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Apple Removes Apps from China Store That Help Internet Users Evade Censorship

nytimes.com

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Re: Apple Removes Apps from China Store That Help Internet Users Evade Censorship

#431

Post by simonh »

sievebrain wrote: post #294
simonh wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many of Apple's devices are manufactured in China? The Chinese Government could completely cripple Apple in a second. It really isn't Apple that has the leverage. Censorship is fundamental to Chinese government policy. It's totally non-negotiable. You either do as they say, or you don't operate in China. No negotiation, no compromise. Given the manufacturing situation China has Apple by the short and curlies, and…

Yet somehow Google manages to make phones and not cooperate with China.

Google also doesn't violate Chinese censorship or data disclosure laws, which apparently is what it's being suggested that Apple do.

Of course Google do this by not operating in China at all any more. But what is being suggested is that Apple at least threaten to violate Chinese law or attempt to apply pressure to the Chinese government. Even Google didn't try that when they did operate in China, because frankly they're not insane and they had employees in China, and presumably didn't want any of those employees gracing the hospitality of the Chinese police force.

Re: Apple Removes Apps from China Store That Help Internet Users Evade Censorship

#432

Post by shalmanese »

KMag wrote: post #339
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #206

Earlier 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…

The Baidu front page today basically looks like the Google front page.

Re: Apple Removes Apps from China Store That Help Internet Users Evade Censorship

#434

Post by dilap »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #301
dilap wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, I don't think it is a false dichotomy in this case. It seems unlikely to me in the extreme that China is going to change its policies in response to pressure from some foreign company, even one as large as Apple. More generally, I don't think describing countries & cultures that don't share your particular values as evil is reasonable or useful.

> Nah, I don't think it is a false dichotomy in this case. It seems unlikely to me in the extreme that China is going to change its policies in response to pressure from some foreign company, even one as large as Apple. That is still a false dichotomy. They don't necessarily have to change the policy in order to render it ineffective. Apple is full of smart people. They could think of something if they had to . Other…

Setting aside our debate about if free speech is an absolute, cross-cultural moral right or more of a trade-off with other values up to each culture to decide...

Apple itself is a long way from being the free speech crusader you are hoping for; in fact, they are clearly quite pro-censorship: just look at the App store. It's ridiculously censored! The refusals to approve the drone strike app Metadata+ and the Twitter-alternatie Gab strike me as particularly egregious. See also the section "1.1 Objectionable Content" of the app store review guidelines -- it's like stepping back in time to the worst caricature of 1950s America prudery and censorship.

Re: Apple Removes Apps from China Store That Help Internet Users Evade Censorship

#435

Post by aluhut »

aluhut wrote: post #344
intro-b wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are honestly a lot of similar patterns of argumentation, attack, deflection, and amplification that I've noticed across these platforms whenever China is mentioned; as a native Chinese speaker, vast populations of Chinese internet communities and social media services are pretty unreadable to me because you see the same dozen arguments by Chinese netizens unfolding over and over again. His/her assumption that m…

From reading through some of the China threads you came upon, I'm not really sure if you are really familiar with the concept of "free".

you = he

...it was late.

Re: Apple Removes Apps from China Store That Help Internet Users Evade Censorship

#437

Post by acdha »

yarg wrote: post #425
acdha wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A nation state doing traffic analysis will have people working full time to subvert the initial weak link of getting the software (which nobody else uses so simply possessing it will be seen as a sign of criminal intent) and keying information, doing statistical analysis to find why people have unusual access patterns to that innocent content and correlating people not known to be connected who are showing those same…

Obtaining the software is hard, that is certain - but human beings have been successfully smuggling contraband for as long as there has been such a thing. And when you download the dozen specific fluffy cat videos, you don't just download that set - that would be fundamentally stupid - the set exists to mask the source, not to protect the receiver. The receiver would download a naively popular superset of the target…

I think it's very risky to conflate different classes of threat. Yes, the state could suborn a CA but simply using SSL does not make you stand out. Using software which is designed to evade surveillance is by itself a bad thing to be caught possessing and unless it's perfect it will leave traces which will draw attention.

The problem I'm concerned with is the promise: tell people that something like this works and they are likely to trust it – at least until news spreads about other people getting caught by basic statistical traffic analysis. This is basically the Bitcoin anonymity trap: the marketing guys like to run around telling people it's anonymous and people often miss the distinction that any mistake will cause it to fail open with a full public history.

Re: Apple Removes Apps from China Store That Help Internet Users Evade Censorship

#438

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

kps wrote: post #129
eternalban wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UK is the surveillance capital of this planet [1]. PM May expressed readiness to "tear up Human Rights"[2]. UK is the enabler of Chinese CP leadership, not a follower. [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/19/extreme-survei... [2]: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jun/06/theresa-may...

The UK has been a leader in developing internet censorship for over 20 years; it's never been just one party or government. When certain big network equipment companies (this was before Huawei cloned everything) responded to criticism for building the Great Firewall of China by saying they were only supplying off-the-shelf gear already in use in the West, they weren't lying.

Only the past 10, maybe 15 years - the worst damage has all been in the past 5 years - but you're right about it being both parties: under Labour we had RIPA and the wet-dreams of "Wacky Jacqui" Smith - which in turn enabled the the Tory gov's implementation of these regressive legislation.

The problem is how the UK cabinet is arranged and the politically powerful role of Home Secretary - where the job description is a license to dream up, campaign for, and implement the most effective means of "keeping the country safe". Quite unfortunate.

Long-term change would only be effected by having the role's description framed in the context of keeping the UK - and its freedoms - safe. It's a subtle change to the oath of office, but would hopefully prevent the recent abuses we've seen. Universal mass surveillance is fundamentally incompatible with our right to privacy.

Re: Apple Removes Apps from China Store That Help Internet Users Evade Censorship

#439

Post by jMyles »

archagon wrote: post #324
jMyles wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The western tradition does in fact hold that, in some form, the binding fibers of the universe are the guarantor of certain rights. That's the entire basis for the US Declaration of Independence.

Yes, and China is not really part of that tradition.

Absolutely - the Asian legal tradition is very different. But you said,

> any and all rights

...and I'm just pointing out that there's a robust philosophical framework, including the stated basis for common law traditions such as the US, Britain, Canada, etc. which does characterize rights as being as fundamental to the universe as particles.

Re: Apple Removes Apps from China Store That Help Internet Users Evade Censorship

#440

Post by kps »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #438
kps wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK has been a leader in developing internet censorship for over 20 years; it's never been just one party or government. When certain big network equipment companies (this was before Huawei cloned everything) responded to criticism for building the Great Firewall of China by saying they were only supplying off-the-shelf gear already in use in the West, they weren't lying.

Only the past 10, maybe 15 years - the worst damage has all been in the past 5 years - but you're right about it being both parties: under Labour we had RIPA and the wet-dreams of "Wacky Jacqui" Smith - which in turn enabled the the Tory gov's implementation of these regressive legislation. The problem is how the UK cabinet is arranged and the politically powerful role of Home Secretary - where the job description is…

No, more than 20. Sometimes, the slope actually is slippery.

http://www.liquisearch.com/internet_watch_foundation/history...

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