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Apple iPhone a danger to China national security -state media

Hamartia Antidote

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Apple iPhone a danger to China national security -state media - Yahoo Finance

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese state media on Friday branded Apple Inc's iPhone a threat to national security because of the smartphone's ability to track and time-stamp user locations.

A report by broadcaster CCTV criticised the iPhone's "Frequent Locations" function for allowing users to be tracked and information about them revealed.

"This is extremely sensitive data," said a researcher interviewed by the broadcaster. If the data were accessed, it could reveal an entire country's economic situation and "even state secrets," the researcher said.

Apple was not available for immediate comment.

Apple has frequently come under fire from Chinese state media, which accused the company of providing user data to U.S. intelligence agencies and have called for 'severe punishment'. It has also been criticised for poor customer service.

The California-based company is not the only U.S. firm to suffer from Chinese media ire.

Google Inc services have been disrupted in China for over a month, while the central government procurement office has banned new government computers from using Microsoft Corp's Windows 8 operating system.

Other U.S. hardware firms such as Cisco Systems Inc and IBM Corp have experienced a backlash in China from what analysts and companies have termed the 'Snowden Effect', after U.S. spying revelations released last year by former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.
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Irrespective of Apple this does bring up a good point as to how your phone/laptop can easily track your daily routine.
 
:lol:

Huawei's Revenge; Chinese State Media Brands Apple's iPhone Security Risk

You might recall a couple of years ago that a very indignant Huawei (along with ZTE ) was running around insisting that while they were indeed Chinese companies the idea that there were security backdoors written into their products was ridiculous. The accusation did harm their business though and now it seems that they’re gaining something of a revenge. For Chinese state media is now loudly insisting that Apple's iPhone is a security risk and perhaps it shouldn’t be used in the Middle Kingdom.

I don’t, of course, state that Huawei is organising this action: only that they’d have to have hearts of stone not to get a least a wry smile out of this. The story today about Apple:

Chinese state media on Friday branded Apple Inc’s iPhone a threat to national security because of the smartphone’s ability to track and time-stamp user locations.

A report by broadcaster CCTV criticized the iPhone’s “Frequent Locations” function for allowing users to be tracked and information about them revealed.

“This is extremely sensitive data,” said a researcher interviewed by the broadcaster. If the data were accessed, it could reveal an entire country’s economic situation and “even state secrets,” the researcher said.

Whether all of that is true or not isn’t quite the question. For recall what happened to Huawei just a few years ago in the US as my colleague Dan Ikenson tells it:

So it’s not at all surprising that the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, yesterday, following a nearly year-long investigation, issued its “Investigative Report on the U.S. National Security Issues Posed by Chinese Telecommunications Companies Huawei and ZTE” along with recommendations that U.S. companies avoid doing business with these firms.

But there is no smoking gun in the report, only innuendo sold as something more definitive. The most damning evidence against Huawei and ZTE is that the companies were evasive or incomplete when it came to providing answers to questions that would have revealed strategic information that the companies understandably might not want to share with U.S. policymakers, who may have the interests of their own favored U.S. telecoms in mind.

As Huawei pointed out a little later to another group of colleagues of mine putting those sorts of backdoors into equipment would have been commercial suicide:

Chinese hardware manufacturer Huawei says allegations it provides backdoors for espionage in its kit remain unproven and would be “commercial suicide”.

“The hypothetical – that our equipment could be used for espionage by the Chinese government – has never been proven,” spokesman Scott Sykes told press at the company’s annual global analyst event in Shenzen this week.

“If it were ever proven, we would lose 65 per cent of our business overnight. That would be corporate suicide.”

As it turned out in the end there were in fact backdoors into some Huawei kit. Placed there by the NSA and used by them to read their source code: but of course that’s not quite what everyone meant.

All of which leads us to two economic points we can and should make about trade and competition. The first being that this sort of “national” competition, where the US House of Representatives seemingly deliberately makes life difficult for Chinese companies can backfire. For there will be US companies attempting to do business in China (Apple says that it is their second most important market for the future) and they are liable to the same sort of disruption. Smear and innuendo it all may be but it works which is why people do it.

The second is that competing upon anything other than those free market principles of how good the kit is and the price of said kit can also backfire. As soon as you start swirling up rumours, rumours that cannot in fact be defended against (how can anyone *prove* that there’s no backdoor in their code without revealing all their code?), then you and yours can also be damaged by the spreading around of the appropriate rumours. It’s better by far to run competition on straight and narrow grounds rather than by trying to pay clever tricks.

It would be a little too much to place this statement from China today firmly at the feet of those who whipped up the Huawei furore a couple of years back. For we’ve not the evidence of a direct connection. However, they must have got the idea of damaging sales by false security complaints from somewhere and that idea certainly didn’t start in China now, did it?

Huawei's Revenge; Chinese State Media Brands Apple's iPhone Security Risk - Forbes

 
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The issue is ANY company can easily add tracking software. The only reason Apple is in the limelight is because they exposed an on/off switch on the settings screen. For all we know it has been a feature for years.

Which brings up the point of any cell phone/laptop could be doing exactly the same thing right now...and for years.
 
The issue is ANY company can easily add tracking software. The only reason Apple is in the limelight is because they exposed an on/off switch on the settings screen. For all we know it has been a feature for years.

Which brings up the point of any cell phone/laptop could be doing exactly the same thing right now...and for years.

Always has been source for info these cell phones. Nothing new.
 
Does anyone know if the CCP is taking any action against this?
 
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