China Legislature to Vote on Anti-Terror Law Criticized by U.S. - requires encryption keys
China Legislature to Vote on Anti-Terror Law Criticized
by U.S.
Draft of law requires phone companies provide encryption
keys
Chinese offical says U.S. has same laws, uses double
standards
December 25, 2015 — 1:50 AM PST
China’s legislature is scheduled to vote Sunday on a new
anti-terrorism law that has drawn criticism from the U.S. government on
concerns it could give Chinese authorities surveillance access to users of
American technologies.
The Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress
will meet to vote on the anti-terrorism law along with other resolutions,
according to a schedule posted on the legislature’s website. The first draft of
the law, published last year, requires phone companies and Internet providers
to submit encryption keys, the passcodes that help protect data, to Chinese
authorities, and keep equipment and local user data inside China.
U.S. President Barack Obama said in a March interview
with Reuters such requirements would let China install “back doors” in U.S.
technology companies’ systems, and the Asian nation will “have to change” such
provisions to be able to do business with the U.S.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei defended the
law on Wednesday, calling related clauses “completely reasonable” and
dismissing concerns about privacy and intellectual property rights. He also
cited similar requirements in U.S. laws that ask companies to provide technical
assistance to investigators, and urged the U.S. to refrain from using “double
standards.”
The accusation against China doesn’t help America “uphold
its moral high ground,” the official Xinhua News Agency said in a commentary
published Thursday without the name of an author. “On the contrary, it makes
Uncle Sam look pugnacious and overbearing.”
President Xi Jinping, overseeing a campaign against
rising terror in the country, in November denounced the first execution of a
Chinese national by Islamic State and reaffirmed the country’s opposition to
terrorism. Knife-wielding assailants killed 29 people at a train station in the
southern city of Kunming in March last year. At least 50 people were killed
after a group of men attacked a coal mine in China’s remote western region of
Xinjiang, Radio Free Asia reported in October, citing local security officials.
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