Apple CEO Tim Cook: The VICE News Tonight Interview (HBO)

I've posted this a number of times before but it's apparently not common knowledge (and for good reason Apple doesn't seem to talk about their situation in China often). Apple's position in China is completely consistent with the rest of the world. In filings to a court during the FBI legal fight, Apple addressed this topic head on. The reason it was brought up in the first place was because national security establishment water holders were putting out the idea that Apple makes exceptions for China, and the Department of Justice parroted it [1]. From Apple's filing [2]: >Finally, the government attempts to disclaim the obvious international implications of its demand, asserting that any pressure to hand over the same software to foreign agents “flows from [Apple’s] decision to do business in foreign countries . . . .” Opp. 26. Contrary to the government’s misleading statistics (Opp. 26), which had to do with lawful process and did not compel the creation of software that undermines the security of its users, Apple has never built a back door of any kind into iOS, or otherwise made data stored on the iPhone or in iCloud more technically accessible to any country’s government. See Dkt. 16-28 [Apple Inc., Privacy, Gov’t Info. Requests]; Federighi Decl. ¶¶ 6–7. The government is wrong in asserting that Apple made “special accommodations” for China (Opp. 26), as Apple uses the same security protocols everywhere in the world and follows the same standards for responding to law enf

Transcript of relevant section: [this video] > VICE News: In terms of privacy as a human right, does that apply to how you do business in China? > Apple CEO Tim Cook: It absolutely does. Encryption for us is the same in every country in the world. We don't design encryption for, you know, for the US and do it differently everywhere else. It's the same. And so to send a message in China, it's encrypted. I can't produce the content. I can't produce it in the United States either. If you lock your phone in China, I can't open it. > The thing in China that some people have confused is certain countries, and China's one of them, has a requirement that data from local citizens has to be kept in China. We worked with a Chinese company to provide iCloud. But the keys, which are- which is the "key" so to speak, pardon the pun, are ours. > VICE: But haven't they moved to China, meaning it's much easier for the Chinese government to get to them? > Cook: No, I wouldn't- I wouldn't get caught up in the, uh, "where's the location" of it. I mean, we have servers located in many different countries in the world. It's- they're not easier to get data, uh, from being in one country versus the next. The key question is, how does the encryption process work, and who owns the keys if anyone. In most cases for us, you and the receiver own the keys. VICE interviews are not held under penalty of perjury, of course, but we may give Apple's CEO the benefit of the doubt. As Mr. Cook acknowledges, Apple did m