Censorship, Surveillance and Profits: A Hard Bargain for Apple in China
Apple built the world’s most valuable business on top of China. Now it has to answer to the Chinese government.
https://www-nytimes-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.nytimes.com/2021/05/17/technology/apple-china-censorship-data.amp.html
Two decades ago, as Apple’s operations chief, Mr. Cook spearheaded the company’s entrance into China, a move that helped make Apple the most valuable company in the world and made him the heir apparent to Steve Jobs. Apple now assembles nearly all of its products and earns a fifth of its revenue in the China region. But just as Mr. Cook figured out how to make China work for Apple, China is making Apple work for the Chinese government.
Mr. Cook often talks about Apple’s commitment to civil liberties and privacy. But to stay on the right side of Chinese regulators, his company has put the data of its Chinese customers at risk
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more on Apple in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=apple+
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more on VR in this IMS blog
HOW ORACLE SELLS REPRESSION IN CHINA
https://theintercept.com/2021/02/18/oracle-china-police-surveillance/
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more on Promethean and student data privacy
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=promethean
Russia-linked spyware found on school laptops given to children by government from r/worldnews
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/russia-spyware-school-laptops-b1790759.html
Upon unboxing and preparing them, it was discovered that a number of the laptops were infected with a self-propagating network worm,” one teacher reportedly wrote
Laptops provided to schools in order to support vulnerable children learning from home during the coronavirus pandemic have been found to contain viruses.
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more on student data privacy and China in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2018/10/31/students-data-privacy/
Leaked Documents Show How China’s Army of Paid Internet Trolls Helped Censor the Coronavirus from r/worldnews
https://www.propublica.org/article/leaked-documents-show-how-chinas-army-of-paid-internet-trolls-helped-censor-the-coronavirus
At a time when digital media is deepening social divides in Western democracies, China is manipulating online discourse to enforce the Communist Party’s consensus. To stage-manage what appeared on the Chinese internet early this year, the authorities issued strict commands on the content and tone of news coverage, directed paid trolls to inundate social media with party-line blather and deployed security forces to muzzle unsanctioned voices.
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more on trolls in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=trolls
The Chinese Communist Party on the American Campus
https://www.state.gov/the-chinese-communist-party-on-the-american-campus/
State Department, Michael Pompeo
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Pompeo Criticizes Colleges Over China Ties
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2020/12/10/pompeo-criticizes-colleges-over-china-ties
U.S. Policy on China May Move from ‘America First’ to America & Co.
A tech entrepreneur in the State Department is using network theory to counter Chinese pressure.
According to Krach, the Clean Network includes 180 telecom companies and 50 national governments that represent two-thirds of the world’s gross domestic product. Although that’s impressive, all countries aren’t equally committed.
The task of forming networks to counter China’s influence has been made easier by China itself, which has frightened and angered trading partners with its “wolf warrior” diplomacy, a newly belligerent pursuit of China’s national interests.
The Clean Network is to China what George Kennan’s “long telegram” [PDF] of 1946 was to the Soviet Union, wrote David Fidler, adjunct senior fellow for cybersecurity and global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, in a blog post in October.
But trade deals alone are not enough, says Martijn Rasser, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. For instance, they wouldn’t stop China from exporting its surveillance technology to countries such as Venezuela and Uganda, where it’s been used to target political activists, he says.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/charliefink/2020/08/07/this-week-in-xr-tik-tok-makes-music-as-instagram-reels-more-on-epics-epic-raise/#7ec4b9ef6b9d
President Donald Trump signed an executive order to prohibit US companies from doing business with Tencent, which owns WeChat and nearly 50% of Epic Games, which makes Fortnite and Unreal Engine. Tik Tok has until September 20th to sell to Microsoft or another American company or it, too, will be banned. Is this because some Kpop fans on Tik Tok spoofed a Trump rally in Tulsa?
Tencent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tencent
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/why-chinas-race-ai-dominance-depends-math-163809Why China’s Race For AI Dominance Depends On Math | Forget about “AI” itself: it’s all about the math, and America is failing to train enough citizens in the right kinds of mathematics to remain dominant. from r/technology
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/why-chinas-race-ai-dominance-depends-math-163809
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more on CHina in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=china
After March 2020 reports about Zoom privacy issues, now Zoom acknowledges working with the Chinese government:
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Is Zoom Safe for Chinese Students?
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/06/12/scholars-raise-concerns-about-using-zoom-teach-about-china
Unlike many other major tech platforms based in the U.S., Zoom, which is headquartered in California, has not been blocked by the Chinese government. Zoom said in a blog post that it is “developing technology over the next several days that will enable us to remove or block at the participant level based on geography” which will allow the company to “to comply with requests from local authorities when they determine activity on our platform is illegal within their borders; however, we will also be able to protect these conversations for participants outside of those borders where the activity is allowed.”
Zoom’s interference with the Tiananmen gatherings and its suspension of user accounts raised alarm among many in higher education, which increasingly depends on Zoom to operate courses remotely — including for students located within China’s borders.
Multiple scholars took to Twitter to express their worries
PEN America, a group that advocates for free expression, condemned Zoom for shuttering the activist’s account.
This is not the first time Zoom’s links to China have come under scrutiny. In April, the company admitted that some of its user data were “mistakenly” routed through China; in response, the company announced that users of paid Zoom accounts could opt out of having their data routed through data centers in China.
An April 3 report by scholars at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy said Zoom’s research and development operations in China could make the company susceptible “to pressure from Chinese authorities.”
Zoom, whose Chinese-born CEO is a U.S. citizen, said in its latest annual report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it had more than 700 employees at its research and development centers in China as of Jan. 31. The SEC filing notes that Zoom has a “high concentration of research and development personnel in China, which could expose us to market scrutiny regarding the integrity of our solution or data security features.”
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Zoom Just Totally Caved In to China on Censorship from r/technology
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more about Zoom in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=zoom