thing as 99.999% integrity. Apple either has 100% integrity or is inviting you to play russian roulette with it’s products and services. We might have already rolled the dice enough times - 1.4e9 active devices trusting apple about 10 times a day for 282 days this year = 3.948 trillion rolls of the dice. A 0.001% chance of betrayal by Apple is 39.4 million betrayals this year (approximately the population of Canada)
    • kerkeslager 7y ago
      > However, Apple has not to date lied about what they are doing and we do not yet have a reason to doubt their representations about the security of their encryption. Did you read the original link, or the memo it linked to? "the app was being used maliciously to target individual officers for violence and to victimize individuals and property where no police are present." This was written by Tim Cook, speaking for Apple. That is Apple lying about what they are doing.
      • dkonofalski 7y ago
        >That is Apple lying about what they are doing. That is a ludicrous interpretation of that statement, in my opinion. Apple is being told by the government of a nation they're operating under that the law has been broken and that those things happened. What is Apple supposed to do in this case? Tell China "we don't believe you" and then what? You think China is going to change its tune? Or do you think Apple can get away with saying "Ok, fine! We're not going to do business here!" with zero repercussions? This is not Apple lying. This is Apple making public what they were told by the Chinese government. Apple is not the bad guy here. China is.
        • computerex 7y ago
          Read this: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2019/10/10/cook-hkmap-live-email https://daringfireball.net/linked/2019/10/10/cook-hkmap-live... Once again, Apple is in complete control of their App Store. They are the ones who decided to remove the app because of financials. This is the price of doing business in China.
  • Aloha 7y ago
    The US isn't a closed market and can't effectively eject Apple from the market. While I disagree with the choice Apple made, it's a very rational one. Permanent removal from China would probably be worse for freedom in China over 20 years, and massively worse for Apple in the short term. No company should be expected to back or foment a revolution somewhere, from my perspective they're looking out for their own beet interest and the best interest of their customers.
    • bcrosby95 7y ago
      > Permanent removal from China would probably be worse for freedom in China over 20 years, I'm curious about how you came to this conclusion.
      • Aperocky 7y ago
        Because they would be replaced by local Chinese companies. Are you saying that would have no effect on freedom for the users?
        • deleted 7y ago
          [deleted]
        • untog 7y ago
          If Apple capitulates to every demand the Chinese government makes then perhaps there isn’t much of a difference.
          • millstone 7y ago
            Right. But of course the Chinese government has asked Apple for a backdoor, and (to our knowledge) Apple has not provided that. So long as that's true, an iPhone really is one of the most secure option for Chinese residents.
            • fooker 7y ago
              > (to our knowledge) This is really the key phrase here. What we know for sure is: Google and Facebook services do not work in China while Apple and Microsoft's do.
  • president 7y ago
    > Why should users believe that (closed source) iMessage encryption is free from backdoors when we know that Cook will dance around sensitive truths? At least in China, you can probably assume iMessage is back-doored given that iCloud content in mainland China is operated by a Chinese internet company. Apple quietly posted this last week on their support page: "iCloud services in China mainland are now operated by Chinese internet services company Guizhou on the Cloud Big Data Industrial Development Co., Ltd., (GCBD). This allows us to continue to improve iCloud services in China mainland and comply with Chinese regulations." It goes on to say: "iCloud services and all the data you store with iCloud, including photos, videos, documents, and backups, will be subject to the new terms and conditions of iCloud operated by GCBD." Source: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208351 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208351 EDIT: After some research, it looks like the iCloud handover actually happened last year (https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/11/icloud_china_goes_to_china/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/11/icloud_china_goes_t...).
    • Despegar 7y ago
      Actually we can't assume that at all. It seems I'm going to have to repost this comment a thousand times https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20904857 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20904857 >Apple has already publicly said in court filings, and under threat of perjury, that they don't make any exceptions for China. From Apple's filing [1]: >Finally, the government attempts to disclaim the obvious international implications of its demand, asserting that any pressure to hand over the same software to foreign agents “flows from [Apple’s] decision to do business in foreign countries . . . .” Opp. 26. Contrary to the government’s misleading statistics (Opp. 26), which had to do with lawful process and did not compel the creation of software that undermines the security of its users, Apple has never built a back door of any kind into iOS, or otherwise made data stored on the iPhone or in iCloud more technically accessible to any country’s government. See Dkt. 16-28 [Apple Inc., Privacy, Gov’t Info. Requests]; Federighi Decl. ¶¶ 6–7. The government is wrong in asserting that Apple made “special accommodations” for China (Opp. 26), as Apple uses the same security protocols everywhere in the world and follows the same standards for responding to law enforcement requests. See Federighi Decl. ¶ 5. and a declaration from Craig Federighi personally [2]: >Apple uses the same security protocols everywhere in the world. >Apple has never made user data, whether stored on the iPhone or in iCloud, more technologically accessible to any country's government. We believe any such access is too dangerous to allow. Apple has also not provided any government with its proprietary iOS source code. While governmental agencies in various countries, including the United States, perform regulatory reviews of new iPhone releases, all that Apple provides in those circumstances is an unmodified iPhone device. >It is my understanding that Apple has never worked with any government agency from any country to create a "backdoor" in any of our products and services. >I declare under penalty of perjury under the laws of the United States of America that the foregoing is true and correct. When China wants something from iCloud they do it the same way that law enforcement does it everywhere in the world, which is through Apple. [1] https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2762131/C-D-Cal-16-Cm-00010-Dckt-000177-000-Filed-2016.pdf https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2762131/C-D-Cal-1... [2] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2762118-Federighi-Decl-Executed.html#document/p1 https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2762118-Federighi-De...
  • mistermann 7y ago
    > Apple caved under pressure from China. The explanation Cook gave is not just an embarrassment, it calls into question the veracity of all of his other statements. I was thinking about the complexity of the world the other day, and how so many people hold diametrically opposed beliefs, but often based on solid reasoning and genuine facts. How could this be? If you think about it, the modern world is so complex, with so many facts (some of which are actual facts, some of which are popular opinions now considered to be fact), with all of the inter-connected, Nth order cause and effect going on, how is a person who wants to be as objective as possible supposed to actually come up with a reasonable model of what's going on, even if they're willing to put in the work? People skilled in communications and the psychology of persuasion can pick and choose a subset of "facts" and put together plausible and completely contradictory descriptions of the very same story, and done correctly it's very difficult even for the vigilant to know you're being duped. So what's a person to do? What I came up with is the idea that yes, one should indeed take "facts" into consideration, including some sort of notion of trustworthiness for each fact, but what's missing is the value of lies in coming up with one's model of reality. So, when trying to figure out what the real deal is on any given situation, don't first look for the facts, but rather the obvious lies - if you can find obvious lies or misrepresentations of reality coming from powerful (politicians or corporate leaders) or influential people (the media), this is probably a good trail to follow to lead you toward the most important parts of the truth. Of course, there's lots of complexity involved here as well, you have to consider the nature of the bias from the messenger, compare versions of the lie across different outlets, etc etc etc, but in many cases I suspect this is a highly productive approach for maximizing the correctness of one's models. So in this case, as the article points out, "However, over the past several days we received credible information....that the app was being used maliciously to target individual officers for violence". Obviously a lie, although in this case, considering Tim Cook's no dummy I expect he knew everyone would know he's lying, so I wouldn't form any specific conclusions on this, other than money >>> honesty and principles for him, but why should we expect more from him than any other important person in Western society....this is just how we are. Despite the wonderful sounding platitudes we tell ourselves, this is our culture. And the Achilles heel that I believe China will be able to continue to exploit indefinitely, because I simply can't see it ever changing, it has become so normalized that hardly anyone can even recognize it anymore. EDIT: Thinking more, with this being so obvious once you're aware of it, I can't imagine this is a unique theory I've come up with. Does anyone know a name for this style of thinking?
  • lonelappde 7y ago
    > And why should the US government be satisfied with a fully encrypted iMessage given that Apple will cave to demands given enough pressure? Unlike China, the US is still governed by mostly democratic laws and a Constitution, and law enforcement and politicians can't just wish new laws into effect. As Penn Jillette says, "The Chinese Bill of Rights isn't worth the paper it isn't written on."
    • scarface74 7y ago
      Law enforcement, district attorneys, and judges have a lot of latitude about how the law is applied. Not to mention the latitude that regulatory agencies have.
  • dilippkumar 7y ago
    Your comment has made a really really deep impression on me. For the past several years, I’ve been a hardcore Apple loyalist only for their stance on privacy and security. It’s time to stop being deluded. I’m going to stop paying premium for apple and assume all my devices are hostile by default. What the actual fuck Apple.
    • __m 7y ago
      You are Chinese and assumed your data would be encrypted with Apple?
      • benburleson 7y ago
        I don't think that was said or implied.
    • sushicat 7y ago
      Before you made such judgement you need to think why you have freedom of speech and privacy here, because they all protected by US laws. The companies here can do things against government for protecting users privacy and security is because laws protected them. Also, the privacy people talked about these days is more focusing on how these data got stored and used by companies and advertisement agencies. They shouldn’t use your data for profit without appropriate consent. All the companies here in US will follow court orders and hand over personal data when they required. In this case, no company can again the court and refuse to provide data. Back to this case. You can assume your dats is safe here in the US, because it’s protected by the laws.
      • JohnFen 7y ago
        > You can assume your dats is safe here in the US, because it’s protected by the laws. I honestly don't think that you can assume your data is safe in the US. The laws are lax and not well-enforced (and are mostly civil in nature anyway). The US may be better than China on this score, but it's worse than a lot of other modern nations.
    • baq 7y ago
  • coldtea 7y ago
    >Apple caved under pressure from China. The explanation Cook gave is not just an embarrassment, it calls into question the veracity of all of his other statements. What veracity? He is a businessman in a trillion dollar company. He says what pleases the market -- the domestic and the foreign one, not his personal beliefs... The first priority is always profits or growth. If one sincerely cared for the environment for example, would stop tons things that Apple is doing, not just one. The CEO of a multinational churning consumer gadgets by the shit-loads only cares for the environment to the degree that said caring doesn't impact the bottom line. >Why should users believe that (closed source) iMessage encryption is free from backdoors when we know that Cook will dance around sensitive truths? Well, that's an easier thing to answer, because there would be leaks from Apple employees (NSA had leaks, for Apple it would be many times easier) if that was the case. Tons of engineers would know. >And why should the US government be satisfied with a fully encrypted iMessage given that Apple will cave to demands given enough pressure? Because Apple will also cave to their demands. Besides it's another thing to please some foreign customer by caving in to remove an app (especially if said foreign customer is a sovereign state and the app is anti-policy -- companies are not in some obligation from the US or otherwise to side with protesters), and another thing to e.g. cave in to China and give them a backdoor to iMessage as you seem to imply as a potentiality. In fact the latter would be treason (or close) for a US-based company and have much more serious repercussions...
    • dannyr 7y ago
      Part of Apple's image that earned it loyal customers is that they care more about their customers than most other companies. Apple doesn't sell your data, it protects your privacy, will fight government agencies asking for user's data, etc.
      • manigandham 7y ago
        A lot of that was for PR, especially against rivals like Google and Microsoft. Apple definitely made some improvements but there were better approaches for just about everything they did that would've helped users and industry alike.
      • 7y ago
  • manigandham 7y ago
    Tim Cook previously said "not on our platform" before and people warned about censorship and centralized control that would eventually harm to the most dependent users. This is the direct outcome of such a policy where a few have ultimate power over the masses. It's a sad development for Apple.
  • est31 7y ago
    > Why should users believe that (closed source) iMessage encryption is free from backdoors That's an easy one: the encryption happens client side and thus any backdoor has to sit on the clients and, if it exists, would be available to security researchers. There is no guarantee of it happening, but I believe some of those researchers reverse engineer whatever binary apple published and then check it for backdoors. Of course there are still tricks that apple could pull, like adding backdoors only to targeted phones, changing the filesystem to present one version of the binary to the OS command that executes it and another to anyone else (like security researchers), extracting the unencrypted message contents using chips that sit on the memory bus (e.g. baseband), etc. But these tricks are harder to pull off and are still detectable as they happen on end-user devices. They definitely won't say "yeah there is a backdoor". Ultimately, you need to trust them.
    • Andrew_nenakhov 7y ago
      Doctored binaries (that leak private keys) can be sent to only select devices of a people under surveillance. So reverse-engineering generally available app will show nothing. Apple REALLY must be coerced into allowing app sideloading (and accept push notifications not only through APNS)
      • est31 7y ago
        The OS comes from apple, too. How does sideloading help when the OS is backdoored? How does installing your own OS help when there is a backdoor in the hardware?
        • Andrew_nenakhov 7y ago
          Sideloading helps to install the apps you want (or need), not the apps Apple allows you to use. Thing is, you buy a very expensive piece of hardware, and you don't even truly own it. Of course, Apple frames it as 'care to protect you from malware', but in reality, it's just a digital handcuff.
          • 7y ago
• Mindwipe 7y ago
  Tim Cook is a crook and a moral coward. Single signature signing authorities for software will always be inevitably used for evil, and here it directly has been. Apple does have a choice here. An easy one. It could remove the requirement that all iOS apps have to be signed to run on Apple devices. Simple. And at that point the Chinese government have no further way to blackmail them. But Apple has decided it's future ability to behave in an anti-competitive fashion is more important than democracy for the people of Hong Kong.
  • SiliconAlley 7y ago
    Honestly, as a person who prizes Apple’s products and happily depends on them for work, personal life, etc. I think Tim Cook needs to either open up sideloading or be promptly fired and replaced by somebody who will. None of this sits well with me. It is a situation we do not need to be in. I agree that he is a moral coward, and in far too important and dangerous a position to be so.
    • throwaway-571 7y ago
      The first duty of public companies is to the shareholders. Users fuzzy feelings figure very little in the incentive structure. Sideloading is probably too damaging to the short term profits of the company to be on the table. Or it might not even be a question worth considering for the board .
      • SiliconAlley 7y ago
        I agree. I hope this will be enough of a disaster in terms of optics that it renders him unfit and forces this outcome.
  • jacobush 7y ago
    At this point I would think the Chinese government would take such an action as "defiance". If Apple is worried Chine might close its supply chains, opening up side loading would really piss them off. Plus it's just not in the DNA of Apple to do side loading. Goes against the grain of everything.
• ordinaryradical 7y ago
  This is a huge stain on the company, the brand, and Cook’s leadership. It’s not just censorship—it’s active cooperation with an authoritarian power under the fig leaf of TOS violations. Truly astonishing.
  • flukus 7y ago
    And the people who purchase apple products. They gave Apple this level of control in the first place.
    • jm4 7y ago
      Oh, get off your high horse. Which devices are you using from a company that isn’t similarly large and doesn’t do the same thing?
      • flukus 7y ago
        I'm far from perfect, but I don't purchase products from a company that has dictatorial control over the software installed on my phone, so I'm not complicit in handing over that power to corporations (and in turn the CCP), iPhone users are. Their actions helped lead to this.
        • deleted 7y ago
          [deleted]
  • troysand 7y ago
    No disrespect to Steve Jobs but my guess is that he would do the same thing.
    • ryanlol 7y ago
      I doubt it. There are infinite ways to word this email, a different CEO may not have written anything. Cook presumably had some goal while sending this internal email, I doubt he achieved it. Telling your employees lies as weak as this certainly isn’t going to improve morale.
• stevespang 7y ago
  "Tim Cook is a crook and a moral coward". i 2nd that.
• asdf333 7y ago
  hacker news admins should investigate the downvote patterns on articles critical of china ...there seems to be a very strong downward pressure on articles critical of china — so much that i suspect there may be a down vote ring..
  • Mindwipe 7y ago
    Yup. There are a few "throwaway" accounts that are also fairly obviously astroturfing too.
  • tyfon 7y ago
    Dang explained yesterday [1] that there is a "common news item" penalty to stories to avoid very hot topics from dominating the front page, but that they have removed this restrictions from some articles. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21211124 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21211124
    • udujdbfhu 7y ago
      Down vote brigades are real. So to are government shills. Finally the mods regularly lie about their ongoing censorship policy. Look no further then the fact that such topics cannot be discussed. My post will be removed very quickly.
    • dang 7y ago
      I don't have time to dig up specific links at the moment, but if you look through https://news.ycombinator.com/posts?id=dang https://news.ycombinator.com/posts?id=dang, you'll see that I've written about this extensively in the last few days. China-related stories are anything but suppressed here—it has been the most-discussed single theme of the last week, and one of the most of the last several months. See these #1 stories from the last few days: https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2019-10-07 https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2019-10-07 https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2019-10-08 https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2019-10-08 https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2019-10-10 https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2019-10-10
      • 7y ago
• baddox 7y ago
  Can I play devil's advocate for just a moment? Gruber asks for evidence. His only complaints seems to be the lack of evidence and a question of whether the app violates local (Hong Kong) law. Cook's memo directly addresses both of those issues: > However, over the past several days we received credible information, from the Hong Kong Cybersecurity and Technology Crime Bureau, as well as from users in Hong Kong, that the app was being used maliciously to target individual officers for violence and to victimize individuals and property where no police are present. This use put the app in violation of Hong Kong law. So then, is the complaint simply that Cook is not providing direct evidence of these claims? Is that a reasonable expectation? What evidence could Cook provide that would directly tie violence (we know that Hong Kong protesters have committed violence) to this particular app? It seems like everyone agrees that this app was useful for organizing Hong Kong protests, and that some Hong Kong protesters have committed violence and broken local laws. Please don't take this as some statement of political support for any particular government, company, or group. I'm attempting to address the specifics of this memo and Gruber's complaints. I am not attempting to make any argument of the form "the Hong Kong protests are [good, bad] and therefore any tool that helps the protesters is [good, bad]." The overall merits of the Hong Kong protests are not, from what I can tell, relevant to Apple's decision to ban this app or Gruber's complaints about Apple's decision and memo.
  • inetsee 7y ago
    My first question is whether the "Hong Kong Cybersecurity and Technology Crime Bureau" is a reliable source of information under the current circumstances. I haven't been reading all the news about the Hong Kong protests, but what I have been reading suggests that China is applying an enormous amount of pressure to halt the protests, or reduce the international visibility of what is happening in Hong Kong. It doesn't seem to me to take much of a leap of faith to think that China is applying pressure on the Hong Kong Cybersecurity and Technology Crime Bureau to get this app removed.
    • baddox 7y ago
      Cook's memo says that the reports, from the bureau as well as from the app's users, are "credible." That at least implies that Apple evaluated the credibility of the claims. I do understand that some people (like Gruber) might want Apple to provide material evidence, but is that really Apple's responsibility or usual behavior? It would seem extremely odd (and not at all comforting) to me if Apple, for example, released video evidence of a violent attack along with some record of this app being used by the attacker. That seems like something a government should do in a legal case, of course, but it would be seem strange to me for Apple to do that. And even if they did, I suspect it wouldn't convince people who are convinced that China is doctoring or inventing evidence to vilify the Hong Kong protesters.
• saagarjha 7y ago
  This is honestly the most disappointing part of this entire saga. That Apple’s leadership realized that this is an issue, that the company’s employees do too, and that they think it’s appropriate to send out an email to placate the company but contains no real information and falls apart immediately if you look at it for longer than a couple seconds.
• vineyardmike 7y ago
  This reads like propaganda. I wonder if they have to do this to keep their supply-chain open. Now would be a good time to take that $200bn and invest in some new factories.
  • wmeredith 7y ago
    Cook has said repeatedly that they can't buy the labor they have available n China ta any price anywhere in the world. It's not a problem they can throw money at unfortunately.
    • ajscanlan 7y ago
      Why couldn't they cut into their profit margins if he cared that much?
      • dwaite 7y ago
        Probably because they couldn't get the labor and supply chains they need at any price.
• Wowfunhappy 7y ago
  > In this case, we thoroughly reviewed [the facts], and we believe this decision best protects our users. When I read Tim Cook's letter, this line at the end jumped out to me as super off. Even if everything else was completely true, how would this decision protect Apple users? Unless all the police have iPhones?
  • willis936 7y ago
    I think Apple culture is to treat employees like customers. That is to say, like they’re 4 years old and need to accept what they’re told.
  • throwaway-571 7y ago
    Positive Tinfoil hat on: The police would have used / were starting to use presence of the app as evidence that users were participant in the protest and arrested them. Or the police would have been able compromise the users, the app or the data (but then why not keep it as a honeypot?)
• reaperducer 7y ago
  For those who want to read the e-mail: https://pastebin.com/dFyftCuZ https://pastebin.com/dFyftCuZ As for me, I sold my Apple stock yesterday. Tim won't miss my $10k. But I won't miss him when I am able to move to a better platform.
  • asdf333 7y ago
    yeah...not sure i can ditch my macbook pro yet but next phone is not going to be iphone anymore...
    • epmaybe 7y ago
      why not? Short of developing for iPhone, iPad, or macOS, I don't think they bring anything new to the table that minor inconveniences on a Windows or Linux platform wouldn't solve.
      • truth0seeker 7y ago
        I guess you have to use Linux because Microsoft does the same thing. Azure China is isolated from the rest and hold by a Chinese company; Windows and Office 365 has Chinese specific version; Skype is not available etc.
    • drevil-v2 7y ago
      Yes because Android has your privacy needs covered! Don't let the door hit you on your way out
      • SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
        I didn't see any mention of Android in GP's comment. Can't miss any opportunity we can to have a dig though, can we?
• traderjane 7y ago
  It's entirely plausible that the Hong Kong police have assembled a documented narrative of incidents of crime and abuse. The call for evidence into what might be a handful of cases isn't interesting. What is unconvincing is that an app's potential to be used with crime is sufficient for people to understand Mr. Cook's bright-line, process, or thinking around the matter. This app was likely being used in ways which critically supported the mitigation of risk to life, a fact which Mr. Cook described only as "benign"; the failure to discuss the balance against the app's relation to public health, and the failure to frame the nature of Hong Kong police and law, makes any attempted weighing suggested by Mr. Cook to be of low credibility as a lens into his process. Presumably Google Maps, Search, and other apps also facilitates crime at a magnitude well beyond the app in question, but how does the weighing work?
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• nabdab 7y ago
  > Moreover, what are these incidents where protesters have targeted individual police for a premeditated attack? Can Mr. Cook point to a single example? Can anyone? The message stated that they had credible sources. That really should be enough in that type of communication. He was not trying to make a court case providing evidence he was describing the company decision to employees. Now if there actually haven’t been any such cases then it adds question to the sources not to Apples decision or communication. And really you can’t expect a company like Apple to start employing foreign government spies to infiltrate government institutions in order to provide credibility checking of information provided. If the police are saying they have reports of misuse of the app and violent attacks Apple has to act on that.
  • defterGoose 7y ago
    The venue really doesn't matter considering that the source is effectively unimpeachable. Sure, it might be proper for Apple to err on the side of caution when violence is involved, but in this case, there is definitely violence on both sides, and one side (the state) definitely has the upper hand. Plus, the idea that the app could be used for specific targeting of individual police has pretty clearly been debunked. In the end its really just a question of whether you think Apple should be on the side of egalitarianism or unrestricted profit.
• Despegar 7y ago
  Gruber is taking Ceglowski and HKmap.live's comments at face value, but they aren't disinterested actors. They both have (admirable) agendas in the pro-democracy protests. Of course they're going to characterize the app in the best light possible (it's so you can avoid the protests and avoid inadvertently running into cops). Apple most likely did get legitimate examples of the app being used for that, and that was all the pretext they needed to remove it. The real issue is that the CCP is also likely holding a gun to their head both in the state newspaper but also privately. And obviously Apple isn't going to light themselves on fire which is what people really want to see them do. Then there's the bad faith critics that are using this as an opportunity to say they're hypocrites because they are politically active on various issues (like the encryption fight with the FBI), as if it isn't because they're protected by the rule of law in Western nations and they aren't in China. Ultimately everyone understands this. The real original sin is the fact that the West normalized relations with China in the first place [1]. Corporations like Apple aren't going to liberate China, and they can't even if they wanted to. The US and other countries could decide tomorrow to sanction China and Apple and every other business would be unable to do business with them. They could treat China like North Korea or Iran. That's a political question for governments, not corporations. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Communiqu%C3%A9s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Communiqu%C3%A9s
  • dmix 7y ago
    Why not ban Waze for their police reporting feature?
    • toasterlovin 7y ago
      The answer is probably: Stay Tuned.
    • ummonk 7y ago
      Incidentally, I think that measures by Uber to identify riders who are cops and deny them rides should have gotten Uber the same treatment as any other organized crime syndicate.
      • 7y ago
• birdyrooster 7y ago
  Nvm
  • shuckles 7y ago
    .
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
• protomyth 7y ago
  Apple's supply chain is China-based. If Apple doesn't pull app, then China's leadership probably shuts down that supply chain. China's leadership doesn't give a damn about Apple or Foxcomm or even the NBA. It's probably a real blow to Tim Cook since he is famous for setting up such an amazing supply chain. He put Apple in such a dangerous position. He caved and made up an excuse.
  • nico_h 7y ago
    That’s a double edged lever. If apple can’t make iPhones in china it can’t employ Chinese citizens, and these jobs move out of the country. So does the investment in training. Though it might clear up the market for local brands.
    • protomyth 7y ago
      I'm sure someone will take up the slack.
  • ogre_codes 7y ago
    China isn't going to shutdown Apple's supply chain, that's revenue to Chinese companies. The threat is that they would make it more difficult for Chinese buyers of the iPhone or put regulatory hurdles in front of Apple to make it difficult to sell iPhones in China. China is one of Apple's largest markets.
    • protomyth 7y ago
      I honestly don't think Xi cares. He is playing the long game and would rather China buy a Chinese company's product. I bet Apple is replaceable in his eyes.
  • LgWoodenBadger 7y ago
    If China shuts down Apple’s manufacturing in China then you will see a mass exodus of all US-ordered manufacturing from China. If it can happen to Apple it can happen to anyone.
• privateSFacct 7y ago
  Just say you've been asked by the authorities in the territory to remove the app, and you've complied. Full stop. There are lots of apps missing from the China app store. This whole thing about removing the app to protect users strains credibility.
• capableweb 7y ago
  It's already known that iCloud in China is operated by a state-owned telecom (GCBD) see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21217920 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21217920 so they could use the data to track the protestors. And iPhone usages is comparatively small according to https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/china https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/china (Android 79% and iPhone 20%) Then https://hkmap.live/ https://hkmap.live/ is available as a website. So why the outcry about this? In the end, for-profit companies will do what gives them profit. You should not rely on them for anything that won't give them profits.
  • bgee 7y ago
    > iCloud in China is operated by a state-owned telecom ... so they could use the data to track the protestors. Please stop spreading lies unless you have evidence to back up your claim. From [0]: "Apple has never made user data, whether stored on the iPhone or in iCloud, more technologically accessible to any country's government." Disclaimer: mainlander here. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21209190 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21209190
    • paulryanrogers 7y ago
      Is that true of the company they've contracted to manage iCloud in China?
      • bgee 7y ago
        Sorry the parent post was referring to the latter part: "so they could use the data to track the protestors"; it is a known fact that iCloud in China is managed by a Chinese company starting in 2018/01 [0]. [0] (link in Chinese): https://www.zhihu.com/question/265371940/log https://www.zhihu.com/question/265371940/log
    • dannyw 7y ago
      Apple may have not, GCBD have.
  • 7y ago
• cageface 7y ago
  The silver lining here is that a lot of people are thinking hard for the first time about what it means to give up the right to install whatever software you want on your own hardware. A devil's bargain always seems like a good deal until the bill comes due.
  • scarface74 7y ago
    Right because the average iPhone user cares about what happens in China.
• dmix 7y ago
  Doesn’t Waze show where the police are?
  • megaremote 7y ago
    And drivers kill a lot more people than protestors.
• onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago
  I hope the FCC can somehow massively fine Apple for this. It's completely disgusting and pathetic. I can hope, even though it won't happen.
  • Aloha 7y ago
    How would they?
• OrgNet 7y ago
  Apple lied about being in bed with the NSA, too... I don't know why anyone consider Apple much better then Google when it comes to privacy...
  • alexhektor 7y ago
    can you give a source?
    • OrgNet 7y ago
      first search result that I found: https://www.cheatsheet.com/technology/apple/is-apple-lying-about-its-involvement-in-government-surveillance.html/ https://www.cheatsheet.com/technology/apple/is-apple-lying-a... (didn't read it though, but they lied about being part of PRISM)
      • chillacy 7y ago
        Do you mean, being a victim of prism? When tech companies found out about the NSA wiretapping unencrypted connections between their datacenters they pretty much flipped out and got serious about security against nation-state attacks.
        • OrgNet 7y ago
          I don't. PRISM doesn't work how you described it, as far as I know... It is basically a backdoor to Apple for the NSA (so whatever Apple can see, the NSA can also see).
          • lern_too_spel 7y ago
            PRISM doesn't work the way you've described it. It ingests data from the FBI's Data Intercept Technology Unit, which handles court ordered wiretaps on individual accounts from Internet communications services. You can see this in the slide Snowden leaked. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/prism-collection-documents/images/prism-slide-7.jpg http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/prism-... https://medium.com/@alecmuffett/how-to-talk-about-prism-and-not-get-entirely-blown-off-if-youre-an-activist-e2a79d2cd2ad https://medium.com/@alecmuffett/how-to-talk-about-prism-and-...
• savethefuture 7y ago
  Why haven't they banned other police tracking apps like waze?
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• m3kw9 7y ago
  What was he supposed to say? We were asked to take it down and did just that?
  • bsder 7y ago
    At least that would be honest.
  • beart 7y ago
    Ideally he would say "No"
• ab_testing 7y ago
  It works for me as a share-holder. Apple's iPhone 11 is again popular in China and there are even reports of Apple increasing the 11's production to meet the high demand. Apple should not be doing anything to mess with the Chinese consumers and the Chinese government as China is a very difficult growth market to crack into. I believe that Tim Cook has done a great job of appeasing China and at the same time has worked a very fine line with Trump to keep i Phones out of the Trump's tariffs .
  • tomohawk 7y ago
    Collaborating with a genocidal government to disarm protesters is not doing a great job. Too strong of a statement? Consider this tribunal's findings of genocide on the part of the PRC, harvesting organs from political prisoners and minorities. https://chinatribunal.com/final-judgement-report/ https://chinatribunal.com/final-judgement-report/
  • justforyou 7y ago
    As a shareholder, you are morally bankrupt.
• flukus 7y ago
  The sad thing here is that people think pressuring apple is the way to change this. The mistake was giving apple that much power over your life in the first place and people that do deserve to face the repercussions from that. Apple customers aren't victims of apples policies (and now the CCP), they're collaborators.
• dang 7y ago
  Previous threads: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21217401 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21217401 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21210678 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21210678 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21159872 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21159872
• ALittleLight 7y ago
  Are there people working on an open source web app version of this app? I'd love to see if I could involved at some level.
  • capableweb 7y ago
    It's a website already, try https://hkmap.live https://hkmap.live Which is why I don't understand the outcry coming from what Apple is doing here.
    • CamperBob2 7y ago
      Does the website work from behind the Great Firewall?
      • capableweb 7y ago
        Let's hope so, because probably it was/is being used as the backend for the mobile applications too! Otherwise there is probably mirrors, both the front- and back-end
• charred_toast 7y ago
  Apple has their hands tied because of all the factories churning out their products that would come to a standstill if the Chinese government decided it wanted to. It's sad and unfortunate, but what other business decision would a CEO make if 80-90% of their future revenue stream disappeared overnight? Can someone else help me play devil's advocate? In any case, if we're so innovative as a country why can't we make more stuff here, that's the only solution, not globalism. This scenario is an unintended consequence of globalism. Apple isn't intentionally being bad, they probably don't have a choice, right? They put too many eggs in one basket. You can say too bad, but when the banks were bailed out, I was saying they deserved to go under as well.
• sillydinosaur 7y ago
  They can say whatever they want, but it's plain they just want money and they're willing to sacrifice any scruple they have to get it. Fuck Apple.
• _iyig 7y ago
  I understand Apple’s reliance on Chinese manufacturers, but at the same time, aren’t they sitting on roughly a quarter-trillion dollars in cash [0]? If Apple can’t use such wealth to pivot production away from China, or at least feel confident in this option as a contingency plan, then who can? [0] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/29/apple-now-has-tk-cash-on-hand.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/29/apple-now-has-tk-cash-on-han...
• hktruth 7y ago
  On balance, I think Apple did the right thing. The police in London raided properties and arrested people before the Extinction Rebellion protests had even started. Removing the app as a precaution in case some crazies out there decide to use it to ambush and murder people seems reasonable given the situation. For those who want the app, just use the website. https://hkmap.live/ https://hkmap.live/ However, since the data is crowd-sourced, it wouldn't be hard for an attacker to inject bogus data rendering the entire website and app useless. Which could be extremely dangerous for innocent civilians if people simply make up stuff. Someone could write, "guy in red shirt, blue jeans and white baseball cap having coffee in McDonalds is an undercover officer and beat a protestor last night". Given the mob justice and violence that we've seen, it might be better that everyone simply ignores the site.
• dirtyid 7y ago
  In the last week, HK police vehicles have been singled out, ambushed, officers mobbed and attacked with molotov cocktails. Rioters are shot in self protection. Mainland owned stores are targeted when police are not near. All aided by this app that is facilitating extreme violence on the ground. Of course this doesn't add up to western main stream media news readers who were presented with one-sided peaceful protest narrative that is further perpetuated by savvy HK social media users trying to push the same propaganda. Any news to the contrary have been heavily suppressed on western social media to the point of forming an impregnable filter bubble escalating to the bewildering responses seen here. The cognitive dissonance is strong. The entire controversy is couched in ridiculous language like kotowed or caved or capitulated when the simple reality is US companies have to conform to local laws and realities. I can see how people are confused, they were sold the idea that US companies are there to export morality, and now expect US companies to behave like foreign policy tools wielded for US geopolitical interests, ironically a charge frequently levied at Huawei. If China had an app that allowed US alt-right or antifa to target PoC/whatever antifa equivalent owned stores and attack the police, it would be pulled in a heart beat.
  • cycrutchfield 7y ago
    >If China had an app that allowed US alt-right or antifa to target PoC/whatever antifa equivalent owned stores and attack the police, it would be pulled in a heart beat. If you’re going to end with this sort of false equivalence, it kind of colors the rest of your argument and makes me wonder if you are being disingenuous here. I further note that you make a lot of assertions with no facts to substantiate them, and refer to news reports on Hong Kong as propaganda, so perhaps I don’t need to wonder anymore.
    • dirtyid 7y ago
      It's only false equivalence to those zero familiarly of HKer/Mainlander dynamic. Which is the majority of western readers, hence their extreme susceptibility to biased reporting. >If you’re going to end with this sort of false equivalence, it kind of colors the rest of your argument and makes me wonder if you are being disingenuous here. The closest analogy to HK protestors are alt-right, they match all the hallmarks: disenfranchised, social media savvy, economically anxious youth who see their culture being displaced and their privileged being eroded by immigrant mainlanders. Rich ones come in to buy all the property, poor ones use up all the social services. These are common complaints to the mainland locust narrative - when the mainland sends their people, they're not sending their best. [1] https://www.scmp.com/article/991355/anger-mainland-visitors-escalates-locust-ad https://www.scmp.com/article/991355/anger-mainland-visitors-... A row between Hongkongers and mainlanders is reaching boiling point after internet users raised more than HK$100,000 in less than a week to finance a full-page 'anti-locust' advertisement in a Chinese-language newspaper in the city. ... Mainlanders have already crossed our bottom line,' said Yung Jhon, who refused to disclose his real name. 'Why are mainland mothers flooding in to take up resources in public hospitals, getting our benefits and social welfare? Why do mainlanders ... refuse to follow our rules and order? We can't accept that. Sounds familiar? 30 years ago, common HKer could get a low-skill industry or service job and make a comfortable living based off mainland exploitation. Then China's manufacturing growth made HK Detroit. After handover, 1 million mainland immigrants entered HK on one-way permits under family reunification plan in the last 10 years. That's 15% of the city. This culture clash is the same script causing right wing nationalism everywhere in western liberal countries. But because it's HK, and the sufferage angle plays well to western MSM, people close their eyes, pretend HK is some woke utopia, and that all those Pepes memes are innocent, because English proficient HKers who use western internet are somehow just like us in the west but also that naive. >I further note that you make a lot of assertions with no facts to substantiate them, and refer to news reports on Hong Kong as propaganda, so perhaps I don’t need to wonder anymore. Propaganda via omission. How long did it take for western news media to finally acknowledge the frequent violence happening on the ground? The racially motivated on mainland citizens and mainland connected businesses. The doxxing of police families. Why don't you do some research yourself. The fact that people here, beneficiaries of a free 5th estate somehow reliably have their opinions shaped to reflect US foreign policy positions is... interesting. It's Manufacturing Consent, Iraq WMDs all over again.
• panda88888 7y ago
  I am not surprised by this. I always thought Tim Cook talks a good talk, but fails to walk the walk when the stakes at hand is real. He’s fine with standing up to the CIA/FBI because he knows it’s good PR for business and the US government cannot do anything without a lengthy court fight that is mostly fair. Same with other US domestic issues such as DACA, sane sex marriage, etc. But when it comes to the PRC government, he caves immediately because the threat is real. He knows he CAN and probably WILL lose access the Chinese market and manufacturing capacity, and there’s no court system to appeal—-the system is rigged and controlled by the CCP. Therefore, principles bow down before revenue. Personally I don’t care what Tim Cook and Apple does to get and keep access to Chinese market, but I am disgusted by hypocrite with the high rhetoric about privacy, human rights, etc., but compromising immediately when $$$ is at stake.
  • dannyw 7y ago
    If you compromise, at least be frank about it.
    • baq 7y ago
      here's the thing: he can't. that would offend the CCP.
  • lern_too_spel 7y ago
    When did he stand up to the CIA? As far as standing up to the FBI, the impetus behind that was to cover up another lie. Apple had told customers "it's not technically feasible" for Apple to respond to data requests and got a mountain of free press for it. The FBI showed a method by which Apple could obtain the encrypted data on those devices. Soon after, that claim disappeared from Apple's "Privacy" marketing page. https://gizmodo.com/apple-wont-turn-over-your-phones-data-to-police-if-your-1636197341 https://gizmodo.com/apple-wont-turn-over-your-phones-data-to... Complying with the data request would have given users who had their data obtained standing to sue Apple, so Apple's willingness to litigate the issue went so far as the cost of the lawsuits it wanted to avoid. The FBI dropped the case not because it didn't think it could win but because it could access the data more quickly using another vendor's data extraction service.
• equalunique 7y ago
  Three take-aways for me: 1) Android users win this round. 2) Would be great to have some kind of whiz-bang P2P decentralized federated mesh-networked version of Hkmap.live. 3) My opinion on Apple has not improved.
  • SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
    > Android users win this round. There are no winners in this game, only losers. Google make similar concessions for the Chinese government. I say that as an Android user.
    • equalunique 7y ago
      I hope something like F-Droid catches on over there.
  • scarface74 7y ago
    Well seeing the app does nothing that the website can’t do, developing for the web instead of an app when it’s appropriate seems to win.
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
• umvi 7y ago
  If I were Tim Cook, I'd have said: "Sure, we'll comply with your demands" and then I would have immediately mobilized a covert engineering task force to push out an urgent bug fix that rigs every Apple device in the entirety of China to turn into a Winnie the Pooh brick on Xi's birthday
  • unfunco 7y ago
    And that's why you'll never be CEO of Apple.
    • SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
      Or anything, for that matter.
• throwaway99zsh 7y ago
  I am an Apple employee. I didn’t get this email. Something doesn’t compute here.
  • rubbingalcohol 7y ago
    Did you forget to accept the new iCloud ToS?
• exabrial 7y ago
  Tim Cook is the Steve Ballmer of Apple. Part XVIIXDXC
• Trias11 7y ago
  Apple is under pressure from China to remove App. Billions of dollars at stake for Apple. That's why Apple does that. If you'd be offered $1B to agree to remove the app, would you do that? You know the answer.
  • Invictus0 7y ago
    $1B for me is a life changing amount of money. $1B for Apple is less than .4% of their revenue. I imagine you're a software engineer earning 100k per year. Would you take away a tool a group of people are using to try and fight for their freedom for $400?
    • Trias11 7y ago
      So, it is much easier to judge others (Apple and whoever) and avoid acknowledging that for sufficient amount of money most of the righteous commenters here would be willing to sheepishly sacrifice their beliefs.
  • Terretta 7y ago
    WhatsApp founder walked away early from nearly a billion dollar final payout, over privacy dispute with Facebook, then funded Signal $50M instead.
• revscat 7y ago
  Fuck your fiduciary duty. I cannot think of two words that have done more damage to humanity than those two.
• bluthru 7y ago
  This seems like a perfect opportunity for Apple to allow apps to be installed outside of the App Store (like macOS). I was absolutely shocked that Apple rejected the Gab app. Their rules are arbitrary and constricting.
  • Terretta 7y ago
    The single page app at https://hkmap.live/ https://hkmap.live/ opens on iOS with a note telling you how to add it to your Home Screen. That gives you a custom app icon, which opens as a live full screen map app w/o browser chrome. This open mechanism to “sideload” what a regular user can’t tell the difference from an App Store app was the original iPhone app distribution strategy for both live and offline HTML5 apps, provided to developers before the App Store existed. It remains relatively trivial to distribute apps this way. Start here: https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/AppleApplications/Reference/SafariWebContent/ConfiguringWebApplications/ConfiguringWebApplications.html https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Ap...
• dwoozle 7y ago
  Jeez... when Apple loses Gruber you know they’ve fucked up. But what can they do? Generations of greedy American CEOs handed over the reins to China and turned them into a superpower. And now we’re all fucked.
• crankylinuxuser 7y ago
  Simply put then.... As an American citizen, you should run a Chinese iPhone so YOUR messages go to a hostile foreign government. As a Chinese citizen, you should run an American iPhone so YOUR messages go to a hostile foreign government. :)
• ihdadi1 7y ago
  منصة شليلة 2019 MPWX+94 الربوة، الرياض السعودية shliilh65@gmail.com
• ihdadi1 7y ago
  vip@ihdadi.com MPWX+94 الربوة، الرياض السعودية
• anonimouse1234a 7y ago
  Throwaway account for obvious reasons, but this email I did not receive this email and I am an Apple employee in Cupertino. Some of the language used doesn’t sound correct, it sounds very specific mentioning reports - normally these emails are general. Again I never received this email, so if it was sent it was not company wide
• anonimouse1234a 7y ago
  Thor’s way account for obvious reasons. I am an Apple employee (Cupertino) and I did not receive this email. It also reads different than other Tim emails, which never mention specific things such as credible reports and the language seems off. I also did not here any colleagues mention such an email, and usually it pops up for everyone at the same time and it becomes a topic. This email pastebin is a fake
  • messick 7y ago
    I too was thrown off by all the “company-wide email reporting”. Check AppleWeb.
  • idlewords 7y ago
    I was told by multiple Apple employees that it is genuine. Check your spam folder.
    • idlewords 7y ago
      Gruber confirms it's real. https://daringfireball.net/linked/2019/10/10/cook-hkmap-live-email https://daringfireball.net/linked/2019/10/10/cook-hkmap-live...
• mstaoru 7y ago
  WRT to "is iCloud backdoored" in China, I made a recent submission that didn't make it to the first page, but it's still relevant: https://www.chinalawblog.com/2019/10/chinas-new-cybersecurity-system-there-is-no-place-to-hide.html https://www.chinalawblog.com/2019/10/chinas-new-cybersecurit... > The inspection team has complete access to the network system. Inspection can cover both the technical aspects of the network system and the data/information maintained on the servers. See Article 10. The inspectors can fully access the system and they are permitted to copy any data they find. See Article 15. The only restriction on the inspectors copying the data in your company’s system is that the inspectors must provide you with a receipt. Though Article 10 “restricts” access to matters involving national security, the definition of national security in China is so broad that there is no real limitation on what can be accessed, copied and removed.
• xtat 7y ago
  tim cook: blood on your hands
• rasengan0 7y ago
  Designed by Apple in California; Made in China. Chinese Communist Party (CCP) rules China. Apple is moving to more Services. Changing the pie chart takes time. They have numbers to make this assessment for their shareholder stakeholders. How many iDevices does the company sell? The calculation is simple. CCP rules ... Apple If HK blood is shed, Cook's pet Product(RED) may take on a different connotation.
• wonnage 7y ago
  China isn't like the US, where Apple can use their trillions and lawyer up. China will just shut you down and take your shit. Guess where hkmap.live and the Chinese App Store employees responsible for approving it end up when that happens. Similarly if the "moral" thing for these companies to do is to divest from China, then HK will only be served by Chinese companies, and good luck trying to provide a police tracking app there too. This is totally different from the Rockets situation, where it really is just a matter of principle over money. If Morey and the NBA stick to their guns, the NBA can just leave China, and other than some hazy concepts of goodwill and cultural exchange, nothing is lost except money. I'd rather have Apple and others in China than without. A Chinese company capitulates immediately to the government, a multinational at least can put up some semblance of resistance, with international relations as a bargaining chip.
  • Thorrez 7y ago
    >Similarly if the "moral" thing for these companies to do is to divest from China, then HK will only be served by Chinese companies Would it be possible to divest from all of China except Hong Kong?
    • wonnage 7y ago
      No, because unlike Taiwan, Hong Kong is internationally recognized (as well as by its own government) as a part of China. The Qing government declared a war on drugs in the 1800s, and started seizing and destroying British opium shipments. The British retaliated by occupying HK and forced the Qing to cede it, resulting in a 99 year lease. So while the other concessions were returned to China after the modern era began, Hong Kong remained British until 1997. Come 1997, the Brits tried to tie various conditions on the return, mostly around them maintaining control over the government despite the territory now being owned by China. These were made under the guise of protecting freedom, but arguments can be made that they were just trying to hold on to some power. Given relative weakness of China at the time, they eventually agreed to this One Country, Two Systems compromise you might've heard of. All this is to say, it's complicated; China has actually adhered to most aspects of it to date - there's no Great Firewall, HKers have their own passports, various freedoms of speech and assembly you'd be familiar with in the West. But it has no sovereignty of its own, and is very vulnerable to China encroaching on its citizens.
• golemiprague 7y ago
  I don't know what people expect from those silicon valley companies. They are all hypocrites especially apple but the worst thing is their classicism. They try to make people think that the main problem is diversity of race and gender but the way they discriminate is against classes and political views. The whole apple messages system is an exercise in creating a walled garden where only apple users can participate. Kids who can't afford their devices are getting shunned from conversations, especially at young age when they are not savvy enough yet to install more global messaging systems that works across all platforms. Apple hates poor people, they hate lower classes who voted for Trump and they hate the people of HK, they are tyrants and always have been, it is only now that people start to realise it because suddenly it hits something that they care about.
• jjellyy 7y ago
  Ban "Waze" it shows us where police are !
• mindfulhack 7y ago
  I hope I'm not promoting conspiracy theory so much as probability theory. I don't think we can trust Apple not to have NSA backdoors anymore. We all know about Microsoft's reputation, but Apple may be the slimiest of them all. Everything is closed source and encrypted on the network level, so instead, we have to judge from Apple's corporate and PR behaviour. Apple care about their branding and profits above all, and not one iota about their customers, truth, or transparency. Thus, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple had surveillance backdoors in secret, making a complete mockery of the whole 'privacy play' they maintain as a branding differentiator against Google.
• pfortuny 7y ago
  I said it on another thread: that is most likely a copy paste from a mail sent by the CCP. I am sure the iPhones have been used many more times AS PHONES to convey the location of officers and demonstrators. But that is harmless?
• greggman2 7y ago
  Like lots of people have pointed out the email makes no sense. Any app can be used to do the things the Hkmap.Live app was banned for. So, in order to force Apple's hand it seems like people should start trying to use Apple's own apps to coordinate HK related protests and information to the point that China asks Apple to ban it's own apps. That seems like the only thing that would get Apple to have to deal with this apparent contradiction. I'm not familar enough to know what that would be. Can you make custom maps on Apple maps like you can on Google Maps? Maybe someone could gather info and make custom maps once an hour that shows locations. Or they could post a feed of HKmap.Live screenshots to some giant iMessages list. Etc... Some ideas of what might happen if they can get China to make the request to ban Apple's own apps. 1) Apple bans their on apps in response to requests from China the apps are being used for bad things 2) Apple ignores China and risks China banning Apple from China 3) Apple hastly separates the app store from the phone so they can claim they don't control the apps (probably can't happen fast enough to be an actual response) 4) other? Of course if China never asks for Apple to ban it's own apps then nothing would come of this but the idea is basically to force a stronger response so that one way or another something happens.
• crusty511 7y ago
  > that the app was being used maliciously to target individual officers for violence and to victimize individuals and property where no police are present The email has to be fake. Lots of apps can be used in malicious ways.
• smcl 7y ago
  "For a company that usually measures umpteen times before cutting anything, it’s both sad and startling." Apple measured their risk of people getting upset over a BS excuse to ban an app and compared it to the risk of pissing of the Chinese government, and made the appropriate cut. It seems to me that Apple have been incredibly careful and precise here. What's happened though is that the author of the post made the all-too-common mistake of thinking that Apple is a friendly, caring company who are "different" when it comes to things like this - they're not, they're just a regular company. It's sad, but entirely unsurprising.
  • Traubenfuchs 7y ago
    Will a lot of westerners boycott us if bend over for China? Probably not. Do we care enough about Hong Kong customers? Not really - they are <8 million people! Do we care about China? Yes, a lot. Both about the government and the 1.4 billion potential customers there!
    • smcl 7y ago
      Yep that's the sad arithmetic behind capitalism - Apple are no different from any other corporation in this respect. But the problem is that people often see them as friendly and caring, when they maybe should step back and realise that such corporations are not their friends, don't care about them and would sell them out in an instant if it benefit them.
• dwoozle 7y ago
  And I’m sure that China could just block or otherwise disable this app or just go kill the protesters if they wanted. But that’s not what they wanted. They wanted Tim Cook to drink a cup of Xi’s diarrhea in public and Cook happily did it.
• tibbydudeza 7y ago
  "You are holding the phone wrong" ... typical Apple BS which people don't call them out on because they well Apple.
  • the_other 7y ago
    Lots of people call Apple out on all sorts of issues, several times a week. Figuratively "no one" believed "You're holding it wrong".
• kkarakk 7y ago
  This is what happens when you're the sole arbiter of your platform. Give us the ability to control our own hardware and maybe this kinda PR scandal wouldn't happen.
• trwhite 7y ago
  What's to stop someone building similar functionality for the web? Seems like a no-brainer to me.
• _pmf_ 7y ago
  The mindset of people expecting Apple to do certain symbolic acts, but finding it perfectly fine to continue pushing billions into China is somewhat baffling.
• Aissen 7y ago
  No question of how the walled garden brought that. But the walls are too profitable to tear down now. It was never about user protection.
• killjoywashere 7y ago
  This is like the anti-encryption folks in government arguing no one can have secure communications because kiddie-porn. Baby, bathwater. rinse.