Cupertino’s giant Apple is known for many things like its cutting edge technology, high-resolution cameras and near perfected build quality. But, if there’s one word to associate with Apple, the culmination of every commercial, product, feature and perfectly rehearsed keynote the company will most likely come up with the word ‘Privacy’. Any operating system (although we don’t have many apart from google’s android and outdated Symbian on a mobile platform) can advertise their product as “secure and private” on the front but Apple certainly has the business model to prove this. Let me try and explain the origins of this business model and why the privacy claim is sheer hypocrisy by Macintosh makers.
2016 – United States of America – FBI vs Apple.inc
To dive into the matter of Apple’s privacy claim let’s go back to the events in 2015, the infamous FBI (The Federal Bureau of Investigation) vs Apple is one of the highest-profile, riskiest and most controversial debates over privacy in recent times.
On December 22nd, 2015 gunman Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife Tasfeen Malik carried out a mass shooting expressing commitment to ‘Jihadism’ and targeted a Christmas party at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California. 14 people were killed and at least 22 people were injured, the perpetrator’s of the incident were killed in a police shootout and iPhone 5C was extracted from Syed Rizwan Farooq’s possessions. This accounted for the worst terror attack in the United States only following Al-Qaeda’s 9/11 tragedy.
The federal agencies were unable to crack Apple’s pass-code on perpetrators iPhone. The FBI asked Apple to create a unique OS in the new iOS that is free from certain security protections. The main task with Apple was to create a backdoor for federal agencies to use brute force to overcome the password.
Apple declined. On Feb 16, 2016 apple release an open letter to the customers outlining their behemoth concerns over ‘The threats to data security’ and ‘The need for Encryption’.Tim cook personally and publicly declined and argued that this was a threat to civil liberties and decryption one iPhone would hinder the legitimacy and security of all the devices and potentially the internet.
In apple’s words to their customers in the open letter,
“In the wrong hands, this software — which does not exist today — would have the potential to unlock any iPhone in someone’s physical possession”
Apple, open letter to customers based in states
Apple dragged the matter to court, the government argued that “this was a matter of National security” and asked Apple to comply.
Apple fought the federal agencies and won and retained its privacy claim for users.
Arguably this helped Apple to set the gold standard over privacy concerns in the market. Whether you think for-profit or moral standards, Apple was able to market themselves as the most caring brand for its privacy measures.
2016 – People’s republic of China- The Cybersecurity law
In the same year on November 7th, 2016 on the other side of the world the Chinese authority passed laws concerning ‘cyber sovereignty’. The new laws argued data protection, data localisation and cyber-security in the ‘interest of national security’.
The new law made it mandatory for foreign firms to store and collect data inside mainland China and allow Chinese authorities to conduct spot checks on the company’s network operations. Apple, Microsoft and even short video streaming company, musical.ly (now tik-tok, after ByteDance.Ltd acquired and merged it in 2018) were forced to operate and store information within China and censor its content according to the interest of Chinese authorities.
Surprisingly, Apple became the 1st foreign company to comply with China’s demand.
Apple also agreed on storing iPhone users’ i Cloud data locally on servers of state-run telecom Guizhou-Cloud big data (GCBD): Apple’s Chinese i Cloud partner, keeping the doors open for the high-risk data monetization by the Chinese government. By doing so, Apple essentially created a backdoor for the Chinese government to seep into users personal data contrary to what it had done for the privacy and civil liberties in the United States against the battle it picked up against the FBI.
This time though, there were no fights, no open letter to the customer’s against breach of privacy, no principled stand and no long protracted fight against the regime. Apple complied to the cyber-security law without a hiccup of concerns about civil liberties or human rights abuse that can resolve due to this, that the Chinese government is so notoriously known for.
Companies like Whats-app and Skype did not agree to such measures and were banned from operating in China and were restrained from further expansion.
Apple also censored ads, videos, apps, podcasts, music and many more things which were not in the interest of Chinese authorities. It also took down VPN’s (Virtual Private Network) from the Chinese app store, thus snatching away user’s privacy of surfing content of choice. VPN’s gave users access to forbidden content and allowed them to circumvent the great firewall of China. It also removed “TAIWAN” as a typing text and restricted the emoji for the flag of Taiwan.
While In the US Apple has the environment to put out fight against the government by garnering public support, in China Apple complies to all the laws simply because it has no other choice. This is a pure example of Sheer hypocrisy by Cupertino’s ace player in technology. With 20% of its sale and most of the manufacturing in China, Apple has little choice but to comply.
Furthermore, to support the Chinese consumer base it launched its dual sim support iPhone, improvements in Cantonese typing showing evident signs on leaning on the cultural interests of the population.
Speaking of cultural interests, the brand with each new iPhone lineup comes up with a special red iPhone under sub-branding of (PRODUCT)RED globally, the sales of which are donated as charity to an NGO fighting against HIV AIDS. (this year they will donate it for fighting coronavirus pandemic for the sales of iPhone SE 2nd generation ).Unfortunately, this is not true for China. The red iPhones sold in China are significantly different from the red colour of the global version and isn’t sold under (PRODUCT)RED sub-branding, because AIDS and homosexuality remain taboo subjects in China. The red colour version of iPhone of china is specially created for the Chinese market as red colour in Chinese culture symbolizes luck, joy and happiness and is believed to bring vitality and fertility.
Apple also pumps a significant amount of cash into China’s economy still is complying to its regulation in the 1st place. Speaking in broad terms Apple and China are interdependent over each other for contributing to each other economically.
The question here is evident! How secure is your data? As smartphones are becoming so integrated with humans and store so much information about us that it won’t be an exaggeration to call them metaphorically a human organ, probably like little brains.
In an alternate reality, even if Apple wants to protect users’ personal identity on the highest moral grounds, it wouldn’t be able to do so at least in China. Apple is a commercial company and would use China’s human and raw material resources from China complying to the Chinese regime for the best interests in the company’s profit. Strategically, economically and logically it would be foolish of Apple to lose market over privacy in China so Apple has no other choice than to comply.
The Nobel prize winner, Norman Angell in his book ‘The Great illusion’, he writes
“The economies of the world were so connected and so dependent upon one another that the cost of conflict would simply be too great”
Norman Angell
Daksha 
Woahh! engrossing and informative💫🤍
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