iPhone a national security threat: Chinese state media
12 Jul 2014
Apple is embroiled in an escalating confrontation over cyber security and US spying after China's state broadcaster CCTV branded the iPhone as a national security threat.
The development comes just months following the US technology group striking a deal to supply iPhones to China Mobile, the world's largest phone company - a major development as Apple attempts to reach a further billion Chinese smartphone users.
The Chinese charge comes in the same week that the US and China concluded high level trade talks that saw little progress being made to update an 18-year old agreement governing the $2 trillion annual trade in high-tech products between the two countries.
Chinese state broadcaster CCTV yesterday cautioned about the iPhone's ability to track a user via its positioning technology and ''view the user's home address, unit information and whereabouts''.
According to the report, which cited revelations made by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, Apple passed such data on not just to advertisers but also to US spy agencies. According to CCTV the information would still be recorded even with the feature turned off.
The function could collect data and might result in a leak of state secrets, the report said citing Ma Ding, head of the online security institute at People's Public Security University of China.
Apple, Microsoft Corp, Google and Facebook are among a number of US companies criticised by state-run media amid an escalating spat over cyberspying and hacking allegations.
The tensions came to a head after five Chinese military officers were indicted by US prosecutors for allegedly hacking into the computers of American companies.
Last month, a commentary on the microblog of the People's Daily newspaper claimed Apple, Microsoft, Google and Facebook cooperated in a secret US program to monitor China.
According to CCTV, the national broadcaster, a provincial government was told not to buy computers with Microsoft's Windows 8. It further quoted a professor as saying, the software was a potential threat to China's information security.
