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Chinese partner Apple iCloud has reached an agreement with China Telecom to migrate customer data from the country to Tianyi Cloud service of the public company, a decision that seems to go against Apple's insurance against government spying.
According to the local publication Caixin China Telecom Tianyi Cloud at the end of June signed an "infrastructure agreement" with Apple partner Guizhou-Big Data Industry Co. Ltd. to provide iCloud storage services for Mainland China. China Telecom representatives declined to provide details on the arrangement, but said that GCBD migrated all Chinese iCloud customer data to Tianyi servers.
Apple has confirmed the change to TechCrunch Tuesday night
The development is likely to raise the shackles of privacy advocates who earlier this year warned of snooping risks associated with the decision of Apple to move regional iCloud data to China-based servers.
Apple completed the transfer to GCBD cloud services in February after informing customers of the transfer a month ago. To comply with the Chinese cybersecurity laws, the user data and the cryptographic keys that protect it have been transferred into the operation.
Like other cloud storage providers, Apple secures iCloud data with the help of cryptographic keys. Prior to the migration of mass data, all iCloud keys – even those from Chinese accounts – were located on US servers, which meant that government access requests fell under US law. These protections disappeared once the user's data reached Chinese soil.
For its part, Apple has repeatedly stated that the move is a requirement for the operation of iCloud and other cloud computing services in China. The company said last year that its Chinese servers do not include backdoors, adding that it would be iCloud key control, not GCBD. If the situation has changed with the Tianyi agreement is not clear.
The decision to continue iCloud services in light of the Chinese record of censorship and espionage is apparently at odds with the dogma of Apple's privacy.
"While we were arguing against the fact that iCloud was subject to these laws, we ultimately failed," Apple said in February. He added that maintaining iCloud with his partner GCBD – known to have close ties to the Chinese Communist Party – is a better option than to discontinue service, as this would not only lead to a user experience negative, but would also be detrimental to the user. privacy.
GCBD-Tianyi's merger is not the first time that Apple has been relying on China Telecom to get help with its iCloud services. In 2014, the company confirmed that it was storing customer data on localized servers in order to improve speed and reliability for customers. Unlike the current configuration, iCloud security keys have been kept off.
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