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Tim Cook’s Company-Wide Email on Hkmap.live Doesn’t Add Up

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Re: Tim Cook’s Company-Wide Email on Hkmap.live Doesn’t Add Up

#271

Post by ryanlol »

baddox wrote: post #9

Can I play devil's advocate for just a moment? Gruber asks for evidence. His only complaints seems to be the lack of evidence and a question of whether the app violates local (Hong Kong) law. Cook's memo directly addresses both of those issues: > However, over the past several days we received credible information, from the Hong Kong Cybersecurity and Technology Crime Bureau, as well as from users in Hong Kong, that…

You’re not playing the devils advocate, instead of steelmanning his argument you’re coming up with something completely different.

Cook clearly made an extremely specific claim, not a general one about protesters being violent.

>the app was being used maliciously to target individual officers

Re: Tim Cook’s Company-Wide Email on Hkmap.live Doesn’t Add Up

#272

Post by smueller1234 »

neurostimulant wrote: post #172
nickfromseattle wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft has the same setup for Azure. >Get a physically isolated instance of Azure for your cloud computing services—operated by 21Vianet, a company based in China. Besides censorship and spying on users, China probably doesn't want it's company's data hosted in a place the US's 3 letter agencies can access it via an NSL. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/global-infrastructure/chin...

Aren't foreign companies not allowed to operate in China without partnering with local companies? I think most (if not all) companies that sell services and digital products (online games, etc) operate this way.

That's not the only possible model. You can also have wholly foreign owned Chinese subsidiaries in the free trade zone if you get the appropriate licenses granted. Forgot the details though, sorry. That setup is apparently relatively "easy" for trade with physical goods, our lawyers told us some years ago, but wanting to do e-commerce without selling physical items meant all sorts of additional licenses had to be sought, and since nobody had done that before, it was unclear whether it would go through.

I remember a hilarious 24h trip to Shanghai because the Chinese law firm had found somebody who was well connected and willing to talk to us. It was somebody's cousin. In the day long meeting, the lawyers were entirely tight lipped and refused to give any legal opinion, merely reading the letter of the law back to us (which is not useful at all in China). The only person who was willing to give any guidance (and preciously little at that) was the cousin.

It was simultaneously very serious, with lots of money at stake, hilarious, exhausting, exhilarating, difficult, full of (cultural, not legal) learnings, and very, very frustrating.

Re: Tim Cook’s Company-Wide Email on Hkmap.live Doesn’t Add Up

#273

Post by baq »

dannyw wrote: post #194
panda88888 wrote: post #144

I am not surprised by this. I always thought Tim Cook talks a good talk, but fails to walk the walk when the stakes at hand is real. He’s fine with standing up to the CIA/FBI because he knows it’s good PR for business and the US government cannot do anything without a lengthy court fight that is mostly fair. Same with other US domestic issues such as DACA, sane sex marriage, etc. But when it comes to the PRC governme…

If you compromise, at least be frank about it.

here's the thing: he can't. that would offend the CCP.

Re: Tim Cook’s Company-Wide Email on Hkmap.live Doesn’t Add Up

#274

Post by ryanlol »

troysand wrote: post #230
ordinaryradical wrote: post #4

This is a huge stain on the company, the brand, and Cook’s leadership. It’s not just censorship—it’s active cooperation with an authoritarian power under the fig leaf of TOS violations. Truly astonishing.

No disrespect to Steve Jobs but my guess is that he would do the same thing.

I doubt it. There are infinite ways to word this email, a different CEO may not have written anything.

Cook presumably had some goal while sending this internal email, I doubt he achieved it. Telling your employees lies as weak as this certainly isn’t going to improve morale.

Re: Tim Cook’s Company-Wide Email on Hkmap.live Doesn’t Add Up

#275

Post by ryanlol »

ummonk wrote: post #103
dmix wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not ban Waze for their police reporting feature?

Incidentally, I think that measures by Uber to identify riders who are cops and deny them rides should have gotten Uber the same treatment as any other organized crime syndicate.

Why?

Re: Tim Cook’s Company-Wide Email on Hkmap.live Doesn’t Add Up

#276

Post by greggman2 »

Like lots of people have pointed out the email makes no sense. Any app can be used to do the things the Hkmap.Live app was banned for. So, in order to force Apple's hand it seems like people should start trying to use Apple's own apps to coordinate HK related protests and information to the point that China asks Apple to ban it's own apps. That seems like the only thing that would get Apple to have to deal with this apparent contradiction.

I'm not familar enough to know what that would be. Can you make custom maps on Apple maps like you can on Google Maps? Maybe someone could gather info and make custom maps once an hour that shows locations. Or they could post a feed of HKmap.Live screenshots to some giant iMessages list. Etc...

Some ideas of what might happen if they can get China to make the request to ban Apple's own apps.

1) Apple bans their on apps in response to requests from China the apps are being used for bad things

2) Apple ignores China and risks China banning Apple from China

3) Apple hastly separates the app store from the phone so they can claim they don't control the apps (probably can't happen fast enough to be an actual response)

4) other?

Of course if China never asks for Apple to ban it's own apps then nothing would come of this but the idea is basically to force a stronger response so that one way or another something happens.

Re: Tim Cook’s Company-Wide Email on Hkmap.live Doesn’t Add Up

#277

Post by truth0seeker »

epmaybe wrote: post #184
asdf333 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah...not sure i can ditch my macbook pro yet but next phone is not going to be iphone anymore...

why not? Short of developing for iPhone, iPad, or macOS, I don't think they bring anything new to the table that minor inconveniences on a Windows or Linux platform wouldn't solve.

I guess you have to use Linux because Microsoft does the same thing. Azure China is isolated from the rest and hold by a Chinese company; Windows and Office 365 has Chinese specific version; Skype is not available etc.

Re: Tim Cook’s Company-Wide Email on Hkmap.live Doesn’t Add Up

#278

Post by truth0seeker »

shakna wrote: post #142
baddox wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that could be a valid choice for Apple to make, and I think reasonable people could disagree about which choice Apple ended up making. But it seems very plausible to me that Apple was presented with credible information that this app was being used to organize violent attacks and that Apple made a reasonable choice to ban the app according to Apple's policies about following local laws as well as Apple's inte…

Absolutely. The problem with Apple's, and many other companies, early response policies is it depends on the source of truth, such as the police, not being complicit. If they always wait for a court order, PR disasters happen, and polticians dredge up 'think of the children' arguments. If they don't wait for an order they can become part of the machinery of ill-intentioned polticial or commercial forces. Damned if th…

I totally agree. But there is a point you may not aware.

Government, law enforcement and court are not separated in China, they all belonging to the same central government. So if you really want a court order, they’ll issue one quickly.

That’s the tricky situation. Companies must obey local laws, but local laws are built on behalf of central government, and court exists for protecting central government.

Re: Tim Cook’s Company-Wide Email on Hkmap.live Doesn’t Add Up

#279

Post by Gigablah »

xenospn wrote: post #264
panda88888 wrote: post #144

I am not surprised by this. I always thought Tim Cook talks a good talk, but fails to walk the walk when the stakes at hand is real. He’s fine with standing up to the CIA/FBI because he knows it’s good PR for business and the US government cannot do anything without a lengthy court fight that is mostly fair. Same with other US domestic issues such as DACA, sane sex marriage, etc. But when it comes to the PRC governme…

Honestly - Apple could have doubled their prices and gained 90% of the US market if he stood up to China and told the CCP to stuff it. They would have had amazing PR for decades.

Google exited China and the PR from that didn't last for more than a couple of years. What makes you think this will be different?

Re: Tim Cook’s Company-Wide Email on Hkmap.live Doesn’t Add Up

#280

Post by unfunco »

umvi wrote: post #156

If I were Tim Cook, I'd have said: "Sure, we'll comply with your demands" and then I would have immediately mobilized a covert engineering task force to push out an urgent bug fix that rigs every Apple device in the entirety of China to turn into a Winnie the Pooh brick on Xi's birthday

And that's why you'll never be CEO of Apple.
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