What course of action would you prefer: Willingly shut down iCloud in China or have iCloud forcefully shut down in China?

I would much prefer that the license and information from apple explicitly stated that this chinese firm will only be able store and access data from chinese accounts and there is a very secure barrier between the two. However, given this paragraph

They include a clause that both Apple and the Chinese firm will have access to all data stored on iCloud.

It makes me really worried about apples commitment to privacy.

I'd prefer that China allow its citizens to freely access the global internet.

I was going to comment that I think the question referred to what course of action /Apple/ should take, but maybe fundamentally changing superstates is not off the table when you have multinational megacorp resources.

What are you suggesting? Revolution?

And how could Apple accomplish that?

By threatening to pull manufacturing.

China adds so little value there I don’t think it would cause a blip. Then Apple would have decide somewhere else to do that with the right supply chain in place.

I think(I hope) as more people in China come online they will realize that they are missing out.

Sadly the opposite might occur. Fake news is very useful. For corporations, it acts like PR/marketing channel. For nation-states it's a great propaganda channel.

What if the Communist Party of China was actually visionaries what the Internet could do for oppressive nation-states, if properly harnessed for the good of the party?

This was the hope with the internet here in the US. Hundreds of millions of users later, the average person seems even less informed on the world around them. Access is meaningless if good information is less appealing or is made to seem less credible than propaganda.

How about a notice on iCloud reading something like "iCloud is not available in your country due to local government regulations that are in conflict with our position on personal privacy. We are sorry for the inconvenience."

Given China's history I would expect them to be very, very upset by this public criticism of their government. Especially on every iPhone.

Google did that (actually took an even stronger stance). But if competitors don't do the same, then nothing changes and you are just ceding the market to them.

To be clear, I am not advocating that companies should bow down on their principles, just that it needs to be a more coordinated effort across companies, and might need new technical solutions to evade government firewalls etc.

While I am cynical that my wishes would come true, I do respect the companies that take a moral stance against their own business interests, which includes Google in China and Apple in the US.

Pure speculation on my part, but could this be a way for Apple to segregate Chinese account data from the rest of their customers' data?

That would seem to limit the scope of what Chinese authorities can access.

To me it seems to be case — Chinese customers will use firewalled version of iCloud available only in one country.

This is exactly what this is done. Apple needs to isolate its Chinese users so that only they are affected by Chinese government regulations.

How do they define "Chinese users?" What about an American traveling or living in China?

While you're not wrong, this strikes me as the cost of doing business in China. For comparison, AWS and Azure both operate under local partners in China.

e: "strikes me as" == "is"; it's not really optional.

That cost of doing business seems to be getting more expensive all the time. At what point do we have to subsidize that cost with our own privacy and freedom?

Because the options are either do that or exit the country unfortunately.

Precisely my point, but thanks for clarifying. The subtext I guess is that in my view it's worthwhile for Apple, even if I have personal qualms about the privacy implications. Then again, I would assume this won't affect non-Chinese region Apple/iCloud users.

>> Because the options are either do that or exit the country unfortunately.

> The subtext I guess is that in my view it's worthwhile for Apple

Exiting the country might be the most worthwhile long term choice for a company. China has clearly indicated, through it's actions, that it's mainly interested in technology transfer to shore up it's domestic competitors. It's not really interested in giving foreigners a fair shot at its market.

This might not be very true for Apple (as it's really mostly a luxury smartphone maker), bit it is for a lot of the companies that would like to do business there.

I disagree.

Apple has always made clear that information stored on their iCloud service were subject accesses by a third party with the proper authority. Whether this third party is US or Chinese does not change anything.

Only the information that is resident on your phone with the Secure Enclave is tamper resistant.

I don't buy into this line of reasoning, because it inverts the relationship. Of course Apple has to hand over access to authorities if there's a lawful reason behind it, just like e.g. a private person has to oblige to a search warrant. But in this case they hand over their infrastructure to an untrusted party in order to conduct business in the first place.

Again, it's not so much about what the firm can actually do with the infrastructure (ideally, it's a black box that only the user can access with the correct key), but what compromise they're willing to make in order to conduct business. Privacy has become a selling point for Apple, and actions like these signal how serious they are about it.

Blackberry went through the same issue with the a similar outcome.

Personally, I see this as a positive development, as it signals that the company is doing what it claims to, promoting the PRC to get the same accommodation that Office 365 delivered versus giving the state the level of access it demands.

If you feel strongly or have a requirement to control your account principal, you should not be using a third party identity store.

Many countries have such limitations, not only China requires data to be stored "in the country", but also Russia. I've been in a situation, where an international product got "forked" into a daughter-company-controlled China-only product. Nothing escaped this Chinese sandbox, and nothing got into either.