Chinese authorities can now get a Chinese legal order and tell Apple’s local partner to hand over user data. The local partner (and by extension Apple) will have no choice but to comply with the order.
Apple’s statement to Reuters is quite telling. “While we advocated against iCloud being subject to these laws, we were ultimately unsuccessful,” The company told Reuters. Apple simply couldn’t win this fight.
They moved the storage of encryption keys for Chinese users to servers in China instead of shutting down iMessage and Facetime. Quite the different response.
If they stay in the UK they should make red bubbles whenever one of the participant is in the UK and subject to UK’s laws.
They should already be doing this for the amount of data they give to the Chinese government.
https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/25/apple-moves-icloud-encryption-keys-for-chinese-users-to-china/
They moved the storage of encryption keys for Chinese users to servers in China instead of shutting down iMessage and Facetime. Quite the different response.