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Comment by ubersync | Hacker News Reader

I am sure the chinese government can twist Apple's arm to sign their malware. So it is not any better.

It's not any better (stated as fact) because you hold an unsubstantiated opinion which so far is contradicted by actual reality.

Today Android phones have this malware on them and iOS phones do not, so the actual facts in the real world are that iOS is free of this intrusion.

That might change, but the situation now is what it is. This is why you are getting downvoted.

No offense, but the idea that "iOS is free of this intrusion" is your unsubstantiated opinion just as much. You don't know that for sure, do you?

So far only Android phones are reported as having the software installed on them by border guards. There are no reports of this being done to iPhones. Those are the facts.

The company building the software also provides equivalents for other operating systems: https://mobile.twitter.com/0xdude/status/1146113174212661249...

We just don't have a sample to reverse-engineer yet.

Well, they're facts about news reports. Always good to remember that what we know about what's going on in some other part of the world is what people tell us.

I understand that and I think the people downvoting do too. It doesn’t justify knowingly and explicitly stating something as a fact based only on speculation.

What exactly was stated explicitly as a fact?

The reports that I have seen have stated that iPhones are searched by connecting a cable to them.

Cables are probably connected to make sure the screen doesn't lock to save battery.

Those are the reports, not the facts.

I think if news of that got out, the US government would not be happy with one of their companies being complicit in signing Chinese malware. China gets away with a lot of stuff because companies can write it off to spies or other infiltration. Outright approval of it wouldn't go so well, especially after the Huawai affair.

The US government failed to twist their arms. Very unlikely that China has a lot of power over them. Given how many people they employ in China, they might have actually power over China.

Conversely, they depend heavily on Chinese manufacturing -- for something like 70% of their production and also rely on Chinese markets for a significant portion of their profits. When Xi comes to Tim Cook with the options: "lose 70% of your manufacturing and 50% of your sales or let us install this app" it's not really an easy choice.

Oh there is, but its not one the proletariat on social media want to accept.

OK, I'll bite: How sure are you?

Lol, fanboys downvoting my comment, even though it is totally possible. Even my last comment 28 days ago, which was incidentally against Apple but factually true, was also downvoted. Looks like hacker news is being plagued with fanboys who can't take any valid criticism of their dear Apple Inc.

Edit: when I wrote this comment, my original comment was at -4 points.

It’s not the same. These are border guards easily putting spyware on Android phones, since it’s a feature of Android (to load programs). With iOS, you’d have to jailbreak it first, which isn’t a trivial thing to do “while you wait” at the border.

That’s all.

You don't need to jailbreak if you have an Apple signed App, which the Chinese Govt. can theoretically force Apple to provide.

Will you not see it on the launch screen?

I mean, if you wanted a hidden, non-standard launchd type app, you'd have to modify the filesystem, install it, they'd need to create special tooling to do so, and modify the updaters to preserve it across an iOS update, etc. All without anyone at Apple speaking out.

Apple refused to create an unlock tool for the US government that was a one-off, to create spyware for China seems like they last thing they'd do. Could they? I guess. Once detected - and it definitely would be (as this was), or leaked by employees - Apple would get bowled over by buyers and the stock market. It's just not in their interests. Their current business model is selling privacy.

Then we need a story like this article confirming that do this too. So far the evidence points to “no”, but that isn’t enough. The transparency report from Apple needs to report this as well.

Apple is just gonna remotely ship it to you. You can't do business in China without bending over to government. If they want malware there then there will be one.

Would you please read the site guidelines? They ask you not to post like this.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

These biases are in the eye of the beholder. People with opposite feelings about Apple (or whatever the corp of the moment is) see exactly the opposite bias.

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