We gotta stop with the China bogeyman every time a privacy issue comes up. This is a feature designed by an American company for American government surveillance purposes. China is perfectly capable of doing the same surveillance or worse on its own citizens, with or without Apple. China has nothing to do with why American tech is progressively implementing more authoritarian features in a supposedly democratic country.
China is just an example. In Australia, the law allows our executive department to order tech companies to build backdoors for the investigation of any crime punishable by more than 2 years imprisonment.
We actually had the anti terror department arrest a popular, left-leaning YouTube influencer for harassment while physically assaulting his mum (all on video).
That's something that is literally unprecedented in Hong Kong just 3 years ago.
Ok. How about the Saudi Arabian bogeymen then? Who took Jamal Kashoggi apart with bonesaws as he screamed? Or the Israeli bogeymen who exploited his phone for them? Or the Turkish bogeymen who also a customers of that Israeli phone exploitation company? (Or Facebook who wanted to buy those tools but got turned down, because Facebook is “too far” even for NSO who happily take Saudi and Turkish money?)
There are without doubt enough privacy bogeymen to go around, trying to derail a valid argument over its use of the Chinese as the placeholder bogeyman detracts from the discussion pointlessly.
The point is that all these bogeymen distract from the actual issue, because they make government surveillance sound like something that only happens in other places... We need to wake up and realize it's happening right here at home and has been for decades
No-one was suggesting that China was behind this move.
We're talking about China taking advantage of this integrated technology to increase control over its population through backdoors like these.
China already imposes that all data from Chinese users be located in China and readily accessible and mined by the authorities[1].
Apple is willing to bow to these regimes because it has substantial supply-chain interests there and it sells hundred of millions of devices. A boon to both Apple and the local government.
> We're talking about China taking advantage of this integrated technology to increase control over its population through backdoors like these. ... A boon to both Apple and the local government.
But still: Secondary. The main effect of even mentioning it is to deflect attention away from Apple.
I think it's irresponsible to avoid thinking about how bad actors might use a technology you've developed.
And is it really unfathomable that the US government could use this sort of thing for evil? I mean, wind back the clock to something like the Red Scare. If they had iPhones back then, they totally would have pressured Apple to add hashes for communist imagery, and use that to persecute people (or worse).
(Before anyone brings this up: I do categorically reject the notion of "that was in the past; that couldn't happen today". If you truly believe that, I have a bridge you might be interested in purchasing...)
