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Comment by reaperducer | Hacker News Reader

The actual report[1] is very interesting to read.

I was surprised that there were zero App Store takedown requests from governments in North America, South America, and Australia.

All of the takedown requests came from China, Vietnam, and Europe; including Norway and Switzerland.

[1] https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/pdf/requests-2018-H...

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Also, a National Security Letter may require that the takedown not be publicized in any way. This is in part what led to the concept of warrant/NSL canaries: a statement in a legal doc such as terms, etc. that says there have been no warrants or takedowns orders received. If the canary is removed from the doc then it is not publicizing the NSL, but the canary's absence is supposedly required by law (IANAL) because keeping it in there would be a falsehood in a legal document, and so the absence indicates the NSL/takedown occurred.

Just to add to this, Apple did have a warrant canary. It disappeared in 2014 [1], suggesting that they have been receiving warrants and possibly takedowns for the last 5 years.

[1] https://gigaom.com/2014/09/18/apples-warrant-canary-disappea...

An NSL can only be used to subpoena metadata from a provider without the provider being allowed to inform anyone. It can’t be used to compel a company or person to do much else.

To my knowledge, the US government (or at least the FBI) “negotiates” a takedown of a problematic app with the developer directly.

Source?

Personal knowledge/professional experience. While it certainly isn’t my area of expertise I have no reason to believe law enforcement handled this particular situation differently than they would any other. I will say that I didn’t think the government had much of a leg to stand on from a legal perspective (so perhaps that could have necessitated their “negotiation” approach) but the stress of the ordeal provided quite a lot of leverage to get the developer to take it down.

All the EU countries (Norway, Switzerland and Netherlands) include the footnote "All or vast majority of requests relate to illegal gambling investigations."

Switzerland is not part of the EU.

And neither is Norway.

Sometimes people type "EU" when they mean "Europe." Like people type "America" when they mean "The United States of America."

Though they are part of Schengen which abolishes border control with the EU and makes things confusing for visitors.

True, but they are part of the single market.

Well, thank you (sarcasm at play here obviously) Germany for pushing Europe towards the top with 67% of all the requests based upon the total given for Europe, Middle East, India, Africa Total. Why they bundle those into one total is equally odd, though maybe some telco regional grouping legacy aspect at play perhaps - thinking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasia

I'd work out the Europe total, but that would only depress me further.

Why does Germany stick out compared to other countries in Europe - some Stazi hangover mentality! Who knows, but some serious questions need to be asked as clearly some major disparity amongst EU countries at play here. But I'm sure they will get their shrills to bury that question, hmmmm.

Germany 12,343 requests Europe, Middle East, India,Africa Total 18,205

They mention why Germany had an unusually large amount in the article.

They do, but that is a large amount of stolen devices in a 6 month period compared to other countries.

The inner cynic in me asks - Maybe that was the template they used for such requests.

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