Apple
is under fire for moving iCloud data to China
Apple's
latest move in China has privacy advocates and human rights groups
worried.
CNN,
26
February, 2018
The
U.S. company is moving iCloud accounts registered in mainland China
to state-run Chinese servers on Wednesday along with the digital keys
needed to unlock them.
"The
changes being made to iCloud are the latest indication that China's
repressive legal environment is making it difficult for Apple to
uphold its commitments to user privacy and security," Amnesty
International warned in a statement Tuesday.
The
criticism highlights the tradeoffs major international companies are
making in order to do business in China, which is a huge market and
vital manufacturing base for Apple (AAPL).
Related:
Use iCloud in China? Prepare to share your data with a state-run firm
In
the past, if Chinese authorities wanted to access Apple's user data,
they had to go through an international legal process and comply with
U.S. laws on user rights, according to Ronald Deibert, director of
the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab, which studies the
intersection of digital policy and human rights.
"They
will no longer have to do so if iCloud and cryptographic keys are
located in China's jurisdiction," he told CNNMoney.
The
company taking over Apple's Chinese iCloud operations is
Guizhou-Cloud Big Data (GCBD), which is owned by the government of
Guizhou province. GCBD did not respond to requests for comment.
The
change only affects iCloud accounts that are registered in mainland
China.
Apple
(AAPL) made the move to comply with China's latest regulations on
cloud services. A controversial cybersecurity law, which went into
effect last June, requires companies to keep all data in the country.
Beijing has said the measures are necessary to help prevent crime and
terrorism, and protect Chinese citizens' privacy.
The
problem with Chinese cybersecurity laws, Deibert said, is that they
also require companies operating in China "to turn over user
data to state authorities on demand -- Apple now included."
Other
big U.S. tech companies have had to take similar steps -- Amazon
(AMZN) and Microsoft (MSFT) also struck partnerships with Chinese
companies to operate their cloud services in the country.
Related:
Apple is leading the race to $1 trillion
Apple
says that it did advocate against iCloud being subject to the new
law, but was unsuccessful.
"Our
choice was to offer iCloud under the new laws or discontinue offering
the service," an Apple spokesman told CNN. The company decided
to keep iCloud in China, because cutting it off "would result in
a bad user experience and less data security and privacy for our
Chinese customers," he said.
Apple
users typically use iCloud to store data such as music, photos and
contacts.
That
information can be extremely sensitive. Earlier this month, Reporters
Without Borders urged China-based journalists to change the country
associated with their iCloud accounts -- which is an option for
non-Chinese citizens, according to Apple -- or to close them down
entirely
The
company has stopped mentioning Microsoft Azure
Apple
has confirmed that it uses Google’s public cloud to store data for
its iCloud services in its latest version of the iOS Security Guide
last month, as spotted by CNBC. Reports that Apple relied on Google’s
cloud services surfaced in 2016 but were previously never confirmed.
Apple
had previously used remote data storage systems provided by Amazon
Web Services and Microsoft Azure. Apple’s edition of the iOS
Security Guide in March 2017 still listed Microsoft Azure instead of
Google Cloud Platform.
The
new edition describes its iCloud service: “The encrypted chunks of
the file are stored, without any user-identifying information, using
third-party storage services, such as [Amazon] S3 and Google Cloud
Platform.”
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.