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I'm not intimate enough with any of the parties involved in this situation, so my reply will also be comfortably generic:

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.

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I'm just not sure what that evidence could look like. Like I said, don't we have sufficient evidence that this app was used to organize protests in Hong Kong, and that some protesters in Hong Kong committed violence against officers and against individuals and property where no police were present?

As for Hong Kong law, I can agree that it might be nice to cite a specific law, but I also don't find it at all difficult to believe that any government would have a law that allows the government to prohibit a communication medium that is being used to organize anti-government protests that have been sometimes violent.

It is worth considering why a government would not have such a law.

Apple should've given some kind of overview of how exactly the app was used to target police officers. Knowing that the app was aggregating info on police presence, I can see a dozen ways to maliciously use this info.

For example, it could have been used to identify locations where police is about to withdraw to target last remaining officers. Or to identify a good place for an ambush with good escape options and no video surveillance and then lure police into the ambush by reporting a minor accident. Information about location and movements of the adversary is invaluable for exactly this reason - it gives the other side advantage in planning.

If something like this really did happen and if Apple has any specifics, it should totally release it down to exact location and time of incidents and the aftermath. These are very serious allegations that need substantial proofs.

That is not what the application does though. it is not "being used to organize anti-government protests". that is not the reason it was removed. it was a map with icons. by that logic any and all communications apps ( telegram especially) would be outside the law because you can organize protests using them, way better than using icons on a map.

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