Apple today filed a lawsuit against NSO Group and its parent company to hold it accountable for the surveillance and targeting of Apple users. The complaint provides new information on how NSO Group infected victims’ devices with its Pegasus spyware. To prevent further abuse and harm to its users, Apple is also seeking a permanent injunction to ban NSO Group from using any Apple software, services, or devices.
I wonder if this means Apple will sue itself next, because what the NSO Group does is not that different from what Apple itself does in, for instance, China. Apple has given the Chinese government full access to the iCloud data of all Chinese Apple users, so much so that even Apple itself cannot enter the date centres where Chinese iCloud data is stored. If Apple is suing the NSO Group for the “surveillance and targeting of Apple users”, why isn’t Apple saying anything about how it is aiding China to do the exact same thing?
Don’t get me wrong – the NSO Group is terrible and if they get sued out of existence that’s a major win, but the blatant hypocrisy here is so obvious I almost feel like Apple is doing this just to see how far its supporters are willing to go to defend them.
It’s easy to stick to your morals in countries with fair and open judicial systems. It’s how you act in those that don’t that show who you really are.
Thom: Apple should violate Chinese government law.
Also Thom: Apple should be punished for violating EU law.
Me: ???
It goes like this. Whether you like it or not, to do business in China, you have to follow the law there. To do business in Europe, you have to follow the law there. To do business in the US, you have to follow the law there. Do we see the common trend here?
If Apple, or any other company, should do business with the Chinese due to their massive rights violations is one issue, and one which we can debate. But you don’t get to say that Apple, or any company, has to follow the law in one country but not in another just because you don’t like the law in that other country. It’s not only asinine, but foolish, since it opens up a precedent to do exactly that: not follow the laws you want them to follow.
Yeah, no.
China is currently committing a genocide. Aiding that regime, as Apple and many other major corporations are doing, is a crime against humanity. You don’t get to say “just following orders!” when it involves things like genocide and ethnic cleansing.
United Nations obligations and resolutions are clear in international law. In Europe these via the European Convention (a none EU treaty) is the mechanism by which they are brought into local law.
Whenever I have the opportunity I mention this to Americans. The sample I have is none scientific but so far positive. Many Americans do support the idea of constitutional level human rights such as might be implemented by a bill of rights. Some in the US legal establishment actively resist bringing UN obligations into US law under the principle of sovereignty which I think is a weak excuse.
China’s legal system is extremely underdeveloped.
Thom is quite correct. By definition human rights are universal. Post-Nuremberg “just following orders” is no defence in law.
On this day of Thanksgiving for us Americans it might be wise to heed the words of one of our founding fathers when it comes to companies like Apple…
“Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains.” – Thomas Jefferson
Ford and IBM were happy to sell to the NSDAP despite the horror stories coming 0ut of Germany pre WWII, companies in the USA and EU have been happily having their products made with Chinese slave labor since the 70s, companies have no soul nor conscience nor sense of loyalty to anyone but themselves. This is why we must push for governments to reign in their abuses. Because lets be honest…without being pushed these corps would happily go back to having their products made in labor camps by starving children if it means they could increase their stock price by 4%.
I have to say, this is one of the most naive replies I’ve seen on this subject, any by the author, no less. Spent much time living outside the western bubble?
If Apple decides it is not going to follow the law in China, The head of Apple China , Ms Isabel Ge Mahe, will be the person legally responsible for the companies actions in the country. She will be arrested. If they choose to play by the book (and who can force them to? Just ask Peng Shuai), there will be some kind of trial, and she will be jailed. (They might torcher her too. Just to send a message. They can do what they like. )
Being jailed will disqualify her from being the head of the company, so Tim will have to find another. If Apple appoints such a person, they will be arrested too. If Apple fails to appoint such a person, their company will no longer be a legal entity. All of Apple China’s employees will be unemployed, it’s buildings will be repossessed and the cash it has in the bank (there is no difference between the banks and the government in China, they are all one organisation) will be the property of the government. If you don’t understand about currency hedging and why that means Apple will likely have very large sums of money in Chinese banks, I suggest you do some research.
So by “Standing up to China” Apple will have got at least one, and probably more employees jailed, They will will have lost their property, maybe a billion dollars, and they will have exited the country, being unable to do business there any more.
Now as the good Mr/Ms darknexus says, there is a debate to be had if western countries should be in China at all. That is worthy of scholarly debate. My personal view is that they shouldn’t, but where are strong arguments for both side of this, and I’m open to my mind being changed.
However, saying Apple can stand up to China, reminds me of those American kids I’d sometimes come across while travelling, who are getting into trouble with the law for some dumbs-ass thing or other, and they are loudly proclaiming to the officer “No, you don’t understand, you’re talking about local laws, I’m not local, I’m an AMERICAN, those laws don’t apply to me.” – Sadly I’ve never been there when the penny has dropped and they realise that the local laws very much apply to them.
I am as confused as anyone else, why Thom is so concern about Chinese users who are using Apple, than the Chinese users themselves.
He might be even deleted my posts whenever he post rants against China, since I have not found my posts that are critical against Thom.
To Thom Holwerda: Please ask Apple to quit in the Chinese market, that’s a perfect advice, rather than opposing Chinese law. If you do business there, follow their laws or else quit being there.
Do you have any evidence where the genocide are taking place?
Have you even there in China?
I think people like you should quit thinking that “Europe equals the world, or what we are doing in Europe you should do likewise” mentality.
It is all about trust, when the East trusted the west and we’ve got? Imperialism, opium etc.
There is plenty of hard evidence of genocide taking place in China: eyewitness accounts, intelligence, occasional mistakes (partial admissions) of the Chinese government. You won’t find it in Chinese media and other governments are also careful with their official messaging not to start a full blown war. The Chinese side doesn’t show such restraints and its propaganda machine, supported by foreign shills, works in overdrive. All this creates a false impression of uncertainty and a balanced discussion taking place – that’s propaganda at work for you.
I agree with you Apple should leave China rather than try to circumvent the Chinese law. Doing business there is like trading with Nazi Germany in late ’30s. Sooner or later they are going to get burned by it anyway.
@ndrw,
For the evidence, I can argue that the eyewitnesses accounts, intelligence, the occasional mistakes are just propaganda. There are Uyghur intellectuals who left China for good and are bad mouthing the communist regime for no reason other than seek refuge to the west. Imagine the violent protesters in Hongkong flying British and American flags, disrupting the flow of traffic and air traffic and beating people on the streets that do not agree with them? That’s the kind of people Thom Holwerda loved to defend. Imagine, in your country, people will start protesting and flying foreign flags and beats you in the face if you argue with them? How do the western journalists reported these events, by sugarcoating the event as “they protest against the new bill” in Hongkong?”
How can the OIC (Organization of Islamic Conference) turning a blind eye or pretends(they did go in the Xinjiang region to investigate) and came up with a resolution that nothing genocidal there? The people there were just obliged (western term is: forced or coerced) to attend education centers(western term is: labor camps and any derogatory terms).
I am not for China, we have this quarrel against them in South China Sea, so I am not A FAN of China. But you westerners, just keep on falling on the narrative from your politicians and media. If China was not a nuclear power, and is not economically powerful, they would be turned in the likes of Iraq and Afghanistan! Tell me if this is far fetched. The Xinjiang region is just there to lit the spark of a revolution that would make China weak. The west can no longer use the opium trade.
Where are the sattelite photos? Where are the Uyghurs who escape to the neighboring countries escaping the Genocide? The Chinese can’t guard all the borders, correct? In world war 2, we have so many photographic evidence of the great escapes of the Jews in a highly guarded Nazi Europe, YET NONE in the unguarded vast border in Xinjiang???
O western brilliant minds, come on.
The evidence exists, look it up. The fact some governments or businesses choose not to act on it for short term benefits is unfortunate. Sooner or later they will regret it.
You raised a good point about public trust. Who should we, as individuals without access to information, intelligence, high quality imagery etc, trust? Surely, each government is lying, ergo they are all not trustworthy? Wrong. Governments running large propaganda programmes and having no checks and balances are known to produce mainly false data. China and Russia are good examples. This is effective because people consider someone untrustworthy when he/she lies ~10% of the time. Having an organisation systematically lying 90% of the time feels unnatural and most people will assume much lower odds. Another tool is looking at how easy is it to prove a claim. In this case, it would be trivial for China to let UN observers in, instead they chose to ramp up propaganda even further. So, even if you refuse to look at data or you consider them insufficient, you still have enough tools to make an informed decision.
BTW, the true victims are citizens of such countries. If you’re one of them and aren’t part of the government – get out as soon as you can. Restrictions on movement of people have already started.
Also, not related to my previous comment, but how about an action against Apple for not closing these security holes in a timely fashion in the first place? I’d argue that Apple are just as responsible as NSOGroup here.
I agree with Thom, there’s plenty of hypocrisy. Although I think the hypocrisy goes much further than apple alone. Governments around the world including ours are doing the same thing. I think it’s completely naive to think that suing and “banning” these companies will actually stop the hacking & spying activities. They have the implicit support of governments all around the world. It’s one of those things where everyone wants to point a finger even though a whole bunch of finger pointers are also guilty.
Public: Oh how dare you violate user privacy, we won’t stand for it!
Private: Same time next week?
Quit the Chinese market, if you don’t like their privacy laws or else just like the other commenter, your employees will be arrested, and your business will become an illegal entity.
The choice is yours.
@Thom
The way I see it, Apple is asking for some “honour among thieves”, basically Apple agreeing to comply with the official spying demands of the Chinese government under the understanding that the Chinese government won’t engage in any unofficial spying with the aid of malware and such, or at least not do it in the open and on a large scale (because doing so makes Apple look bad for co-operating with the Chinese government).
Which brings the question: Can there really be any honour among thieves?
—
BTW the only solution to this problem is for free countries to stop doing business with dictatorships like China. But since a large portion of the public not only doesn’t consider trading with dictatorships to be an issue but has also been convinced that the TPP was a good idea, I wouldn’t hold my breath.
I wonder if the U.S. fits in to your criteria of “dictatorships” since they dictate what countries to do if anything, if those countries don’t hence the sanctions and interference will commence.
The only reason I prefer the iPhone over Android in China is that their prevalence requires companies to follow Apple’s privacy rules in order to pass the app approval process and appear in the App Store. Even big companies like ICBC bank (China’s largest bank by marketshare) need to follow Apple’s rules if they want their phone app listed on the App Store. Android on the other hand allows easy sideloading so ICBC does not offer their app on any Android based App Store (*for China users) and requires their China users to download the APK directly from the ICBC website, which allows them to bypass any privacy oversight.
nrlz,
I think they’d have trouble enforcing that to be honest. In general it’s hard to prove or disprove that a company is actually following it’s own privacy policy. For example, several VPN providers in hong kong were discovered to be logging data despite claiming they did not.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/7-vpn-services-found-recording-user-logs-despite-no-log-pledge
Yet some of the developers involved are still in apple’s app store with an app store privacy disclaimer saying “Data not collected”.
https://apps.apple.com/sa/app/vpn-secure-unlimited-proxy/id1560112993
Is it true? Well, neither we nor apple can really be sure. The problem with privacy policies is that it always boils down to trust. Since you were talking about Chinese apps specifically, my gut feeling is that quite a few of them are not respecting the terms of their own privacy policy…but we can’t prove it.
On Android, you have the option of patching apps, then sideloading it. You also have the option of creating custom ROMs and removing any potential spyware. On iOS platforms, neither of these are possible. Some might argue that through the use of an iOS Developer account you could, but only for apps that you write yourself, not for anything else. On Android, you have control over your device to a far greater extent than you would on iOS. Also if one Android manufacturer curtails these freedoms, you have other options. I find it perplexing when I see comments like yours, that Apple is somewhat better, when you have to put your blind faith in them to look after your interests.