| Title | Apple to Store Chinese Users' iCloud Keys in China | |
| Date | Wednesday February 28 2018, @03:45AM | |
| Author | Fnord666 | |
| Topic | ||
| from the keys-to-the-kingdom dept. | ||
Apple moves to store iCloud keys in China, raising human rights fears
When Apple Inc begins hosting Chinese users' iCloud accounts in a new Chinese data center at the end of this month to comply with new laws there, Chinese authorities will have far easier access to text messages, email and other data stored in the cloud.
That's because of a change to how the company handles the cryptographic keys needed to unlock an iCloud account. Until now, such keys have always been stored in the United States, meaning that any government or law enforcement authority seeking access to a Chinese iCloud account needed to go through the U.S. legal system.
Now, according to Apple, for the first time the company will store the keys for Chinese iCloud accounts in China itself. That means Chinese authorities will no longer have to use the U.S. courts to seek information on iCloud users and can instead use their own legal system to ask Apple to hand over iCloud data for Chinese users, legal experts said.
Human rights activists say they fear the authorities could use that power to track down dissidents, citing cases from more than a decade ago in which Yahoo Inc handed over user data that led to arrests and prison sentences for two democracy advocates. Jing Zhao, a human rights activist and Apple shareholder, said he could envisage worse human rights issues arising from Apple handing over iCloud data than occurred in the Yahoo case.
Also at WSJ and TechCrunch.
Related: Apple now relies on Google Cloud Platform and Amazon S3 for iCloud data
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printed from SoylentNews, Apple to Store Chinese Users' iCloud Keys in China on 2024-05-15 02:44:34