US authorities accuse Apple of promoting censorship and harassment in Russia

US Attorney General William Barr on May 18 said that Apple is promoting authoritarian regimes in Russia and China, while not wanting to help American law enforcement officers in the capture of criminals. What does all this mean for iPhone users? Found out the publication with the BBC.

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“Apple collaborated with both the Chinese Communist Party and the Russian regime by hosting data centers and enabling mass surveillance by those governments,” Barr said in reporting the findings of the investigation into the shooting at a naval base in Florida.

“Apple has reportedly disabled features and applications on iPhone used by pro-democracy activists, thereby promoting censorship and oppression. If technology companies like Apple are willing to comply with the demands of authoritarian regimes, they certainly have no excuse for failing to cooperate with rule of law nations that respect civil liberties and privacy rights and have judicial guarantees,” Barr said.

How did the conflict develop?

Apple for many years has refused to provide the US authorities with a backdoor (loophole) for hacking iPhones.

So, for hacking the iPhone 5S of one of the perpetrators of the San Bernardino terrorist attack, Sayed Farouk, the US authorities tried to sue Apple in 2015-2016, and then paid about a million dollars to an unknown contractor. The US National Security Agency admitted that it could not crack the terrorist’s smartphone on her own.

The government's current dispute with Apple began after student Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani killed three and wounded eight people at Pensacola Naval Air Station in Florida in December 2019. US authorities believe that Alshamrani, who was killed at the scene, was associated with al-Qaeda, a terrorist organization banned in Russia and other countries.

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In January, the FBI asked Apple to unlock Alshamrani's iPhone 5 and 7. The company said it was helping the investigation "in every way possible, short of creating a backdoor for the iPhone." At the same time, as Forbes found out, using the GrayKey device from the American company Grayshift, the FBI is able to hack even version 11 iPhones without Apple’s help.

Nevertheless, US authorities continue to push the corporation to create a backdoor for quick access to devices.

Russia's position

“Such statements only cause a condescending smile,” Andrei Krutskikh, the special representative of the Russian President for international cooperation in the field of information security, commented on Barr’s speech.

“The scale of anti-Russian accusations has reached another phase in the United States, namely: beat your own so that others will be afraid. This characterizes them poorly,” Krutskikh added.

In January 2019, Roskomnadzor announced that Apple had localized data about its employees and customers from Russia in the country. Apple Rus LLC, which is responsible for the online store and retail trade of Apple equipment in Russia, has added to the official register of personal data operators, and in the column “database location information” it indicates “Russia”.

The same register states that the company “has established a policy for the processing of personal information” and has appointed a person responsible for organizing this process.

Apple took similar actions in China, transferring iCloud user data to Chinese data centers as required by local law.

Should iPhone users be wary?

“As follows from the information posted in the register of personal data operators on the Roskomnadzor website, the Russian legal entity Apple collects and processes personal data of employees, contractors, and buyers of the Russian segment of Apple. So all this data may well now be requested by Russian authorities,” notes lawyer, head of the human rights group “Team 29” Ivan Pavlov.

“After Apple has registered an organization in Russia and included it in the registry, it is subject to all the same risks that Russian organizations bear,” continues Pavlov. “Namely: attacks by law enforcement agencies, soft attacks in the form of requests for information, and hard attacks with searches and seizure of relevant servers.”

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According to the Russian Code of Administrative Offences, fines for failure to provide information to regulatory authorities are up to 5 thousand rubles ($70), for investigators and prosecutors - up to 100 thousand rubles ($1), and even administrative suspension of the organization’s activities for up to two months is possible.

“But soft attacks may well be followed by more severe ones with the seizure of servers and subsequent access to information,” adds Pavlov.

Apple Position

In response to criticism from US authorities, Apple issued a statement: “Customers count on Apple to keep their information secure, and one of the ways we do that is by using strong encryption on our devices and servers. We sell the same iPhone everywhere, we don't store customer passwords, and we can't unlock password-protected devices. In our data centers, we implement robust hardware and software security controls to keep information secure and ensure there are no backdoors in our systems. All these methods are equally applicable to our activities in every country in the world.”

Every six months, Apple publishes transparency reports with data on law enforcement requests from different countries.

The number of requests from Russia is growing from year to year: for example, in the first half of 2019 (the latest published data), the corporation received 1219 requests from this country and satisfied 82%. For comparison: since 2013, Ukraine has made a request for access from Apple to only 11 devices, of which only three were satisfied.

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