Apple Called to Account for its “Double Standard”

By Rupert Eyles / March 5, 2020;

Campaign against Apple allowing China to spy on Tibetans (Tibet Action Institute)

A global coalition of civil activists and human rights groups penned an open letter to technology giant Apple on February 13, calling on the company to stop facilitating China’s state-sponsored censorship and surveillance, and to meet them to discuss their concerns further.

The letter, whose signatories include Free Tibet and Tibet Action Institute, is addressed to Philip Schiller, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing. It highlights the company’s removal of 1,000+ Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) and news apps from the iOS App Store in China and “the transfer of Apple users’ iCloud data to a Chinese state-run telecom company”.

The letter states that these moves set “a blatant and unethical double standard for the Chinese App Store” and that following the removal of VPNs, iOS users in China are not able to protect their “internet communications from pervasive surveillance”. The letter goes on to stress that the lack of transparency around the removals appears to silence the “concerns of app developers…including many at Apple, who believe in an open and equally accessible web for everyone.”

Apple’s recent actions are couched within China’s continued state surveillance, notably of Tibetans and

Uighurs. Uighurs are the Muslim ethnic minority population of East Turkestan [Ch: Xinjiang] in northwestern China who live under similar oppression to the Tibetans under Chinese rule. Over a million Uighurs are known to be housed in “re-education camps” and Tibet has been ranked as “the second least free place on Earth, behind Syria”, according to the letter. The coalition urges Schiller to heed Apple’s own statements regarding its protection of individuals’ privacy across their products and, in addition to requesting a meeting with Schiller, for Apple to report annually on their policies on freedom of expression and access to information, as well as actions the company has taken “in response to government or other third-party demands that were reasonably likely to limit free expression”.