Apple is giving Chinese authorities greater access over customers' iCloud accounts to comply with new laws there, it has confirmed.

The tech giant will begin hosting the accounts in a new data centre which stores the cryptographic keys needed to unlock an iCloud account. These have previously been stored in the US, meaning any foreign state looking for access to an account needed to submit a request through the US legal system.

But now Chinese authorities will no longer have to use the US courts to seek information on iCloud users and can instead use their own legal system to ask Apple to hand over iCloud data for Chinese users, legal experts said.

Human rights activists say they fear the authorities could use that power to track down dissidents, citing cases from more than a decade ago in which Yahoo Inc handed over user data that led to arrests and prison sentences for two democracy advocates. Jing Zhao, a human rights activist and Apple shareholder, said he could envisage worse human rights issues arising from Apple handing over iCloud data than occurred in the Yahoo case.

In a statement, Apple said it had to comply with recently introduced Chinese laws that require cloud services offered to Chinese citizens be operated by Chinese companies and that the data be stored in China. It said that while the company’s values don’t change in different parts of the world, it is subject to each country’s laws.