By the end of this month, Apple will move all iCloud accounts of Chinese citizens and residents to a server in China.
This move of data from iCloud to servers in China is not new. Since last year, the American company Apple has announced that in order to be in full compliance with Chinese legislation, it will take this step.
Currently, all data owned by users around the world is stored on servers in the United States (USA). This means that any content from these accounts is subject to American law. If a country wants to find out the account information of an iPhone, iPad, Mac or other Apple device with iOS / macOS, it must first make a legal request to the authorities in the USA. Only after a court in the States finds that the request is founded, the data will be made available to the authorities of the respective country. To date, Apple did not provide any confidential user data. Either from the USA or from other countries.
However, Chinese law prevents Apple from keeping confidential the data of all Chinese users or those with resident in China. Every time Chinese government requesting information about a user, they must make a clear request, which must go through a trial in USA. In the end, the court in the States will decide whether the data will be sent to the Chinese government or not.
In order to avoid this arduous procedure and not to conflict with the government of the country with the largest economy in the world, Apple decided that all iCloud accounts of Chinese citizens and residents should be stored on servers in China. This means that the Chinese government will no longer have to apply to a US court when they want confidential data of an iOS or macOS user.
Despite the fact that Apple has assured that These data will not be at the mercy of Chinese authorities, human rights activists do not like this migration of iCloud accounts to China. They discussed a case that happened more than 10 years ago, when the American company Yahoo! Inc. provided the Chinese government with more data on dissidents. Data that ultimately led to at least two arrests.
Leaving aside the assurances given by Apple, that the information from iCloud will not end up in the curious hands of the authorities in China and that this migration will not create an access loophole for the local authorities, this is hard to believe.
The migration of the iCloud accounts of Chinese citizens will be done on February 28, 2018, during which time the service will not have functional problems. The new host of these accounts will be Guizhou's Cloud Big Data servers. Cloud location also used by other large companies such as Alibaba Group and Huawei.
