Couldn't you just do this in China? https://www.imore.com/how-configure-vpn-access-your-iphone-o...
Apple Removes Apps from China Store That Help Internet Users Evade Censorship
381–390 of 449 posts
Re: Apple Removes Apps from China Store That Help Internet Users Evade Censorship
#382Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Google has this "do no evil" value Former Google engineer here. There's a subtle but significant semantic difference between "Don't be evil" (the real motto) and "Do no evil" (a confusion between the Hippocratic oath and the Google motto).
Can you explain the semantic difference between being and doing in this context? What I'm mostly interested in is how you can rationalize doing evil while not considering yourself as being evil. Is it based on the idea that you might do evil unintentionally or that you could be coerced into it? Are there other reasons for the distinction?
Not Google-specific, but:
Do no evil = "No, we are not going to torture these prisoners of war, period."
Don't be evil = "It's OK to waterboard them a little if they deserve it. Remember, we are the good guys, we're here to help."
(See also: rationale for the My Lai Massacre. Very similar thinking, it's possible to excuse awful things when you're the hero(es) of your own (indoctrinated) narrative.)
Re: Apple Removes Apps from China Store That Help Internet Users Evade Censorship
#383You cannot do business in China without doing what they tell you. Period. Either you do it or you leave. I work for a big company (you would all know) and we have a large business unit in China, they own 52% of it. They decide what goes in and how customers can use it. We don't get to decide anything without government approval. It's so easy to claim the West shouldn't do what the leadership of China wants in China,…
>"The market is too large to leave."
Or stated another way "there's too much money involved to worry about ethics."
Yet Google left it and they seem to be doing OK. Apple could well afford to leave it too:
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/02/apples-cash-hoard-swells-to-...
Re: Apple Removes Apps from China Store That Help Internet Users Evade Censorship
#384Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google was aspirational in China when it left: they weren't making much money there...they hoped to in the future. Apple is not aspirational in China today: they are already making a lot of money there. Leaving China would cause an immediate shock to its stock price as well as a huge cut in actual profits.
> Google was aspirational in China when it left: they weren't making much money there...they hoped to in the future. I was an engineer on Google's web search indexing system for 4 years (including the Aurora attack), leaving shortly before Google's China exit. I listened to several talks by the head of Google China, who came from Baidu. Even before the Aurora attack, as a matter of national pride, we knew the very be…
When you say "Chinese market" you mean mainland Chinese market. Google does just fine in Hong Kong and Taiwan, while Baidu is completely MIA outside of mainland China even in markets with significant Chinese populations.
Re: Apple Removes Apps from China Store That Help Internet Users Evade Censorship
#385To all in HN:
It is a huge market which helping the people in China break the GFW (Great Fire Wall). You can start a startup for that :)
Re: Apple Removes Apps from China Store That Help Internet Users Evade Censorship
#386Earlier quoted context omitted.
Saying that that it complies with the local laws is a weak argument. This is about moral and ethics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Jewish_legislation_in_pre...
The alternative is to stop doing business in China, is that what you want Apple to do?
I'm saying that this is a weak argument:
Apple complies with law in countries where it operates.
Is it right or wrong to aid in restricting ~1b people's access to knowledge and information
about their government's past deeds[1], current affairs[2], corruption[3], etc.
But saying they're following local laws is similar to saying that someone is just respecting German WW2-laws on Jews or apartheid in South Africa.
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[1] Tiananmen Square
[2] Food safety (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal)
[3] High-official corruption (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/26/world/asia/china-blocks-we...)
Re: Apple Removes Apps from China Store That Help Internet Users Evade Censorship
#387You cannot do business in China without doing what they tell you. Period. Either you do it or you leave. I work for a big company (you would all know) and we have a large business unit in China, they own 52% of it. They decide what goes in and how customers can use it. We don't get to decide anything without government approval. It's so easy to claim the West shouldn't do what the leadership of China wants in China,…
"I am objecting to this on the basis of forcing me to violate Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Perhaps this greased handshake will help."
Re: Apple Removes Apps from China Store That Help Internet Users Evade Censorship
#388Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a fundamental limit to what is blockable. Even if all strong cryptography is prohibited and all that can legally be utilised is a backdoored version, a steganographic option can be encorporated in a way that is mathematically undetectable - albeit at rather low bit rates relative to the absolute rate of the stream. The problem for censors is that there is not such thing as optimal compression for a given stre…
That's technically true but largely irrelevant because it ignores the hard problem: if you're a covert agent supported by a major power, sure, you may have the opsec training and resources needed for that to be relevant but in most cases the question is not crypto magic but how it handles discovery, trust, and individual compromises. You can have perfect steganography but as soon as a government informant says they g…
Dissent against authoritarian governments will always be a game of cat and mouse - sometimes the cat will catch the mouse, there's no preventing that.
But I think that you're underestimating the power of the mathematics here in terms of the levels of achievable misdirection.
If the government gets into your unencrypted context you're pretty much fucked - I'll give you that - but it does not necessarily mean that anyone else is going down with you.
Let's say you have an unencrypted piece of data telling you that the XOR of the least significant bits of a multitude of data streams contains secret data and a descriptor for the next source node. Most of the data streams will be completely innocent. Even once I extract that data I'll have no idea where the contraband information came from.
This naturally further reduces your bandwidth, and you'll need the streams to contain content that non-dissidents have a decent chance of downloading together by pure chance to reduce suspicion.
There are huge difficulties - but that does not come close to meaning that nothing can be done.
Re: Apple Removes Apps from China Store That Help Internet Users Evade Censorship
#389Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the GFW is a protectionism tool to protect and grew the Chinese Internet sector. How do you reconcile this belief with the following: 1) The GFW blocks sites and content related to dissident groups and individuals in China, such as Xinjiang and Tibetan independence groups. 2) The GFW blocks sites and content related to Falun Gong. 3) Personal VPN usage will be blocked. 4) Many foreign news sites are blocked.
1. illegal organisations by Chinese laws. 2. illegal organisation by Chinese laws. btw, they spam my mobile all the time, it is pretty rude to call someone's mobile 5-6am on a weekend morning to play prerecorded message like "CCP is bad, they jailed many Falun Gong members". 3. "will" is a very interesting term. Posting here using VPN, let me know when it is actually blocked. 4. I read CNN/BBC/Foxnews quite often, th…
What reason is there to block information about illegal organisations? Is information about ISIS blocked?
Re: Apple Removes Apps from China Store That Help Internet Users Evade Censorship
#390If you build in the ability to censor, you can't disclaim responsibility when a state makes you do it. We'll see the same sort of thing in Russia, the UK, and so on. Apple can still act, if they wish, by not locking down their users. I know that'd be a big step for them.
To be clear, "ability to censor" is basically just having an app store. Companies can decide what they'll include in their store, which means governments can also regulate what they're allowed to sell (or block the app store altogether in that country). That doesn't mean app stores are inherently evil; they still do a lot of good by making sure people can easily find and pay for high-quality apps. As you say, a reaso…
To be clear, what you mean by "having an app store" is "reverting 40 years of established software usage best practice and downgrade to dictatorial way where a central company can control everything".
Words have power. "App store" sounds up-beat, friendly and inclusive. But the rules behind what Apple has established that "App store" actually means are anything but.