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Apple's Cook, Williams 'deeply offended' by BBC supply chain expose
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MacNN Staff
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In a new email memo to the company's UK workforce, Apple's Senior VP of Operations Jeff Williams claims that he and CEO Tim Cook were "deeply offended" by a BBC Panorama documentary exposing labor abuses in the company's supply chain. Specifically, Williams and Cook are said to have been "deeply offended by the suggestion that Apple would break a promise to the workers in our supply chain, or mislead our customers in any way;" Williams charges that " Panorama's report implied that Apple isn't improving working conditions. Let me tell you, nothing could be further from the truth."
Williams notes that Apple provided "facts and perspective" about the company's human rights efforts to the BBC before the documentary aired, but that they were "clearly missing from their [ Panorama's] programme." In that regard, the memo goes on to repeat statements made about Indonesian tin mining, elaborating on some points. "We spearheaded the creation of an Indonesian Tin Working Group with other technology companies. Apple is pushing to find and implement a system that holds smelters accountable, so we can influence artisanal mining in Indonesia. It could be an approach such as 'bagging and tagging' legally mined material, which has been successful over time in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. We are looking to drive similar results in Indonesia, which is the right thing to do," the memo says.
On the issue of rights abuses in factories, Williams claims that the company knows of "no other company doing as much as Apple does to ensure fair and safe working conditions, to discover and investigate problems, to fix and follow through when issues arise, and to provide transparency into the operations of our suppliers." The executive says that the 1,400-plus managers it has stationed with Chinese suppliers are "trained to speak up when they see safety risks or mistreatment," and that the company has a "team of experts" dedicated to enforcing its supplier code of conduct.
"In 2014 alone, our Supplier Responsibility team completed 630 comprehensive, in-person audits deep into our supply chain," the email goes on. "These audits include face-to-face interviews with workers, away from their managers, in their native language. Sometimes critics point to the discovery of problems as evidence that the process isn't working. The reality is that we find violations in every audit we have ever performed, no matter how sophisticated the company we're auditing. We find problems, we drive improvement, and then we raise the bar."
To offer evidence that things have changed, Williams says that "several years ago," most of the people in its supply chain worked over 60 hours a week, and that "70+ hour workweeks were typical." It's after "years of slow progress and industry excuses" that Apple decided to track the hours of each laborer and publish monthly results online. "It takes substantial effort, and we have to weed out false reporting, but it's working. This year, our suppliers have achieved an average of 93 percent compliance with our 60-hour limit. We can still do better. And we will," Williams argues.
He also points to a crackdown Apple auditors managed against a ring of job brokers who were charging high fees and holding onto passports, as well as the educational programs it runs for factory workers. "I will not dive into every issue raised by Panorama in this note, but you can rest assured that we take all allegations seriously, and we investigate every claim," he comments.
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Last edited by NewsPoster; Dec 19, 2014 at 07:10 PM.
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Grizzled Veteran
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Sounds like you could use one of these nice, shiny, tinfoil headwear things I'm selling. They supposedly block all sorts of secret thoughtwave-collecting activities. How many do you need? I think you need at least 5.
You can pay me in Bitcoin if you like, since the government is probably tracking all your money so they can snatch you off the street and prevent you from blowing their cover. When you order, just say the secret codeword so I know it's really you: "crackpot."
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Clinically Insane
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That Washington Post link was immediately exposed as ignorant hogwash.
Internet search kind of depends upon you sending them a question.
Also, what on Earth does one have to do with the other? We all know the Internet is for porn and exploiting children. The same kind of children mining tin with their bare hands. Won't somebody please think of the children?
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Mac Enthusiast
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Clinically Insane
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You'd do well to READ the tripe you link to.
Please actually make an argument, because what you're seeing in those links is not what others see in them:
What they tell me is that
a) Apple includes web searches in Spotlight by default, and that
b) they include location data in the search query to make the search results more relevant, but
c) retain no identifying data whatsoever about the people doing the searches once they've delivered results, and that
d) this search data at no time whatsoever leaves Apple's hands.
What on Earth this shit has to do with Apple's supply chain, I still have no idea at all.
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Managing Editor
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Newsposter things are on the front page of MacNN. Please keep that in mind.
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Grizzled Veteran
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Here's what I gleaned from the hyperbolic fear mongering:
He/she is taking issue with Apple being involved with the human rights and/or treatment of the employees of Apple's contractors, because he/she is asserting that Apple is hypocritical, trying to build an argument to support that notion based solely off of a misguided understanding of Spotlight search results in Yosemite and the fact that a portion of them are internet-based. The assertion there is that Apple is somehow invading or otherwise running afoul of our privacy (hence the hypocrisy -- "how can they be so concerned about the well-being of foreign workers when all the while they're 'spying' on their own, domestic users?"), despite the fact that none of the internet-based search queries could ever be traced back to a single computer or user or otherwise used to profile and/or uniquely identify a person, all combined with a grave misunderstanding of how the internet works overall.
Also for kicks, he/she has linked to articles on how to "fix" Yosemite (asserting that Spotlight is somehow "broken"), the solutions of which are comprised of nothing more than unchecking a few checkboxes that Apple provided to the user to check or uncheck of their own free will in order to give the user specific and absolute control over what results, precisely, Spotlight is allowed to provide to the user, and going so far as to allowing the user to restrict Spotlight from ever communicating over the internet, period.
I suspect it stems from the intial bout of fear mongering when Yosemite was released, and Spotlight gained internet-aware search abilities. The original fear mongering was over the fact that Apple made internet-aware search abilities the default, rather than turning off internet-aware searches by default and giving the user the option to turn them on. In other words, Apple employed an "opt-out" scenario rather than an "opt-in" scenario, which rubbed a great many people the wrong way, and was eventually picked up by a bunch of tinfoil-hat-wearing-types who spun it into this great conspiracy about how Apple is spying on us, and logging and sharing our search queries and location information for their own, nefarious reasons.
To the subject of this post: feel free to chime in if any of that sounds wrong.
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...he/she asked a question, and simply followed up with further external opinions (judgement of 'tin hats' notwithstanding) in response to (mostly) critical rhetoric, rather than relating back to the subject of corporate representation, and emotive responses to potentially critical exposé of mining, material supply & human rights issues facing a preeminent US digital technology company...
To the subject of the article, shareholder responsibility & credible representation of supply (or user privacy) is Apple increasingly restricted to 'handmaiden' status?
Does default web search opt-in correlate with (by design) an apparent one way ticket for iCloud calendars, notes & reminders & also the Safari 'new private window' unexecuted when following an email link ?
...more 'tin hats' (in response)...?
https://www.torproject.org/about/torusers.html.en
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMIrmt9sZyY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEq42BDBVWk (skip to 9:30m)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/0..._n_825053.html
...and more directly to the subject of the article, is there a fragile line between representation, exploitation, reputation & duty especially in areas of relative opacity such as user data & multinational supply chains, and affecting what many define as core human rights physically, digitally, locally & abroad...?
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Why is apple saving users' searches? Even if it's anonymous, it's still insanely creepy intrusion into its customers' privacy.
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Clinically Insane
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Yeah, they are insanely creepy.
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Clinically Insane
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They are saving users' searches?
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Forum Regular
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They are writing them to disk. I may be old-school, but that's called "saving". Further, Apple are forwarding the search queries to their partners for analysis. This forwarding is part of a business transaction, which makes Tim Cook's open letter on privacy a series of bald-faced lies. "Saving" is collection, and forwarding the collected data is making the customer - specifically, the customer's search query - the product.
Mr. Cook may be "deeply offended", but nowhere as deeply offended as informed Apple customers should be.
"Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters."
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Oh noes! Appel iz teh evile boogeezman!
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