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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Hypocrisy is characterized (to my mind) by criticism of the actions of others that one undertakes oneself, with a presumed unawareness that the conflict exists.
The Chinese government is not acting with any sort of denial; these two actions may hold others to standards that they don't follow, but they don't seem to be avoiding that fact.
Yes, except US is not trying to destroy China while China seems to be secretly dreaming of destroying the West and becoming a global authoritarian hegemon. All after the US did for them.
In terms of real-world actions, the US has more 750 military bases in 80 countries, including 300 in Asia.
China has 8 overseas bases: one in Djibouti and the rest in islands near China.
China is definitely trying to advance its economic interests throughout the world, by investing in infrastructure in Africa and Latin America.
That's what every country does or aspires to do. It's just business.
Better transparent soft power that delivers tangible results for the local populace rather than opaque coups, mercenary armies, and funding dictators and warlords.
If some other country would decide that they have the right to do anything in order to ensure that my own country can use only inferior technologies for making consumer products such as smartphones and SSDs, like USA tries to do to China, I would not consider that much less aggressive than "trying to destroy" or than an overt war declaration.
Frankly, China's reactions to the US "sanctions" have been extremely restrained and very far from proportional to what USA has done.
The claims of USA that their actions with the purpose of hurting leading Chinese companies like Huawei or SMIC are "sanctions", are pure BS. If they had really been sanctions, then USA would have presented to China some political demands that would have been conditions for avoiding sanctions, for instance they could have required the recognition of the fact that Taiwan is an independent country or a promise that they will not try to expand their sovereignty over the adjacent seas or better rights for minorities.
But USA did not tie any demands to the so-called "sanctions", so these are not sanctions. USA has also claimed that their actions, including the blackmailing of European and Taiwanese companies to stop selling their products to China have the purpose to hurt the Chinese military.
This is also complete BS. The impact on the military will be negligible. The only great impact has been on the US companies Qualcomm and Micron, whose competitors in smartphones and SSDs have been removed from the market exactly at the moments when it had become obvious that in the very near future the US products will no longer be competitive and will lose most of their market share.
Thus the champion of the "free market" could not find any other solution to stay in the top position, except by cheating.
The problem for USA is that this has been an action that has been possible to do only once, and it will be no longer available in the future. It has been wasted now providing gains only for some US companies, while many other US, European and Taiwanese companies have lost money, so they have been more preoccupied on how to circumvent the sanctions instead on how to support them.
If USA had adopted such policies against China at least 15 years earlier, they would have had a good chance to ensure a constant technological advantage for USA. If such policies would have been adopted some time later, in a future when China would still have had critical dependencies on US technology, in the case of a serious conflict they could have been blackmailed to accept whatever USA would have wanted.
Now, these policies have been adopted too late for preventing China to match USA in technology and too early to be able to force them to do anything, because by the time of any future conflict they will have had enough years to eliminate their external dependencies.
Until very recently, iCloud was not encrypted by default. So in the case of a subpoena, they handed over all your unencrypted iCloud files, chat logs, backups, etc. That's much more difficult due to changes that just happened this year.
You need to turn on 'Advanced Data Protection for iCloud' to have data encrypted. Mail, Contacts and Calendars are still not encrypted (Apple has key).
If you read the link that you've posted, that was not about handing data over. They were already doing that. They didn't want to automate the process. They used the dispute as a pr campaign which you have faithfully repeated.
When it's a public request, and the people involved are already dead, there can be this kind of public spectacle. Apple was part of PRISM as per Snowden's leaks, and as cited in the wiki page, Snowden further claims regarding this specific case that the FBI was already perfectly capable of decrypting the device.
Apple does not have a history of giving most of their data to the US government. I'd go so far as to say that they have given less than .00001% of their data to the US government and they were probably legally obligated to do so. Apple actually has a history of not bending over to the government.
They’ve banned Teslas from government compounds and big state-owned companies for a few years. There are even occasional reports of Tesla cars being diverted from certain roads for reasons the police wouldn’t disclose.
Edit: It could be retaliations against US sanctions. But there’s a difference: All these kinds of orders are made without any written documents. These are just part of the general decline of the rule of law in China, which there weren’t much to begin with.
Tesla concern is autopilot cameras shipping images back to Tesla, which is valid; Tesla does ship stills back for training if enabled in the data sharing configuration.
I’ve reached the limit of my personal experiences that I will be sharing.
But, if you don’t know anyone in the offensive security space and still want to get some general feelings, perhaps you can start by looking into things like “Tesla CAN bus security,” “Tesla infotainment security,” and “Tesla NFC fob security.”
Plus, here’s a heuristic for why they would have horrible security: they a are poorly built product which focuses more on flash than substance made by a company with an owner that is known to cut corners, and security is absolutely not one of the key selling points of this(or any other) car.
Could the US government slip Tesla one of those nifty national security letters and get themselves a closet off some server room at Tesla HQ? It's not like they'd be spying on US citizens in China.
Your assumption is that breaking data protection laws in the West has anywhere near the same sort of consequences as in China. The Chinese government doesn't have to believe or assume anything, and even Elon Musk avoids anything but praise for China.
>"But there’s a difference: All these kinds of orders are made without any written documents."
And you know this how? Maybe the document do exist but are classified. As for rule of law - try civil forfeiture for example. It is but a pure theft that goes unpunished.
On an iPhone it opens the stocks app into that article but with a paywall for Apple News+. Interesting that the desktop behavior is to redirect to wsj.
Wouldn't be surprised if this is because the phones are TOO secure. Maybe they want them to use phones with built-in back-doors so they can keep an eye on them.
Not really, it's just tit-for-tat because Western governments banned use of phones from Chinese companies such as Huawei. It's the same game we've been playing for years.
The public ban will also come in due time. Probably when the US carries out another equipment ban against China. This is a way to manage public perceptions.
I think MDM systems enable governments to track quite a bit these days.
I think the real issue probably is somewhere between retaliation and the desire to support a domestic competitor. China has long had a view that it can't be reliant on a foreign company and that's especially true for the tech sector.
I'd doubt it. Apple regularly provides the Chinese government with device data[0], and iCloud data is already stored in state-owned[1] servers. I struggle to imagine what more surveillance you could ask for.
iPhones are also banned in Russia for govt officials. I believe that was after Kaspersky reported on the targeted vuln/backdoor attack ("Operation Triangulation")
Kaspersky exposed apple devices are backdoored and cannot be trusted. These devices are essentially black boxes controlled by adversary that cannot be properly audited. Apple obviously cooperates with Western govts providing/injecting backdoors, so it's prudent to ban them.
What "kaspersky shortcomings" are you talking about?
> Kaspersky exposed apple devices are backdoored and cannot be trusted.
iPhones are of course not invulnerable to malware, no one is claiming that. Android devices aren't either.
What Kaspersky "exposed" was that their corporate devices were compromised. They claimed victory afterwards when they found the fact. But the truth is that they inadvertently allowed malware to roam free in their corporate devices for several years, which is quite telling, especially for a security company.
Them shifting the blame to Apple is like blaming Cisco for a corporate network hack, when your personnel left a device exposed to the internet with no appropriate protections in place. Yeah, a Meraki could be as much of a "black box" as a mobile device.
I get that Kaspersky has no business with Apple, but the whole saga was bizarrely unprofessional from their part.
Might be that they have too much internal stuff going on, that they don't want phone makers to know about. The more leverage the phone makers have, the more difficult to rein them in.
Expect more and more of this. The ultimate prize are technology standards, right now the West dominates that and China is actively trying to dethrone them. The world will sort itself in two camps again, Cold War is back functionally.
You mean the US dominates. I don't see any EU, Canadian or Australian designed smart-phones, Office365, Google, Chat-GPT, AWS, I can buy reaching critical mass.
Edit: INB4 the chip hipsters who found out about ASML during the pandemic chip shortage, chime in with "but muh ASML is European!". Yes, it is European(Dutch), it's also based on EUV tech licensed from the US, and has EUV light sources at it's core secret sauce, made by Cymer, a US company, but I was talking about software products and services which are the big money makers.
EU, Canada, and the rest of the west are lacking in world dominating SW companies and rely exclusively on the US, which the US can always use as leverage.
Ironically, China's detachment form the US SW companies and the need to develop it's own giants, will give it a major advantage long term, versus US's allies which will keep relying on it.
No but it’s a symbiotic system with EU companies being key parts of the system. Or am I missing some way I can buy a top-of-the-line cell phone not created with Taiwan-manufactured chips built using Dutch equipment? This is on purpose: the system is designed to create an important role for partners albeit a subordinate one. Though one might argue that they let Taiwan become too important. Either way, the recent book a Chip War is illuminating.
Ahh yes, good point it is mostly the US, but US allies do own a lot of IP and supply chain capability, particularly Japan and SK.
I don’t agree China will have the advantage though, it will certainly develop its own standards and mandate it internally but it remains to be seen if it will be able to export those standards, it tried with BRI and that did not work, but that was more manufacturing oriented. It’ll try to tech again but it will be a tough sell. It simply does not have the goodwill required. Will see gains in Russia, Pakistan and Cambodia, some countries in Africa but that’s about it.
> I don't see any EU, Canadian or Australian designed smart-phones, Office365, Google, Chat-GPT, AWS, I can buy reaching critical mass. ... EU, Canada, and the rest of the west are lacking in world dominating SW companies and rely exclusively on the US, which the US can always use as leverage.
Reached critical mass, or even world-dominating: Nokia, RIM, Figma, Skype, Spotify, Hetzner
> the US dominates
... by buying them.
// Of these, RIM lost critical mass, Spotify is on uncertain ground, and Hetzner seems fine.
Point is whether EU could reach critical mass or domination, not whether could sustain. In their day, RIM (Canada) for biz and Nokia (EU) for normies destroyed US mobile sales.
Most big US HW/SW companies do have a significant presence in Europe and some other places like Israel, it's not like Europe has a lack of engineers and scientists capable of building this stuff, they are just mostly working for US companies
> it's not like Europe has a lack of engineers and scientists capable of building this stuff
That wasn't my point. We have engineers, but we have no local champions. ASML, SAP and Spotify can't balance out what the US has.
>they are just mostly working for US companies
THAT was my point. Europe has a lack of local top tech companies and our brightest minds are working to build up the US tech sector instead of the domestic one.
Glad that at least some tech people here in Europe are aware of how things stand when it comes to technology and to our economic future (which depends on said tech).
Just the other day I was saying to a person close to me of how right now the world economy is splitting into two separate future growth camps, China and the US, with Europe left somewhere in a stagnating middle.
This just seems like a logical reaction to unknown supply chain attacks. The DoD has restrictions on acquisition of Chinese hardware, for example.
Some HN posters believe that this is a tit-for-tat move regarding the Huawei sales ban, which is hardly comparable, as Huawei hardware cannot be legally distributed or sold by US companies.
Even if it were the latter thing promoting domestic industry is a pretty logical thing to do in their shoes. Restricting supply of tech to China may make perfect sense from a US perspective but we can hardly expect them to play along.
The hardware is made in China but not the software. So it probably depends on how much oversight of the software the CCP has, and this decision implies not enough for their comfort.
I think it depends on whether the use is classified or not. I'm not aware of iPhone supporting red/black separation, not to mention a model without cameras for use in secure environments.
Opinions like this are largely from new cold war propaganda, but also projection. The US spys on everyone everywhere. PRISM for example. Pegasus being another.
Strongly disagree. It's Israeli, but minor difference. The US has PRISM and newer operations that are just as if not more advanced. Can you show anything China has done. That's remotely close to what the US has done in Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Indonesia, Panama, Grenada, Philippines, Japan, Yugoslavia, Laos, Cambodia, Guatemala, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, and the thousands of regime change operations the US has conducted? The US also incarcerates more people than any other country in the history of the world. We also have more murders by police than nearly any other country and far more than China. I can go on.
That makes no sense. The Chinese don't need to hack their people, let alone their own government workers, to find out what they are saying. It what world does govt compliance worker A need to literally hack govt busybee 1 to figure out if busybee 1 is work on their govt machine?!
Global version and carries no warranty, meaning imported. You can find all sorts of weird imported stuff in Amazon and NewEgg from third party sellers.
Still not legal for US companies to distribute Huawei phones, though.
Global version and carries no warranty, meaning imported.
Obviously they are imported, that's the point. They are imported Chinese phones. Amazon and Newegg are US companies distributing imported Chinese Huawei phones.
There is a ban on Huawei telecom equipment, and a ban on selling tech to Huawei, but show me where phones are banned.
"Imported" here only means that they crossed the border, not that they are being lawfully distributed in the US.
> Amazon and Newegg are US companies distributing imported Chinese Huawei phones.
Not true. Third party resellers are importing and selling some Huawei phones.
> ... show me where phones are banned.
Can you buy a Huawei phone from a retailer in the US? Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart? Or from a telecom? AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile?
Huawei and ZTE have also both been banned from getting FCC licenses. You could definitely buy a Huawei phone in the US, but it wouldn't be licensed by the FCC.
>Third party resellers are importing and selling some Huawei phones.
It is a distinction without a difference. I buy on Amazon, I pay on Amazon. They have a complicated supply chain with third party sellers, but it doesn't make them immune from import bans.
>Huawei and ZTE have also both been banned from getting FCC licenses.
Yes, that is true, but yet to see any citation of an ban on imports, sale, or use.
> It is a distinction without a difference. I buy on Amazon, I pay on Amazon. They have a complicated supply chain with third party sellers, but it doesn't make them immune from import bans.
Amazon third party sellers work like Ebay.
You are suggesting that when you buy something off Ebay, it is Ebay the one selling you the stuff, which is clearly not true.
You could find things on Amazon that aren't licensed to be sold in the US. That doesn't make them suddenly "legal".
> Yes, that is true, but yet to see any citation of an ban on imports, sale, or use.
If they cannot get a FCC license, they cannot legally distribute or sell their phones in US soil. That's just FCC rules [0]
But I'm honestly not sure what you are trying to prove here.
For example, I recently bought a Japanese Sony gadget on Ebay. It has Bluetooth. It definitely does not have a FCC sticker, nor has been licensed by the FCC. I was able to buy it, but Sony is not allowed to sell it in the US.
Does the fact that I bought it from an US website, mean that Sony is effectively selling this gadget in the US? Of course not, that's ridiculous.
I’m getting second hand embarrassment watching you try win an argument you lost decisively 3 replies ago.
Your comment: “Huawei hardware cannot be legally distributed or sold by US companies.”
You were dead wrong. Just admit it, it’s not personal.
“Does the fact that I bought it from an US website, mean that Sony is effectively selling this gadget in the US? Of course not, that's ridiculous.”
You can’t be this naive. This is 2023 not 2001. Sanctioned companies selling through distributors has been around since sanctions. US laws have explicit rules around this and companies facilitating are themselves subject to sanctions.
"Telecommunications equipment produced by Huawei Technologies Company, including telecommunications or video surveillance services provided by such entity or using such equipment."
Phones are a part of telecommunications equipment.
The definition of telecommunications equipment is:
The term “telecommunications equipment” means equipment used by a carrier to provide telecommunications services, and includes software integral to such equipment (including upgrades).
I don't think that includes phones. That is routing/switching hardware and software. I.e., infrastructure equipment, not consumer devices.
The definition applies to terminals. The FCC routinely uses the term to refer to terminals, e.g. [0]
Also, in the same paragraph, you can read that they explicitly mention “video surveillance services” as telecommunications equipment, which are terminals as well.
This restriction also comes on top (like July) of the recent kaspersky/Russian govt hack (called operation triangulation by kasp) where it is alleged that kaspersky's enterprise network was hacked after someone hacked their workers' iPhones and they puvoted to the enterprise network after the workers connected their iPhones to the work wifi.
It's not a hard breadcrumb trail to follow and i am also aghast at so many HN posters pontificating so strongly about nonsense
What a fantastic advert for Apple products. I remember when the G4 was banned from sale to Iran because it was a "super computer" - of course everyone wanted one then.
Just a thought, but could they be worried about privacy features of the iPhone? Whistle blowers, dissidents, etc., would benefit from iOS Security relative to Android. Then again, I don’t know the export laws of China, for all I know, they require weak security to sell the iPhone in China.
The question is, how many mutually disjoint digital domains will the planet eventually split into?
Countries have their own everything (laws, regulations, money, taxes etc) given that this is how the world's political power is managed.
Digital tech and information flow spread like if it is a universal something, but that is not how the worlds political power is managed.
At most you might have coalitions of allies that trust each other enough to have a joint info-space. But there isnt much trust even between EU and US, and ultimately its every truly sovereign entity for itself.
Humans are tribal by nature. Countries and borders exist precisely because we can't agree on the same set of laws, forms of government, and how society is structured.
In that sense, an open and universal internet is an anomaly. It was a great thought experiment by hippie technophiles, and "connecting the world" is a commonly parroted platitude by social media executives, but humans are far from ready to interact with millions of strangers from their own country, let alone from around the world.
If anything, all this technology that was supposed to bring us together, has instead driven us further apart. The internet is our main source of information, yet it's been corrupted by advertising, corporations and governments to spread disinformation and propaganda on an unprecedented scale, and influence the masses towards their own agenda.
We're still in the early stages of the technological revolution, but it's clear that a universal communication medium cannot exist yet. We're not ready for it. China and Russia already have isolated alternatives, and it's only a matter of time before other countries or coalitions follow suit. In any case, we can safely assume that all of it will be heavily censored and controlled by each government. Cryptography will exist in some form, but there will be backdoors for any government to exploit as needed.
Is this too pessimistic? :) I'd really like to be wrong about all this, but I can't picture a scenario where billions of us happily sing kumbaya together around a virtual campfire.
No, I don't think its too pessimistic. In fact the illusion of a global digital village lasts longer than what one might expect, probably because of tech illiteracy and the capture of various local elites.
But I also dont think that the hippy technofiles were all wrong.
Ironically, when you combine the finite Earth with extreme levels of digital information gathering and the zero cost of replication and transmission it is very hard to keep silos. E.g., pretty soon automated translation is a thing (and I am not an AI bro :-). Also you cant do much about joint dependencies on environmental deterioration without global coordination.
How its going to play out is unclear but the scenario of the same old clans fighting it out in the same old ways is not a given in the longer term. There are centripetal and centrifugal forces. For now the pattern seems to be tearing apart.
Isn't it more difficult to hack Apple devices than Android? Also, would Apple allow the US government to plant spyware on their devices sold in China? I also would more likely believe that China wants to monitor their own party members and thus, force them to use Android devices.
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