As far as I know, In the US, Apple has always fully and willingly complied with legal requests for data stored on it's servers. Even in this specific controversial case, Apple handed over the relevant data to the authorities upon legal request.
Where they are drawing the line is to "break in" to their customers' devices upon legal request. As far as I can tell from this article, there is nothing to suggest that the Chinese government has ever made such a request.
It is therefore very misleading of this article to compare the requests as if they are the same and to suggest that Apple is complying with similar requests in China while denying the US government.
Is anybody shocked by this, really? Tim Cook knows very well that he will suffer absolutely no penalty for grandstanding against the U.S. government; in fact, it earns him and his company nothing but good press. Meanwhile his customer base will stand by his side (even as they obediently vote to re-elect the same government that's making the demands) and the government whose electoral base is those same customers will huff and complain but in the end do nothing.
But standing up against the Chinese government? Those guys may actually respond in some fashion. That principle actually carries some financial risk. Can't have that. China gives the orders and Cook's knees can't hit the ground fast enough.
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[ 5.5 ms ] story [ 18.0 ms ] threadApple deserves criticism for this but don't give US politicians ideas about doing what China does.
I think there are plenty congresspeople that would like to be China for a day.
Where they are drawing the line is to "break in" to their customers' devices upon legal request. As far as I can tell from this article, there is nothing to suggest that the Chinese government has ever made such a request.
It is therefore very misleading of this article to compare the requests as if they are the same and to suggest that Apple is complying with similar requests in China while denying the US government.
But standing up against the Chinese government? Those guys may actually respond in some fashion. That principle actually carries some financial risk. Can't have that. China gives the orders and Cook's knees can't hit the ground fast enough.