In recent years, Apple has been exposed to the news that it has been taking down sensitive content applications at the request of the Chinese Communist Party authorities in order to win over the Chinese market. In an investigative report published by the foreign press on 17 May, interviews with dozens of Apple employees and information security experts unveiled the inner workings of Apple’s efforts to cave in to Beijing’s demands for profit. According to the report, Apple deposited Chinese users’ data in a data center under the jurisdiction of the Chinese Communist Party, knowing that it would not be possible to prevent the Chinese government from accessing the users’ data, but Apple still acted contrary to its promised values.
According to the New York Times, Apple has relied on China to leapfrog the world’s largest market capitalization companies over the past 20 years. Today, Apple assembles nearly all of its products in China, and the Greater China region accounts for about one-fifth of Apple’s revenue, which the Chinese Communist government uses as leverage to pressure Apple executives to compromise and contradict their carefully crafted image of championing civil liberties and privacy.
The newspaper interviewed 17 current and former Apple employees and four information security experts to piece together a picture of Apple CEO Tim Cook caving in to Beijing’s demands for business in China.
Apple’s handing over of Chinese user data to a Chinese state-owned enterprise opens the door for the Chinese Communist Party to access user data
According to the report, Apple agreed to store Chinese users’ personal information on servers managed by the Chinese state-run company Cloud on Guizhou in order to comply with the Communist Party’s “cybersecurity law” that came into effect in 2017. In addition, Apple is building a new data center in Inner Mongolia.
Apple’s data centers in China are effectively controlled by government agents. Apple has agreed to store digital keys that unlock the personal information of Chinese users in these data centers and to forgo the use of encryption technology used in other data centers.
Independent information security experts and Apple engineers said the concessions would make it nearly impossible for Apple to prevent Chinese authorities from accessing Chinese users’ e-mail, photos, contact information, calendars and location data. Apple insists it retains control of the digital key to unlock data and that the encryption technology used in China is more advanced than in other countries.
The human rights group Amnesty International issued a statement in 2018 in response to Apple’s decision, advising iCloud users in China who have overseas credit cards and payment addresses to sign up for overseas IDs. iCloud accounts and permanently deactivate them.
Amnesty International said that according to China’s Cybersecurity Law, judicial and state security authorities can request “technical support and assistance” from network operators. This means that if the authorities ask Guizhou on the Cloud to provide information about an iCloud user for use in a criminal investigation, the company is legally obligated to provide that information, and there is little legal way to refuse such a request.
The Amnesty International article also writes that Apple will henceforth store the keys to Chinese iCloud users’ accounts in China, not the United States, meaning that the company will have to hand over the key information if requested by the authorities under Chinese law.
App that cooperates with Chinese Communist Party officials to remove sensitive content
In addition to the fear of losing Chinese users’ personal information, Apple has also removed a large number of apps with “sensitive content” in recent years to appease Chinese Communist Party officials.
Phillip Shoemaker, who ran Apple’s App Store from 2009 to 2016, was quoted as saying that Apple’s lawyers in China gave his team a list of topics that could not appear in Chinese apps, including Tiananmen Square, Tibetan independence and Taiwan independence. Apple’s policy was simple and straightforward: whenever the lawyers determined that a taboo topic in China was involved, Apple would take it down.
Schumaker recalls being woken up several times in the middle of the night by Beijing authorities demanding that specific apps be removed. If an app was suspected of mentioning a taboo subject, he would remove it; if the case was more complicated, he would report it to Apple’s senior vice president of Internet software and services, Eddy Cue, and longtime marketing executive Phil Schiller, among other executives.
Apple banned apps for Chinese iPhones about Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, but allowed apps developed by units of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, which is accused of detaining and abusing Uighurs, to be downloaded by users.
Apple also assists the Chinese Communist Party in spreading its worldview. Chinese iPhones filter out the Republic of China flag emoji, and maps show Taiwan as part of China. Patrick Wardle, an information security expert who worked for the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), said there was a time when typing “Taiwan” on an iPhone would cause the phone to flash.
According to an analysis by The New York Times, about 55,000 apps have disappeared from Apple’s China App Store since 2017, most of which can still be found in other countries’ App Stores.
Of the apps that have disappeared, more than 35,000 are games that must be approved by authorities in China; the remaining 20,000 disappeared apps are in a wide range of categories, including foreign news media, encrypted communications and other apps. Apple also took down tools for organizing pro-democracy demonstrations and circumventing Internet controls.
In July 2017, Apple’s China App Store took down more than 60 virtual private network (VPN) software titles, sparking an outcry. Outsiders criticized Apple for having become an accomplice to Beijing’s online censorship.
U.S. Senators Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) sent a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook at the time, questioning Apple’s failure to offer sufficient resistance to Chinese Internet censors. In their letter, the two senators asked Cook to respond to whether Beijing’s enactment of cybersecurity laws had alerted Apple and whether Apple had objected when asked by the Chinese government to take down VPNs.
The letter also asked Apple to clarify whether it had voluntarily removed software from its app store in China to avoid censorship and whether it had denounced “the Chinese government’s cyber censorship and surveillance tactics.
Apple declined to comment on the senators’ letter, but CEO Tim Cook responded at an earnings meeting that Apple “certainly doesn’t want to remove the software,” but that Apple has to comply with local laws in the countries where it does business.
Recent Comments