A new anti-terrorism law passed in China Sunday will require tech firms to turn over sensitive information, including encryption keys, to the government. The law comes on the heels of a broadly worded national security law passed in July that mandated that the country’s Internet infrastructure be "secure and controllable."
The new law also restricts press freedom in China, curtailing the right of journalists to report on terror attacks or show "cruel or inhuman" scenes, Reuters reported. It also puts new restrictions on social media use by Chinese citizens, who already face state censorship and filtering when they post about controversial issues or criticize the government.
China's anti-terror laws have attracted criticism from businesses, human rights groups and U.S. President Barack Obama, who told Reuters in March that "we've made very clear to them that this is something they're going to have to change if they expect to do business with the United States."
Li Shouwei, a government spokesman, told Reuters that companies won't have to fear any backdoors -- entryways that bypass a traditional security mechanism -- into their products and services.
But a draft of the legislation that the International Association of Privacy Professionals analyzed in March shows that's untrue: China's new law requires Internet service providers and telecommunications providers to install government-accessible backdoors and provide encryption keys for any data stored on their servers.
Shouwei also told Reuters that China was "simply doing what other major nations already do in asking technology firms to help fight terror." He cited Western nations' actions as justification, Reuters reported.
Although US leaders have condemned China's laws, they are engaging in the same rhetoric of national security stateside, suggesting that technology companies find a magical way to create secure backdoors through a Manhattan-like project despite technologists and experts resolutely telling politicians that to do so is to mandate insecurity.
The national security justification is exactly what the Federal Bureau of Investigation, congressmen and presidential candidates have used when calling for Silicon Valley
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