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Comment by cromwellian | Hacker News Reader

I'm curious why HN users don't seem to have a problem with Apple censoring the App Store on demand, blocking VPNs and other crypto tools which have real life consequences for some in China. Seems like they get a pass for operating in China (and earning huge yearly revenues from it, which would obviously be threatened if they didn't comply) Is this just a grandfathering in? If Google had never left China and merely obeyed censorship requests in 2010, would people be less upset because they've been acclimatized to it?

I don't support Dragonfly, and I do fear the allure of the Chinese market is influencing people to put aside ethical quandaries for revenue growth, but it seems to me that standards are different for different companies.

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> I'm curious why HN users don't seem to have a problem [...]

I do and always have. I also have a problem with their silence concerning relinquishing control of iCloud DCs there too. I avoid Apple products due to their anti-developer, opaque, and money-above-all approaches.

> it seems to me that standards are different for different companies.

Exactly. And countries. So I try not to draw any reaction equivalence except in personal preference. People's outrage is more a product of who they like most at any given time, often driven by narratives in the press/community. All you can do is be consistent with yourself and don't get too whataboutist when these double standards rear their heads.

The censorship aspect is a red herring. Google is giving the government the infrastructure to identify candidates for "re-education" via their Google searches. Is Apple funneling dissidents to the government via their app store?

The answer is, we don't know, Apple is a much more secretive company with far fewer leaks. But Apple does tens of billions in revenue a year in China, and it's entire edifice is built on Chinese manufacturing, and so there is the potential for tremendous leverage by Chinese authorities. If China asked Apple to provide a list of accounts which downloaded VPNs in Xinjiang, are you 100% confident they wouldn't if threatened with sanctions? Perhaps it's even via a plausibly deniable mechanism, like buying keyword targeting on the Chinese app store, and phishing people to fraudulent apps in a 'sting', while you look at other way.

There's enough money involved that anyone should seriously question how strong an executive's ethics can be if they've got a $1 trillion market cap to defend. I'm not saying any company is superior to the other, I'm saying the allure of tens of billions of dollars is a powerful motivator for weakening of ethics, and I wouldn't even trust Edward Snowden's ethics if tens of billions was on the line.

I get that you are trying to sow doubt, but consider:

>The memo, authored by a Google engineer who was asked to work on the project, disclosed that the search system, codenamed Dragonfly, would require users to log in to perform searches, track their location — and share the resulting history with a Chinese partner who would have “unilateral access” to the data.

https://theintercept.com/2018/09/21/google-suppresses-memo-r...

When you discover a memo like that for Apple, feel free to share it with us.

We haven't discovered memos like this from Microsoft either, but we know Microsoft works with governments. AT&T installed backdoors for governments, and no memo was leaked.

Google is a much more leaky organization, with vocal employees, and not very good at internal compartmentalization, and that's why you know about these things. We used to consider a bug if an employee can't 'see everything' everyone else is working on.

Is lack of whistle blowers elsewhere a sign that there's no whistles to blow, or a sign that oppressive security and compartmentalized security at other firms makes it hard for the public to find out?

My point is, transparency is good, and that more secrecy doesn't buy you trust. That's why people value open source and used to pretty much rail against closed source HW on HN. Now we seem to be an in era where closed source and locked down DRM app stores that block side loading are accepted.

Apple's ethical lapses have all been on the supply-side.

Rare-earth mining, contributing to serious environmental problems in China:

https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/30/business/global/30rare.ht...

https://www.cnet.com/news/digging-for-rare-earths-the-mines-...

(Apple stopped mining rare-earth minerals in China in 2017, 7 years after the NYTimes story broke.)

Child labor, with teenagers working 11-hour days to assemble your iPhone X:

https://nypost.com/2017/11/21/apple-has-been-using-teen-labo...

Child-labor in the mining of rare-earths:

http://fortune.com/2017/03/03/apple-cobalt-child-labor/

These are not Apple’s ethical lapses - they are the failure of an entire industry. An industry, it’s worth noting, that Apple has been extremely transparent about, and has worked to fix. Also worth noting that Apple’s suppliers have improved dramatically in recent years - something that can’t be said about most other manufacturers.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-apple-icloud-insigh...

Imagine the outrage if Google stored user data in a datacenter run by a company controlled by the Chinese government.

Apple pulled an amazing PR coup in convincing us that they somehow respect privacy more than Google.

Not to mention the iCloud celebrity photo leak caused by not using 2FA to protect user data; only to prevent fraudulent credit card transactions. Maybe this is more a question of not being as skilled at cloud services than something deliberate, but it makes no difference to users whose data leaks.

What we know is Apple gave the iCloud data to the China government and removed the VPN software. Versus China government tried to hack Gmail accounts and Google left China and walked from making billions.

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/02/5-things-you-... When Profits Threaten Privacy – 5 Things You Need to Know about ...

https://www.ft.com/content/ad42e536-cf36-11e7-b781-794ce08b2... Apple drops hundreds of VPN apps at Beijing's request

https://www.androidauthority.com/using-google-fi-in-china-85... Using Project Fi in China: Say goodbye to VPNs - Android Authority

Apple detects whether a Chinese user uses the Taiwanese flag emoji[1] in order to corrupt its display. Nothing is stopping them from pinging back home when a Chinese citizen says or reads the wrong words.

[1] https://9to5mac.com/2018/07/11/apple-china-taiwan-flag/

But they have not hired a team of 300 engineers to notify the government of the use of the emoji. Apple still uses the Secure Enclave in the iPhone in China. Apple still end-to-end encrypts most data sent to iCloud with the Enclave.

Google and Apple's products here are so disparate in how they infringe on user privacy that the comparison isn't even warranted.

iCloud data for Chinese users is stored in China on servers owned by a Chinese company. Chinese law requires this and apple complies.

Again, this is irrelevant if the data contained is E2E encrypted by the Secure Enclave.

data in iCloud servers is NOT encrypted. Apple has provided it to law enforcement on request. They are quite open about it.

>"I'm curious why HN users don't seem to have a problem with Apple censoring the App Store on demand, blocking VPNs and other crypto tools which have real life consequences for some in China."

Pulling an App from the App store is nowhere near the same as building a tool to satisfy the CCP. I get it you're a Google employee and want to defend them but this is nothing more than a red herring and an equivalency fallacy. It sound like you've really drank the Mountain View Kool-aid.

If I were to rationalize this, it would be that the App Store is a platform that Apple hosts and curates. Google indexes content that Google does not host or curate outside of responding algorithmically to specific input.

I do think if Google hadn't left, it would probably have been more normalized by now.

I think I'd be a lot more critical of Apple if, for example, the Chinese government got a special ability to unlock iDevices, if they already have this, I'm not well informed, so feel free to let me know.

Its pretty widely believed that the Chinese government can and has accessed Chinese Citizens' iCloud accounts before [1]. (I work at Google).

[1]: https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/18/17587304/apple-icloud-chi...

Why Amnesty International is upset with Apple and the human rights abused with giving the data to the government.

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/02/5-things-you-... When Profits Threaten Privacy – 5 Things You Need to Know about ...

But also removing the VPN software.

https://www.ft.com/content/ad42e536-cf36-11e7-b781-794ce08b2... Apple drops hundreds of VPN apps at Beijing's request

Quite a bit of data in iCloud is E2E encrypted with device-based Secure Enclave. This doesn't seem like much of an issue.

Outside of China yes. If China is asking people to install Jingwangweishi (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jingwang_Weishi) under threat of fine or jail on Android devices, why do you think they would allow a simple, legal workaround to be "Just buy an iPhone!"

That is, China sets up elaborate domestic surveillance, deep packet inspection everywhere, asks citizens to install apps which backdoors their phones to scanning and logging, and all you need to do to thwart it is buy an Apple device? Does that sound like something they would willingly permit?

That would be like the US congress passing a law requiring Key Escrow, and every device manufacturer on the market complying, but if you just buy a Xiaomi phone, you can bypass it.

How likely do you think there's no special alteration to how iCloud encryption works in China?

Apple has been openly evil for most of its existence.

When they keep on being evil (within the boundaries of the law), no one flinches, it's business as usual, and the Apple fanboys keep on submitting to being mistreated by their favorite toy-maker so they can keep on secretly caressing their shiny new Iphones in their bed at night.

But back in the days, Google set the moral bar for themselves very, very high.

Now that they are openly failing to meet their own standard, the world is sorely disappointed.

From my perspective, I don't recall Apple's motto ever being "Don't be evil". I expect Apple to make the call that will generate the most revenue for them as my baseline assumption.

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