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Comment by fpgaminer | Hacker News Reader

I don't know the exact status of iOS in China, but, for example, if iMessage still works there and iOS is still secure then personally I'd call it a victory. Being able to provide a dystopian society with privacy, end-to-end encryption, etc, at the cost of censoring a flag. "Ends justifying the means", etc, etc. We all know the arguments. But the real world is messy.

For reference, I've been to Taiwan. Beautiful country. Censoring their flag in China is a cheesy move on China (and Apple's) part. But again, I'll take that in exchange for the other pro-privacy victories Apple can make.

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Nobody uses iMessage in China because SMS is expensive. iCloud data in China is stored in a datacenter in China where the Chinese government can access any data any time they want with no warrant whatsoever.

iMessage isn't SMS so I don't understand your first sentence. That's like saying "Nobody sends email because postal stamps are expensive".

As for the second sentence, iMessage isn't iCloud. And even if the iMessage data is stored in the same data center (which I have no idea), it's end-to-end encrypted so that doesn't help China.

If Apple needs to comply with China's demands, do you think that Apple would refuse to break encryption if China requested it?

Yes. I think Apple would disable iMessage in China entirely before breaking its encryption.

I disagree. But say the option wasn't to disable imessage, but rather break the encryption or stop selling in China? Or stop using your own encrypted icloud storage and use one run by China or stop selling in China?

To buttress your belief, is there any circumstance where they didn't cave to requests from the Chinese government? Or anywhere where they publicly disagreed at least? Honest question as I'm unsure if it has ever happened.

China can't mandate that Apple run an unencrypted messaging system in China. They could demand that Apple not run an encrypted one, but it would be complete nonsense to say "you must operate a message network or you can't sell phones!"

> To buttress your belief, is there any circumstance where they didn't cave to requests from the Chinese government?

I don't see how I could have an answer to that question, because Apple doesn't publicize the times that China asks them to do something and they say no. I would certainly imagine that China has probably asked them to break the encryption on iMessage.

I meant that because iMessage fallback to SMS and you don't know if sending an iMessage to someone will go through iMessage or SMS which might cost you money, that's why nobody uses iMessage.

iMessage isn't iCloud, but iMessages are stored in iCloud, Apple also stores iCloud encryption keys in China. See https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/25/apple-moves-icloud-encrypt...

it’s pretty easy to disable the fallback

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