Craig Federighi testified that he’s not aware of them doing it. That doesn’t preclude the possibility that it has been done by someone else in the company without his knowledge.
In early 2018, Apple forced their users to opt-in to migrating iCloud encryption keys and data to Chinese data centers:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-apple-icloud-insigh...
Chinese government nationalized the data centers six months later, gaining access to all the encryption keys and user iCloud data at rest. Apple complied:
https://mashable.com/article/china-government-apple-icloud-d...
"Encryption for us is the same in every country in the world...We worked with a Chinese company to provide iCloud, but the keys [...] are ours...I wouldn't get caught up in 'where's the location of it,' I mean we have servers located in many different countries in the world. They're not easier to get data from being in one country versus the next...The key question is how does the encryption process work, and who owns the keys — if anyone. In most cases for us, you and the receiver [of a message] own the keys." - Tim Cook
(https://www.businessinsider.com/tim-cook-apple-encrypts-data...)
Apple is specifically stating that they have retained control over the encryption keys.
Tim Cook is describing how encryption works - he is not saying that the Chinese government doesn't have access to the data at rest with the iCloud encryption keys. Amnesty International [1] sums it up:
>“By handing over its China iCloud service to a local company without sufficient safeguards, the Chinese authorities now have potentially unfettered access to all Apple’s Chinese customers’ iCloud data. Apple knows it, yet has not warned its customers in China of the risks.”
They raised this issue three full months before the Chinese government went ahead and nationalized all of the Apple user data and encryption keys.
[1] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/03/apple-privacy...
If you are targeted by the CCP, then yes, they can make a “legal” request for the data of an individual that Apple is able the decrypt (which isn’t all of it), but they aren’t able to apply mass surveillance to the iCloud data.
The encryption keys are for iCloud backups at rest, for which a copy of the keys are stored serverside. This can decrypt all iCloud data, including messages, pics, videos, documents, etc. Tim only described E2E message encryption between users, not encrypted iCloud backups.
Again, Tim isn't saying what you think he's saying. He's intentionally not answering that question or misdirecting - he's doing it all over again here:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208351
Can you link to a source showing that Apple didn't turn over control of iCloud in China to the CCP?
"Encryption for us is the same in every country in the world...We worked with a Chinese company to provide iCloud, but the keys [...] are ours...I wouldn't get caught up in 'where's the location of it,' I mean we have servers located in many different countries in the world. They're not easier to get data from being in one country versus the next...The key question is how does the encryption process work, and who owns the keys — if anyone. In most cases for us, you and the receiver [of a message] own the keys." - Tim Cook
(https://www.businessinsider.com/tim-cook-apple-encrypts-data...)
Not only has Apple given the iCloud keys to the kingdom to China, iCloud is actually run by the state in China
From a later article from the same source, Apple states: "Apple has not created nor were we requested to create any backdoors and Apple will continue to retain control over the encryption keys to iCloud data"
https://money.cnn.com/2018/02/28/technology/apple-icloud-dat...
I'm not saying it's not concerning, and China can still request a particular users data, but let's be accurate.
"You understand and agree that Apple and GCBD [emphasis added] will have access to all data that you store on this service."
https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/icloud/en/gcbd...
GCBD, a state-owned company, certainly gives the Chinese government the ability to see all iCloud data. It is technically true that if the Chinese government sends a data request to Apple, Apple can try to push back within the legal system, but why would they send a data request to Apple when they can get unfettered access from GCBD?
As far as who controls the keys for decrypting iCloud data at rest, I cannot believe that Chinese iCloud data would be sent encrypted to Apple's servers outside of China to be encrypted for rest with Apple-controlled keys and sent back to GCBD servers for storage and then sent to Apple's servers outside of China for decryption after verifying it is a user authorized request and back encrypted for the user when the user requests the data (and the same for all operations on the data like indexing). The keys absolutely must exist in China under GCBD's control.