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> The government might be able to force/convince Apple and Google to take it out their app stores in the UK Apple has even threatened to withdraw their own sys
by ajdude 3y ago
> The government might be able to force/convince Apple and Google to take it out their app stores in the UK
Apple has even threatened to withdraw their own systems from the UK rather than comply with this.
https://9to5mac.com/2023/07/20/apple-imessage-facetime-remove-security-law/ https://9to5mac.com/2023/07/20/apple-imessage-facetime-remov...
- sneak 3y agoUnlike in China, where they do presently escrow keys to the government for mass surveillance.
- webinvest 3y agoThat’s because Apple still makes their hardware in China & America. But not in the UK.
- supernikio2 3y agoYes, because China has double the population as the whole of Europe. Ceasing operations in the UK wouldn't hurt their revenue as much as doing so in China.
- Alupis 3y agoSo Apple's only principled if they'll make slightly less ludacris amounts of money? It's really hard to be a credible "privacy/security" choice when your morals are plainly for sale...
- function_seven 3y agoNobody is talking about morals here. Its bad for business for Apple to capitulate to the UK. It's bad for business for them to not capitulate to China. And iPhones ceasing to be sold in the UK would probably be all it takes for public backlash to neuter the law. I imagine that's not on the table in China.
- Alupis 3y ago> Its bad for business for Apple to capitulate to the UK. It's bad for business for them to not capitulate to China. It's very difficult to square these two sentences together. On one hand, if they break their privacy and security for the UK government, it's bad for business because they'll continue to sell iDevices and services? On the other hand, if they break their privacy and security for the CCP, it's good for business because they'll continue to sell iDevices and services? You're tacitly admitting my assertion - Apple's morals are for sale. If the US threatened Apple, we can expect they'll sell out there too, no?
- function_seven 3y ago> You're tacitly admitting my assertion - Apple's morals are for sale. Yes. China is much further from the Western world than the UK. Capitulation there isn’t a step onto the slippery slope. Doing the same thing in the UK would lead very quickly to EU and US demands to do the same. By exiting such a small market, Apple defends the much larger markets against creeping surveillance. Remember how fierce the backlash was to their CSAM scanning proposal? They walked that back. Some people might think it was for moral reasons, but I’m pretty sure they realized it would harm their bottom line. The way things work in China is not the same as the UK. They either play by CCP rules or they don’t play at all. Apple’s calculus here seems to be that not playing in the UK market is worth it, whereas missing out on the Chinese market is not worth it.
- Alupis 3y agoNobody needs to operate in China. That's the thing that's being overlooked. Apple made a choice to operate there - and would have still been the world's most valued company regardless. So, Apple's choice was to sell-out their privacy and security credentials to make more money - counting on their other large markets (ie. the US) not paying close enough attention to see the blatant hypocrisy. "Security and privacy are great - unless we can make more money selling off your security and privacy to oppressive government regimes!" Somehow that just doesn't have a catchy marketing ring to it... So now there's precedent that Apple will violate everything they stand for if a large enough market demands it. What happens when the US government decides to place Apple in the crosshairs for not "helping catch terrorists" or something? Will Apple sell out too? Why not?
- wand3r 3y agoThey have huge illiquid manufacturing in China. The government has a lot of leverage over them. Its impossible for them to gamble on this. It's not even comparable to the UK situation at all.
- Alupis 3y agoNobody forced Apple to manufacture anything in China - let alone sell devices there and be held to Chinese laws regarding privacy and security. Make no mistake - Apple traded their moral high-ground for a few bucks.
- JHorse 3y agoEven if they pulled all manufacturing from China, they could still potentially be kneecapped if China blacklisted them from purchasing things like gallium. https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/27/prices_of_gallium_and_germanium_rise/ https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/27/prices_of_gallium_and...
- Alupis 3y agoChina wouldn't care if Apple bought gallium if Apple wasn't selling/manufacturing devices there in the first place. Apple made a choice folks... and it was to sell out to an oppressive regime. There is no other way to see this.
- kergonath 3y agoA company has no morals… Its policies depend on the people within it, who do have all sorts of moral principles that are always more or less at odds with each other. Trying to go beyond that is a fool’s errand: a company is not a person. Everything makes sense once you’ve understood that. When it happens, a company acting purely on someone’s moral code (usually a dictator CEO, though) sounds fine and reassuring. But on the contrary, this is unstable as you never know when that person will be sidelined, forced out, or realign their principles. At this point the company you trust can very well become an enemy. Just look at Twitter or Reddit. On the long term, you need the company’s financial interests to be aligned with your (various) interests. This is the only thing that remains stable. Well, as long as nobody comes and make it private; then anything goes. It sucks, but that’s capitalism for you. For the moment, Apple is mostly safe because basic privacy is their brand, and dropping it would be costly. This gives them leverage against some governments, but not so much against others. You can also count yourself lucky not to be born in China, but then there’s nothing Apple can do about that.
- dividedbyzero 3y agoIt's also important to draw red lines right away before unwelcome precedents are set. We'll do this for China and maybe for India if that market grows big enough, and we would absolutely do this in the US if compelled to, but we will not do this for anyone else. Except maybe for the EU.
- chongli 3y agoNo, the population of China is not the issue. The problem for Apple is that so many of their products are still made in China that if they anger the Chinese government they risk having their factories closed, leaving them with no products to sell. To say this would be disastrous for sales would be an understatement.
- llm_nerd 3y agoThe last thing China is going to do is close manufacturing plants. Apple makes 10x more selling in the Chinese market than they do in the United Kingdom, even with all of the roadblocks and handicaps China erects. Further Apple realizes that as the UK is a Western, democratic nation it is easy to essentially bargain about policies. Apple's current threats are essentially negotiating. There would be no negotiating with China about stuff like this.
- junofan 3y agoBeijing can’t even shut down the factories north of the city that dump particulates into the lungs of the leadership and their families. No way they can shut down some of the big iPhone factories.
- throwaway290 3y agoAre you joking? Even a random middle class flat in Beijing would have at least one OK air filter appliance. Party elites likely have pretty good industrial grade ones everywhere. First thing is shield themselves from the fruits of their policies...
- matthewdgreen 3y agoI’m pretty concerned about what Apple is doing in China, but there’s no evidence at all that Apple is escrowing end-to-end encryption keys to the government. There’s also no evidence that the Chinese government is using Apple’s non-E2E keys (held in Apple hardware in a cage at a Chinese hosting provider) for mass surveillance. I’m not saying that it’s impossible: I’m saying if you could come up with that evidence, either through reverse-engineering or a verifiable leak from Apple, it would be the biggest story in tech. You would be famous and (if you knew the right hedge fund) probably very rich.
- capableweb 3y agoThat Apple operates iCloud in every single country except China, where GCBD (AIPO Cloud (Guizhou) Technology Co. Ltd) operates iCloud, think I makes pretty clear what's going on.
- graeme 3y agoThat’s separate from iMessage, which is end to end. Apple used to be able to access iMessages through iCloud backups. They changed their system worldwide, now they can’t. So presumably GCBD also lost access to iMessages in iCloud backups.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- sneak 3y agoApple can still read ~100% of all iMessages in real-time because iCloud Backup (non e2ee by default) serves as a key escrow backdoor in the e2ee of iMessage. It is thus legitimate to state that iMessage is not e2ee as in practice each iMessage is also encrypted to a key held by Apple (in addition to the endpoints). Even if you turn it (e2ee iCloud Backup) on, it's ineffective, as both parties to a conversation must have turned it on for the conversation to be private. Your beliefs are inaccurate.
- deleted 3y ago
- s3p 3y agoWould like a citation for this. Also, Apple recently deployed e2e encryption for all of iCloud, and this is live even in China.
- ThePowerOfFuet 3y agoTrue, but the Chinese are in control of the iCloud system used for Chinese residents, which was carved off to comply with Chinese law.
- netheril96 3y agoYou can frame it the different way: Apple has given up improving the freedom of the Chinese people because that is infeasible. But it hasn’t given up hope on the West.