Apple in China - Censorship, Surveillance and Profits

Apple has given control of their Chinese customer's data to the Chinese Communist Party who have full access to the emails, photos, documents, contacts and locations of all Apple users in China whenever they want it.

U.S. law has long prohibited American companies from turning over data to Chinese law enforcement. But Apple and the Chinese government have made an unusual arrangement to get around American laws.

In China, Apple has ceded legal ownership of its customers’ data to Guizhou-Cloud Big Data, or GCBD, a company owned by the government of Guizhou Province, whose capital is Guiyang. Apple recently required its Chinese customers to accept new iCloud terms and conditions that list GCBD as the service provider and Apple as “an additional party.” 

The terms and conditions included a new provision that does not appear in other countries: “Apple and GCBD will have access to all data that you store on this service” and can share that data “between each other under applicable law.”

Under the new setup, Chinese authorities ask GCBD — not Apple — for Apple customers’ data, Apple said. Apple believes that gives it a legal shield from American law, according to a person who helped create the arrangement. GCBD declined to answer questions about its Apple partnership.

Internal Apple documents reviewed by The New York Times, interviews with 17 current and former Apple employees and four security experts, and new filings made in a court case in the United States last week provide rare insight into the compromises Apple has made to do business in China. 

They offer an extensive inside look — many aspects of which have never been reported before — at how Apple has given in to escalating demands from the Chinese Communist Party

Apple CEO, Mr. Tim Cook often talks about Apple’s commitment to civil liberties and privacy. 

But to stay on the right side of Chinese Communist Party, Apple has put the data of its Chinese customers at risk and has aided government censorship in the Chinese version of its App Store. After Chinese employees complained, it even dropped the “Designed by Apple in California” slogan from the backs of iPhones sold in China

Apple says that they have tried to isolate the Chinese servers from the rest of its iCloud network. Apple says that the Chinese network would be “established, managed, and monitored separately from all other networks, with no means of traversing to other networks out of country.” 

But now that the Chinese Intelligence Agencies have physical access to Apple hardware and control over the network, how secure is data of Apple users outside China ?

“Chinese intelligence has physical control over your hardware — that’s basically a threat level you can’t let it get to,” said Matthew D. Green, a cryptography professor at Johns Hopkins University.


Read More: 

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/17/technology/apple-china-censorship-data.html

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Only 0.05% of vaccinated healthcare workers got severe Covid that required intensive care

Only 0.05 per cent of vaccinated healthcare workers got severe Covid that required intensive care, showed a recent study released by Fortis Healthcare. The study covered over 16,000 healthcare workers across Fortis hospitals in the country, who were administered both first and second doses of the vaccine between January 2021 and May 2021.  Fortis said that this period included the period when India was recording 350,000-400,000 daily Covid-19 cases and these healthcare workers were treating Covid patients. Since healthcare workers by the nature of their job are at highest risk of exposure to the virus, the performance of the vaccines will be even better in case of the common man who is not exposed to such conditions. Read more: https://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/only-0-05-fully-vaccinated-healthcare-workers-got-severe-covid-fortis-121061701236_1.html
Read more

Lessons from China on bad banks to solve NPAs

After the Asian financial crisis, China set up dedicated bad banks for each of its big four state-owned commercial banks. These bad banks were meant to acquire non-performing loans (NPLs) from those banks and resolve them within 10 years. In 2009, their tenure was extended indefinitely. In 2012, China permitted the establishment of one local bad bank per province. In 2016, two local bad banks were allowed per province. By the end of 2019, the country had 59 local bad banks. However researchers have found that the Chinese bad banks effectively help conceal NPLs.  As India gets ready to operationalize  a new bad bank, the National Asset Reconstruction Company Ltd. (NARCL), we need to learn the following important lessons from the bad experience of the Chinese: A centralized  bad bank has a temporary purpose, and need not exist in perpetuity. Transferring NPLs to a bad bank is not a solution in itself. There must be a clear resolution strategy and the...
Read more

NCLT benches have become the weak link of the IBC

 The NCLT benches have become the weak link of the IBC  There have been inordinate delays at the NCLT, mainly due to inconsistent application of law, lack of institutional capacity and the tendency to entertain frivolous cases by promoters and disgruntled creditors Supreme Court has conclusively ruled on contentious issues under the IBC such as supremacy of commercial wisdom of financial creditors, subordinate status of operational creditors and bar on promoter participation.  Yet the NCLT continues to entertain petitions questioning settled positions.  It is commonplace to find contrarian orders passed on emotive grounds bereft of legal reasoning which defy statutory provisions and the Supreme Court’s orders Erroneous decisions are set aside at the NCLAT and the Supreme Court, but it needlessly waste time  If the NCLT is taking unreasonably long to approve a plan then it must submit a report to the NCLAT, justifying the delay. Failure to reform the NCLT will bl...
Read more