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?

It’s not just censorship—it’s active cooperation with an authoritarian power under the fig leaf of TOS violations. Truly astonishing.

> 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.

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.

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?

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.

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

There are lots of apps missing from the China app store.

This whole thing about removing the app to protect users strains credibility.

And iPhone usages is comparatively small according to https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/china (Android 79% and iPhone 20%)

Then 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.

A devil's bargain always seems like a good deal until the bill comes due.

[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/29/apple-now-has-tk-cash-on-han...

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

That would make it obvious that Apple is complying with law, and that they haven't "bowed to pressure" from either side.

If there is a claim that the app is violating law, then that should be validated by a judicial process, not by the operating nuances of a company.

If Apple are receiving reports from users that the law is being broken, they should be passing those on to law enforcement, and publicly complying with the response, not acting as their own arbitrator.

Yes, it's a reasonable demand. If public opinion is asking something of Apple, and its CEO chooses to answer, every aspect of the answer is open to scrutiny. Gruber indeed lists the specific evidence he would expect:

> - When was HKmap.live “used maliciously to target individual officers for violence”?

> - When was it used to “victimize individuals and property where no police are present”?

> - What local laws in Hong Kong does it violate?

It's unlikely that a CEO would be so thorough. Apple is particularly obsessed with secrecy, and tech companies in general seem to not want to disclose details when they restrict access to a product or platform.

But it's still a reasonable demand from an individual standpoint.

And beyond the actions of the Chinese government, corporations like Apple have no integrity upon which to base trust for them anymore. They need to cough up real proof instead some canned response that basically tells us to trust them on blind faith alone.

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.

But those alleged crimes could not have possibly helped by the app, as has been pointed out: you don't get to see individual officers' locations and it does not show areas with no police at all either, just police hotspots (and technically, most areas even in a dense city like Hong Kong are without immediate police presence most of the time, anyway).

But even if we played devil's advocate and took the allegations of criminal activity that abused the app at face value, and assumed Tim Cook is not free to share specifics as the information might be confidential, he could at least answer what local laws were allegedly violated by the app itself. Those laws certainly are not confidential information.

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

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

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_t...).

You’re absolutely right and for the vast majority of companies put in this position I wouldn’t be happy about their decision but I definitely wouldn’t hold it against them. That said, if ever there were a company in the history of the world whose users are rabidly loyal enough, whose economic contributions in China are substantial enough, and with the “Fuck You Money” necessary to do what’s right when it comes to China, it’s Apple.

And when you consider that Apple launched themselves into America’s living rooms with the “1984” commercial, I might even go so far as to say that Apple could have leaned in to whatever negative consequences they may have suffered as a result.

Let's not give them a pass here, as it's quite obvious why they're accepting the Chinese statements at face value, because of how dependent they are on the Chinese market.

This is about money, not principles.

> HK map app can't be used to "individually" target police because it doesn't have any granular reporting and as anyone in Hong Kong can attest, the police travel in large groups. Repeat: the app has no granular function. More like police here, tear gas there, road block here. (https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1182384310873219077)

Also, if it does indeed violate a law, why can no-one tell us which law? Even the HK police deferred to Apple when asked about this.

If it can happen to Apple it can happen to anyone.

If they have examples, they should share them. It would have been easy for Tim to put the dates and locations of incidents in his email. There are plenty to go around on the protestor side: look up what happened at the Prince Edward MTR station on 8/31, for example.

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.

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.

Would it be possible to divest from all of China except Hong Kong?

At the end of the day, Apple taking down the app seems like an expected outcome, and HK is outside of the great firewall, so anyone can still access the site. What's the problem?

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...