by Lauren Fruen at The Daily Mail
Apple data is being processed by Chinese state workers with the tech giant wiping tens of thousands of apps at the request of the government there so that te tech giant can do business in the country, according to a new report.
The state employees are said to manage servers at its data center in Guiyang and another in the Inner Mongolia region, The New York Times reports. That means the government is able to access personal data of millions of Chinese residents.
The encryption technology used by Apple elsewhere has also been banned by China, according to the report.
Apps said to have disappeared include foreign news sites and gay dating services.
And topics banned are said to include Tiananmen Square and independence for Tibet and Taiwan, according to Phillip Shoemaker, who previously ran Apple’s App Store.
This is all despite Tim Cook’s vow to protect civil liberties which saw the release of a controversial new privacy controls in April that requires iPhone users to give permission for apps to track their activity for advertising purposes.
It comes in stark contrast to the approach in the US where Apple has rebuffed attempts by the DoJ to give investigators access to its phones.
The allegation that Apple has removed gay dating sites is particularly stinging for Apple CEO who is gay.
The Chinese government is not thought to have gained access to the data, The Times reports. But documents seen by the paper suggest Apple has made concessions to make it easier for them to do so…
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