CommunityNews

CommunityNews

Apple's Cooperation with Authoritarian Governments

Over the past few years, Apple seems increasingly willing to cooperate with authoritarian governments, uninterested in protecting its own users, and unwilling to actually standup for human rights in broad terms, as often portrayed by its marketing department or direct statements from CEO Tim Cook.

The company is quick to position itself as a prominent human rights advocate in the corporate world, especially regarding issues like user privacy and security. Although, as Ole Begemann has aptly pointed out, this is increasingly disingenuous to the point of deliberately deceiving its customers and the general public. There are even (unconfirmed) reports that the lack of end-to-end encryption that Ole criticizes is actually due to willful coordination and cooperation with the FBI. And like most companies in the industry, Apple employs a highly problematic supply chain, which makes its human rights crusade seem even less authentic.

Most recently, there was a dispute with ProtonVPN (the company that also makes ProtonMail) over an update for its app in the App Store. Proton Technologies claimed that Apple was intentionally blocking the update amid the ongoing crackdown in Myanmar. I agree with Gruber that there is little direct evidence to support this exact claim. While I am willing to give Apple the benefit of the doubt and consider this an inconvenient coincidence, I would not be surprised if this were a deliberate move. After all, Apple has pulled VPN apps from the App Store before. For now, we can assume (as Gruber highlights) that this is yet another issue with Apple’s poorly executed app review process where its so-called rules are applied arbitrarily.

However, there is still reason to be concerned, because Apple does not have a laudable record when it comes to cooperating with authoritarian governments. Below is a brief history of events that I have been tracking so far. If you know of others, get in touch…

This thread was posted by one of our members via one of our news source trackers.

Most Liked

OvermindDL1

OvermindDL1

Gotta love how against human rights Apple is for supposedly being so pro-privacy… >.>

AstonJ

AstonJ

It does worry me a bit tbh - we need much more transparency! :upside_down_face:

OvermindDL1

OvermindDL1

Which is why it horrifies me so much that they do this stuff without announcing it or why or anything, they are incredibly opaque!

Where Next?

Popular Macos topics Top

First poster: bot
Apple’s Shifting Differentiation. Apple is about the integration of hardware and software, but the balance between the two has shifted o...
New
First poster: bot
Apple Silicon M1: A Developer’s Perspective. The excitement around Apple’s new M1 chip is everywhere. I bought a MacBook Air 16GB M1 to ...
New
New
First poster: bot
We’ll guide you through the process of using Homebrew package manager to install security tools on macOS to exploit vulnerabilities found...
New
First poster: bot
Yesterday, a short Twitter thread by the excellent Jeff Johnson caught my eye. Since he often deletes past tweets, I’ll quote the relevan...
New
First poster: bot
Apple Now Selling More M1 Macs Than Intel-Based Models, Says Tim Cook. Despite only being released in November, sales of the M1-powered ...
New
First poster: bot
Safari isn’t protecting the web, it’s killing it. There’s been a lot of discussion recently about how “Safari is the new IE” (1, 2, 3, 4...
New
First poster: bot
Apple broke up with me :cry:. Do not get too attached to your Apple account; it belongs to Apple, NOT YOU!
New
New
First poster: bot
macOS has a wonderful input mechanism where you press and hold a key on your keyboard to display the accent menu. It’s easy to internaliz...
New

Other popular topics Top

AstonJ
Curious to know which languages and frameworks you’re all thinking about learning next :upside_down_face: Perhaps if there’s enough peop...
New
AstonJ
poll poll Be sure to check out @Dusty’s article posted here: An Introduction to Alternative Keyboard Layouts It’s one of the best write-...
New
New
AstonJ
I ended up cancelling my Moonlander order as I think it’s just going to be a bit too bulky for me. I think the Planck and the Preonic (o...
New
dimitarvp
Small essay with thoughts on macOS vs. Linux: I know @Exadra37 is just waiting around the corner to scream at me “I TOLD YOU SO!!!” but I...
New
rustkas
Intensively researching Erlang books and additional resources on it, I have found that the topic of using Regular Expressions is either c...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Author Spotlight James Stanier @jstanier James Stanier, author of Effective Remote Work , discusses how to rethink the office as we e...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Author Spotlight Mike Riley @mriley This month, we turn the spotlight on Mike Riley, author of Portable Python Projects. Mike’s book ...
New
New
New