Apple publishes human rights policy, commits to freedom of information | Hacker News Reader

Apple publishes human rights policy, commits to freedom of information

thehill.com

78 pointsevo_970 comments

The money line

“Where national law and international human rights standards differ, we follow the higher standard. Where they are in conflict, we respect national law while seeking to respect the principles of internationally recognised human rights.”

In other words, business as usual, more virtue signalling. This weasel word statement means they stand for nothing. They will still do business in the country. They are upholding no values if they allow national law to trump their ideals.

What are they supposed to say? We would go against the local laws of a country if we think they violate human rights?

If you’re not going to stand for human rights, at least don’t claim that you are.

"We refuse to work with countries that engage in ongoing human rights abuses."

Which countries are those? And who decides which go on the list?

I doesn't matter much as long as there is a list. Apple can even publish it's own list, then everybody can debate if this is a good list or bad list. Currently there is no list - no discussion.

Apple? Because this is a statement about their moral principles.

There's no consensus among scholars about how many human rights exist, how to realize them, and how to prioritize them.

For example, is healthcare a right? Is food a right? Is education a right? Is there a "right to development"?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human... seems like a good lowest bar to hit, incidentally the policy being discussed in this thread was based on it

It is possible (and in fact, expected) of companies that take these kinds of pledges to have a baseline set of human rights that most people (or at least most people on Apple's board) will agree on, even if there is ambiguity around the edges.

The alternative is saying, "we'll stand for this thing that we refuse to define in even vague terms, and as a result it will be impossible for anyone to evaluate whether or not we're succeeding, or even making progress."

If Apple can't determine even in broad terms what is and isn't a rights violation, then their declaration is meaningless. They don't need to decide for everyone, and not everyone needs to agree with them -- it's fine for other people and companies to come up with their own criteria. But Apple has to at least some internal idea of what they mean when they say they stand for something, otherwise it will be impossible for them to build real policies around the declaration.

And some of this honestly isn't that controversial among scholars. As an analogy, if I commit to avoiding stocking unhealthy products in my store, I don't need to know for certain whether or not coffee is healthy in order to say Cadbury Eggs are not -- pretty much everyone agrees on that. In the same way, we don't really need to debate whether or not healthcare is a human right to understand that forced abortions, forced monitoring and 'reeducation', and concentration camps for Uighurs are violations of their human rights.

"There is no consensus among scholars, therefore human rights don't exist."

Couple of honest questions to you (or anyone else reading this who thinks along the same lines).

Firstly, are you saying anyone who happened to be born in China is complicit in e.g. the crimes committed against Uighur population and thus doesn't deserve to be able to legally buy an Apple phone in their country?

Secondly, if Apple exits a non-free country, do you expect that to improve the situation? Make the country freer?

In China this would leave the population to local tech, which is pretty much owned by CCP and subject to its every whim—as opposed to Apple’s cooperating to the degree required to not break the law.

What's the benefit to be had here?

Apple doesn't help prop up an authoritarian regime? CCP gonna CCP, but at least Apple's hands are clean. It's not any individual Chinese citizen's fault, but they unfortunately have to deal with the consequences of an illiberal, ruthless regime.

So your idea is that the presence of Apple helps (props up) CCP, the absence would hurt CCP? Any details as to how?

My belief is it's the opposite and I've outlined why I think Apple’s withdrawal would strengthen the regime in my comment above.

If the CCP believed that Apple's absence would strengthen the regime, then they would get rid of Apple. Clearly they think it's in their best interest to have Apple around. You can disagree with them, but I think the CCP is much better positioned to know what's in their interest than we are.

You are granting CCP omniscience, power and integrity they don't have.

Apple probably came to China to expand their market, had enough lawyers to navigate the muddy bureaucracy, CCP could block them regardless but decided to let them open shops and profit from taxes for now. Many Chinese would buy Apple products overseas in HK or Taiwan anyway; CCP is powerless to stop it and would not mind a share of the sales.

CCP may be blind to Western values brought in by Apple, or discount their influence, or tolerate them for now because it is economically lucrative.

>Firstly, are you saying anyone who happened to be born in China is complicit in e.g. the crimes committed against Uighur population and thus doesn't deserve to be able to legally buy an Apple phone in their country?

I am not saying everyone in China is complicit in the Chinese government's human rights abuses. Purchasing a specific product from a specific company is not a right.

>Secondly, if Apple exits a non-free country, do you expect that to improve the situation? Make the country freer?

>In China this would leave the population to local tech, which is pretty much owned by CCP and subject to its every whim—as opposed to Apple’s cooperating to the degree required to not break the law.

I don't expect it to improve the situation, nor do I believe it's Apple's job to improve China. Apple's job is to have consistent beliefs about human rights if they're going to pretend to care about them.

>What's the benefit to be had here?

The benefit is Apple puts their money where their mouth is. Saying they care about human rights and then cooperating with a serial abuser renders their policy irrelevant.

The challenged the FBI in court to protect the privacy and rights of their users, so you they can at least state they will challenge any such requests to the fullest extent of the law.

They could also commit to not enter markets where local law isn't compatible with human rights and "freedom of information and expression". Although the most relevant such country is China and no way are they leaving that market and in addition their whole supply chain is massively dependent on China.

Doesn't Google make phones in china without being otherwise active there?

They're starting to move Pixel production to Vietnam. It's also less of a freedom of information and expression issue when the Play Store doesn't operate in China like the App Store does.

Apple essentially failed to patch a current plaintext backdoor to iMessage end to end encryption (due to the fact that device backups, on by default, containing complete plaintext message history are NOT end to end encrypted and are uploaded to Apple with Apple keys each night) because they didn’t want to cross the FBI.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud-exclusiv...

https://sneak.berlin/20200604/if-zoom-is-wrong-so-is-apple/

Challenging the FBI in court is not in violation of US laws.

"We are committed for finding markets solutions to human rights. Apple Store fee in China is now 50% and the money goes to organizations supporting human rights."

In other words, “respect national law while seeking to respect the principles of internationally recognised human rights”.

Open phrasing allows creativity with options without revealing any specific plans to CCP.

I mean if they want to make these kinds of statements then yeah, kinda. Because following national laws even when you disagree with them is the default. I don't fault anyone for taking this position since I don't think anyone is ever obligated to self-sacrifice. But civil disobedience is the act of protest and something deserving of praise.

It bad to violate human rights to comply with local laws of a country.

But it's even worse to do that and claim that you are upholding the human rights.

What they should do is either: be honest and say that they comply with local laws of a country even if they think they violate human rights; or don't violate human rights.

Yes.

Unless their position is "all countries equally violate human rights", they should minimize their footprint in countries with egregious human rights violations. They get to decide which countries go onto that list. Maybe they think China has an excellent record, or is no worse than others. If so, let them state that.

"We refuse to put ourselves in a position where we can be compelled to violate human rights." - such as the position of arbiter of what may run on your phone.

And not encrypting iCloud backups

They're not "supposed" to say anything. Every normal business claims to follow local laws and we don't praise them for it.

What are we supposed to say? They can claim to stand up for human rights and freedom of information and expression while kowtowing to China?

If you live in China and care about privacy, get an iPhone. The local offerings (Huawei, etc) are compromised, and Google's stuff is blocked.

Apple's in a tough spot, but the iPhone is one of a few remaining viable choices that isn't dominated by the PRC and why roll Apple for that? What's the plan if Apple pulls out?

Supposing one standard is "ban hate speech" and another is "freedom of speech" - how do you choose the higher standard of those two?

In an international human rights context, typically, freedom of speech is a qualified right as opposed to an absolute right. In other words it can be curtailed to an extent if it comes into conflict with other human rights.

That's one point of view, but others exist.

It’s not a point of view, it’s the legal position of at least the European Convention on Human Rights/UK Human Rights Act and I believe also the UN Declaration of Human Rights.

We have the freedom to express ourselves by giving Apple $99/yr to share our open source apps, apps which ultimately further enrich their platform.

If you are poor and have been donated an iPhone, then express yourself somewhere else.

And if you have expressed yourself on macOS in the past, now pay up there too, or we are going to suggest that your art is dangerous to view on our devices, and we'll make it difficult [1] to run.

Nathalie Lawhead's article [2] is a heartbreaking exploration of how open source developers and artists experience Apple's chokehold.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24217116

[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20200602003250/http://www.nathal...

Come on..You get listing and visibility and distribution worldwide, Consumers don't have to worry about your credentials and bonafides because app store due diligence checks help keep out malicious and fraudulent apps.

People can download appstore apps without worry as opposed to some random guy publishing an open source app that most don't have time or expertise to vet.

Yes, there are costs associated with running the App Store, but I would be very surprised if those costs came anywhere near what Apple is charging devs.

I don’t feel that Apple shouldn’t charge at all, only that what they’re charging is unreasonably high.

Not on macOS, there you’re getting the advantage that macOS doesn’t mark you as malware.

You can't see how that's a double edged sword though?

I buy a device, I even buy a special computer so I can build programs for the device... and now I have to pay $99/year just to comfortably run my own program on my own device? Even worse, I can't even continue to digitally interface with my own customers, people who Apple never helped me land as clients, without passing through Apple's arbitrary store rules AND paying them 30%?

That's fucking dog shit and it's going to have to change, especially given that they have 50% of the market in the US.

> People can download appstore apps without worry

We should be given a choice to worry or not, and to do it independently from the App Store.

There is also the other (more important than opensource) kool-aid about how "green" Apple is. Meanwhile they're choking the repair industry which is reducing the e-waste on our planet. And they give themselves a gold star on their so called "report card" on the environmental impact of their products. The irony..

So the linked news story makes it sound like this document was proposed and accepted:

> At its February annual general meeting a shareholder proposal calling on Apple to publicly commit “to respect freedom of expression as a human right” received more than 40 percent support from shareholders.

> According to The Financial Times, Apple's board of directors approved the policy and published it ahead of a deadline of Sept. 5 for shareholders to submit motions for next year's investor meeting.

When attempting to read the document through the link in the story, I get directed to Reuters who says:

> While it was defeated, it gained 40.6% of votes cast - far more than similar motions put forward previously and enough to push the company to respond, experts said.

So, this sounds like Apple may have published the proposal but still actually declined it?

Has this been coupled with any actual policy changes, donations, or new products? Is there anything concrete that Apple is going to do differently now that it's made this statement?

Having end-to-end encryption on icloud backups would be better than this vague press release.

Or be allowed to run a firewall on your phone.

Seriously, to see what your phone is doing and who it is connecting to is a fundamental right they deny.

Would an open source app like Lockdown [1] help you? It can block requests and it also has logs. I haven’t used it, but you could check it out.

I’d love to have something like Little Snitch/LuLu on iOS and by default disallow outgoing and incoming connections to all (or at least new) apps.

[1]: https://lockdownhq.com/

I have been using an old version of adblockios which apple made them change (crippling the product).

And when the average user forgets their iCloud password and loses their everything? Apple decided the trade off for that is worth it, and they provide an alternative for people who want fully encrypted backups: iTunes local backups.

That doesn’t matter when everyone else you iMessage with has their (on by default!) non-e2e iCloud device backups enabled.

Your entire chat history plaintext gets made available to the feds without a warrant anyway, regardless of the settings on your own device—the plaintext escrow then happens on the device at the other end of the conversation pair.

Apple does not care about your privacy. There was a plan to fix this glaring what-amounts-to-a-backdoor in iMessage encryption, but they cancelled it to avoid crossing the FBI.

The Reuters reporting on the matter cited six sources.

> without a warrant

You're claiming the feds don't have to follow the law. There is no evidence for your claim.

I think the organisation "sum of us" is interesting:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SumOfUs

Some of the campaigns they are running:

https://www.sumofus.org/campaigns/

So I take they are going to allow software to flow freely to their devices now?

Here is the link to the document refered to in the article. I wish this wasn't a link to the newspaper rather what apple posted :\ https://s2.q4cdn.com/470004039/files/doc_downloads/gov_docs/...

Reads like a cheap attempt to bolster their recently tarnished reputation.

Tarnished to the tune of $2T market cap?

Tarnished to the tune of attention received for anti-competitive behavior. I'm sure you realized that's what I was referring to, but trying to dunk on me with an inane "yeah but they're rich" response was too hard to resist I guess?

(As long as we can extract a 30% cut from the platform the information is on by removing the freedom of our users to install what they want on their devices.)

what?

I have been such an Apple fan over the years. The recent negative press Apple is getting doesn't affect me in any meaningful way. At the same time it does hit home that a device I use for many hours of the day is heavily controlled by their internal company policies.

I always felt like free software was a nice concept I didn't really care about day to day, my opinion is changing on that. I am really excited by a usable Linux on mobile offering.

... so long as you use a web browser which supports only Apple approved capabilities & features.

All empty words. Don't look at what they say, look at what they do; Apple has a long history of acquiescing to the CCP's every demand so that they can keep their access to the Chinese market.

They probably just put this out because they ran some focus groups and determined that this would improve their image among American / European consumers.

So they are not going to cooperate with CCP? Nice.

What about the freedom to show your app user the information that they could buy some products cheaper on a website?

In the course of trying to determine whether a specific company was participating and profiting from human rights abuses in China just earlier this morning, I came across this mention of Apple:

https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/china-83...

TLDR; Apple is one of a number of companies directly implicated and has not even bothered to respond to these reports.

Apple has responded, just not there: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/aug/10/apple-imp...

That's a response to _different_ allegations. Please see pp 23-27 of the original report by the ASPI: https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/ad-aspi/2020-03/Uygh...

What about the freedom of users?

There are no human rights. Only privileges. Some have more, some less. The most powerful ones give and take them as they see fit and is convenient to them. It has always been so. Laws are for the masses.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com