[HN Gopher] China Bans iPhone Use for Government Officials at Work
___________________________________________________________________
China Bans iPhone Use for Government Officials at Work
Author : smugma
Score : 111 points
Date : 2023-09-06 14:30 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (stocks.apple.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (stocks.apple.com)
| smugma wrote:
| "China's restriction mirrors similar bans in the U.S. against
| Huawei Technologies as well as against officials using Chinese-
| owned TikTok"
| baby wrote:
| This is the correct explanation. And that makes sense as well.
|
| I think another insight might be that the Chinese gov doesn't
| really like when large companies can influence their decisions.
| I'd imagine that if everyone in the gov has an iPhone it makes
| it harder to be tough on Tim Apple.
| WhereIsTheTruth wrote:
| The reciprocity is related to fear of spying
|
| In the age of AI and model training, data is more than ever
| precious
|
| The US spying on EU leaders and their industry is perhaps
| what China is worried about
|
| https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/us-security-agency-
| spie...
|
| https://www.mediapart.fr/en/journal/france/290615/revealed-m.
| ..
|
| https://www.euractiv.com/section/global-
| europe/news/russia-s...
| smoldesu wrote:
| It's a shame that a superpower like China can't call out
| the United States on surveillance without it being
| hypocrisy. We need more countries objecting to unfair
| power-alignment like FIVE EYES, XKeyscore and PRISM.
| Unfortunately, most of them would rather build their own
| version rather than hold the US to a higher standard.
|
| Hopeless "violence begets violence" situations like this
| underscore how _disastrous_ a full expose of both
| governments would be. It 's a sad time to be a global
| citizen.
| kube-system wrote:
| All major powers spy on everyone. It is a prerequisite
| for being a major power, and it always has been.
| smoldesu wrote:
| I agree. In the same way we resent nuclear warfare
| though, we should want to "de-surveillance-ize" as much
| of the free world as possible. It's an unsafe deterrent
| and (as we're seeing now) a _terrible_ precedent to set
| when things verge towards war.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| _All major powers spy on everyone_
|
| Can't we just say all nation states? It certainly isn't
| just major powers that have spy agencies.
|
| E.g.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_intelligence_agencies
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Security_Agency_(Sout
| h_A...
| crazygringo wrote:
| I don't think _all_ nation states have spy agencies.
|
| Wikipedia lists them for 122 countries [1], out of 206
| [2]. So about 60%. Maybe a little higher if a few are
| missing.
|
| I do wonder if there's also some kind of commonly
| accepted division within those that separates the "big
| guys" vs the "little guys", e.g. if there's a certain key
| spying ability that takes a certain level of funding and
| sophistication. I mean, I do have to assume that there is
| a qualitative difference between the kind of spying done
| by "major powers" and others.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_intelligence_ag
| encies
|
| [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states
| yorwba wrote:
| More pertinent in this case, probably:
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-09-15/china-
| wan...
|
| _When Xu was apprehended, he had with him an iPhone whose
| contents he'd faithfully backed up to the cloud, a lapse
| that allowed FBI investigators to recover all the data from
| Apple Inc._
|
| ...
|
| _FBI search warrants to Apple and Google had opened up his
| iCloud and multiple Gmail accounts, and digital forensics
| experts at the bureau had mined the contents of the phones
| recovered at the arrest. (Investigators were not able to
| recover anything, however, from the iPhone Xu Heng had been
| carrying. The day after the arrest, someone remotely
| accessed the device and wiped it clean.)_
| saiya-jin wrote:
| As simple as that. Apple's 'security' is type of
| selective security that looks great on PR campaigns (we
| encrypt this part of face scan, we do that to cloud),
| make users feel they have something better, yet if one
| actually has anything important to hide, its useless.
|
| Certain Israeli private company can hack through any
| phone security (at least both ios and android) like its
| not there, you just need to pay enough. You can be
| genocidal murderer too, doesnt matter.
|
| Good luck explaining this to nontrivial part of HN crowd
| who are absolutely uncritical of Apple. I think if google
| would be doing 100% as they do now but be a chinese
| company, they would be smeared to hell by the same crowd.
| At least both are US companies, so some diacussions with
| some can be had.
| petesergeant wrote:
| > And that makes sense as well
|
| I dunno, I think I'd rather a group of people I was trying to
| hack were using a collection of random devices with vendor-
| supplied customer Android builds on them than iOS.
|
| > if everyone in the gov has an iPhone it makes it harder to
| be tough on Tim Apple
|
| Everyone in the government is a party member and will toe the
| line. It's the middle-class public you need to keep your eye
| on.
| ksec wrote:
| > it makes it harder to be tough on Tim Apple.
|
| Considering China's Biggest Export are Consumer Electronics
| and its adjacent industry, Apple has been the biggest help to
| that in the past 15 years. Not just on its products, but also
| the whole Supply Chain from Display to NAND. I warned about
| BOE and YMTC in 2016 on SemiWiki before both names enter into
| mainstream media. And it seems only Financial Times [1] ( or
| arguably Patrick McGee ) is getting it. Almost every comments
| on HN hate Qualcomm, during the Apple vs Qualcomm trial, the
| company that sided with Apple most was interestingly ( or not
| ) Huawei.
|
| So no, there are still no signs they are tough on Apple. If
| anything Apple are helping Chinese companies to set up base
| outside of China to continue their operation. Actively
| funding and directing resources. This trend has only recently
| stopped some what after India demanded more local company to
| be used inside supply chains.
|
| Again, if anything Tim Cook is very much Pro China.
|
| [1] https://www.ft.com/content/bf8e3846-2421-4f91-becf-2dfe39
| ec9...
| dr-detroit wrote:
| [dead]
| cabirum wrote:
| iPhones are also banned in Russia for govt officials. I believe
| that was after Kaspersky reported on the targeted vuln/backdoor
| attack ("Operation Triangulation")
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| > I believe that was after Kaspersky reported on the targeted
| vuln/backdoor attack
|
| If that is true, what a bizarre reaction. Apple wasn't behind
| this, and, if anything, it highlighted Kaspersky shortcomings.
| cabirum wrote:
| Kaspersky exposed apple devices are backdoored and cannot be
| trusted. These devices are essentially black boxes controlled
| by adversary that cannot be properly audited. Apple obviously
| cooperates with Western govts providing/injecting backdoors,
| so it's prudent to ban them.
|
| What "kaspersky shortcomings" are you talking about?
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| > Kaspersky exposed apple devices are backdoored and cannot
| be trusted.
|
| iPhones are of course not invulnerable to malware, no one
| is claiming that. Android devices aren't either.
|
| What Kaspersky "exposed" was that their corporate devices
| were compromised. They claimed victory afterwards when they
| found the fact. But the truth is that they inadvertently
| allowed malware to roam free in their corporate devices for
| several years, which is quite telling, especially for a
| security company.
|
| Them shifting the blame to Apple is like blaming Cisco for
| a corporate network hack, when your personnel left a device
| exposed to the internet with no appropriate protections in
| place. Yeah, a Meraki could be as much of a "black box" as
| a mobile device.
|
| I get that Kaspersky has no business with Apple, but the
| whole saga was bizarrely unprofessional from their part.
| ramshanker wrote:
| Since when stocks.apple.com redirects to Wall Street Journal?
| Scoundreller wrote:
| They embed news links in the stocks app, so probably an
| artefact of that.
| nashashmi wrote:
| stocks apple is a goto shortcut url. But even then the paywall
| stays.
|
| The link should be changed.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| Might be that they have too much internal stuff going on, that
| they don't want phone makers to know about. The more leverage the
| phone makers have, the more difficult to rein them in.
| seatac76 wrote:
| Expect more and more of this. The ultimate prize are technology
| standards, right now the West dominates that and China is
| actively trying to dethrone them. The world will sort itself in
| two camps again, Cold War is back functionally.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> the West dominates_
|
| You mean the US dominates. I don't see any EU, Canadian or
| Australian designed smart-phones, Office365, Google, Chat-GPT,
| AWS, I can buy reaching critical mass.
|
| Edit: INB4 the chip hipsters who found out about ASML during
| the pandemic chip shortage, chime in with "but muh ASML is
| European!". Yes, it is European(Dutch), it's also based on EUV
| tech licensed from the US, and has EUV light sources at it's
| core secret sauce, made by Cymer, a US company, but I was
| talking about software products and services which are the big
| money makers.
|
| EU, Canada, and the rest of the west are lacking in world
| dominating SW companies and rely exclusively on the US, which
| the US can always use as leverage.
|
| Ironically, China's detachment form the US SW companies and the
| need to develop it's own giants, will give it a major advantage
| long term, versus US's allies which will keep relying on it.
| seatac76 wrote:
| Ahh yes, good point it is mostly the US, but US allies do own
| a lot of IP and supply chain capability, particularly Japan
| and SK.
|
| I don't agree China will have the advantage though, it will
| certainly develop its own standards and mandate it internally
| but it remains to be seen if it will be able to export those
| standards, it tried with BRI and that did not work, but that
| was more manufacturing oriented. It'll try to tech again but
| it will be a tough sell. It simply does not have the goodwill
| required. Will see gains in Russia, Pakistan and Cambodia,
| some countries in Africa but that's about it.
| emodendroket wrote:
| No but it's a symbiotic system with EU companies being key
| parts of the system. Or am I missing some way I can buy a
| top-of-the-line cell phone not created with Taiwan-
| manufactured chips built using Dutch equipment? This is on
| purpose: the system is designed to create an important role
| for partners albeit a subordinate one. Though one might argue
| that they let Taiwan become too important. Either way, the
| recent book a Chip War is illuminating.
| sentinalien wrote:
| Most big US HW/SW companies do have a significant presence in
| Europe and some other places like Israel, it's not like
| Europe has a lack of engineers and scientists capable of
| building this stuff, they are just mostly working for US
| companies
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> it 's not like Europe has a lack of engineers and
| scientists capable of building this stuff_
|
| That wasn't my point. We have engineers, but we have no
| local champions. ASML, SAP and Spotify can't balance out
| what the US has.
|
| _> they are just mostly working for US companies_
|
| THAT was my point. Europe has a lack of local top tech
| companies and our brightest minds are working to build up
| the US tech sector instead of the domestic one.
| Terretta wrote:
| > _I don 't see any EU, Canadian or Australian designed
| smart-phones, Office365, Google, Chat-GPT, AWS, I can buy
| reaching critical mass. ... EU, Canada, and the rest of the
| west are lacking in world dominating SW companies and rely
| exclusively on the US, which the US can always use as
| leverage._
|
| Reached critical mass, or even world-dominating: Nokia, RIM,
| Figma, Skype, Spotify, Hetzner
|
| > _the US dominates_
|
| ... by buying them.
|
| // Of these, RIM lost critical mass, Spotify is on uncertain
| ground, and Hetzner seems fine.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> Reached critical mass, or even world-dominating: Nokia,
| RIM, Figma, Skype, Spotify, Hetzner_
|
| Not even close. All of those are meh in terms of market cap
| and have plenty of competition making them easily
| replaceable by US alternatives.
|
| The likes of Apple, Nvidia, Office365, Google, are
| irreplaceable in the EU, and they could buy all of those
| companies if they wanted to.
| throwaway20004 wrote:
| pretty sure figma is american
| bouke wrote:
| Maybe this is when Apple finally decides to encrypt all iCloud
| storage?
| systemz wrote:
| It's almost all e2ee
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36734905
| ftxbro wrote:
| first they evade the U.S. chip bans, now they ban U.S. phones,
| how can they be so hypocritical
| arrowsmith wrote:
| [flagged]
| InitialLastName wrote:
| Both actions are perfectly reasonably justified by self-
| interest, and I don't see them saying it's anything else.
| ftxbro wrote:
| > Both actions are perfectly reasonably justified by self-
| interest
|
| If that's a justification then isn't every kind of hypocrisy
| justified by self-interest?
| lenkite wrote:
| All nations look out for their self-interest first and
| foremost over any concerns of hypocrisy. The US is a prime
| example.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| Hypocrisy is characterized (to my mind) by criticism of the
| actions of others that one undertakes oneself, with a
| presumed unawareness that the conflict exists.
|
| The Chinese government is not acting with any sort of
| denial; these two actions may hold others to standards that
| they don't follow, but they don't seem to be avoiding that
| fact.
| impish9208 wrote:
| Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37403089
| pgt wrote:
| My initial (unconfirmed) suspicion would be that the CCP has
| discovered the US is spying on their party members via Apple
| devices.
| yohannparis wrote:
| I mean, seems fair to have a huge US company with an history of
| giving most of their data to their government to not be used.
| l33t7332273 wrote:
| Can you name some examples?
| viscanti wrote:
| No, because the facts don't fit the narrative unfortunately.
| yohannparis wrote:
| the CLOUD act: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act
|
| I'm a Apple fanboy myself and praise their security features.
| But as a USA company they are not above the law.
| politelemon wrote:
| 81% turnover rate
|
| https://www.techtarget.com/searchsecurity/news/252455036/Gov.
| ..
| nickthegreek wrote:
| Apple does not have a history of giving most of their data to
| the US government. I'd go so far as to say that they have given
| less than .00001% of their data to the US government and they
| were probably legally obligated to do so. Apple actually has a
| history of not bending over to the government.
| jcrash wrote:
| History? You mean like all those times they refuse to open
| phones for the government?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%E2%80%93FBI_encryption_d...
| smoldesu wrote:
| > In 2015 and 2016, Apple Inc. received and objected to or
| challenged at least 11 orders issued by United States
| district courts
|
| Compared to the thousands of requests they received and
| fulfilled in that time:
| https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/us.html
| politelemon wrote:
| If you read the link that you've posted, that was not about
| handing data over. They were already doing that. They didn't
| want to automate the process. They used the dispute as a pr
| campaign which you have faithfully repeated.
| dooglius wrote:
| When it's a public request, and the people involved are
| already dead, there can be this kind of public spectacle.
| Apple was part of PRISM as per Snowden's leaks, and as cited
| in the wiki page, Snowden further claims regarding this
| specific case that the FBI was already perfectly capable of
| decrypting the device.
| testfrequency wrote:
| Apple has a history of giving most of their data to the US
| government?
|
| Did you mean to say "Apple has had to follow federal law when
| handed subpoena requests"?
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Apple doesn't have access to anything remotely to hand over
| data stored on your phone or in iCould, right?
|
| What are they even handing over in subpoenas?
| mdorazio wrote:
| Until very recently, iCloud was not encrypted by default.
| So in the case of a subpoena, they handed over all your
| unencrypted iCloud files, chat logs, backups, etc. That's
| much more difficult due to changes that just happened this
| year.
| slaw wrote:
| You need to turn on 'Advanced Data Protection for iCloud'
| to have data encrypted. Mail, Contacts and Calendars are
| still not encrypted (Apple has key).
|
| https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303
| yohannparis wrote:
| Yes this is what I meant. Thank you for the clarification as
| some people might not be aware of those United States of
| America federal laws.
|
| For example the CLOUD act
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act
| fendy3002 wrote:
| The problem is when the data is related with foreign country
| that's been asked by the US govt.
|
| Can apple not follow it, and will they protect it? Maybe
| someone with better knowledge on this topic can answer.
| petesergeant wrote:
| > "Apple has had to follow federal law when handed subpoena
| requests"
|
| That's no less of a problem for non-friendly governments
| flykespice wrote:
| uno reverse card play against US ban I see
| cynicalsecurity wrote:
| Yes, except US is not trying to destroy China while China seems
| to be secretly dreaming of destroying the West and becoming a
| global authoritarian hegemon. All after the US did for them.
| rayval wrote:
| "Secretly dreaming" sounds like a thought-crime.
|
| In terms of real-world actions, the US has more 750 military
| bases in 80 countries, including 300 in Asia.
|
| China has 8 overseas bases: one in Djibouti and the rest in
| islands near China.
|
| China is definitely trying to advance its economic interests
| throughout the world, by investing in infrastructure in
| Africa and Latin America.
|
| That's what every country does or aspires to do. It's just
| business.
|
| Better transparent soft power that delivers tangible results
| for the local populace rather than opaque coups, mercenary
| armies, and funding dictators and warlords.
| marsa wrote:
| why do you think that?
|
| like sure, i suppose every nation dreams of being the top dog
| ruling the world, and China even has a realistic shot at it
|
| but i never got any 'we want to destroy the west' vibes from
| China
| tylerthetiger wrote:
| The best example of we want to destroy the west vibes is -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atBDuJBuKpQ
| marsa wrote:
| well that's a relief
| adrian_b wrote:
| If some other country would decide that they have the right
| to do anything in order to ensure that my own country can use
| only inferior technologies for making consumer products such
| as smartphones and SSDs, like USA tries to do to China, I
| would not consider that much less aggressive than "trying to
| destroy" or than an overt war declaration.
|
| Frankly, China's reactions to the US "sanctions" have been
| extremely restrained and very far from proportional to what
| USA has done.
|
| The claims of USA that their actions with the purpose of
| hurting leading Chinese companies like Huawei or SMIC are
| "sanctions", are pure BS. If they had really been sanctions,
| then USA would have presented to China some political demands
| that would have been conditions for avoiding sanctions, for
| instance they could have required the recognition of the fact
| that Taiwan is an independent country or a promise that they
| will not try to expand their sovereignty over the adjacent
| seas or better rights for minorities.
|
| But USA did not tie any demands to the so-called "sanctions",
| so these are not sanctions. USA has also claimed that their
| actions, including the blackmailing of European and Taiwanese
| companies to stop selling their products to China have the
| purpose to hurt the Chinese military.
|
| This is also complete BS. The impact on the military will be
| negligible. The only great impact has been on the US
| companies Qualcomm and Micron, whose competitors in
| smartphones and SSDs have been removed from the market
| exactly at the moments when it had become obvious that in the
| very near future the US products will no longer be
| competitive and will lose most of their market share.
|
| Thus the champion of the "free market" could not find any
| other solution to stay in the top position, except by
| cheating.
|
| The problem for USA is that this has been an action that has
| been possible to do only once, and it will be no longer
| available in the future. It has been wasted now providing
| gains only for some US companies, while many other US,
| European and Taiwanese companies have lost money, so they
| have been more preoccupied on how to circumvent the sanctions
| instead on how to support them.
|
| If USA had adopted such policies against China at least 15
| years earlier, they would have had a good chance to ensure a
| constant technological advantage for USA. If such policies
| would have been adopted some time later, in a future when
| China would still have had critical dependencies on US
| technology, in the case of a serious conflict they could have
| been blackmailed to accept whatever USA would have wanted.
|
| Now, these policies have been adopted too late for preventing
| China to match USA in technology and too early to be able to
| force them to do anything, because by the time of any future
| conflict they will have had enough years to eliminate their
| external dependencies.
| bigbacaloa wrote:
| Nonsense. US just as badly motivated as China.
| nologic01 wrote:
| The question is, how many mutually disjoint digital domains will
| the planet eventually split into?
|
| Countries have their own everything (laws, regulations, money,
| taxes etc) given that this is how the world's political power is
| managed.
|
| Digital tech and information flow spread like if it is a
| universal something, but that is not how the worlds political
| power is managed.
|
| At most you might have coalitions of allies that trust each other
| enough to have a joint info-space. But there isnt much trust even
| between EU and US, and ultimately its every truly sovereign
| entity for itself.
| imiric wrote:
| Humans are tribal by nature. Countries and borders exist
| precisely because we can't agree on the same set of laws, forms
| of government, and how society is structured.
|
| In that sense, an open and universal internet is an anomaly. It
| was a great thought experiment by hippie technophiles, and
| "connecting the world" is a commonly parroted platitude by
| social media executives, but humans are far from ready to
| interact with millions of strangers from their own country, let
| alone from around the world.
|
| If anything, all this technology that was supposed to bring us
| together, has instead driven us further apart. The internet is
| our main source of information, yet it's been corrupted by
| advertising, corporations and governments to spread
| disinformation and propaganda on an unprecedented scale, and
| influence the masses towards their own agenda.
|
| We're still in the early stages of the technological
| revolution, but it's clear that a universal communication
| medium cannot exist yet. We're not ready for it. China and
| Russia already have isolated alternatives, and it's only a
| matter of time before other countries or coalitions follow
| suit. In any case, we can safely assume that all of it will be
| heavily censored and controlled by each government.
| Cryptography will exist in some form, but there will be
| backdoors for any government to exploit as needed.
|
| Is this too pessimistic? :) I'd really like to be wrong about
| all this, but I can't picture a scenario where billions of us
| happily sing kumbaya together around a virtual campfire.
| meyum33 wrote:
| They've banned Teslas from government compounds and big state-
| owned companies for a few years. There are even occasional
| reports of Tesla cars being diverted from certain roads for
| reasons the police wouldn't disclose.
|
| Edit: It could be retaliations against US sanctions. But there's
| a difference: All these kinds of orders are made without any
| written documents. These are just part of the general decline of
| the rule of law in China, which there weren't much to begin with.
| FpUser wrote:
| >"But there's a difference: All these kinds of orders are made
| without any written documents."
|
| And you know this how? Maybe the document do exist but are
| classified. As for rule of law - try civil forfeiture for
| example. It is but a pure theft that goes unpunished.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Tesla concern is autopilot cameras shipping images back to
| Tesla, which is valid; Tesla does ship stills back for training
| if enabled in the data sharing configuration.
| l33t7332273 wrote:
| Also Tesla is an absolute security nightmare.
| john_alan wrote:
| Got any evidence?
| l33t7332273 wrote:
| Every security lab I've ever been around was picking lots
| of low hanging fruit from the fertile tree of that
| infotainment system.
| fooker wrote:
| Do you have any evidence for this?
| l33t7332273 wrote:
| I've reached the limit of my personal experiences that I
| will be sharing.
|
| But, if you don't know anyone in the offensive security
| space and still want to get some general feelings,
| perhaps you can start by looking into things like "Tesla
| CAN bus security," "Tesla infotainment security," and
| "Tesla NFC fob security."
|
| Plus, here's a heuristic for why they would have horrible
| security: they a are poorly built product which focuses
| more on flash than substance made by a company with an
| owner that is known to cut corners, and security is
| absolutely not one of the key selling points of this(or
| any other) car.
| morkalork wrote:
| Could the US government slip Tesla one of those nifty
| national security letters and get themselves a closet off
| some server room at Tesla HQ? It's not like they'd be spying
| on US citizens in China.
| kalupa wrote:
| is anyone saying that doesn't already exist?
| plagiarist wrote:
| Why would they need a closet? Tesla probably gives them
| regular torrent links
| tyrfing wrote:
| Sure, but data on Chinese users isn't allowed to leave
| China, so that Tesla HQ closet won't be very useful in this
| case.
| bboygravity wrote:
| In the same way that Microsoft's EU data isn't somehow
| ending up at the NSA in the US, lol?
|
| There's no way that the Chinese gov actually believes
| that Chinese Tesla data stays in China.
| tyrfing wrote:
| Your assumption is that breaking data protection laws in
| the West has anywhere near the same sort of consequences
| as in China. The Chinese government doesn't have to
| believe or assume anything, and even Elon Musk avoids
| anything but praise for China.
| dheera wrote:
| What about humans with prosthetic silicon eyes? We'll have
| more of those going into the future. They'll be able to
| export video and images as well.
| greenyoda wrote:
| Archive of article with full text: https://archive.ph/MN7rx
| darknavi wrote:
| What is with the URL? stocks.apple.com redirects to wsj.com?
| brandonscott wrote:
| it was shared from the apple stocks app
| jsf01 wrote:
| On an iPhone it opens the stocks app into that article but with
| a paywall for Apple News+. Interesting that the desktop
| behavior is to redirect to wsj.
| politician wrote:
| Not a surprise given Apple relocating their manufacturing to
| southeast Asia and out of China.
| jcrash wrote:
| Wouldn't be surprised if this is because the phones are TOO
| secure. Maybe they want them to use phones with built-in back-
| doors so they can keep an eye on them.
| c7DJTLrn wrote:
| Not really, it's just tit-for-tat because Western governments
| banned use of phones from Chinese companies such as Huawei.
| It's the same game we've been playing for years.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| Then they should have banned iPhone sales across China, as
| the US did with Huawei.
| lenkite wrote:
| The public ban will also come in due time. Probably when
| the US carries out another equipment ban against China.
| This is a way to manage public perceptions.
| Calvin02 wrote:
| I think MDM systems enable governments to track quite a bit
| these days.
|
| I think the real issue probably is somewhere between
| retaliation and the desire to support a domestic competitor.
| China has long had a view that it can't be reliant on a foreign
| company and that's especially true for the tech sector.
| politelemon wrote:
| It's got backdoors, just not to the places they want it going
| to.
| smoldesu wrote:
| I'd doubt it. Apple regularly provides the Chinese government
| with device data[0], and iCloud data is already stored in
| state-owned[1] servers. I struggle to imagine what more
| surveillance you could ask for.
|
| [0] https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/cn.html
|
| [1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208351
| sampa wrote:
| no surprise, considering every bodyshop now has a working iOS
| bugs chain to hack any iphone
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| > working iOS bugs chain to hack any iphone
|
| I don't think this is true.
| sampa wrote:
| I cannot wait to be deceived! (c)
| drcongo wrote:
| What a fantastic advert for Apple products. I remember when the
| G4 was banned from sale to Iran because it was a "super computer"
| - of course everyone wanted one then.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| This just seems like a logical reaction to unknown supply chain
| attacks. The DoD has restrictions on acquisition of Chinese
| hardware, for example.
|
| Some HN posters believe that this is a tit-for-tat move regarding
| the Huawei sales ban, which is hardly comparable, as Huawei
| hardware cannot be legally distributed or sold by US companies.
| emodendroket wrote:
| Even if it were the latter thing promoting domestic industry is
| a pretty logical thing to do in their shoes. Restricting supply
| of tech to China may make perfect sense from a US perspective
| but we can hardly expect them to play along.
| fouc wrote:
| > unknown supply chain attacks.
|
| Is that the case given that iPhones are manufactured in China?
|
| My tinfoil hat theory is that they find it harder to hack
| iPhones to monitor their government officials.
| emodendroket wrote:
| Maybe they do but one could just as well apply this logic to
| bans on Huawei telecom equipment.
| mushbino wrote:
| Opinions like this are largely from new cold war propaganda,
| but also projection. The US spys on everyone everywhere.
| PRISM for example. Pegasus being another.
| FormerBandmate wrote:
| Pegasus isn't American.
|
| Also, China has the capability to spy on everyone and their
| government is morally worse so of course they are. Social
| credit, concentration camps, etc
| Terretta wrote:
| > _My tinfoil hat theory is that they find it harder to hack
| iPhones to monitor their government officials._
|
| It is a fact that certain US agencies required Blackberry or
| Android, rather than iOS on iPhone, for this reason.
| mushbino wrote:
| They hack iPhones without Apple knowing? I really don't
| think that's possible.
| tylerthetiger wrote:
| Source?
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| I believe this is no longer true. iOS devices are allowed
| in the DoD, for example.
| bragr wrote:
| I think it depends on whether the use is classified or
| not. I'm not aware of iPhone supporting red/black
| separation, not to mention a model without cameras for
| use in secure environments.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| I'm not aware of _any_ consumer phone that would follow a
| pure red /black architecture.
|
| There are a bunch that are CNSSP-11 compliant, though:
| https://www.nsa.gov/Resources/Commercial-Solutions-for-
| Class...
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| The hardware is made in China but not the software. So it
| probably depends on how much oversight of the software the
| CCP has, and this decision implies not enough for their
| comfort.
| bityard wrote:
| Is it impossible for an adversary in China to modify an
| iPhone during manufacture in a way that Apple can't detect?
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| _Huawei hardware cannot be legally distributed or sold by US
| companies._
|
| There are bans on Huawei telecom equipment, but their phones,
| tablets, smartwatches, etc are not banned and are readily
| available:
|
| https://www.newegg.com/Huawei/BrandStore/ID-15388
|
| https://www.amazon.com/stores/Huawei/page/34F6034C-1D34-4913...
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Huawei servers continue to be as popular as ever as well.
|
| edit: It's of course not Huawei, it's a totally new and
| different company which bought Huawei's server business a
| week after being founded, silly me.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| These are older devices, and most of them are sold out
| already.
|
| That T3 10 is now over 6 years old, for example.
| thowfaraway wrote:
| The p60 pro is released this year and available:
|
| https://www.newegg.com/p/23B-001M-007X6
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| Global version and carries no warranty, meaning imported.
| You can find all sorts of weird imported stuff in Amazon
| and NewEgg from third party sellers.
|
| Still not legal for US companies to distribute Huawei
| phones, though.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| _Global version and carries no warranty, meaning
| imported._
|
| Obviously they are imported, that's the point. They are
| imported Chinese phones. Amazon and Newegg are US
| companies distributing imported Chinese Huawei phones.
|
| There is a ban on Huawei telecom equipment, and a ban on
| selling tech to Huawei, but show me where phones are
| banned.
| em3rgent0rdr wrote:
| Government phones seems like a good niche for fully-open RISC-
| V-based phone with all open hardware.
| koprulusector wrote:
| Just a thought, but could they be worried about privacy features
| of the iPhone? Whistle blowers, dissidents, etc., would benefit
| from iOS Security relative to Android. Then again, I don't know
| the export laws of China, for all I know, they require weak
| security to sell the iPhone in China.
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