Sen. Marco Rubio on Wednesday ripped Apple Inc.'s plans to change its iPhone settings to undercut the most popular means for law enforcement to break into the devices, noting the technology company turned over all its data to the Chinese government to comply with new regulations there.
"Apple, who is very proud of how they are making it harder for American law enforcement to collect evidence from iPhones of criminals, had [no] problem turning over their entire cloud in China to the Chinese government," the Florida Republican said on Twitter.
"Not just the phones, all the data."
Apple said Wednesday it was making the iPhone changes to protect customers in countries where police seize phones at will and to protect users from the risk that such a move could encourage leaks to spies and criminals.
But in February, Apple said it would store the keys for Chinese iCloud accounts in China itself.
The move now allows Chinese authorities to bypass U.S. courts to seek information on iCloud users and instead use their own legal system to get Apple to hand over iCloud data for Chinese users.
"While we advocated against iCloud being subject to these laws, we were ultimately unsuccessful," Apple, based in Cupertino, Calif., said at the time.
Officials said it was better to offer iCloud under the new system because no longer doing so would create a bad user experience and less data privacy and security for its Chinese customers.
Human rights activists, however, fear the Chinese government could use the authority to track down dissidents.
They cited cases from more than a decade ago when Yahoo Inc. handed over user data that led to arrests and prison sentences for two democracy advocates in Beijing.
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