Apple Deletes Police-Tracking App Used by Hong Kong Freedom Protesters at China’s Behest
Shane Trejo
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Tech giant Apple has caved to Chinese demands and pulled an app from their store that allowed Hong Kong freedom protesters to track police officers.
Apple had previously banned the controversial app, HKmap.live, before reversing course last week after widespread outrage. This prompted an angry response from the People’s Daily, the official propaganda rag of the Chinese Communist Party.
“Foreign companies probably don’t understand the sentiments and way of thinking of Chinese people. Our ancestors had been bullied. But today we are united more than ever. On issues involving principles, we have zero tolerance for wrongdoings. Providing a gateway for “toxic apps” is hurting the feelings of the Chinese people, twisting the facts of Hong Kong affairs, and against the views and principles of the Chinese people,” the propaganda rag stated.
“Apple and other corporations should be able to discern right from wrong. They also need to know that only the prosperity of China and China’s Hong Kong will bring them a broader and more sustainable market,” the communists concluded in a veiled threat to Apple.
The message was received by Apple loud and clear, and they quickly groveled to their Chinese masters by removing the app from their app store.
“The app displays police locations and we have verified with the Hong Kong Cybersecurity and Technology Crime Bureau that the app has been used to target and ambush police, threaten public safety, and criminals have used it to victimize residents in areas where they know there is no law enforcement,” Apple said in a statement about their decision to appease the ChiComs.
In another show of fealty, Apple also banned the Quartz app in China on Wednesday in order to help the totalitarian country enforce thought control over its massive population.
“We abhor this kind of government censorship of the internet, and have great coverage of how to get around such bans around the world,” Quartz CEO Zach Seward said to The Verge.
Apple also removed the Taiwan flag emoji from their iOS 13 platform for its users in Hong Kong and Macau this week, demonstrating their utter subservience to the communist nation.
Apple is not the only Big Tech firm in bed with China, as Google works closely alongside them to perfect the Orwellian Nightmare:
The White House expressed concern about Google building a controversial search engine for the communist Chinese government that would significantly censor search results.
“Vice President Mike Pence commented today in a speech that Google’s modified search engine — currently under the codename Dragonfly — would ‘strengthen Communist Party censorship and compromise the privacy of Chinese customers,’” according to The Verge.
The project reportedly will track users’ searches back to their mobile phones, allowing the Chinese government, which is implementing a “social credit score” system, to track every internet user and potentially punish them for their searches…
The Intercept reported that Jack Poulson, a senior research scientist at the tech giant, quit his job in protest over the project.
“I view our intent to capitulate to censorship and surveillance demands in exchange for access to the Chinese market as a forfeiture of our values and governmental negotiating position across the globe,” he said. “There is an all-too-real possibility that other nations will attempt to leverage our actions in China in order to demand our compliance with their security demands.”
With Big Tech – and most other multinational corporations – having sold their souls to China, the stakes of President Donald Trump’s trade war against the far-east menace could not be higher.
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