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Comment by smugma | Hacker News Reader

“China’s restriction mirrors similar bans in the U.S. against Huawei Technologies as well as against officials using Chinese-owned TikTok”

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This is the correct explanation. And that makes sense as well.

I think another insight might be that the Chinese gov doesn’t really like when large companies can influence their decisions. I’d imagine that if everyone in the gov has an iPhone it makes it harder to be tough on Tim Apple.

The reciprocity is related to fear of spying

In the age of AI and model training, data is more than ever precious

The US spying on EU leaders and their industry is perhaps what China is worried about

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/us-security-agency-spie...

https://www.mediapart.fr/en/journal/france/290615/revealed-m...

https://www.euractiv.com/section/global-europe/news/russia-s...

It's a shame that a superpower like China can't call out the United States on surveillance without it being hypocrisy. We need more countries objecting to unfair power-alignment like FIVE EYES, XKeyscore and PRISM. Unfortunately, most of them would rather build their own version rather than hold the US to a higher standard.

Hopeless "violence begets violence" situations like this underscore how disastrous a full exposé of both governments would be. It's a sad time to be a global citizen.

All major powers spy on everyone. It is a prerequisite for being a major power, and it always has been.

I agree. In the same way we resent nuclear warfare though, we should want to "de-surveillance-ize" as much of the free world as possible. It's an unsafe deterrent and (as we're seeing now) a terrible precedent to set when things verge towards war.

All major powers spy on everyone

Can't we just say all nation states? It certainly isn't just major powers that have spy agencies.

E.g.

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Security_Agency_(South_A...

I don't think all nation states have spy agencies.

Wikipedia lists them for 122 countries [1], out of 206 [2]. So about 60%. Maybe a little higher if a few are missing.

I do wonder if there's also some kind of commonly accepted division within those that separates the "big guys" vs the "little guys", e.g. if there's a certain key spying ability that takes a certain level of funding and sophistication. I mean, I do have to assume that there is a qualitative difference between the kind of spying done by "major powers" and others.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_intelligence_agencies

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states

More pertinent in this case, probably: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-09-15/china-wan...

When Xu was apprehended, he had with him an iPhone whose contents he’d faithfully backed up to the cloud, a lapse that allowed FBI investigators to recover all the data from Apple Inc.

...

FBI search warrants to Apple and Google had opened up his iCloud and multiple Gmail accounts, and digital forensics experts at the bureau had mined the contents of the phones recovered at the arrest. (Investigators were not able to recover anything, however, from the iPhone Xu Heng had been carrying. The day after the arrest, someone remotely accessed the device and wiped it clean.)

As simple as that. Apple's 'security' is type of selective security that looks great on PR campaigns (we encrypt this part of face scan, we do that to cloud), make users feel they have something better, yet if one actually has anything important to hide, its useless.

Certain Israeli private company can hack through any phone security (at least both ios and android) like its not there, you just need to pay enough. You can be genocidal murderer too, doesnt matter.

Good luck explaining this to nontrivial part of HN crowd who are absolutely uncritical of Apple. I think if google would be doing 100% as they do now but be a chinese company, they would be smeared to hell by the same crowd. At least both are US companies, so some diacussions with some can be had.

> And that makes sense as well

I dunno, I think I'd rather a group of people I was trying to hack were using a collection of random devices with vendor-supplied customer Android builds on them than iOS.

> if everyone in the gov has an iPhone it makes it harder to be tough on Tim Apple

Everyone in the government is a party member and will toe the line. It's the middle-class public you need to keep your eye on.

> it makes it harder to be tough on Tim Apple.

Considering China's Biggest Export are Consumer Electronics and its adjacent industry, Apple has been the biggest help to that in the past 15 years. Not just on its products, but also the whole Supply Chain from Display to NAND. I warned about BOE and YMTC in 2016 on SemiWiki before both names enter into mainstream media. And it seems only Financial Times [1] ( or arguably Patrick McGee ) is getting it. Almost every comments on HN hate Qualcomm, during the Apple vs Qualcomm trial, the company that sided with Apple most was interestingly ( or not ) Huawei.

So no, there are still no signs they are tough on Apple. If anything Apple are helping Chinese companies to set up base outside of China to continue their operation. Actively funding and directing resources. This trend has only recently stopped some what after India demanded more local company to be used inside supply chains.

Again, if anything Tim Cook is very much Pro China.

[1] https://www.ft.com/content/bf8e3846-2421-4f91-becf-2dfe39ec9...

It more closely resembles Russia's bans on Iphones due to security reasons. https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/russia-says-us-hacked...

But are the mirrored for the same reasons? If I'm not mistaken Isn't Tiktok famously misusing private data of its users? Which I believe was the reason for the US ban.

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