Apple 'Assessing' Hong Kong National Security Law as Other Tech Companies Pause Data Requests
Apple is assessing a new Hong Kong security law that makes "subversion" of the government illegal and raises concerns about the criminalization of protests, reports Bloomberg.
China last week implemented legislation allowing local authorities to supervise and regulate internet access in Hong Kong. The new measures criminalize acts that were previously considered protected speech under Hong Kong law, such as the ongoing protests.
In a statement, Apple said that it already requires content requests from local law enforcement authorities to be submitted through the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty between the U.S. and Hong Kong. Apple also says that it has not received requests for Hong Kong user data since the law went into effect last week, though it is under assessment.
"Apple has always required that all content requests from local law enforcement authorities be submitted through the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty in place between the United States and Hong Kong," the company said. Under that process, "the U.S. Department of Justice reviews Hong Kong authorities' requests for legal conformance."
Earlier today, tech companies that include WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter said they would pause the processing of requests for user data from Hong Kong law enforcement agencies due to the implementation of the new security law.
Note: Due to the political or social nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Political News forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.
Popular Stories
Apple has announced it will be holding a special event on Tuesday, May 7 at 7 a.m. Pacific Time (10 a.m. Eastern Time), with a live stream to be available on Apple.com and on YouTube as usual. The event invitation has a tagline of "Let Loose" and shows an artistic render of an Apple Pencil, suggesting that iPads will be a focus of the event. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more ...
Apple has dropped the number of Vision Pro units that it plans to ship in 2024, going from an expected 700 to 800k units to just 400k to 450k units, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Orders have been scaled back before the Vision Pro has launched in markets outside of the United States, which Kuo says is a sign that demand in the U.S. has "fallen sharply beyond expectations." As a...
Apple today released several open source large language models (LLMs) that are designed to run on-device rather than through cloud servers. Called OpenELM (Open-source Efficient Language Models), the LLMs are available on the Hugging Face Hub, a community for sharing AI code. As outlined in a white paper [PDF], there are eight total OpenELM models, four of which were pre-trained using the...
Apple is finally planning a Calculator app for the iPad, over 14 years after launching the device, according to a source familiar with the matter. iPadOS 18 will include a built-in Calculator app for all iPad models that are compatible with the software update, which is expected to be unveiled during the opening keynote of Apple's annual developers conference WWDC on June 10. AppleInsider...
The upcoming iOS 17.5 update for the iPhone includes only a few new user-facing features, but hidden code changes reveal some additional possibilities. Below, we have recapped everything new in the iOS 17.5 and iPadOS 17.5 beta so far. Web Distribution Starting with the second beta of iOS 17.5, eligible developers are able to distribute their iOS apps to iPhone users located in the EU...
Top Rated Comments
China is a state that is extremely hostile to Western values and is actively engaging in cyber warfare against us, but the capitalists don’t care so long as their profits keep rolling in. Granted, the US and Russia has or is doing similarly, but China is prepared to treat its people worse than they treat animals, which is to say: extremely poorly.
Tim Cook and Apple simply can’t claim any moral high ground regarding their social equality, BLM or sexuality positions in the US and other western countries when they support a regime which denies basic human rights, transparency, the ability to question authority; and engages in genocide to name a few.
If Apple has the courage to remove a headphone jack and move to ARM, they should have the courage to get out of China.
He’s not going to risk losing business in Hong Kong though.