Apple denied Chinese government requests for source code twice in last 2 years

Chinese authorities have asked Apple to turn over source code twice in the past two years, but the company refused in both cases, Apple general counsel Bruce Sewell told a hearing of the U.S. House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on Tuesday.

Sewell was defending the company against accusations that the company is willing to hand data over to the Chinese government for business reasons, but unwilling to help U.S. law enforcement access private data, Reuters reported. Today's hearing is related to a House Judiciary Committee gathering in March, where Sewell also spoke to defend Apple's encryption practices.

The company's dealings with China became contentious earlier in the hearing, when Captain Charles Cohen — a commander with the Indiana State Police — brought up the idea that Apple is willing to give data to Chinese officials. His position was attacked by Representative Anna Eshoo, a Democrat from California, who forced Cohen to admit that his only source of information was media reports.

In Apple's latest Report on Government Information Requests, released Monday, the company said that China filed 32 requests for information relating to 6,724 accounts, up from 24 requests tied to 85 accounts six months earlier. It's not clear how many of these Apple complied with.

In a separate Tuesday panel, also in front of the Energy and Commerce subcommittee, Sewell contended that building any backdoor into Apple products would create problems for "one hundred percent" of its users.

Calling attention to potential usefulness of accessing private data, however, Thomas Galati — the chief of intelligence for the New York Police Department — told the hearing that between October 2015 and March 2016, investigators had been unable to open 67 Apple devices. These were linked to 44 violent crimes, include 10 homicides, two rapes, and the shooting of an on-duty officer.

New York is now the focus of the conflict between Apple and the U.S. government over encryption, following the Justice Department withdrawing an order asking Apple to help break into the iPhone of San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook. An anonymous third party helped the government instead.

The Justice Department is appealing a March ruling by New York Magistrate Judge James Orenstein, who argued that Apple can't be forced to undermine its own security in the instance of an iPhone linked to a local drug case. On Friday, lawyers for Apple suggested that the government has failed to prove it needs Apple's help in extracting data.

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10 Comments

SpamSandwich 32917 comments · 19 Years

About 8 years ago

It may be a safe bet to imagine at some point Apple will be barred from Chinese markets in the future due to their governments protectionism and approval of rampant IP theft.

baconstang 1153 comments · 10 Years

I always go to the Indiana state police for the best info on international high tech news.

revenant 610 comments · 15 Years

is this the best the upper brass of law enforcement can do--offer a completely unverifiable statement about source code without any evidence at all? i think someone needs to be demoted.

cnocbui 3612 comments · 17 Years

SpamSandwich said:

It may be a safe bet to imagine at some point Apple will be barred from Chinese markets in the future due to their governments protectionism and approval of rampant IP theft.

I think they might like to do that but won't. The repercussions could be very significant and what would China have gained? Apple moving absolutely everything to India? The Chinese are fairly pragmatic. There is little to gain and a lot to loose by such a move. Apple itself could initiate significant retaliatory actions and it would be inevitable that a case would go to the WTO. Then of course there would be the faint possibility of US trade sanctions.

rob53 3307 comments · 13 Years

SpamSandwich said:

It may be a safe bet to imagine at some point Apple will be barred from Chinese markets in the future due to their governments protectionism and approval of rampant IP theft.

I don't understand why so many people hate and don't trust China. The vast majority of people have no idea how China operates, they only are given news from a ton of unreliable sources and believe it. We continue to buy products manufactured in China while bashing them. The worst part is the US government hasn't been any better than the Chinese government for a long time. I'm not complaining about Obama, I'm complaining about the DHS, FBI, CIA, NSA and all the other three-letter agencies we don't know about. In other words, the US (and almost every country in the world) is no better than China. China could be changing. They might not fear anything going on from inside the country so they're concentrating their spying efforts on other countries, which is what we do in return. The USA is not an angel, it's far from it. China has become a capitalistic country, just like the US. We need to honor them as a country and quit complaining about them when we don't know what's really going on. I can complain about the US because I'm seeing firsthand how corrupt the entire government is all the way down to local police departments. I live in the Pacific Northwest and Seattle's police department is as bad as Los Angeles' was (and continues to be).

China will never bar Apple from its country because they're not stupid, like certain politicians running for office this year, and they need Apple's money. As for IP theft, that happens all over the world and our own judicial system can't protect Apple's IP from theft. Don't blame the Chinese on this one.