Apple's "cooperation" with authoritarian governments tends to only go so far as it needs to in order for the next iPhone to come out on time and in sufficient supply. Otherwise Apple bends heaven and earth to engineer their devices to be as secure as they can make them, even against state authorities.
That said, if you live in China, you probably don't want to sync your stuff to iCloud. Not because Apple doesn't want to protect your data, but more because you can't trust anything in any data centers that are physically on Chinese soil.
But let's get real. If you're in mainland China and the authorities decide they need to confiscate your phone, you're already fscked.
Digging through the link the other commentator posted, Apple complied with 88% of Russia's requests for information and 94% of China's with over 1000 requests from each of those nations...
Versus Google which has avoided giving information to or censoring search results in both countries and as a result is mostly banned.
With Apple leaving Russia and removing government-affiliated apps from App Store with no way to side-load them, the only other option is Android now and blocking Google completely will probably render most smartphones useless, as most Android phones rely on Google services to function. I think that's why it's not banned yet.
> Apple's "cooperation" with authoritarian governments tends to only go so far as it needs to in order for the next iPhone to come out on time and in sufficient supply
That statement is kind of information-free. If China knows they have Apple completely over the barrel, why wouldn't they demand a lot?
But for how they cooperate, Apple's own transparency report shows they give information on Apple customers to Chinese authorities thousands of times per year, and accept the vast majority of requests: https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/cn.html
>If you're in mainland China and the authorities decide they need to confiscate your phone, you're already fscked.
Funny how you specifically mention China, as if it worked differently in USA - the country where you can get four years of jail time for talking back to police.
Because of hypocrisy? They pretend to be not in ads business with your data
So now everyone is doing the same thing so called value the 'privacy' (aka only they could collect the data for themselves to do personalized ads). So in the end you pick the one who hoard ur data and show the ads. What's the difference again?
Google, being US-based company, is legally obliged to provide all the data they have to three letter agencies, without any real oversight. They can’t refuse even if they wanted.
Regardless, I care less about the US government having my info than, say, Russia (especially being part Ukrainian, having Ukrainian friends and family, etc...).
