Apple chief says firm guards data privacy in China

Apple chief executive Tim Cook on Tuesday said the company is devoted to protecting people's privacy, with data encrypted and locked away on servers even in China.

Cook called privacy as one of the most important issues of this century, and maintained that the US-based technology colossus even safeguards data Chinese law requires it to keep stored in that country.

"We worked with a Chinese company to provide iCloud," Cook said, referring to Apple's service for storing digital content in the internet cloud during an interview with Vice News.

"But, the keys to the data are ours."