Reprinted from www.corpwatch.org
Apple has agreed to allow the Chinese government run security audits
on the new iPhone to prove that there is no back door access for the
U.S. government. However, activists say that this agreement could have
the opposite effect, allowing China to broaden spying on its own people.
"Handing over source code [would] mean that the Chinese government
will know exactly how ... Apple software works," said Percy Alpha, the
founder of the anti-censorship group GreatFire.org. "Apple users world-wide are much more vulnerable to spying from the Chinese government."
For its part, Apple maintains that it does not cooperate with any
government. "Unlike our competitors, Apple cannot bypass your passcode
and therefore cannot access this data," the company claims. "So it's not technically feasible for us to respond to government warrants for the extraction of this data from devices in their possession running iOS 8."
Indeed James Comey, the director of the U.S. Federal Bureau of
Investigation, recently complained that the government was worried that
Apple's latest software update was too secure. "What concerns me about
this is companies marketing something expressly to allow people to place themselves beyond the law," Comey told reporters last September.
But despite Apple's assurances of privacy for its users, the
question remains as whether it is a match for the Chinese government,
which is believed to have one of the world's most sophisticated
government systems for Internet censorship and surveillance,
collectively known as the Great Firewall.
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