Mr. Cook has famously defended controversial decisions like his ongoing engagement with authoritarian rulers in China, or his dinners with President Trump, by saing "the sidelines are not a successful place to be... the way that you influence these issues is to be in the arena."
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This is a chance for Mr. Cook to make amends by stepping into the arena. He would be warmly welcomed in Hong Kong, he would have a chance to see with his own eyes what is happening here, and he would leave perhaps more in touch with the values that Apple still claims to uphold.
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To Apple employees, I will just say: look at the numbers. Over two thousand arrests since June, thousands injured (including people who were not hurt at the time of arrest), many alleging sexually assault by the police. Children as young as 11 put in the hospital. Two kids shot.
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Multiple thousands of rounds of tear gas fired in densely populated residential areas, including hundreds at a time in a single night. Kids taken from parents and put in foster care as punishment for demonstrating. It's pretty clear who needs protecting from whom in Hong Kongpic.twitter.com/gHB6k5Mdu8
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Finally, I offer my sincerest condolences to
@waze, which unlike HKmap is an app specifically intended for evading law enforcement, and which by Mr. Cook's logic must therefore brace itself for imminent removal from the App Store8 replies 55 retweets 192 likesShow this thread -
I don't care for Apple, but they have a clear policy. If the US government said Waze is illegal, they'd take it down. That just hasn't happened yet.
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The Hong Kong government was asked about the situaton and said "huh?" No one has pointed to a single law this app breaks.
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My understanding was that the CCP complained so Apple complied. I don't believe it was Apple's idea.
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Hong Kong as you know has its own legal system and actual rule of law, so it's important to point to a specific law this app is breaking
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that's a good point, but breaking the law is clearly not a requirement. Apple is known to remove apps because of National Security Letters from our government, and we can't even know the reasons.
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Apple runs the store at its entire discretion, so of course it can take down apps for any reason it wants. But since Cook says in the letter that the app is "in violation of Hong Kong law", it's odd that no one at Apple or in Hong Kong government can point to the law in question.
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