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Comment by johnnycab | Hacker News Reader

I don't follow..pray tell, what are these arbitrary rules?

What rules? Has Apple ever made a technical change to iOS that made it less secure in response to a government request?

The entire premise of the article is to highlight the fact that a government has expressly requested Apple into allowing pre-approved apps to be installed and make use of the ecosystem, on their terms. I ask once again, where is the separation or distinction being made between the political and technical, in this case?

The difference is that if an app that has to be installed by mandate only has the same rights as any other apps that can be downloaded from the App Store, it doesn’t change the security of the underlying system. If the app is restricted to the same permission and sandboxing model.

Heck, Apple could theoretically make the sandbox more restrictive.

On top of that, changing the name of a country is a server side change and changes data. That’s no different technically if France mandates that all movies had to have French subtitles.

> Heck, Apple could theoretically make the sandbox more restrictive.

Only by breaking other apps.

As if Apple hasn’t done that before....

> Has Apple ever made a technical change to iOS that made it less secure in response to a government request?

Yes. https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/chinese-censo...

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