Methinks this won’t be the last politically-motivated removal from Apple’s App Store; the more apps they remove then the more they weaken their own arguments about how a locked-in walled garden is in consumer interests.
The big tech companies bent the knee (or, complied with local policies and laws) to Russia, China, Europe, etc already to do business over there, it's nothing particularly new but we are fully aware that Russia and China are not free countries, and Europe has stricter consumer / data protection laws (so it's less free for companies than the US).
And it won't affect their branding in any relevant way.
As "Amusing Ourselves to Death"[1] would explain, what almost all Apple consumers want is just FaceBook, WhatsApp, memes and games. Anything else is "boooring!".
It would appear that the “if you have nothing to hide” thing that the gICEstapo and supporters are fond of trotting out, does not apply to ICE themselves. Whoda thunk it. They'll be complaining that such apps don't give ICE agents [and by “agents”, I mean “thugs”] due process next.
You have been making this same shitty point in hundreds of different comment sections now for multiple years. It’s a weird fixation.
The fact of the matter is that here in this very real life situation, the web platform having capabilities that aren’t just displaying documents in a markup language would have made it much more difficult for the government to just go and pressure a single company and now the service no longer exists for anyone.
Unverified developers can still use adb to install whatever they choose per the link:
“How does developer verification impact my use of Android Studio?
We are working to ensure these changes don’t have an impact on your day-to-day workflow so you can continue building your apps as smoothly as possible. Participating in developer verification will not affect your experience in Android Studio, the official IDE for Android app development. You will continue to be able to build and run an app even if your identity is not verified. Android Studio is unaffected because deployments performed with adb, which Android Studio uses behind the scenes to push builds to devices, is unaffected. You can continue to develop, debug, and test your app locally by deploying to both emulators and physical devices, just as you do now.”
For clarity, they're requiring apps to be signed by a verified developer on certified Android devices. You can still side load, but the verification is still required for the side loaded apps.
Future HN headline: Pam Bondi orders Google to revoke verification status and code signing certificates of authors of {partisan/politically-unfavourable Android app}
Back in 2011, Apple removed apps that crowdsourced warnings about DUI checkpoints. It remains Apple's policy today.
According to Grok, "In March 2011, four Democratic senators—Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), and Tom Udall (D-N.M.)—sent letters to Apple, Google, and Research in Motion (BlackBerry's parent company) urging the removal of such apps […]"
So, we have precedent where four Democratic senators pressured Apple to remove an app that allowed people to evade law enforcement.
Why did you ask an LLM which is manipulated by a single person when he doesn't like facts?
> So, we have precedent where four Democratic senators pressured Apple to remove an app that allowed people to evade law enforcement.
Yes, senators sent letters to several companies. Apple listened. What would have happened if it didn't? What would happen to Apple if they don't listen now?
Do you sincerely believe that both situations are comparable?
> Do you sincerely believe that both situations are comparable?
How are they not? In both cases US government officials applied pressure and implied legal action to force private companies to act in ways that enabled law enforcement to act with less resistance. It’s why we should always push back against government overreach and bullying. Because the “slippery slope” might be a logical fallacy, but that doesn’t stop it from also being the most likely outcome of the government pushing the boundaries.
> to remove an app that allowed people to evade law enforcement.
No, they continued to allow police location apps (Google maps will even tell you where they are).
The language they added to the app store rules were very specific: "Apps may only display DUI checkpoints that are published by law enforcement agencies, and should never encourage drunk driving or other reckless behavior such as excessive speed."
Whether or not that was a good idea at the time (it wasn't), you can't claim this is covered by the same guidelines.
And it was wrong then too. Preventing people from sharing publicly available, literally visible from the street, information has got to be the brightest line violation of 1A. I'm really over how much the supreme court—not just this supreme court—has let the government end run around the constitution using tricks like this. Especially with the tax and spend power. If the government couldn't pass a law doing X then the government shouldn't be allowed to achieve X by any means.
Congressional dysfunction isn't an excuse to allow the creation of a shadow government orchestrated by the executive but here we are.
Not surprising. The media hyped up the app and the admin hyper focused on it. Was bound to happen eventually since Apple wants to play nice with the government. Nice thing is it isn't the only one and others are multiplatform instead of iOS only. I'm doubtful we'll be seeing ICEblock show up in the iOS side load community.
I'd love for all tech reviewers at future product launches to go: "Yeah cool new iPads thanks... why did you guys block and remove an app that wasn't illegal? One that helped people know if armed forces that could search them and tear apart their homes were in the area?".
Just refuse to report on or post about new product launches without mentioning it.
Press is an large thing for Apple. Multiple times now they've only sprung into action when the press got on their arse about something (faulty HDD cables/video cards in Macbook Pros, faulty keyboards, etc). Press getting on them could push them to take an actual stance, or at least explain why (bowing to the dictator in this case).
Which is why all of them should, every single one. Ones who don't should be called out by others.
Same thing at White House press conferences, push push push them relentlessly with questions that make them uncomfortable... make them squirm.
Press who always allow the other side to control the narrative deserve to die out. I know this is all easier said than done, but holy crap we are making it so easy for them to walk over us right now, we could at least do something.
Which is why people going back and forth about incentives has always driven me nuts. Attempting to make assurances based on this handle we crank called "human incentive" that may map to human behavior in the expected direction, the opposite direction, or no direction at all, is madness! We don't know. Humans are unsolved.
Give me guarantees, or the closest approximation. Federation, distribution, dispersion of authority, interoperability.
Yes, exactly, which is why counting laws as a part of the incentive mechanism is wrong to do. "They won't do that because they don't want to break the law." Laws are impossible to perfectly enforce and States are changeling things. Communities should create more dependable guarantees.
Why do you need one? Or why is there always a presumption of an incentive that maps to capitalist modes?
I want decentralization because States oppress people and I want resistance to that to persist, others think like me such as the inventor of the Signal protocol hence why it was invented. If you need to describe that as incentive, cool beans.
You can't send a push notification without a certificate that apple controls from a website. Push notifications seem to be key here so that you don't have the constantly open the app/webpage.
Well, native apps are more popular among non tech savvy people because they’re easier to find and install. I was talking to the guy who works on our backyard and they don't even know what a browser is on their phone.
I have looked into developing a PWA. For starters:
1. Decent storage API. Last time I checked, there were serious limitations on the amount of storage you can use, especially in iOS
2. Mechanism for the user to save a certain . Analogous to saving and running a .exe and being able to compare the file hashes and run different versions of a file without the app developer's intent. This would include the ability to write and edit web apps from your device.
3. Some way of sending TCP/UDP packets directly, and doing port forwarding through UPnP.
4. Mechanism to run processes in the background, and for inter-app communication.
For example, you could not make a decent bittorrent app as a PWA. This is an example of an app which is prohibited on the app store despite having Apple having no legal basis for doing so.
I've often wondered if it would be possible to make some sort of "PWA Browser" that would give web apps hooks to some of this functionality, but it would probably get banned (There are no real rules on the app store, they can just ban you for whatever they want).
this is what I dont understand.
so many apps are almost website-like in functionality, and you can save a shortcut to the desktop / main screen and it will launch / look like an app. complete with notifications (if enabled).
What's the barrier? (another poster mentioned not knnowing anything outside of the appstore, but then "Share -> Add to Home screen" is a pretty damn simple flow.
Hmm, would be a shame if a major mobile operating system provider also ran a website-blocking service used by the largest web browser (Chrome) and the largest open-source web browser (Firefox).
They could even call it something like Google Safe Browsing to make it sound good to people.
This is exactly what's wrong with Apple's app store exclusivity. It's also what's wrong with mandatory notarization where regulations forbid that, and Google's plan to require developer verification.
Somewhat roundabout, but WEI can make it so you need to have an allowed device-OS-browser combo for important services like banking. The device can then make it impossible to install another OS, and the OS can make it impossible to install another browser. Then the browser (or the OS) just receives blacklists (and possibly eventually whitelists after everything is entirely corporate captured) from Google/Microsoft/Apple.
Apple is working hard to make sure the answer is no (by not implementing advanced PWA APIs in WebKit and by not allowing other browser engines on iOS).
The neat thing about the US is that governments are overthrown regularly by automatic operation of law: 12pm on the 20th of January 2028, in the case of the 47th president. I'm sure you know this but I feel everyone needs to remind themselves of this immutable fact regularly until then.
You are 8 months in since your last 20th of January and your chief turd already collected all top military officials and started his speech by intimidating them. There is no such thing as "automatic operation of law".
FWIW, everyone who claims that Apple fundamentally needs the centralized ability to control apps on their platforms "for everyone's safety" -- despite how that obviously and repeatedly makes them become patsies for governments all over the world to enforce their censorship regimes -- are complicit in this stuff (in addition, of course, to the people who build it at Apple...).
May be not complicit, but I think people need to be reminded that the context that Apple claims privacy is a fundamental human right and they are the defender of it. Both PR and in court.
And this centralised censorship regimes isn't new. It is exactly the same during Hong Kong protest in 2019.
This framing is designed to shame people into feeling guilty for their point of view, rather than their actions.
Being complicit means to be knowingly involved in or facilitating an illegal or wrongdoing act. In my books, it requires a level of participation that I don’t think your characterization meets.
You're dismissing the parent argument merely based on a narrow interpretation of the word complicity. The way they use it is common and correct in English language. All it needs is to aid the wrongdoing in some manner. That's exactly what you do when you choose to support and lend credence to Apple's flawed arguments on safety and thus blunt the opposition to their hostile practices. This is significant because Apple has been forced on occasions to backtrack on bad decisions in the face of public backlash. (Anybody remember their plan to scan all photos in the phone for CSAM?)
Now even if you want to go the pedantic or legal route, the meaning of complicity changes according to jurisdictions. Many legal jurisdictions consider interference in the opposition to a crime or even silence in the face of a crime to be complicity if you had sufficient knowledge about wrongdoer's intent. In this particular case, people had been warning for decades of this exact outcome, down to the details of the headline.
You could argue that this is policing of thought and opinion. Obviously, we're talking about moral responsibility here, which is just another opinion too as far as consequences are considered. (Except in cases of astroturfing and sock puppeting where the complicity is more direct. But we will ignore that possibility for now.)
>> everyone who claims that Apple fundamentally needs the centralized ability to control apps on their platforms "for everyone's safety"
This is an action. If you go around defending Apple or advocating for their position then yes, you are complicit. You are not just a bystander, you are actively participating in their propaganda. This is especially true on HN where we expect the average user to be fairly technically literate. Everyone here should know how phones are not unique computers that need extra central authority control to make them safe when compared to your desktops and laptops.
Sure, Apple probably wants to have control over that too, but are we really going to let them destroy the very thing that made these systems magic? Computers are "magic" because we can program them. Because they are environments. You cannot make a product for everybody. But you can make an environment in which everyone can adapt to their individual needs and use cases. That's what makes the computer magical and so special. A smart phone is nothing without its apps.
There's a difference between having a view and spreading apologia for public consumption.
For example, surely anti-abolitionists' apologia made them more complicit in the continued institution of slavery than those who chose not to make excuses for it did, even if they themselves did not own or facilitate the sale of people.
We don't seem to have a problem with assigning some responsibility for abolition with abolitionists' own apologia, some of it still read in schools today.
Okay. So your point was not really: "I disagree on moral philosophy, responsibility and the attribution of guilt", it was: "I support Apple's centralized control on all apps you can run, but I don't want to be criticized for the moral implications of state control, censorship and authoritarianism, nor do I want to defend my position on the merits". That's cheap.
It's more like: "I support Apple's centralized control on all apps you can run, as long as that monopoly is only used to squeeze out competition and not for censorship."
Of course government censorship becomes a lot easier if you only need to put pressure on one company.
I don't know if that's necessarily a charitable interpretation of the comment, keeping in mind the HN commenting guidelines. Despite differences in opinion we should give everyone the chance to state their view, no matter what it is, as long as it generates "curious" discussion.
If you buy apple products, work for the company or own its stock then you are financially facilitating this. I don't know who you are and I don't care, I am just saying this is the basic cause and effect.
Things cannot improve unless stakeholders use their levers to change or abandon the company.
I do 2/3 of those things and have no problem with what Apple is doing. There is no universal right side in this. This being a top comment here doesn't make it true.
FWIW, if you have no problem with what Apple is doing--and a lot of people might not: they might even actively cheer Apple on if they went out of their way to help ICE... not my jam, but a lot of people want to simultaneously be anti-ICE or anti-Trump and pro-Apple--then I don't think my comment becomes "untrue": the point simply would have no serious effect on you, as I guess you are simply OK being "complicit"... today <- which is key, as it isn't like this is the first or last time Apple has become a patsy to governments around the world, restricting access or removing content and software that challenge authoritarian control. I gave an entire talk in 2017 at the Mozilla Privacy Lab on how this happens to centralized systems all the time called "That's How You Get a Dystopia", though Apple is only one segment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsazo-Gs7ms.
The thing is these are all your opinions and you have a right to them... but you are choosing these words (my guess is they are chosen for you based on your source material) words like "complicit", "patsy", "authoritarian control". Using these words doesn't make them true.
I give you credit for speaking up for what you believe in publicly.
My opinion is that it is pretty self evident that a large or small company would remove an app at the request of the US Government that actively tracks federal agents that are attempting to enforce the law.
Bud Tribble was shaming Apple cronies in 1981 when he put "reality distortion effect" in circulation. You can feel however you want, but everyone can see the truth for what it is. Been that way for a while now.
Whatever the word is, the cause and effect is this:
1. Apple users tolerate the status quo through inaction, which is the centralized distribution of software.
2. Governments take advantage of this status quo to control apple users.
If it was the case that the OS was open, then the US Gov. would have no leverage to prevent the distribution of the software mentioned in the article. However apple's stakeholders enable and justify the centralized software distribution as a feature rather than a bug.
Developers are in on it too: the locked-down ecosystem is more lucrative for them because there are higher entry costs to producing software, and thus reduced competition. It prevents piracy for example, at the cost of preventing the distribution of pretty much all open source software.
It’s happened many times before, and people heard about it and aren’t that stupid or forgetful. They just want to believe something incompatible, so they permit themselves a little internal dishonesty: maybe it’s a separate issue that somebody else will surely figure out, or there’s a better solution (that we won’t pursue), or everybody always exaggerates (but we won’t verify that), or they find a way to hate and dismiss everybody who talks about it. Declaring your own shamelessness is more of the same: you’re reframing the problem from the consequences of your actions to your feelings about those consequences, then addressing only your feelings. It’s the same sort of behavior as heroin addicts, who find a route to happiness that doesn’t push them through the good things that the pursuit of happiness was meant to.
They knowingly created the systems they built around having centralized control, everyone told them the consequences of doing that, they did it anyway, this is the result, they are responsible.
> This framing is designed to shame people into feeling guilty for their point of view, rather than their actions.
Having a point of view and then using that point of view to make public claims, often counter-claims in face of precisely this type of criticism, is an action. Examples are easily found on this forum.
Would have Apple done the same if it was any another country?
Probably not. They would have courts and the democratic processes to help them resist.
But in face of authoritarian government who can hurt Apple's sales the company always bows. Be it actions in China or now action in US. The motive is simply profit.
The company cannot have a centralized control to make it "safer" and then give that way if the profits are under threat. Companies should be shamed for that.
I'm skeptical of this angle. If the app in question is being used by some to commit targeted violence, is it really a question of profit and not safety? Does it really take much pressure to want to get out of that position?
Does Apple publish apps designed for reporting locations of immigrants or minority groups? Is that a line of business they want to be in at all?
Please show where these apps have been used to commit targeted violence.
Your second paragraph reads to me like you’re equating the desire to protest and document the atrocities being committed by government agents to physical threats and violence being committed by unhinged private citizens against minority groups. This is a disingenuous argument.
Okay, but that's not what's being asked now is it? What's being asked is the explanation. They aren't telling saying to the public "we love the taste of boots" even if it is true.
I have no hope that the solution can be solved through lawfare. The ability of one company to control what the vast majority of people can do with their phones is unacceptable, regardless of what happens with this one app.
The vast majority of the people on this planet have never touched an iphone. Android dominates basically everywhere outside north america and, interestingly, the DPRK.
I lost--not on the facts, or even on the relevant law, and not even in the district court where we were being heard, but in appeals on a narrow technicality of statute of limitations that we bet our case on (I am explicit about this as Apple didn't "win", so much as "we failed"; I even feel like our case just wasn't argued very well once we got to that level, which hurts)--over a year and a half ago... so, never :(.
It’s a shame too, because Apple has the money and brand wherewithal to fight the government. See the FBI vs Apple stuff that happened years ago. That actually won them some real converts.
Capitulating over this is Apple showing their supposed core values have significantly hollowed
Isn’t Apple mostly interested in making more money, though, instead of spending money?
The way I see it of all the top tech giants, Apple has the most to lose with all the tariff shenanigans, so it’s in their [shareholders] interest to stay friends with the current administration.
Apple has never had moral values other than earning money by making great products.
And I say this as someone who is deeply embedded in the Apple ecosystem.
Part of the brand after the FBI fiasco was about being a privacy forward company that didn’t simply capitulate to government demands on a whim. They demonstrated in smaller tests they were willing to put up a fight for those principles.
That of course was now almost a decade ago. They seem to have changed their entire messaging and with it, seemingly their interest in being more than a ROI machine.
It’s a regression not a step forward. Apple was never a paragon but this was legitimately a step in the right direction I felt, but alas, I suspect in today’s culture I am increasingly in the minority position
> but this was legitimately a step in the right direction I felt
I'll steelman against this, but only because I really enjoy entertaining the idea. Even back then, it was a branding farce. The San Bernadino event was in 2015, pretty close proximity to the Snowden leaks which disclosed Apple's 2012 cooperation with PRISM. Best-case scenario, it was an extremely lucky press junket; worst case scenario it was a false-flag operation designed to manufacture trust from the ground-up. In the aftermath, Apple cooperated with local police and federal authorities perfectly well, and the passcode to the shooter's phone did eventually come out. Apple continued providing device access in situations where warrants were issued. They even dropped their eventual charges against NSO Group.
If your tinfoil hat isn't tight enough yet, we're talking about events that happened over a decade after the Halloween documents. Apple's executives (and the three-letter spooks) know that Open Source can ship attestable and secure software that trounces their best paid UNIX or Windows Server subscription on the open market. If the goal is to expand surveillance and you've got a coalition of sycophantic tech executives (somehow, imagine that haha), then it would almost be trivial to program endless RCEs into the client-side with "secure" binary blobs. All the "E2EE" traffic can get copied onto tapes and sent to a warehouse in Langley. Would be like taking candy from a baby.
And the number of shares you personally own is irrelevant. The only public companies that ever take long term bets are those that are still founder led.
> Cook, clearly trying to remain calm, shot back: “When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind, I don’t consider the bloody ROI [return on investment]. When I think about doing the right thing, I don’t think about an ROI.”
> Cook then offered his own bottom line to Danhof, or any other critic, one which perfectly sums up his belief that social and political and moral leadership are not antithetical to running a business. “If that’s a hard line for you,” Cook continued, “then you should get out of the stock.”
Making devices accessible cost pennies compared to their revenue and didn’t take any real courage. Come back to me when they stand by their convictions when it can cost them billions in tariffs
I'm also a shareholder and I'd say I'm pretty happy with Apple not needlessly getting involved in fights. The most important thing is not getting tariffed.
Their reputation will be fine, no one but the terminally online are going to stop buying an iPhone because of this.
Pretty sure most of their shareholders feel similarly.
I agree that most people will not hear about this app being removed. (Though note that it's being reported here in "normal people" news, not tech news.)
But it's far from the only way Cook has aligned himself with Trump in just the last few months. The dumb gold-glass plaque and the UK royal visit are two much more visible examples.
> Doing what he needs to avoid tariffs is fine in my book.
And from above:
> The most important thing is not getting tariffed.
I am curious where your personal line is. Surely you have one. If the only way Cook could avoid tariffs were to go on live TV and swear his allegiance to the KKK, would you still support that? What if the only way were for him to pursue direct legal action against you and your family until you’re bankrupt? Eating live puppies? What exactly would you consider to be “too much”?
Exactly this, we are not talking the normal cycle of 4 years and then they are out, we are talking a possible "forever" fascism in the US so sticking to points of "I'm happy as long as my sticks are fine" is completey sticking your head in the sand hopping this all goes away soon.
Tim Cook is a very shareholder-friendly CEO. One of the first things he did after he became CEO, which jobs always refused, was to start stock buybacks.
I have a hard time believing Apple getting in legal fights with the current administration is something that shareholders will appreciate, even if it’s better in the long term.
Regardless, if shareholders care about long term instead of short term, shareholders - as a whole - put the wrong CEO in charge.
> “Steve Jobs created a loyalty with users that is unparalleled in the consumer technology world. What Tim Cook has done, he’s built a loyalty with shareholders,” Sculley said on “Squawk on the Street.”
> Regardless, if shareholders care about long term instead of short term, shareholders - as a whole - put the wrong CEO in charge.
FWIW, while I keep wondering just how different the entire world would have ended up if Scott Forstall had ended up in charge of Apple instead of Tim Cook, I believe he was also one of the big reasons the App Store ended up as evil as it was (not Steve) :(. Is there anyone whom we could take seriously as having been in serious contention who actually would have done a better job?
the only time apple fights the government is when they want to keep illegally firing people and then the NLRB just goes, well sorry they just have too much money to stop them. They use bribe money for everything else.
Steve was never tested like this was he? Everyone’s about values until they are put into a fucked up situation like Tim Cook. The man had to literally deliver a Roman tribute to this president personally.
And that shouldn't have happened either. Apple doesn't need the US government, and Tim is himself a billionaire— he sure as hell doesn't personally need them either.
FWIW, you are legally required to pay your taxes, and there are going to be serious consequences to your life and your family's life if you don't; the moral decisions in that situation are much more difficult. However, Apple obviously is not and never was legally required to build a centralized App Store... hell: it isn't even clear that that it is legal that they did it, and these arguments are still playing out in court!
And, certainly, no one is legally required to put copious effort into defending the thing Apple did which directly and predictably leads to these results (which are not new or surprising). Even if Apple is, now, legally required to remove this app (and I don't know if they even are: many companies are just cowing to political, not legal, pressure), they carefully and intentionally set themselves up to be in that position.
FWIW, this much should at least be pretty obvious: if you go far far far out of your way to do something that no one required you to do to defend something that pretty clearly leads to a specific result, you are certainly MORE complicit in the results of that action than if you take an action that you are required to do at gunpoint and which only very indirectly and at very low impact causes the result (to the point where I don't even think the analogy of the Nurenberg Defense applies... but, I guess you aren't claiming to understand it well).
Like, I dunno... it just feels like such an ingenuous argument to try to claim that paying taxes -- of which only a very small percentage could possibly be claimed to cause this specific problem, particularly so as this exact same issue happens with iPhones in other countries (such as China, where Apple has become a very clear patsy to the regime and "complicit" barely scratches the surface of their involvement anymore) -- is somehow similar to actively defending the existence of a bottleneck on information and access to software that has time and again been used for censorship and authoritarian control.
Well to start with no one requires anyone to get a job and pay taxes. You could just as well live off food banks and take as much money from government. Knowing that the government does this, one need not give them any money any longer. You could spend down your balance and start eating from the food bank.
It's a pretty active act to go earn money that you then fully know (completely ahead of time) that you are giving to an immoral government. Especially when you know you can draw out of that government instead.
I think what is pretty obvious is that everyone has a story where they're somehow not villains but the guy epsilon more involved in the subject is 100% the villain.
Most people have their taxes withheld directly from their pay by their employer, and don't get the option to not pay their taxes, because the government gets the money before they do.
Because I have no interest in attracting the apocalyptic ire that is the Internal Revenue Service. You don't fuck with the organization that took down Al Capone or that even the _Joker_ is deathly afraid of.
It’s simply not that easy to do, nor is it the best approach per se, as it’s wrought with foot guns everywhere. Frankly it’s a big risk from a number of angles, one of the most obvious is such a movement being co-opted by special interests
Unironically it's because liberals actually like paying taxes. Every state and local school board tax increase passes where I live because it's a bunch of pot smoking hippies who unironically believe in wealth redistribution through progressive taxation.
The government is a centralization of power, it doesn't matter if our devices are "decentralized" if the government can simply make it illegal to use unlocked devices. Or encryption. Or VPNs. Etc.
But that isn't how this has worked, even in places like China where the regime would seem to have that level of power: while they absolutely require Apple--who went out of their way to create a bottleneck on software and information that is just too juicy not to assert external control over--to remove various apps from their store, it is not actually illegal to own or use unlocked devices.
> The government is a centralization of power, it doesn't matter if our devices are "decentralized" if the government can simply make it illegal to use unlocked devices.
That is a very binary view of the world, but the world is nothing but shades of gray.
At the very extreme of the most totalitarian government, you're right. Such a government can ban one thing or ban everything.
But in nearly every country, it's vastly easier to go choke a single neck (Apple) and tell them to shut something down, than to chase after tens of millions of individual people with individual devices, if all of them can run whatever they want from wherever they want.
The governments will always have the power, that's pretty much built into the definition of government.
Not the definition of our government. Our founding documents state that "Congress shall make no law" along the lines of what Apple is being pressured to do here.
And the executive branch isn't supposed to be making laws at all, even though that's what they're doing.
As the GP says: the problem is the power. But when some of us argue that maybe the government shouldn't have this kind of power, we get shouted down with "HURR DURR MOVE TO SOMALIA THEN," and worse.
It isn't just our government: Apple sells these devices around the world and they pull the same shit in every jurisdiction, and so the Chinese government has been granted by them an extremely powerful axe to just ban software they dislike, a tool they use quite often, forcing Apple to pull apps for VPNs and other P2P tools used by protesters to coordinate in a world where the Internet is locked down. If you are going to create a device and sell it in this world, you have to understand how this world works, and in this world, if you create and defend a centralized bottleneck, you WILL become a patsy.
> Not the definition of our government. Our founding documents state that "Congress shall make no law" along the lines of what Apple is being pressured to do here.
I suggest read up on NSLs.
Sure, that should not be legal if the constitution meant anything, but there it is.
> the problem is the power
Tell me about a single government ever in history that has not abused its power at least sometimes?
While you're right, we should strive for that, we also need to strive for not building centralization that can be abused. Because it will always be abused.
It's both. Apple very intentionaly designs their phones so that they can immediately cut off their user's access to various apps with the flip of a switch and no recourse. It's obvious that this has and will continue to be abused.
At the same time the government of an ostensibly free country that values free speech should absolutely not be making these demands.
At this point I expect such behavior from this administration, they aren't pretending to be anything other than incompetent and corrupt.
Shame on Apple for helping these scumbags, now and in the future.
> I think that Apple is a company that has to obey the rule of law.
Right, so the fundamental problem is having a device where the software that runs on it is controlled by a single company. It creates the attractive nuisance of being able to choke off anything the government doesn't like because, as you said, that single point of contact can't avoid obeying the government.
Computing needs to be open and controlled only by each individual owner of each device, so anyone can run whatever they like sourced from wherever they like.
> That’s your belief and there is a platform that allows just that.
A platform that's just about to take it away with user registrations. And that isn't just a 'belief' - that's what a lot of people do with their phones.
But the problem here isn't about an alternative. Apple platform is popular enough to make it a juicy target for tyrannical regimes. And when that happens, millions of people find their devices useless or outright hostile towards them, due to lack of user-controlled escape hatches.
> The fundamental problem here is not specific to Apple; It’s specific to a regime that is overstepping its bounds daily.
Would you have predicted the current situation two years ago? Regimes go rogue unpredictably all the time. That's why people argue against this sort of device lock down all the time! It's meaningless to shift the entire blame on to the regime after Apple failed to take precautions in the face these warnings.
> Would you have predicted the current situation two years ago?
Yes. There is nothing surprising to me about the current situation.
> Apple platform is popular enough to make it a juicy target for tyrannical regimes.
Agreed, if for nothing else than its size alone. It is also a target for so many folks to say, "if it was different in this one way, it would be amazing (for me.)"
> Yes. There is nothing surprising to me about the current situation.
That would mean that you willfully defended a vulnerability that you could foresee being exploited.
> It is also a target for so many folks to say, "if it was different in this one way, it would be amazing (for me.)"
Apple has been consistent in their messaging. You have to give up your freedom over your devices to ensure security. Not make it hard or explicit to override safety measures. Not make it safe through careful design. But you have to give up your freedom. And there is no limit to the steps they took in this direction.
People had already pointed out that all those measures were for profit squeezing, disguised as security measures. The most important observation though, was that it's a very flawed argument. Security by centralized control is a vulnerability in itself, as evidenced by this incident.
Apple and its supporters fought this argument in a consistent manner too. With shallow dismissals of the concerns, accompanied by the contemptuous implication that the detractors are overreacting. As if the critics should be ashamed for even bringing them up. They never really address the concern directly. You can see this in action in interviews where their top management justify such decisions. I don't see that having changed much.
But, Apple or any other company doesn't deserve to be let off the hook for incidents like this. There is no reason to consider all their decisions as enlightened, especially when corporate profit seeking is involved.
The point is that if you could install the app by side loading it, or from a third party app store, then a Government order to remove an app doesn't make it impossible to use that app. But Apples actions, ostensibly to protect its users, but in reality to protect its profits, has put it in a situation where it is a much more effective tool for government censorship.
The idea of "rule of law" is a shorthand for the set of norms and practices understood by everyone under a single regime, including both specific laws and authorities and more general principles. One of those, notably, is "the government shouldn't force private companies to censor their app stores".[1]
The rule of law is indeed being violated here, but in the other direction.
[1] Or "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech", if you swing that way.
I don't want to fall into the fallacy of implying that this is somehow justified because of something "the left" did a few years ago but I would like to highlight the hypocrisy of how many people were totally okay with this sort of executive censorship when Biden was in charge.
> "We reached out to Apple today demanding they remove the ICEBlock app from their App Store — and Apple did so," Bondi said in a statement to Fox News Digital.
I don't think this is something that trump or biden should be allowed to do, but the classic argument that your constitutional right to free speech ends when the president "politely" asks a software company to censor you on his behalf and they acquiesce is equally [in]valid in both situations.
I have never voluntarily owned an Apple smartphone or tablet, and a huge reason why is because I care a lot about being able to run software on it that Apple doesn't approve of for whatever reason.
Everything in the ICE tracking apps can be done as a web page. Good luck to MAGA trying to stop this, but the ugliness of ICE tactics will inspire a lot of people to build some very good technology to stop it.
Why are we asking for profits companies to fight our fights? I am reading lots of comments from keyboard warriors. For profits companies are not there to fight citizens fights. You don't want this kind of stuff to happen, then people need to fight their governments and demand better and stop relying on for profits entities to do so.
For-Profit companies have an outsized impact on our day-to-day and have the ear of the current administration. Citizens United allows their voice to be heard politically (where they again have an outsized impact). I'm curious why they can lobby to impact the lives we live and our access to information, and their CEO can donate a million to the inauguration but suddenly they deserve the right to fade into the background and stay out of it all?
No surprise here, all companies would do the same. But I was planning on moving to Apple once my current Android fails, not now.
I am hoping the Linux Phone I hear about advances to the point where my Cell Service supports it. Will see because I am pretty much done with Android and Apple.
> Authorities said the suspect, Joshua Jahn, searched his phone for tracking apps, including ICEBlock, before opening fire on the facility from a rooftop.
Thats weird because you dont need iceblock to know that ICE is at an ICE facility
So let’s level set… ICE can buy data from data brokers, and has active contracts with Cellubrite and Pegasus… but an organized opposition can only use rocks and spears. This isn’t a fascist regime at all.
another day, another example of why we must all vigorously reject the campaign to stop users from installing software on their computers. stallman was right!
In a society with rule of law, it is generally understood that adhering to laws, even ones you don't personally like, is a good thing; and that it would be a bad thing to pick and choose which laws to follow and enforce.
I suppose you're making the argument that current US immigration law is unjust and immoral to begin with and therefore should be actively circumvented?
We no longer have a society with the rule of law. The fish rots from the head. You can thank everyone who voted for the wanton criminal promising everything yet nothing but destruction, now creating cruel spectacle after cruel spectacle to distract from the fundamental fact that he should be in prison. And additionally his enablers in Congress and on the Supreme Council who've decided that our Constitution is worth less than toilet paper.
> Surely an app designed to help circumvent the law is a bad thing, even if it doesn't make one legally a criminal merely by association?
Much like Miranda rights. Surely outright informing people in custody they have the right to remain silent is a bad thing, right? Actually, thinking about it now, there's a whole lot of things people have the right to do that make enforcing the law way harder than it needs to be.
Or maybe it's more important to maintain your rights as a human being and citizen, especially in the face of an overreaching executive branch willing to justify anything in order to overreach a little more.
VPNs can serve a legitimate purpose, like shielding your traffic while using a public network. Seems to me the better technology analogue to ICEBlock is The Pirate Bay; maybe there's some flimsy pretext of it being used for a legitimate purpose, and maybe it's not outright illegal, but everyone knows that it's almost always used for an illegal purpose.
> but everyone knows that it's almost always used for an illegal purpose
And I would argue that to the general population (non-HN/tech types) a VPN is the "Pirates Bay" of banned or ID law content. Porn ID law goes into effect, tens of thousands of people suddenly sign up for a VPN. If they thought of it as "shielding your traffic while using a public network" they wouldn't be signing up en masse when laws happen that they want to circumvent; they would have already been using it.
As for ICEBlock et al, knowing they are raiding in a part of a city that happens to be on someones running or cycling/walking route while being a darkly pigmented citizen is a valid use of the app to know to stay clear of the area. It should not be a thing, but it is.
ICE is abducting citizens and generally stirring up chaos to make pretexts for escalating federal occupations. Anyone would be an utter fool to voluntarily put themselves in the presence of the new "American" Gestapo. And since the number of citizens is much larger than the number of iLlEgAlS (regardless of what the fearmongering on boomers' TVs would have you believe), an app to help avoid the lawless thugs is in the same exact category as a VPN.
I haven't heard about ICE detaining any US citizens who weren't either actively interfering with ICE activity as part of a deliberate anti-immigration-law-enforcement protest, or closely associating with actual illegal immigrants.
Detaining people who are actively interfering with ICE activity as part of a deliberate protest is something I think it's reasonable for any kind of police to be able to do - there's no reason why fellow citizens in a democracy should inherently privilege the violence protesters do in order to prevent the enforcement of a law over the violence that the police do to in order to carry out that enforcement, it all comes down to your political opinion of the law.
Detaining US citizens while in the process of detaining illegal immigrants also seems reasonable, since there's no way to tell if a suspected illegal immigrant claiming to be a US citizen is lying or not until law enforcement actually checks. This is no different than cops being able to arrest a person on suspicion of a crime and then let them go with no charges when they realize they were mistake, which is a power cops already have in our society.
> The new lawsuit describes repeated raids on workplaces despite agents having no warrants nor suspicion that specific workers were in the U.S. illegally, and a string of U.S. citizens — many with Latino-sounding names — who were detained.
Working at a workplace that has a large immigration workforce is also not a crime or a reason to be detained. Yes, these things are working their way through the legal system -- as it should. But US citizen rights are being violated and sticking one's head in the sand or hand waving away these things is crazy to me, a US citizen, it's not how I was raised in the South. I can understand non-citizens/residents thinking that way though. They have their own experience
Having brown pigmented skin, working with brown pigmented skin people or speaking spanish doesn't weaken a citizens rights to make these rights violations "reasonable". If someone is "actively interfering" with ICE that's not immigration enforcers job to deal with, and should be handled/handed over to the local police force and taken to a police center, not immigration detention.
Depends on the law and how it's enforced. You could argue the current status-quo is law breaking by law enforcement, so circumventing them is enforcing the law.
No need for actual free speech. Host it in Russia, China, Venezuela, Iran, DPRK, or any other strategic adversary of the United States. The success of ICEBlock is 100% inline with their information warfare goals. The more strife they can spread, the more protests, the more violence, the more confrontations, and the more 'noise' that gets made about ICE in the US, the better for them.
That doesn't mean the developer of ICEBlock is anti-American, just that there's a common interest in seeing his project succeed.
IMHO, this is just another example of something that would be better off as a website/webapp than a native app. If anything, having an app that tracks ICE agents installed on your device seems more like a liability than an asset.
17 years on from the App Store we're still trying to get people to wrap their heads around just using websites. And to think probably all of the users of the app are finding out about it via a LINK in a message or social post.
This is the problem with the modern "app" way of doing things. This sort of thing would be best handled as a website so that users need not run specific software on thier phones. Reports can come in as basic emails parsed for a lat/long or grid. Then a kml file can be pushed as needed to a basic web-facing map. The bandwidth would be minimal and very resistant to shutdown. Heck, share the kml files via torrents or put the map server in tor if necessary. No apps required.
In practice this seems much more difficult to do than going after the app in the app store, particularly if you choose your registrar and hosting provider carefully.
Ya, the pirate bay is still online, so too innumerable similar sites once targeted by various agencies. A smallish map running on a RP plugged into tor would be very resiliant. But there is a bittorent protocol that allows for rolling updates to a torrent. That would be the best way to distribute kml files imho.
What’s this updatable BitTorrent protocol? I wished for something like this years ago as an auto-updating torrent for downloading Wikipedia with live (or daily or whatever) changes.
this is really neat. I've been looking for this sort of functionality with IPNS, but it seems like bittorrent could be better. Do clients implement this yet?
Website can't provide notification on iOS. You may find workaround but that would be either expensive or under Apple's control. This use-case without notifications is quite useless.
Reading the comments on that Fox site is depressing. A lot of hate for Apple, but for the wrong reasons (as in, completely missing the danger of centralized app stores..).
Technofascists are going to help the illiterati fascists because they both like piles of money, utterly lack ethics and a backbone, and don't care about ordinary people.
If I had to guess who was most likely to be illiterate between:
- employees of major American tech companies like Apple
- ICE agents
- illegal immigrants
I would bet on illegal immigrants every time, especially if we're restricting the question to literacy in English specifically.
In addition to the pressure from the Government, this is probably Apple realizing it’s just the right thing to do for a few reasons.
1. Apple (along with the app author s) are aiding and abetting fugitives from the law.
2. The (might) be some financial or legal liability if someone using the app shows up and causes harm to Law Enforcement personnel. People want to be able to sue gun manufactures for building firearms that are used in the commission of a crime. Seems like the same thing right off.
3. If someone wrote an app that helped for instance someone openly evade getting caught for revenge or child porn. Pretty sure that would be either not approved or removed.
4. It’s just the right thing to do. This is a nation of laws. If the public at large wants to change immigration there are ways to do that through congress. One of the reasons there are so many illegal aliens is because of the executive branch (both D and R but especially the former) ignoring the laws in place and just doing as they please.
I think it’s more about liability that specifically breaking a law. I’m not a lawyer but Apple is knowingly publishing an app that is openly helping people evade and/or break the law AND is putting Law Enforcement in danger. Seems there is some liability there.
>>Avoiding being where ICE agents are is not against the law.
Sure if you are the one avoiding arrest. How about if you rob a bank and I help you evade arrest? You could make a case that these apps are doing something similar. With a good prosecutor I wouldn't want to take my chances defending myself against that.
>>Crossing the border not at a designated point of crossing is against the law; this app is not for that.
True - but to argue the point - it could be used for that. If you had a map of where ICE/Border Patrol was it might aid in a successful crossing. Probably a bit OT though.
Being arrested is fine if due process is followed. ICE isn't following due process because they are pieces of shit.
Multiple times now they've been found to have removed innocent people with little chance of recourse. Only after huge public outcry have ICE been shamed into returning a select few.
So 100% people should be avoiding potential removal without due process.
ICE tracking apps put ICE agents in danger, and the same kind of app for, say, tracking Meta employees or “people who wear Team Blue T-shirts” or any other group would obviously be a danger as well. How on earth do people find this controversial..?
Methinks this won’t be the last politically-motivated removal from Apple’s App Store; the more apps they remove then the more they weaken their own arguments about how a locked-in walled garden is in consumer interests.
Oh absolutely. Bondi demanded (!) they remove the app. Why would anyone think she won't demand they remove others?
Apple removed a lot of apps from the store in order to stay present in Russia.
Just business
The big tech companies bent the knee (or, complied with local policies and laws) to Russia, China, Europe, etc already to do business over there, it's nothing particularly new but we are fully aware that Russia and China are not free countries, and Europe has stricter consumer / data protection laws (so it's less free for companies than the US).
Just business under an authoritarian regime. Things happening the way they happen in Russia is not exactly something I'd aspire to, or readily accept…
Only goes to show how the U.S. are becoming more like Russia by the day.
Did anyone actually believe {MEGACORP} would prefer political alignment to money?
And it won't affect their branding in any relevant way.
As "Amusing Ourselves to Death"[1] would explain, what almost all Apple consumers want is just FaceBook, WhatsApp, memes and games. Anything else is "boooring!".
We live in an Idiocracy[2]. Deal with it.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy
This wasn't the first one either.
Yep they reap what they sow
And it is certainly also not the first.
What was the first?
No idea, but i know that apple regularly responds to government takedown requests. This was from last year:
https://www.wsj.com/tech/apple-removes-whatsapp-threads-from...
Apple even has a website about it: (there dozens of such takedowns each year.)
https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/app-removal-request...
It would appear that the “if you have nothing to hide” thing that the gICEstapo and supporters are fond of trotting out, does not apply to ICE themselves. Whoda thunk it. They'll be complaining that such apps don't give ICE agents [and by “agents”, I mean “thugs”] due process next.
Google is making it so sideloading APKs on Android is no longer possible. This is one of many great reasons why that should not happen.
Conversely, this and EU Chat Control are precisely why the powers that be will ensure it will happen.
The importance of FOSS mobile OSes is greater than ever now.
I agree with you, but can we stop calling installing software on the hardware you own "sideloading"?
Yeah, we should just ironically lean into it even harder and call it “backdooring”.
Jokes aside, when has pandering to people to change the status quo of colloquial word use ever worked?
Well, obviously changing "installing software" to "sideloading" worked somehow.
It could be called "liberty-loading". You are at liberty to load/install software from anywhere
Offline installation.
What a coincidence ?
This is why you should be developing for the web and not the App Store in the first place.
Only works if everyone stops helping Google to turn the Web into ChromeOS Platform.
You have been making this same shitty point in hundreds of different comment sections now for multiple years. It’s a weird fixation.
The fact of the matter is that here in this very real life situation, the web platform having capabilities that aren’t just displaying documents in a markup language would have made it much more difficult for the government to just go and pressure a single company and now the service no longer exists for anyone.
Someone has to remember younger folks about IE 6 outcome, while others pretend only Chrome exists and ship Electron crap as well.
Firefox barely surviving at 3%, Safari as the last one standing, remains to be seen if Servo or Ladybird ever become relevant.
Yes, shitty point for anyone that only cares about Google's agenda to take over the Web.
If there’s a coherent point in here I genuinely can’t find it.
I can't help you there.
This is what matters https://whatwg.org/
Not this
https://developer.chrome.com/blog
https://www.electronjs.org/
https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2025/09/lets-talk-...
Google disputes that: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2025/09/lets-talk-...
Unverified developers can still use adb to install whatever they choose per the link:
“How does developer verification impact my use of Android Studio?
We are working to ensure these changes don’t have an impact on your day-to-day workflow so you can continue building your apps as smoothly as possible. Participating in developer verification will not affect your experience in Android Studio, the official IDE for Android app development. You will continue to be able to build and run an app even if your identity is not verified. Android Studio is unaffected because deployments performed with adb, which Android Studio uses behind the scenes to push builds to devices, is unaffected. You can continue to develop, debug, and test your app locally by deploying to both emulators and physical devices, just as you do now.”
>Verified developers will have the same freedom to distribute their apps directly to users through sideloading or through any app store they prefer.
So it’s the same then. Google can just “unverify” a developer who has published an app the kings don’t approve of.
For clarity, they're requiring apps to be signed by a verified developer on certified Android devices. You can still side load, but the verification is still required for the side loaded apps.
Future HN headline: Pam Bondi orders Google to revoke verification status and code signing certificates of authors of {partisan/politically-unfavourable Android app}
This still means that Google is effectively gatekeeping what can be installed on the hardware you own and what cannot.
Back in 2011, Apple removed apps that crowdsourced warnings about DUI checkpoints. It remains Apple's policy today.
According to Grok, "In March 2011, four Democratic senators—Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), and Tom Udall (D-N.M.)—sent letters to Apple, Google, and Research in Motion (BlackBerry's parent company) urging the removal of such apps […]"
So, we have precedent where four Democratic senators pressured Apple to remove an app that allowed people to evade law enforcement.
> It remains Apple's policy today.
What is that policy?
> According to Grok
Why did you ask an LLM which is manipulated by a single person when he doesn't like facts?
> So, we have precedent where four Democratic senators pressured Apple to remove an app that allowed people to evade law enforcement.
Yes, senators sent letters to several companies. Apple listened. What would have happened if it didn't? What would happen to Apple if they don't listen now?
Do you sincerely believe that both situations are comparable?
> Do you sincerely believe that both situations are comparable?
How are they not? In both cases US government officials applied pressure and implied legal action to force private companies to act in ways that enabled law enforcement to act with less resistance. It’s why we should always push back against government overreach and bullying. Because the “slippery slope” might be a logical fallacy, but that doesn’t stop it from also being the most likely outcome of the government pushing the boundaries.
> to remove an app that allowed people to evade law enforcement.
No, they continued to allow police location apps (Google maps will even tell you where they are).
The language they added to the app store rules were very specific: "Apps may only display DUI checkpoints that are published by law enforcement agencies, and should never encourage drunk driving or other reckless behavior such as excessive speed."
Whether or not that was a good idea at the time (it wasn't), you can't claim this is covered by the same guidelines.
> According to Grok
Do you have any sources that aren't prone to hallucination and fits of partisan, racially-charged, conspiratorial hysteria?
https://www.autoblog.com/news/apple-to-reject-apps-that-incl...
Why is Waze allowed since it let's you report speed traps?
Probably because it doesn't technically advertise it as such, just "hey something requiring police presence is around".
ICEBlock should rebrand as a generic "police activity" app and have a category "other" that everyone understands is ICE but isn't labelled as such.
> Why is Waze allowed since it let's you report speed traps?
Nominally the purpose of speed enforcement is to reduce vehicle speeds, which Waze notifications achieve.
Waze - at least in my country - did remove COVID checkpoints during lockdowns, so they don't allow all reports.
What is that?
And it was wrong then too. Preventing people from sharing publicly available, literally visible from the street, information has got to be the brightest line violation of 1A. I'm really over how much the supreme court—not just this supreme court—has let the government end run around the constitution using tricks like this. Especially with the tax and spend power. If the government couldn't pass a law doing X then the government shouldn't be allowed to achieve X by any means.
Congressional dysfunction isn't an excuse to allow the creation of a shadow government orchestrated by the executive but here we are.
Just side load it apple user! Surely the great apple would never lock you in to a walled garden?
Source? Not even your quoted Grok output is claiming that Apple removed the apps, just that the senators asked them to.
At least one source I found says that "Apple and Google did not give in" https://reason.com/2011/05/23/no-app-for-that/
I don't think a situation like this is impossible, quite the opposite, but let's try to not invent facts please.
Ctrl-f DUI https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/
Not surprising. The media hyped up the app and the admin hyper focused on it. Was bound to happen eventually since Apple wants to play nice with the government. Nice thing is it isn't the only one and others are multiplatform instead of iOS only. I'm doubtful we'll be seeing ICEblock show up in the iOS side load community.
I'd love for all tech reviewers at future product launches to go: "Yeah cool new iPads thanks... why did you guys block and remove an app that wasn't illegal? One that helped people know if armed forces that could search them and tear apart their homes were in the area?".
Just refuse to report on or post about new product launches without mentioning it.
Press is an large thing for Apple. Multiple times now they've only sprung into action when the press got on their arse about something (faulty HDD cables/video cards in Macbook Pros, faulty keyboards, etc). Press getting on them could push them to take an actual stance, or at least explain why (bowing to the dictator in this case).
Yeah but the press has to make money. They don't want to lose access, ultimately most of them want to be PR contractors for big companies
Getting people off of for-profit news would be great, though I admit it's a blue sky proposal
Which is why all of them should, every single one. Ones who don't should be called out by others.
Same thing at White House press conferences, push push push them relentlessly with questions that make them uncomfortable... make them squirm.
Press who always allow the other side to control the narrative deserve to die out. I know this is all easier said than done, but holy crap we are making it so easy for them to walk over us right now, we could at least do something.
It’s Hong Kong and HKMap.live all over again.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-49995688
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21210678 ("Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store" (2019); 893 comments)
As soon as incentives start to diverge, centralized app stores look less benevolent.
Which is why people going back and forth about incentives has always driven me nuts. Attempting to make assurances based on this handle we crank called "human incentive" that may map to human behavior in the expected direction, the opposite direction, or no direction at all, is madness! We don't know. Humans are unsolved.
Give me guarantees, or the closest approximation. Federation, distribution, dispersion of authority, interoperability.
> Give me guarantees,
What’s the incentive?
Exactly. As long as this isn’t enforced by laws, it won’t happen. And then there are administrations that get away with just ignoring the law.
Yes, exactly, which is why counting laws as a part of the incentive mechanism is wrong to do. "They won't do that because they don't want to break the law." Laws are impossible to perfectly enforce and States are changeling things. Communities should create more dependable guarantees.
Why do you need one? Or why is there always a presumption of an incentive that maps to capitalist modes?
I want decentralization because States oppress people and I want resistance to that to persist, others think like me such as the inventor of the Signal protocol hence why it was invented. If you need to describe that as incentive, cool beans.
Why would they make you do that, Tim? You gave them a trophy and everything.
The trophy was just a down payment.
Are people using non app work arounds ? Could the app be replaced with a SMS tree https://notbau.com/how-to-create-and-manage-a-manual-call-tr...
It could be replaced with a fucking web app if they built it properly the first time around.
Ah, yes. Apple - the "standing up to the government" company
Apple did the whole show with FBI because it was convenient for them. They bend the knee faster than anyone when things get a little uncomfortable.
“It’s ok when our guy does it!”
-SCOTUS majority, American GOP.
He is just joking...
Why are people so obsessed about apps. could be a website that couldn’t easily be taken down.
You can't send a push notification without a certificate that apple controls from a website. Push notifications seem to be key here so that you don't have the constantly open the app/webpage.
Well, native apps are more popular among non tech savvy people because they’re easier to find and install. I was talking to the guy who works on our backyard and they don't even know what a browser is on their phone.
> they don't even know what a browser is on their phone.
Why should they? There’s no app called “web browser” on the phone. But there may be “Safari” or “Google Chrome”. Do they know what those are?
If you told them “go to <some web address>”, could they do it?
PWAs are limited in functionality, and websites on the clearnet are easily taken down or blocked.
> websites on the clearnet are easily taken down or blocked.
As are apps, as this submission demonstrates. Websites at least have quick methods of recovery by changing domains or servers.
> PWAs are limited in functionality
By Apple, because it's Apple that a) refuses to implement advanced PWA features in WebKit and b) refuses to allow apps to use other browser engines.
So exactly which festures would be needed in a PWA that’s not currently available in iOS?
It’s just a meaningless talking point without specifics
I have looked into developing a PWA. For starters:
1. Decent storage API. Last time I checked, there were serious limitations on the amount of storage you can use, especially in iOS
2. Mechanism for the user to save a certain . Analogous to saving and running a .exe and being able to compare the file hashes and run different versions of a file without the app developer's intent. This would include the ability to write and edit web apps from your device.
3. Some way of sending TCP/UDP packets directly, and doing port forwarding through UPnP.
4. Mechanism to run processes in the background, and for inter-app communication.
For example, you could not make a decent bittorrent app as a PWA. This is an example of an app which is prohibited on the app store despite having Apple having no legal basis for doing so.
I've often wondered if it would be possible to make some sort of "PWA Browser" that would give web apps hooks to some of this functionality, but it would probably get banned (There are no real rules on the app store, they can just ban you for whatever they want).
PWAs can’t use Sockets, for one thing.
What on earth would you need that for in this instance?
As a side note, when Apple finally gets their shit together WebTransport is excellent for most socket like use cases.
what if you want a push notification when ICE agents appear in your work area?
https://web.dev/articles/push-notifications-web-push-protoco...
Maybe an SMS based approach would be preferred over an app notification.
Expensive for the host though
this is what I dont understand. so many apps are almost website-like in functionality, and you can save a shortcut to the desktop / main screen and it will launch / look like an app. complete with notifications (if enabled). What's the barrier? (another poster mentioned not knnowing anything outside of the appstore, but then "Share -> Add to Home screen" is a pretty damn simple flow.
Hmm, would be a shame if a major mobile operating system provider also ran a website-blocking service used by the largest web browser (Chrome) and the largest open-source web browser (Firefox).
They could even call it something like Google Safe Browsing to make it sound good to people.
Exhibit A on why sideloading must be allowed and why Europe is right on this
Yet even there Apple still require apps be notarised, and presumably that signature could be revoked.
Yep that needs to go as well
This is exactly what's wrong with Apple's app store exclusivity. It's also what's wrong with mandatory notarization where regulations forbid that, and Google's plan to require developer verification.
Websites don’t need an App Store.
The brightest minds are working on this problem as we speak
Government agent: "We have top men working on it right now" Indiana Jones: " Who?" Government agent: "Top. Men."
I like this
For how long?
The software on our primary machines used to not need blessing, but that too changed.
as long as it needs to be uploaded onto to monopolies running cloud servers, domain hosters or financial processors
this is why any corrupt government allows the monopolies like Google and Apple proliferate. easier to contain a few
Still don’t? I use FreeBSD.
Did we forget about WEI already? I'm sure Google is waiting for the right time to try it again.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Environment_Integrity
How would WEI prevent you from running a web-site with functionality similar to the removed apps?
Somewhat roundabout, but WEI can make it so you need to have an allowed device-OS-browser combo for important services like banking. The device can then make it impossible to install another OS, and the OS can make it impossible to install another browser. Then the browser (or the OS) just receives blacklists (and possibly eventually whitelists after everything is entirely corporate captured) from Google/Microsoft/Apple.
Precisely. They could simply say "not our problem" and move along if they didn't have this capability.
But since it exists, it can be abused.
I keep hoping enough people inside Google still give a shit to push back on their plan, but I'm not banking on it.
The idea of a world where users have no control over their own devices is just too attractive for the oligarchs.
Can the same functionality be accomplished with mobile web?
can they do push notification (e.g. when ICE agents show up near your zipcode)
Yes push notifications are possible on mobile web.
Not on iOS.
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/usernotifications/...
Apple is working hard to make sure the answer is no (by not implementing advanced PWA APIs in WebKit and by not allowing other browser engines on iOS).
so now you are going to list the unavailable features that would make a web app impossible…
Isn't this the company that was commended for not bowing down to pressure from FBI?
Thankfully, there is no reason why any of these apps need to be native apps.
Add Apple to the list of collaborators who need to be punished once the regime is overthrown.
Overthrown by whom? Aliens? Power supports power, there is no way out of this black hole.
The neat thing about the US is that governments are overthrown regularly by automatic operation of law: 12pm on the 20th of January 2028, in the case of the 47th president. I'm sure you know this but I feel everyone needs to remind themselves of this immutable fact regularly until then.
You are 8 months in since your last 20th of January and your chief turd already collected all top military officials and started his speech by intimidating them. There is no such thing as "automatic operation of law".
FWIW, everyone who claims that Apple fundamentally needs the centralized ability to control apps on their platforms "for everyone's safety" -- despite how that obviously and repeatedly makes them become patsies for governments all over the world to enforce their censorship regimes -- are complicit in this stuff (in addition, of course, to the people who build it at Apple...).
May be not complicit, but I think people need to be reminded that the context that Apple claims privacy is a fundamental human right and they are the defender of it. Both PR and in court.
And this centralised censorship regimes isn't new. It is exactly the same during Hong Kong protest in 2019.
> are complicit in this stuff
I don’t know that that is fair.
This framing is designed to shame people into feeling guilty for their point of view, rather than their actions.
Being complicit means to be knowingly involved in or facilitating an illegal or wrongdoing act. In my books, it requires a level of participation that I don’t think your characterization meets.
You're dismissing the parent argument merely based on a narrow interpretation of the word complicity. The way they use it is common and correct in English language. All it needs is to aid the wrongdoing in some manner. That's exactly what you do when you choose to support and lend credence to Apple's flawed arguments on safety and thus blunt the opposition to their hostile practices. This is significant because Apple has been forced on occasions to backtrack on bad decisions in the face of public backlash. (Anybody remember their plan to scan all photos in the phone for CSAM?)
Now even if you want to go the pedantic or legal route, the meaning of complicity changes according to jurisdictions. Many legal jurisdictions consider interference in the opposition to a crime or even silence in the face of a crime to be complicity if you had sufficient knowledge about wrongdoer's intent. In this particular case, people had been warning for decades of this exact outcome, down to the details of the headline.
You could argue that this is policing of thought and opinion. Obviously, we're talking about moral responsibility here, which is just another opinion too as far as consequences are considered. (Except in cases of astroturfing and sock puppeting where the complicity is more direct. But we will ignore that possibility for now.)
Sure, Apple probably wants to have control over that too, but are we really going to let them destroy the very thing that made these systems magic? Computers are "magic" because we can program them. Because they are environments. You cannot make a product for everybody. But you can make an environment in which everyone can adapt to their individual needs and use cases. That's what makes the computer magical and so special. A smart phone is nothing without its apps.
So yes, complicit.
There's a difference between having a view and spreading apologia for public consumption.
For example, surely anti-abolitionists' apologia made them more complicit in the continued institution of slavery than those who chose not to make excuses for it did, even if they themselves did not own or facilitate the sale of people.
We don't seem to have a problem with assigning some responsibility for abolition with abolitionists' own apologia, some of it still read in schools today.
The wrongdoing is supporting this company's dominance, which enables this level of censorship.
You’re still not shaming me.
Okay. So your point was not really: "I disagree on moral philosophy, responsibility and the attribution of guilt", it was: "I support Apple's centralized control on all apps you can run, but I don't want to be criticized for the moral implications of state control, censorship and authoritarianism, nor do I want to defend my position on the merits". That's cheap.
It's more like: "I support Apple's centralized control on all apps you can run, as long as that monopoly is only used to squeeze out competition and not for censorship."
Of course government censorship becomes a lot easier if you only need to put pressure on one company.
I don't know if that's necessarily a charitable interpretation of the comment, keeping in mind the HN commenting guidelines. Despite differences in opinion we should give everyone the chance to state their view, no matter what it is, as long as it generates "curious" discussion.
Maybe the framing was not intended to do so?
If you buy apple products, work for the company or own its stock then you are financially facilitating this. I don't know who you are and I don't care, I am just saying this is the basic cause and effect.
Things cannot improve unless stakeholders use their levers to change or abandon the company.
I do 2/3 of those things and have no problem with what Apple is doing. There is no universal right side in this. This being a top comment here doesn't make it true.
FWIW, if you have no problem with what Apple is doing--and a lot of people might not: they might even actively cheer Apple on if they went out of their way to help ICE... not my jam, but a lot of people want to simultaneously be anti-ICE or anti-Trump and pro-Apple--then I don't think my comment becomes "untrue": the point simply would have no serious effect on you, as I guess you are simply OK being "complicit"... today <- which is key, as it isn't like this is the first or last time Apple has become a patsy to governments around the world, restricting access or removing content and software that challenge authoritarian control. I gave an entire talk in 2017 at the Mozilla Privacy Lab on how this happens to centralized systems all the time called "That's How You Get a Dystopia", though Apple is only one segment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsazo-Gs7ms.
The thing is these are all your opinions and you have a right to them... but you are choosing these words (my guess is they are chosen for you based on your source material) words like "complicit", "patsy", "authoritarian control". Using these words doesn't make them true.
I give you credit for speaking up for what you believe in publicly.
My opinion is that it is pretty self evident that a large or small company would remove an app at the request of the US Government that actively tracks federal agents that are attempting to enforce the law.
Do you have a 401k that somehow doesn’t hold Apple stock? Or are you complicit too?
I don't contribute to my 401k or I liquidate whatever is in it as soon as feasible within the tax model.
I think I have some index funds but I am going to try to put them into the DOW or gold or something.
I have some bad news for you about the Dow: the top 4 companies by market cap in the Dow are Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon.
Bud Tribble was shaming Apple cronies in 1981 when he put "reality distortion effect" in circulation. You can feel however you want, but everyone can see the truth for what it is. Been that way for a while now.
Supporting it is still not complicity though. Wrongdoing, sure.
Whatever the word is, the cause and effect is this:
1. Apple users tolerate the status quo through inaction, which is the centralized distribution of software. 2. Governments take advantage of this status quo to control apple users.
If it was the case that the OS was open, then the US Gov. would have no leverage to prevent the distribution of the software mentioned in the article. However apple's stakeholders enable and justify the centralized software distribution as a feature rather than a bug.
Developers are in on it too: the locked-down ecosystem is more lucrative for them because there are higher entry costs to producing software, and thus reduced competition. It prevents piracy for example, at the cost of preventing the distribution of pretty much all open source software.
It’s happened many times before, and people heard about it and aren’t that stupid or forgetful. They just want to believe something incompatible, so they permit themselves a little internal dishonesty: maybe it’s a separate issue that somebody else will surely figure out, or there’s a better solution (that we won’t pursue), or everybody always exaggerates (but we won’t verify that), or they find a way to hate and dismiss everybody who talks about it. Declaring your own shamelessness is more of the same: you’re reframing the problem from the consequences of your actions to your feelings about those consequences, then addressing only your feelings. It’s the same sort of behavior as heroin addicts, who find a route to happiness that doesn’t push them through the good things that the pursuit of happiness was meant to.
They knowingly created the systems they built around having centralized control, everyone told them the consequences of doing that, they did it anyway, this is the result, they are responsible.
> This framing is designed to shame people into feeling guilty for their point of view, rather than their actions.
Having a point of view and then using that point of view to make public claims, often counter-claims in face of precisely this type of criticism, is an action. Examples are easily found on this forum.
> or wrongdoing act
Which includes simple dishonesty.
Their action is supporting and promoting the model to other people, if they do that
Businessisknowinglyinvolvedinfascism.
Here's a simple thought experiment.
Would have Apple done the same if it was any another country?
Probably not. They would have courts and the democratic processes to help them resist.
But in face of authoritarian government who can hurt Apple's sales the company always bows. Be it actions in China or now action in US. The motive is simply profit.
The company cannot have a centralized control to make it "safer" and then give that way if the profits are under threat. Companies should be shamed for that.
I'm skeptical of this angle. If the app in question is being used by some to commit targeted violence, is it really a question of profit and not safety? Does it really take much pressure to want to get out of that position?
Does Apple publish apps designed for reporting locations of immigrants or minority groups? Is that a line of business they want to be in at all?
Please show where these apps have been used to commit targeted violence.
Your second paragraph reads to me like you’re equating the desire to protest and document the atrocities being committed by government agents to physical threats and violence being committed by unhinged private citizens against minority groups. This is a disingenuous argument.
Any clue how Apple is justifying this? What rules did these apps allegedly break?
Is it blocked globally, or only for U.S. app store phones? Are downloads blocked, or is the app being removed from phones it's already on?
The rule it breaks is Trump doesn’t like it. So Tim Cook bends the knee as the spineless little man he is.
Okay, but that's not what's being asked now is it? What's being asked is the explanation. They aren't telling saying to the public "we love the taste of boots" even if it is true.
No one would ever say this explicitly, but Tim Cook has very clearly shown it by his own personal actions and those of his company.
When’s your next court date against Apple? Let’s hope the California government can stand against this type of federal overreach.
I have no hope that the solution can be solved through lawfare. The ability of one company to control what the vast majority of people can do with their phones is unacceptable, regardless of what happens with this one app.
Indeed. Web app, SMS, Signal, etc. Have to decouple from centralized systems.
The vast majority of the people on this planet have never touched an iphone. Android dominates basically everywhere outside north america and, interestingly, the DPRK.
Google does the same with the rest of the population, don't they? The methods are different, but the results are the same.
They make some policies, restrictions and changes to their revenue confiscation schemes in lockstep with Apple, or they lag behind them by some years.
But yes, eventually the results are the same: the frog gets boiled.
Except the phones that aren't useing googles app store, such as many Chinese phones and grapheneos users.
I lost--not on the facts, or even on the relevant law, and not even in the district court where we were being heard, but in appeals on a narrow technicality of statute of limitations that we bet our case on (I am explicit about this as Apple didn't "win", so much as "we failed"; I even feel like our case just wasn't argued very well once we got to that level, which hurts)--over a year and a half ago... so, never :(.
It’s a shame too, because Apple has the money and brand wherewithal to fight the government. See the FBI vs Apple stuff that happened years ago. That actually won them some real converts.
Capitulating over this is Apple showing their supposed core values have significantly hollowed
Isn’t Apple mostly interested in making more money, though, instead of spending money?
The way I see it of all the top tech giants, Apple has the most to lose with all the tariff shenanigans, so it’s in their [shareholders] interest to stay friends with the current administration.
Apple has never had moral values other than earning money by making great products.
And I say this as someone who is deeply embedded in the Apple ecosystem.
Part of the brand after the FBI fiasco was about being a privacy forward company that didn’t simply capitulate to government demands on a whim. They demonstrated in smaller tests they were willing to put up a fight for those principles.
That of course was now almost a decade ago. They seem to have changed their entire messaging and with it, seemingly their interest in being more than a ROI machine.
It’s a regression not a step forward. Apple was never a paragon but this was legitimately a step in the right direction I felt, but alas, I suspect in today’s culture I am increasingly in the minority position
> but this was legitimately a step in the right direction I felt
I'll steelman against this, but only because I really enjoy entertaining the idea. Even back then, it was a branding farce. The San Bernadino event was in 2015, pretty close proximity to the Snowden leaks which disclosed Apple's 2012 cooperation with PRISM. Best-case scenario, it was an extremely lucky press junket; worst case scenario it was a false-flag operation designed to manufacture trust from the ground-up. In the aftermath, Apple cooperated with local police and federal authorities perfectly well, and the passcode to the shooter's phone did eventually come out. Apple continued providing device access in situations where warrants were issued. They even dropped their eventual charges against NSO Group.
If your tinfoil hat isn't tight enough yet, we're talking about events that happened over a decade after the Halloween documents. Apple's executives (and the three-letter spooks) know that Open Source can ship attestable and secure software that trounces their best paid UNIX or Windows Server subscription on the open market. If the goal is to expand surveillance and you've got a coalition of sycophantic tech executives (somehow, imagine that haha), then it would almost be trivial to program endless RCEs into the client-side with "secure" binary blobs. All the "E2EE" traffic can get copied onto tapes and sent to a warehouse in Langley. Would be like taking candy from a baby.
I am an Apple shareholder.
My Apple shareholder interest is for Apple to preserve its reputation in the long term, including when Trump is long gone.
Please stop repeating this "shareholders only care about short-term money" idea.
And the number of shares you personally own is irrelevant. The only public companies that ever take long term bets are those that are still founder led.
> Cook, clearly trying to remain calm, shot back: “When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind, I don’t consider the bloody ROI [return on investment]. When I think about doing the right thing, I don’t think about an ROI.”
> Cook then offered his own bottom line to Danhof, or any other critic, one which perfectly sums up his belief that social and political and moral leadership are not antithetical to running a business. “If that’s a hard line for you,” Cook continued, “then you should get out of the stock.”
https://alearningaday.blog/2016/03/12/tim-cook-on-roi/
Making devices accessible cost pennies compared to their revenue and didn’t take any real courage. Come back to me when they stand by their convictions when it can cost them billions in tariffs
I'm also a shareholder and I'd say I'm pretty happy with Apple not needlessly getting involved in fights. The most important thing is not getting tariffed.
Their reputation will be fine, no one but the terminally online are going to stop buying an iPhone because of this.
Pretty sure most of their shareholders feel similarly.
I agree that most people will not hear about this app being removed. (Though note that it's being reported here in "normal people" news, not tech news.)
But it's far from the only way Cook has aligned himself with Trump in just the last few months. The dumb gold-glass plaque and the UK royal visit are two much more visible examples.
Doing what he needs to avoid tariffs is fine in my book. It's practically his responsibility towards shareholders.
> Doing what he needs to avoid tariffs is fine in my book.
And from above:
> The most important thing is not getting tariffed.
I am curious where your personal line is. Surely you have one. If the only way Cook could avoid tariffs were to go on live TV and swear his allegiance to the KKK, would you still support that? What if the only way were for him to pursue direct legal action against you and your family until you’re bankrupt? Eating live puppies? What exactly would you consider to be “too much”?
> Doing what he needs to avoid tariffs is fine in my book
So are we talking anything?
Bending for fascism is fine as long as you get your dividend?
Exactly this, we are not talking the normal cycle of 4 years and then they are out, we are talking a possible "forever" fascism in the US so sticking to points of "I'm happy as long as my sticks are fine" is completey sticking your head in the sand hopping this all goes away soon.
I'm also a shareholder. The most important thing is having principles and sticking to them.
I’m also an Apple shareholder.
Tim Cook is a very shareholder-friendly CEO. One of the first things he did after he became CEO, which jobs always refused, was to start stock buybacks.
I have a hard time believing Apple getting in legal fights with the current administration is something that shareholders will appreciate, even if it’s better in the long term.
Regardless, if shareholders care about long term instead of short term, shareholders - as a whole - put the wrong CEO in charge.
> Tim Cook is a very shareholder-friendly CEO.
I feel like John Sculley of all people praising Tim Cook on this point was pretty damning ;P.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/03/ex-apple-ceo-john-sculley-co...
> “Steve Jobs created a loyalty with users that is unparalleled in the consumer technology world. What Tim Cook has done, he’s built a loyalty with shareholders,” Sculley said on “Squawk on the Street.”
> Regardless, if shareholders care about long term instead of short term, shareholders - as a whole - put the wrong CEO in charge.
FWIW, while I keep wondering just how different the entire world would have ended up if Scott Forstall had ended up in charge of Apple instead of Tim Cook, I believe he was also one of the big reasons the App Store ended up as evil as it was (not Steve) :(. Is there anyone whom we could take seriously as having been in serious contention who actually would have done a better job?
It was obvious Apple was going to bend the knee with that gold plaque.
the only time apple fights the government is when they want to keep illegally firing people and then the NLRB just goes, well sorry they just have too much money to stop them. They use bribe money for everything else.
I wish Steve was still around for these battles. Tim Cook is such a pussy.
It was Steve who decided to make the iphones like this.
Steve was never tested like this was he? Everyone’s about values until they are put into a fucked up situation like Tim Cook. The man had to literally deliver a Roman tribute to this president personally.
He could have refused. Few things would sway public opinion on tariffs like more expensive i devices.
I think Steve would’ve packed it in and retired if he was still around today.
And that shouldn't have happened either. Apple doesn't need the US government, and Tim is himself a billionaire— he sure as hell doesn't personally need them either.
Why would you expect Apple to fight the same administration that it has been prostrating itself for both this term and the last term?
Apple hasn’t had any values aside from its bottom line since Cook took over.
Genuinely hope you're successful with your suit, if that's still ongoing.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45458944 (a quick update in another thread fork)
What exactly do you mean by “complicit” in “this stuff”? What are you accusing?
Quite clearly accusing them of reducing public pressure against Apple putting itself in a position where it's doing exactly what it's doing right now.
Yep. If you're advocating for a policy that leads directly to something, then you're kind of arguing in favor of that something
And everyone who pays the US government bills so that they can do this is also complicit. Talk is nothing if you'll still give them your money.
FWIW, you are legally required to pay your taxes, and there are going to be serious consequences to your life and your family's life if you don't; the moral decisions in that situation are much more difficult. However, Apple obviously is not and never was legally required to build a centralized App Store... hell: it isn't even clear that that it is legal that they did it, and these arguments are still playing out in court!
And, certainly, no one is legally required to put copious effort into defending the thing Apple did which directly and predictably leads to these results (which are not new or surprising). Even if Apple is, now, legally required to remove this app (and I don't know if they even are: many companies are just cowing to political, not legal, pressure), they carefully and intentionally set themselves up to be in that position.
Ah the Nuremberg Defense. Where have I heard that one? Could it be in Nuremberg. No because I wasn't around back then.
FWIW, this much should at least be pretty obvious: if you go far far far out of your way to do something that no one required you to do to defend something that pretty clearly leads to a specific result, you are certainly MORE complicit in the results of that action than if you take an action that you are required to do at gunpoint and which only very indirectly and at very low impact causes the result (to the point where I don't even think the analogy of the Nurenberg Defense applies... but, I guess you aren't claiming to understand it well).
Like, I dunno... it just feels like such an ingenuous argument to try to claim that paying taxes -- of which only a very small percentage could possibly be claimed to cause this specific problem, particularly so as this exact same issue happens with iPhones in other countries (such as China, where Apple has become a very clear patsy to the regime and "complicit" barely scratches the surface of their involvement anymore) -- is somehow similar to actively defending the existence of a bottleneck on information and access to software that has time and again been used for censorship and authoritarian control.
Well to start with no one requires anyone to get a job and pay taxes. You could just as well live off food banks and take as much money from government. Knowing that the government does this, one need not give them any money any longer. You could spend down your balance and start eating from the food bank.
It's a pretty active act to go earn money that you then fully know (completely ahead of time) that you are giving to an immoral government. Especially when you know you can draw out of that government instead.
I think what is pretty obvious is that everyone has a story where they're somehow not villains but the guy epsilon more involved in the subject is 100% the villain.
For all the talk of Trump being Hitler, I never saw any real tax protest movement to defund the regime...
Most people have their taxes withheld directly from their pay by their employer, and don't get the option to not pay their taxes, because the government gets the money before they do.
Because the employers are 'complicit' in paying these payroll taxes, and the employees are 'complicit' in supporting them by showing up for work.
/s
Because I have no interest in attracting the apocalyptic ire that is the Internal Revenue Service. You don't fuck with the organization that took down Al Capone or that even the _Joker_ is deathly afraid of.
It’s simply not that easy to do, nor is it the best approach per se, as it’s wrought with foot guns everywhere. Frankly it’s a big risk from a number of angles, one of the most obvious is such a movement being co-opted by special interests
Unironically it's because liberals actually like paying taxes. Every state and local school board tax increase passes where I live because it's a bunch of pot smoking hippies who unironically believe in wealth redistribution through progressive taxation.
How is a tax increase to fund schools wealth redistribution?
The problem isn't the centralized control, it's the power the governments have.
> The problem isn't the centralized control, it's the power the governments have.
The governments will always have the power, that's pretty much built into the definition of government.
So, technology needs to be built with this reality in mind. Thus, avoid all centralization.
The government is a centralization of power, it doesn't matter if our devices are "decentralized" if the government can simply make it illegal to use unlocked devices. Or encryption. Or VPNs. Etc.
But that isn't how this has worked, even in places like China where the regime would seem to have that level of power: while they absolutely require Apple--who went out of their way to create a bottleneck on software and information that is just too juicy not to assert external control over--to remove various apps from their store, it is not actually illegal to own or use unlocked devices.
> The government is a centralization of power, it doesn't matter if our devices are "decentralized" if the government can simply make it illegal to use unlocked devices.
That is a very binary view of the world, but the world is nothing but shades of gray.
At the very extreme of the most totalitarian government, you're right. Such a government can ban one thing or ban everything.
But in nearly every country, it's vastly easier to go choke a single neck (Apple) and tell them to shut something down, than to chase after tens of millions of individual people with individual devices, if all of them can run whatever they want from wherever they want.
That is the power of decentralization.
The governments will always have the power, that's pretty much built into the definition of government.
Not the definition of our government. Our founding documents state that "Congress shall make no law" along the lines of what Apple is being pressured to do here.
And the executive branch isn't supposed to be making laws at all, even though that's what they're doing.
As the GP says: the problem is the power. But when some of us argue that maybe the government shouldn't have this kind of power, we get shouted down with "HURR DURR MOVE TO SOMALIA THEN," and worse.
It isn't just our government: Apple sells these devices around the world and they pull the same shit in every jurisdiction, and so the Chinese government has been granted by them an extremely powerful axe to just ban software they dislike, a tool they use quite often, forcing Apple to pull apps for VPNs and other P2P tools used by protesters to coordinate in a world where the Internet is locked down. If you are going to create a device and sell it in this world, you have to understand how this world works, and in this world, if you create and defend a centralized bottleneck, you WILL become a patsy.
> Not the definition of our government. Our founding documents state that "Congress shall make no law" along the lines of what Apple is being pressured to do here.
I suggest read up on NSLs.
Sure, that should not be legal if the constitution meant anything, but there it is.
> the problem is the power
Tell me about a single government ever in history that has not abused its power at least sometimes?
While you're right, we should strive for that, we also need to strive for not building centralization that can be abused. Because it will always be abused.
It's both. Apple very intentionaly designs their phones so that they can immediately cut off their user's access to various apps with the flip of a switch and no recourse. It's obvious that this has and will continue to be abused.
At the same time the government of an ostensibly free country that values free speech should absolutely not be making these demands.
At this point I expect such behavior from this administration, they aren't pretending to be anything other than incompetent and corrupt.
Shame on Apple for helping these scumbags, now and in the future.
I guess that iphones will be alright when no government in the world will have that power anymore, then
I think that Apple is a company that has to obey the rule of law. Maybe the problem here isn’t Apple but the rules they are being forced to abide by?
> I think that Apple is a company that has to obey the rule of law.
Right, so the fundamental problem is having a device where the software that runs on it is controlled by a single company. It creates the attractive nuisance of being able to choke off anything the government doesn't like because, as you said, that single point of contact can't avoid obeying the government.
Computing needs to be open and controlled only by each individual owner of each device, so anyone can run whatever they like sourced from wherever they like.
That’s your belief and there is a platform that allows just that.
The fundamental problem here is not specific to Apple; It’s specific to a regime that is overstepping its bounds daily.
> That’s your belief and there is a platform that allows just that.
A platform that's just about to take it away with user registrations. And that isn't just a 'belief' - that's what a lot of people do with their phones.
But the problem here isn't about an alternative. Apple platform is popular enough to make it a juicy target for tyrannical regimes. And when that happens, millions of people find their devices useless or outright hostile towards them, due to lack of user-controlled escape hatches.
> The fundamental problem here is not specific to Apple; It’s specific to a regime that is overstepping its bounds daily.
Would you have predicted the current situation two years ago? Regimes go rogue unpredictably all the time. That's why people argue against this sort of device lock down all the time! It's meaningless to shift the entire blame on to the regime after Apple failed to take precautions in the face these warnings.
> Would you have predicted the current situation two years ago?
Yes. There is nothing surprising to me about the current situation.
> Apple platform is popular enough to make it a juicy target for tyrannical regimes.
Agreed, if for nothing else than its size alone. It is also a target for so many folks to say, "if it was different in this one way, it would be amazing (for me.)"
> Yes. There is nothing surprising to me about the current situation.
That would mean that you willfully defended a vulnerability that you could foresee being exploited.
> It is also a target for so many folks to say, "if it was different in this one way, it would be amazing (for me.)"
Apple has been consistent in their messaging. You have to give up your freedom over your devices to ensure security. Not make it hard or explicit to override safety measures. Not make it safe through careful design. But you have to give up your freedom. And there is no limit to the steps they took in this direction.
People had already pointed out that all those measures were for profit squeezing, disguised as security measures. The most important observation though, was that it's a very flawed argument. Security by centralized control is a vulnerability in itself, as evidenced by this incident.
Apple and its supporters fought this argument in a consistent manner too. With shallow dismissals of the concerns, accompanied by the contemptuous implication that the detractors are overreacting. As if the critics should be ashamed for even bringing them up. They never really address the concern directly. You can see this in action in interviews where their top management justify such decisions. I don't see that having changed much.
But, Apple or any other company doesn't deserve to be let off the hook for incidents like this. There is no reason to consider all their decisions as enlightened, especially when corporate profit seeking is involved.
What platform? Android is removing installing software from "unverified" developers which leads to this exact same scenario.
The point is that if you could install the app by side loading it, or from a third party app store, then a Government order to remove an app doesn't make it impossible to use that app. But Apples actions, ostensibly to protect its users, but in reality to protect its profits, has put it in a situation where it is a much more effective tool for government censorship.
Rule of law? Is that like the token of appreciation Tim Cook presented?
There are laws. Rule of law is a slippery slope.
There is no law or precedent set that would concern Apple with these apps. Apple is bending the knee. The exact same way they do with China.
> Apple is a company that has to obey the rule of law
Damn right.
Where is the court order? Pursuant to what law?
There's no rule that says they need to block other app stores. That's a choice they made. The consequences are also a choice they made.
> Apple [...] has to obey the rule of law.
No, Apple has to obey the law.
The idea of "rule of law" is a shorthand for the set of norms and practices understood by everyone under a single regime, including both specific laws and authorities and more general principles. One of those, notably, is "the government shouldn't force private companies to censor their app stores".[1]
The rule of law is indeed being violated here, but in the other direction.
[1] Or "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech", if you swing that way.
> The rule of law is indeed being violated here, but in the other direction.
I agree. However, the way things work is such that these things take time to sort out, if they get sorted out at all.
I don't want to fall into the fallacy of implying that this is somehow justified because of something "the left" did a few years ago but I would like to highlight the hypocrisy of how many people were totally okay with this sort of executive censorship when Biden was in charge.
> "We reached out to Apple today demanding they remove the ICEBlock app from their App Store — and Apple did so," Bondi said in a statement to Fox News Digital.
I don't think this is something that trump or biden should be allowed to do, but the classic argument that your constitutional right to free speech ends when the president "politely" asks a software company to censor you on his behalf and they acquiesce is equally [in]valid in both situations.
I have never voluntarily owned an Apple smartphone or tablet, and a huge reason why is because I care a lot about being able to run software on it that Apple doesn't approve of for whatever reason.
Absolutely. The Biden administration was censoring posts (even memes) on Meta platforms during COVID, according to Zuckerberg.
Everything in the ICE tracking apps can be done as a web page. Good luck to MAGA trying to stop this, but the ugliness of ICE tactics will inspire a lot of people to build some very good technology to stop it.
Why are we asking for profits companies to fight our fights? I am reading lots of comments from keyboard warriors. For profits companies are not there to fight citizens fights. You don't want this kind of stuff to happen, then people need to fight their governments and demand better and stop relying on for profits entities to do so.
> Why are we asking for profits companies to fight our fights?
Why not? If you can pressure someone into fighting your fight for you, you do it.
That profit is an effective lever. I don’t have a lever in elections because of the electoral college.
For-Profit companies have an outsized impact on our day-to-day and have the ear of the current administration. Citizens United allows their voice to be heard politically (where they again have an outsized impact). I'm curious why they can lobby to impact the lives we live and our access to information, and their CEO can donate a million to the inauguration but suddenly they deserve the right to fade into the background and stay out of it all?
I do not go to any fox sites, so here is a dup using a different news site for this:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45461951
No surprise here, all companies would do the same. But I was planning on moving to Apple once my current Android fails, not now.
I am hoping the Linux Phone I hear about advances to the point where my Cell Service supports it. Will see because I am pretty much done with Android and Apple.
> Authorities said the suspect, Joshua Jahn, searched his phone for tracking apps, including ICEBlock, before opening fire on the facility from a rooftop.
Thats weird because you dont need iceblock to know that ICE is at an ICE facility
Its for when they’re spotted in neighborhoods
dumb rationale, dumb response
Jahn wasn't a big thinker. He used an iron-sighted old surplus rifle to shoot at vans that were filled with detainees rather than employees.
What's next, Waze?
The analogy here is porn apps vs Safari.
So let’s level set… ICE can buy data from data brokers, and has active contracts with Cellubrite and Pegasus… but an organized opposition can only use rocks and spears. This isn’t a fascist regime at all.
Fascism comes later.
and until it happens and even after it happens people will be saying “it’s not so bad”
another day, another example of why we must all vigorously reject the campaign to stop users from installing software on their computers. stallman was right!
Not to refute your point, but a trivial enough thing to create as a web site. I'm guessing that will come next (if one doesn't already exist).
I guess the developers will need to learn HTML+CSS and self host this app on a Russian server. Will be good to showcase the freedom of the web!
I am going to use this news to hit every lemming in the face - those who claim corpo-controlled walled gardens are good for you and grandma.
I’m not sure who you’re expecting to convert. Most people- thinking of people like my parents- think any app that hinders police must be a bad thing.
The idea that something like ICEBlock is benevolent and doesn’t make the user a criminal by association just doesn’t register.
Surely an app designed to help circumvent the law is a bad thing, even if it doesn't make one legally a criminal merely by association?
Why is that a bad thing? Was the Underground Railroad a bad thing?
In the norms of its time, I am sure many thought it was a bad thing. Slave owners, certainly.
It’s only looking at it through today’s drastically different norms that it’s an obviously good thing.
In a society with rule of law, it is generally understood that adhering to laws, even ones you don't personally like, is a good thing; and that it would be a bad thing to pick and choose which laws to follow and enforce.
I suppose you're making the argument that current US immigration law is unjust and immoral to begin with and therefore should be actively circumvented?
> In a society with rule of law
We no longer have a society with the rule of law. The fish rots from the head. You can thank everyone who voted for the wanton criminal promising everything yet nothing but destruction, now creating cruel spectacle after cruel spectacle to distract from the fundamental fact that he should be in prison. And additionally his enablers in Congress and on the Supreme Council who've decided that our Constitution is worth less than toilet paper.
https://xkcd.com/3081/
Immigration is a veneer around "grab whoever we want with no due process".
> Surely an app designed to help circumvent the law is a bad thing, even if it doesn't make one legally a criminal merely by association?
Much like Miranda rights. Surely outright informing people in custody they have the right to remain silent is a bad thing, right? Actually, thinking about it now, there's a whole lot of things people have the right to do that make enforcing the law way harder than it needs to be.
Or maybe it's more important to maintain your rights as a human being and citizen, especially in the face of an overreaching executive branch willing to justify anything in order to overreach a little more.
Only if subjectively cherry picking. VPN apps "help circumvent the law", I wouldn't call them a bad thing
VPNs can serve a legitimate purpose, like shielding your traffic while using a public network. Seems to me the better technology analogue to ICEBlock is The Pirate Bay; maybe there's some flimsy pretext of it being used for a legitimate purpose, and maybe it's not outright illegal, but everyone knows that it's almost always used for an illegal purpose.
> but everyone knows that it's almost always used for an illegal purpose
And I would argue that to the general population (non-HN/tech types) a VPN is the "Pirates Bay" of banned or ID law content. Porn ID law goes into effect, tens of thousands of people suddenly sign up for a VPN. If they thought of it as "shielding your traffic while using a public network" they wouldn't be signing up en masse when laws happen that they want to circumvent; they would have already been using it.
As for ICEBlock et al, knowing they are raiding in a part of a city that happens to be on someones running or cycling/walking route while being a darkly pigmented citizen is a valid use of the app to know to stay clear of the area. It should not be a thing, but it is.
ICE is abducting citizens and generally stirring up chaos to make pretexts for escalating federal occupations. Anyone would be an utter fool to voluntarily put themselves in the presence of the new "American" Gestapo. And since the number of citizens is much larger than the number of iLlEgAlS (regardless of what the fearmongering on boomers' TVs would have you believe), an app to help avoid the lawless thugs is in the same exact category as a VPN.
I haven't heard about ICE detaining any US citizens who weren't either actively interfering with ICE activity as part of a deliberate anti-immigration-law-enforcement protest, or closely associating with actual illegal immigrants.
Detaining people who are actively interfering with ICE activity as part of a deliberate protest is something I think it's reasonable for any kind of police to be able to do - there's no reason why fellow citizens in a democracy should inherently privilege the violence protesters do in order to prevent the enforcement of a law over the violence that the police do to in order to carry out that enforcement, it all comes down to your political opinion of the law.
Detaining US citizens while in the process of detaining illegal immigrants also seems reasonable, since there's no way to tell if a suspected illegal immigrant claiming to be a US citizen is lying or not until law enforcement actually checks. This is no different than cops being able to arrest a person on suspicion of a crime and then let them go with no charges when they realize they were mistake, which is a power cops already have in our society.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/u-s-citizen-wrongfully-d...
> The new lawsuit describes repeated raids on workplaces despite agents having no warrants nor suspicion that specific workers were in the U.S. illegally, and a string of U.S. citizens — many with Latino-sounding names — who were detained.
Working at a workplace that has a large immigration workforce is also not a crime or a reason to be detained. Yes, these things are working their way through the legal system -- as it should. But US citizen rights are being violated and sticking one's head in the sand or hand waving away these things is crazy to me, a US citizen, it's not how I was raised in the South. I can understand non-citizens/residents thinking that way though. They have their own experience
Having brown pigmented skin, working with brown pigmented skin people or speaking spanish doesn't weaken a citizens rights to make these rights violations "reasonable". If someone is "actively interfering" with ICE that's not immigration enforcers job to deal with, and should be handled/handed over to the local police force and taken to a police center, not immigration detention.
Depends on your opinion of the law that people are circumventing.
Depends on the law and how it's enforced. You could argue the current status-quo is law breaking by law enforcement, so circumventing them is enforcing the law.
With that attitude in 1775-76, the US wouldn't have won independence. Would you tug your forelock (and empty your purse) and Kneel to the King ?
Then the government will just force ISP DNS not to answer queries for the domain. That's how easy you can block 99% of users, which is good enough.
And eventually, when all our hardware is runs-software-and-settings-signed-by-approved-entity-only, that last 1% can't do anything about it either.
Aren't mobile apps more or less already HTML+CSS?
A basic website should be easier to write and maintain than any app, because you don't have to maintain both the server and the client.
Indeed, not sure why it wasn’t a website already!
Monopolies are bad ideas for so many reasons. The government has recently learned they actually like them
Will teach some friends how to side load this and tell them to each teach 2-3 friends.
Does it have to be an application? Why not just a website?
Those can be requested to be taken down as well...
Host it in a country with free speech then
No need for actual free speech. Host it in Russia, China, Venezuela, Iran, DPRK, or any other strategic adversary of the United States. The success of ICEBlock is 100% inline with their information warfare goals. The more strife they can spread, the more protests, the more violence, the more confrontations, and the more 'noise' that gets made about ICE in the US, the better for them.
That doesn't mean the developer of ICEBlock is anti-American, just that there's a common interest in seeing his project succeed.
That doesn’t prevent being blocked in other countries.
Sure, but "fuck you, make me" continues to be the best course of action. If they threaten to block you, make them, don't give up in advance.
Yup, that's what I wish Apple would do here.
Which is...?
can website do push notification? (e.g. when ICE agents show up near your zipcode)
> can website do push notification?
Text or e-mail.
Not exactly fool proof though. An adversarial government could force Google or the telecoms providers to block such email/text messages?
> An adversarial government could force Google or the telecoms providers to block such email/text messages?
Texts, probably. E-mail, improbably. At least not trivially in America.
Yes
IMHO, this is just another example of something that would be better off as a website/webapp than a native app. If anything, having an app that tracks ICE agents installed on your device seems more like a liability than an asset.
17 years on from the App Store we're still trying to get people to wrap their heads around just using websites. And to think probably all of the users of the app are finding out about it via a LINK in a message or social post.
No worries apple users! Just side load it.... Oh.. Wait...
Why does this need to be an app?
https://archive.is/ZIqOO
"Do what we say or you get the tariffs". Straight up corrupt mob boss shit.
America, you really owned the libs.
I cannot believe it's really happening. Few months ago it was just jokes...
This is the problem with the modern "app" way of doing things. This sort of thing would be best handled as a website so that users need not run specific software on thier phones. Reports can come in as basic emails parsed for a lat/long or grid. Then a kml file can be pushed as needed to a basic web-facing map. The bandwidth would be minimal and very resistant to shutdown. Heck, share the kml files via torrents or put the map server in tor if necessary. No apps required.
The DOJ would just have the website host, the ISP, or the domain registrar revoke and terminate everything
In practice this seems much more difficult to do than going after the app in the app store, particularly if you choose your registrar and hosting provider carefully.
Ya, the pirate bay is still online, so too innumerable similar sites once targeted by various agencies. A smallish map running on a RP plugged into tor would be very resiliant. But there is a bittorent protocol that allows for rolling updates to a torrent. That would be the best way to distribute kml files imho.
What’s this updatable BitTorrent protocol? I wished for something like this years ago as an auto-updating torrent for downloading Wikipedia with live (or daily or whatever) changes.
https://www.bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0046.html
They were called mutable torrents. A private key would allow the originator to push out updates via dhts.
this is really neat. I've been looking for this sort of functionality with IPNS, but it seems like bittorrent could be better. Do clients implement this yet?
It has been 15+ years since i looked into it. I do remember using it with transmission so it may be out there already.
Website can't provide notification on iOS. You may find workaround but that would be either expensive or under Apple's control. This use-case without notifications is quite useless.
Reading the comments on that Fox site is depressing. A lot of hate for Apple, but for the wrong reasons (as in, completely missing the danger of centralized app stores..).
The median age for a Fox News viewer is 69, according to Nielsen.
I wouldn't make the mistake of thinking comments on a Fox article are indicative of... anything, really.
Most smell of foreign propaganda bots or unhinged political obsessives that I've seen
I think this website overestimates the halo effect Apple garners with the commonfolk.
Technofascists are going to help the illiterati fascists because they both like piles of money, utterly lack ethics and a backbone, and don't care about ordinary people.
If I had to guess who was most likely to be illiterate between: - employees of major American tech companies like Apple - ICE agents - illegal immigrants
I would bet on illegal immigrants every time, especially if we're restricting the question to literacy in English specifically.
I saw it incomment on some other HN post, but:
The acquiescence of megacorps is essential for fascism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_collaboration_with_Na...
JUST SAY NO!
In addition to the pressure from the Government, this is probably Apple realizing it’s just the right thing to do for a few reasons.
1. Apple (along with the app author s) are aiding and abetting fugitives from the law.
2. The (might) be some financial or legal liability if someone using the app shows up and causes harm to Law Enforcement personnel. People want to be able to sue gun manufactures for building firearms that are used in the commission of a crime. Seems like the same thing right off.
3. If someone wrote an app that helped for instance someone openly evade getting caught for revenge or child porn. Pretty sure that would be either not approved or removed.
4. It’s just the right thing to do. This is a nation of laws. If the public at large wants to change immigration there are ways to do that through congress. One of the reasons there are so many illegal aliens is because of the executive branch (both D and R but especially the former) ignoring the laws in place and just doing as they please.
Which law is this app breaking?
I think it’s more about liability that specifically breaking a law. I’m not a lawyer but Apple is knowingly publishing an app that is openly helping people evade and/or break the law AND is putting Law Enforcement in danger. Seems there is some liability there.
Avoiding being where ICE agents are is not against the law. Even being in the country while eligible for deportation is not against the law.
Crossing the border not at a designated point of crossing is against the law; this app is not for that.
>>Avoiding being where ICE agents are is not against the law. Sure if you are the one avoiding arrest. How about if you rob a bank and I help you evade arrest? You could make a case that these apps are doing something similar. With a good prosecutor I wouldn't want to take my chances defending myself against that.
>>Crossing the border not at a designated point of crossing is against the law; this app is not for that. True - but to argue the point - it could be used for that. If you had a map of where ICE/Border Patrol was it might aid in a successful crossing. Probably a bit OT though.
Being arrested is fine if due process is followed. ICE isn't following due process because they are pieces of shit.
Multiple times now they've been found to have removed innocent people with little chance of recourse. Only after huge public outcry have ICE been shamed into returning a select few.
So 100% people should be avoiding potential removal without due process.
ICE tracking apps put ICE agents in danger, and the same kind of app for, say, tracking Meta employees or “people who wear Team Blue T-shirts” or any other group would obviously be a danger as well. How on earth do people find this controversial..?
Are masked Meta employees kidnapping people at gunpoint and deporting them to foreign gulags?
ICE puts people in danger and disregards their due process.
When a group is performing unconstitutional activities they should be tracked and stopped where possible.
Is turnabout no longer fair play, then?