Multiple governments have been eagerly trying to push for tech companies to build backdoors into their systems for some time now, for easy government access, and to hand over encryption keys freely…all in aid of the ‘fight against terrorism’ (so they say). a number of governments have had their hand at it and now China would also like in.

The U.S. government was quick to criticise China on their new proposed technology policies whereby technology companies will be required to hand over encryption keys and ensure backdoors are installed in their systems for government surveillance access, also for counterterrorism reasons.

The first draft also requires companies to ensure servers and user data remains in China and requires the handing over of communication records to authorities.

Many may have been taken by surprise regarding the reactions of the U.S. government to China’s new law proposal, since the same has been asked of U.S. tech companies for some time.

If these laws go ahead, foreign companies with interactions with China will also need to abide by them, privacy and cyber security may be negatively affected when China undertake the spying at their discretion, with China able to intercept foreign communications too.

The reasons put forward as to why China should refrain from going ahead, do make sense however what does not make sense, is why these reasons apply to China but not to other countries that have and are attempting the same.  The reasons proposed as to why China should rethink their new rules include:

  • It will enable the Chinese government to spy and keep track of all the users utilising the services  (this will apply equally to other countries demands made to tech companies)
  • The rules could backfire on China and hurt the Chinese economy as no international firm will credibly turnover data to a government (no different outcome can be expected from other countries demanding the same)

 

This coming from a government that cautioned companies recently on the encryption methods they utilised, to make sure that the encryption they used was breakable by law enforcement and demands for companies to deliberately include flaws in their software for the sole purpose of government access.

A solution would be to acquire an encryption solution where the company does not hold the encryption keys forcing any government entity to go directly to the user for the information. Galaxkey have been forward thinking and this is the approach Galaxkey has taken, bringing a secure solution to the user.

The Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/04/backdoors-encryption-china-apple-google-nsa#comments

The New York Times: