Apple CEO Tim Cook defends removal of Hong Kong mapping app in email to employees

[Karlston]

Apple CEO Tim Cook defends removal of Hong Kong mapping app in email to employees

Cook is adamant that Apple’s decision was the right one

Photo by Visual China Group via Getty Images/Visual China Group via Getty Images

 

Apple CEO Tim Cook has sent an email to employees with a lengthier explanation for why the company chose to remove HKmap.live from the App Store yesterday. Similar to Apple’s statement last night, Cook claims that the app — a crowdsourced mapping tool that’s become useful amid the ongoing protests in Hong Kong — was being misused in ways that could threaten public safety.

 

“The app in question allowed for the crowdsourced reporting and mapping of police checkpoints, protest hotspots, and other information,” Cook wrote. “On its own, this information is benign. However, over the past several days we received credible information, from the Hong Kong Cybersecurity and Technology Crime Bureau, as well as from users in Hong Kong, that the app was being used maliciously to target individual officers for violence and to victimize individuals and property where no police are present.”

 

Cook’s full email is below. It was initially published by HKmap.live’s developers, and Daring Fireball’s John Gruber has vouched for its authenticity.

Team,

 

You have likely seen the news that we made the decision to remove an app from the App Store entitled HKmap.live. These decisions are never easy, and it is harder still to discuss these topics during moments of furious public debate. It’s out of my great respect for the work you do every day that I want to share the way we went about making this decision.

 

It is no secret that technology can be used for good or for ill. This case is no different. The app in question allowed for the crowdsourced reporting and mapping of police checkpoints, protest hotspots, and other information. On its own, this information is benign. However, over the past several days we received credible information, from the Hong Kong Cybersecurity and Technology Crime Bureau, as well as from users in Hong Kong, that the app was being used maliciously to target individual officers for violence and to victimize individuals and property where no police are present. This use put the app in violation of Hong Kong law. Similarly, widespread abuse clearly violates our App Store guidelines barring personal harm.

 

We built the App Store to be a safe and trusted place for every user. It’s a responsibility that we take very seriously, and it’s one that we aim to preserve. National and international debates will outlive us all, and, while important, they do not govern the facts. In this case, we thoroughly reviewed them, and we believe this decision best protects our users.

Tim

Cook’s email doesn’t offer any specifics on these incidents where HKmap.live was supposedly used to target individual police officers. It’s an alarming scenario, as is the idea that people would use the mapping app nefariously to pounce on areas with low police presence. But it’s mostly been state-run media in China pushing these frightening reports so far.

 

HKmap.live’s developers have pushed back against Apple’s claims and reiterated that the app aggregates and consolidates information from users, news sources, and social networks like Facebook and Telegram. HKmap.live never displays a lack of police on its map, only areas where they’ve congregated.

 

 

Apple’s decision has been met with harsh criticism (including from lawmakers), but Cook’s email doesn’t offer any sign that the company is reconsidering. It initially pulled HKmap.live from the App Store earlier this month only to say that the removal was a mistake. But after briefly restoring it, Apple pulled down the app again last night and offered the reasoning that Cook has now doubled down — without providing any examples of unlawful incidents that HKmap.live has helped facilitate.

 

As of now, the app continues to function for people who already have it installed on their iPhones, but it cannot be redownloaded from Apple.

 

 

Source: Apple CEO Tim Cook defends removal of Hong Kong mapping app in email to employees (The Verge)

[Karlston]

In flip-flop, Apple bans app used by Hong Kong protestors

"The app has been used to target and ambush police" in Hong Kong, Apple claims.

Enlarge / Hong Kong protestors in August 2019.

Lewis Tse Pui Lung

Apple has yanked an app called HKmap.live from its app store just days after approving it. The app used crowdsourcing to track the location of protestors and police officers in real time. The app's anonymous author says it's intended to help people in Hong Kong stay safe by avoiding potentially dangerous areas.

 

Apple's latest move came after China's official state-run newspaper, the People's Daily, criticized the app for aiding anti-government protestors—labeled "rioters" by the government—and endangering public safety.

 

Apple first rejected the app in early October, arguing that it "allowed users to evade law enforcement." Critics pointed out that Apple has approved other apps with similar functionality, including the speed-trap warnings on Waze.

 

Then on Friday Apple reversed itself and approved the app. That, in turn, attracted criticism from the Chinese government and its allies—including officials in Hong Kong. So on Wednesday Apple reversed itself a second time and removed the app from its app store.

 

The app's developer insists that HKmap.live is designed to help everyone stay safe and isn't specifically designed for protestors. But it has obvious value for people participating in Hong Kong's pro-democracy demonstrations by helping them find one another and avoid unwanted interactions with law enforcement.

 

In a Wednesday statement, Apple said that it had heard concerns about the app from many Hong Kong customers.

 

"The app displays police locations, and we have verified with the Hong Kong Cybersecurity and Technology Crime Bureau that the app has been used to target and ambush police [and] threaten public safety, and criminals have used it to victimize residents in areas where they know there is no law enforcement," Apple said in its statement.

 

Apple has powerful financial incentives to appease the Chinese government. Most of Apple's manufacturing occurs in China, and China is also a big market for Apple's products. In recent quarters, China has accounted for more than 15% of Apple's global sales.

 

Last month, Apple released a new version of iOS, 13.1.1, which removed Taiwan's national flag from the emoji keyboard for users in Hong Kong. Taiwan has enjoyed de facto autonomy from the mainland for 70 years, but the Chinese government still considers it a rogue province. Apple also recently banned the app for business-news site Quartz from its Chinese app store because the app "includes content that is illegal in China."

 

Apple CEO Tim Cook has defended moves like this in the past, arguing that Apple has an obligation to follow the law in each jurisdiction where it operates.

Other companies have caved to Chinese pressure

In recent weeks, a number of high-profile American companies have engaged in censorship at the behest of the Chinese government. Earlier this week, we reported that Blizzard banned a Hong Kong Hearthstone player from its professional tournaments and stripped him of his prize money after he shouted a pro-Hong Kong slogan during a livestream.

 

Meanwhile, the National Basketball Association has continued to censor speech critical of the Chinese government. The NBA's China headache began when Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey tweeted in support of Hong Kong's protestors. The Chinese government responded harshly, suspending broadcasts of some NBA games. The Rockets lost some Chinese endorsement deals.

 

Since then, the NBA has paid lip service to free speech while continuing to censor criticism of the Chinese government. Fans in Philadelphia and Washington, DC, have been ejected from NBA games for holding up signs supporting Hong Kong and drawing attention to the Chinese government's treatment of its Uighur minority.

 

When CNN's Christina MacFarlane asked Rockets stars James Harden and Russell Westbrook if recent events would discourage them from speaking out on political topics in the future, the question was quickly shut down by an NBA official who insisted that the players would only answer questions related to basketball.

 

 

Source: In flip-flop, Apple bans app used by Hong Kong protestors (Ars Technica)

[mp68terr]

46 minutes ago, Karlston said:

Apple has powerful financial incentives to appease the Chinese government.

Sounds like the summary of the whole story.

[steven36]

Tim Cook Explains Why Apple Sold Out Hong Kong Protestors, Doubles Down

 

 

Apple CEO Tim Cook has explained why his company decided to succumb to China’s pressure and remove an app that was being used by Honk Kong pro-democracy protestors.

 

Protesters had been using the HKmap.live app to monitor police movement based on crowdsourced inputs. Apple removed the app a few days ago, then reinstated it, then pulled it again on Wednesday, a day after People’s Daily, China’s state-run news platform published a piece that proposed Apple was complicit in “illegal acts” by helping the protestors “engage in more violence.”

 

Reuters reports that Cook defended the decision in a statement posted on an internal company site. “It is no secret that technology can be used for good or for ill. This case is no different,” Cook wrote, according to Reuters, which reviewed the letter.

 

The letter (a copy that tech veteran John Gruber claims is authentic has been posted by here) went on to explain that the company reviewed “credible information” from “users” and “Hong Kong Cybersecurity and Technology Crime Bureau” and subsequently determined HKmap.live was used “maliciously to target individual officers for violence and to victimize individuals and property where no police are present.”

 

“This use put the app in violation of Hong Kong law,” Cook wrote. “Similarly, widespread abuse clearly violates our App Store guidelines barring personal harm.”

 

Apple confirmed to Reuters that the letter was written by Cook. The company did not immediately respond to a Gizmodo request for further confirmation or comment.

 

“National and international debates will outlive us all, and, while important, they do not govern the facts,” Cook wrote. “In this case, we thoroughly reviewed them, and we believe this decision best protects our users.”

 

Cook’s claims are difficult to confirm but Pinboard founder and social critic Maciej Cegłowski has been on the ground in Hong Kong for some time, and they found the Apple CEO’s remarks to be suspect. Ceglowski full statement on the matter is available over at Daring Fireball and reads in part:

 

The first allegation is that “the app was being used maliciously to target individual officers for violence”. This makes no sense at all. The app does not show the locations of individual officers at all. It shows general concentrations of police units, with a significant lag.

 

As the developer and @charlesmok, a Hong Kong legislator, have pointed out, the app aggregates reports from Telegram, Facebook and other sources. It beggars belief that a campaign to target individual officers would use a world-readable crowdsourcing format like this.

 

Moreover, what are these incidents where protesters have targeted individual police for a premeditated attack? Can Mr. Cook point to a single example? Can anyone?

 

U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley has been contributing heavily to the debate in a tweet on Tuesday. “Apple assured me last week that their initial decision to ban this app was a mistake,” Hawley wrote.

 

“Looks like the Chinese censors have had a word with them since. Who is really running Apple? Tim Cook or Beijing?”

 

Source

[zanderthunder]

Apple should not bow down to political pressure. They are not obliged to remove the app just because a political decision.