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Apple CEO Tim Cook Calling for Bloomberg to Retract Its Chinese Spy Chip Story

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Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook Calling for Bloomberg to Retract Its Chinese Spy Chip Story

#191

Post by Animats »

MertsA wrote: post #53
Drdrdrq wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, so you know what the truth is in this case? Good for you! /s

Bloomberg listed a lot of entities in that article and every single one that wasn't anonymous has all but called Bloomberg outright frauds over it. They have all sorts of anonymous sources telling them anything and everything about this supposed plot yet none of them provided any shred of evidence to back up their claims. Where's the smoking gun here? Why don't we have die shots of this thing? Why hasn't anyone on th…

Enough people have access to Supermicro boards that this should have been found by now. Adding a part seems unnecessary just to add a back door. Intel CPU chips already have built-in back doors; you just have to enable them.

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook Calling for Bloomberg to Retract Its Chinese Spy Chip Story

#192

Post by vageli »

garmaine wrote: post #185
stephenr wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If there is something like a NSL involved, Apple's legal team would have already reviewed it. Apple's official statement clearly said, they're not under any form of NSL or gag order. The prevailing logic seems to be that US courts still believe the government can't force you to say something against your will, only prevent you from saying something.

> Apple's official statement clearly said, they're not under any form of NSL or gag order. Except that a NSL can (legally) command the recipient to lie about it.

> Except that a NSL can (legally) command the recipient to lie about it.

Do you have a source for this statement? As far as I'm aware, you can be compelled to remain silent but not compelled to give a false statement.

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook Calling for Bloomberg to Retract Its Chinese Spy Chip Story

#193

Post by nil_pointer »

catchaway727 wrote: post #165
tunesmith wrote: post #63

Is it precedented for a news organization to double down like this in the case where a reporter just makes stuff up Stephen Glass style? Because barring a Stephen Glass scenario, what's fascinating here is that no matter which side is right, this is evidence of some sort of mysterious power play. Either Apple was hacked, they know, and are denying, which is evidence of them being under the thumb of U.S. national secu…

The Clinton administration and CIA tried to deny the China-Boeing technology transfer incident. But others in the CIA were concerned, raised the issue and were later proven right. I asked people in the CIA about the Bloomberg story and their response seemed to indicate that the story is real. There’s immense pressure to deny this story for several reasons.

China is Apple's most important market. They have a huge motivation to deny it, as it could cost them doing business there.

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook Calling for Bloomberg to Retract Its Chinese Spy Chip Story

#194

Post by stephenr »

garmaine wrote: post #185
stephenr wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If there is something like a NSL involved, Apple's legal team would have already reviewed it. Apple's official statement clearly said, they're not under any form of NSL or gag order. The prevailing logic seems to be that US courts still believe the government can't force you to say something against your will, only prevent you from saying something.

> Apple's official statement clearly said, they're not under any form of NSL or gag order. Except that a NSL can (legally) command the recipient to lie about it.

Do you have a reference for this? There is apparently case law from the 1970s' where SCOTUS ruled that the government cannot compel someone to speak against their wishes.

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook Calling for Bloomberg to Retract Its Chinese Spy Chip Story

#195

Post by jmull »

So interesting.

With a year of reporting on this story Bloomberg has a LOT of unpublished info. If they are correct they should have a ton of information to back up the claims in their story, including plenty of stuff to put the lie to some/many of the specific denials Apple has made.

Maybe they are waiting, to let Apple hang itself with strong, detailed, public proclamations. Then, bam! They publish all their proof, blowing up Apple's denials, forcing Cook and many other to resign, etc.

Or... they've actually got nothing. In that case they won't be able to refute Apple. Either they slink away, hoping everyone forgets, or issue a massively embarrassing retraction.

I'm fascinated to see what happens. I think we'll know in the next few weeks or months at the most.

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook Calling for Bloomberg to Retract Its Chinese Spy Chip Story

#196

Post by stephenr »

DuskStar wrote: post #183
stephenr wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If there is something like a NSL involved, Apple's legal team would have already reviewed it. Apple's official statement clearly said, they're not under any form of NSL or gag order. The prevailing logic seems to be that US courts still believe the government can't force you to say something against your will, only prevent you from saying something.

And how would the CEO know what sort of NSL some datacenter employees are under?

The original claim is that Apple conducted it's own investigation and refused to cooperate with the FBI on the matter.

They (apple) have refuted this claim and said they're also not under any form of NSL or gag order.

Your suggestion is that both accounts are false, and that a secret government run investigation was run without Apple management's knowledge, but involving Apple datacenter staff, who are in fact under some form of NSL/gag order?

Perhaps you should go work for Bloomberg, they'll run your theory as gospel next week.

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook Calling for Bloomberg to Retract Its Chinese Spy Chip Story

#197

Post by Latteland »

moftz wrote: post #135
tunesmith wrote: post #63

Is it precedented for a news organization to double down like this in the case where a reporter just makes stuff up Stephen Glass style? Because barring a Stephen Glass scenario, what's fascinating here is that no matter which side is right, this is evidence of some sort of mysterious power play. Either Apple was hacked, they know, and are denying, which is evidence of them being under the thumb of U.S. national secu…

Tim Cook would have to know. If there is something like a NSL involved, Apple's legal team would have already reviewed it. That same legal team would also be advising Cook on what he publicly says since he is an officer in the company. He could lose his job or be fined for saying false information in the press (think about what happened to Musk) so its in his and his legal team's best interest to only say true things…

I think it's possible to set things up so that leaders of the companies are shielded from the knowledge on purpose. GM notoriously set up their lawsuit handling legal unit to shield knowledge of problems, among other things with the ignition switch [0]. This was a very specifically organized system where they tried to keep the knowledge of agreements on lawsuits from being visible up the chain - it was no accident. So big companies can and will do this when it suits them. I think this was clearly unethical, but I suspect it's common.

0: http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/attorneys_fired_by_gm...

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook Calling for Bloomberg to Retract Its Chinese Spy Chip Story

#198

Post by stephenr »

freyr wrote: post #148
moftz wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tim Cook would have to know. If there is something like a NSL involved, Apple's legal team would have already reviewed it. That same legal team would also be advising Cook on what he publicly says since he is an officer in the company. He could lose his job or be fined for saying false information in the press (think about what happened to Musk) so its in his and his legal team's best interest to only say true things…

> An NSL compels you to say nothing. You can neither confirm nor deny anything Ordinarily, yes. But what if this was double secret NSL?

I'm not sure NSL's are like meat/cheese layers on hamburgers.

What's the NSL equivalent of adding bacon?

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook Calling for Bloomberg to Retract Its Chinese Spy Chip Story

#199

Post by kylel »

ColanR wrote: post #178
athrowaway3z wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> its probably against the law for him to outright lie about the situation in the eyes of the SEC Didn't some leaked documents show that a 'shadow' judicial status has been created ( under post 9/11 histeria ) where, in the interest of national security, firms are allowed and even required to lie about things?

Do you remember what those documents were, or how they might be found online? (being curious, not confrontational)

See the wiki page for the FISA court [0]

I haven’t read anything that says people/companies must lie, but I have read that they cannot divulge information due to gag orders. (See the court case Microsoft vs US Government [1] )

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intell...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_v._United_States_(20...

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook Calling for Bloomberg to Retract Its Chinese Spy Chip Story

#200

Post by mcphage »

appleiigs wrote: post #132
mcphage wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This idea that Tim Cook / Apple PR must know everything that's going on at Apple is kinda ridiculous. He doesn't have to know everything, but he sure as hell would know "a foreign government is implanting spy chips into the hardware that is being sold to us".

A foreign spy agency isn't going to walk around with a sign saying, hey we planted this. The spy's sole purpose is to make sure Tim doesn't know about it.

So this spy doesn’t want Tim to know about it, but does want Bloomberg to know about it?
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