The South Korean military may ban iPhones for security reasons
South Korea's military is considering a total ban on iPhones in military buildings amid growing concerns about possible leaks of sensitive information through voice recordings, multiple military sources said Tuesday. The news was reported by the Korean Herald .
The sources, a group of senior officers who wished to speak on condition of anonymity, said the Air Force headquarters posted an internal announcement on the Army's intranet server on April 11, instructing a complete ban on any device capable of recording voice and that does not allow third-party apps to control inherent functions, starting June 1, with “iPhones” cited as banned items.
According to the document, the decision to ban iPhones in the military arose from joint meetings held by the headquarters of the Army, Navy and Air Force, located in Gyeryongdae, South Chungcheong province.
The document states: “It is inevitable to block any type of voice recording, not only formal communications, including meetings, office conversations, commercial announcements and complaints, and consultations with the public, but also informal communications, such as private telephone calls (inside military buildings)”.
The document also reads: “There has been an ongoing review regarding the potential extension of this ban to all subordinate units,” with Army headquarters conducting the ban on a trial basis since April. If the ban is extended, it will likely go beyond the Gyeryongdae area to include all other units in the nation.
The devices that will be banned also include all types of smartwatches and wearable devices.
The sources, however, said that Android-based smartphones, especially those from Samsung Electronics, will be exempt from the ban, while the document explicitly states that "the introduction of iPhones will be completely banned."
Currently, an estimated 10,000 personnel, including around 6,000 officers, are on duty at the Gyeryongdae defense center alone. For security reasons, the exact number is not disclosed to the public.
If the ban were extended to all subordinate units, it would affect nearly 500,000 military personnel. According to the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses, a think tank under the Ministry of Defense, the total number of military personnel is 499,8000 as of 2022, including 365,000 in the Army, 69,800 in the Navy and 65,000 in the Air Force.
A favor done to Galaxy users
The reason iPhones would be specifically banned, while Android-based smartphones, such as Samsung's Galaxy series, would not be, is presumably because iPhones do not fully comply with the restrictions outlined by the National Defense Mobile Security, a management application of mobile devices managed by military authorities.
For example, when you activate the security application installed by the Korean military, it begins to limit several functions of the smartphone, including the camera, Wi-Fi, tethering, USB functions and microphone.
However, Apple does not allow third-party apps to control the intrinsic functions of iPhones, with the exception of the camera.
The Ministry of National Defense introduced the security app in August 2013 to mitigate the risk of credential information leakage from its headquarters in Yongsan-gu, Seoul. Initially, this measure applied only to military officers and civil servants working at the Ministry.
The mandate to use the security app in high-security military facilities has been extended to all military personnel from 2021. This decision coincided with the military authorities' initiative to allow soldiers to use smartphones during compulsory military service , even if only between 6.00 pm and 9.00 pm.
The sources said discussions about the potential ban on iPhones began in September last year, when SK Telecom, the nation's largest telecom operator, launched an unprecedented call recording feature for iPhones via the A-Dot app. Apple iPhones do not support call recording features for privacy reasons, as in many US states, including California, it is illegal to record voice calls without the other person's consent.
So the fact that Apple does not want to see its recording activity limited means that the iPhone is seen as a threat by the command of the Koran army. If this allows you to sell a few more Samsung smartphones, so much the better.
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The article The South Korean army could ban iPhones for security reasons comes from Economic Scenarios .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/lesercito-sud-coreano-potrebbe-vietare-gli-iphone-per-questioni-di-sicurezza/ on Wed, 24 Apr 2024 06:00:51 +0000.