By Christopher Cole
A GOP member of the Federal Communications Commission has written to Apple to raise concerns about the tech giant’s interactions with the Chinese government, including its removal of the Voice of America app from smartphones in China.
FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr wrote a strongly worded letter posted this week to Apple CEO Tim Cook, disapproving of what Carr views as a “troubling” example of Apple caving to the Chinese Communist Party. The letter asks Cook whether the company will restore the US public broadcaster’s app even in the face of China’s insistence that it cannot be used on iPhones there.
“While there are many examples of Apple doing the bidding of Communist China — including its decisions to remove Quran and Bible apps — I am focusing in this letter on just one case: Apple’s decision to remove the Voice of America mobile app from its App Store in China,” Carr wrote to the executive.
“Apple’s decision to appease the Communist Party of China — an authoritarian regime that the State Department has determined is committing genocide and crimes against humanity — cannot be squared with your representation in Washington that Apple will ‘battle against an array of dangerous actors’ nor your claim that Apple [will protect] ‘people’s fundamental rights’ from abusive surveillance,” Carr said.
Apple told Law360 on Tuesday that the company was required to remove the app several years ago following a notification that it did not comply with local laws in China.
Carr’s letter was a rejoinder to Cook’s decision to speak out on policy matters at the International Association of Privacy Professionals’ Global Privacy Summit in Washington, D.C., on April 12. The Apple chief criticized antitrust proposals aimed at Big Tech that are circulating on Capitol Hill, saying they are misguided.
Some of that legislation targets app stores, such as the iPhone’s, that have faced sharp criticism in recent years for purported monopolistic conduct.
Carr told the Apple CEO that “you spoke eloquently about what you described as Apple’s commitment to operating its App Store in a manner that promotes privacy and human rights,” and recounted Apple’s “commitment to protecting people from a data industrial complex built on a foundation of surveillance.”
“And you spoke out forcefully against a reality in which ‘technology is exploited to rob humanity of that which is foundational’ as ‘a loss we cannot accept,'” Carr said, adding, “I am concerned that your words in Washington founder upon the harsh reality of your actions in China.”
“Indeed, at the very same time that you were speaking in D.C. about your App Store policies promoting privacy and human rights, your company was continuing its well documented campaign in Beijing of aggressively censoring apps at the behest of the Communist Party,” Carr told him.
Carr said that he only recently learned that Apple blocks the Voice of America mobile app from its App Store in China.
“I find Apple’s conduct in this regard deeply troubling, particularly given your words last week,” he wrote. “Voice of America is part of the US Agency for Global Media, which is funded by Congress. Voice of America operates by statute as an objective, independent voice when it comes to its reporting and content.”
“For years, global corporations like Apple have cut deals with brutal regimes like Communist China in exchange for access to a large and lucrative market,” the commissioner wrote. “Of course, these corporations advance all sorts of reasonable sounding arguments to justify their decisions to stand shoulder to shoulder with authoritarians.”
He added that China is “not becoming more open or bending towards freedom because Apple is doing business there. Far from it. China is cracking down on individual liberty at an accelerating clip.”
Carr asked Apple to respond by April 29 as to whether it will allow access to the Voice of America mobile app through its App Store in China.
A spokesperson for Apple’s corporate headquarters told Law360 in an email Tuesday that “back in 2017, we were notified by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) that the Voice of America app did not comply with local laws because it lacked a license to operate in the country.”
“We are required to comply with local laws where we do business, even though we may sometimes disagree,” Apple said. “The app remains available for download in other countries.”
–Additional reporting by Ben Kochman. Editing by Ellen Johnson.
