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Apple may have said that it opposes the idea of weakening encryption and providing governments with backdoors into products, but things are rather different in China. The Chinese parliament has just passed a law that requires technology companies to comply with government requests for information, including handing over encryption keys.
Under the guise of counter-terrorism, the controversial law is the Chinese government's attempt to curtail the activities of militants and political activists. China already faces criticism from around the world not only for the infamous Great Firewall of China, but also the blatant online surveillance and censorship that takes place. This latest move is one that will be view very suspiciously by foreign companies operating within China, or looking to do so.
http://betanews.com/2015/12/27/china-passes-law-requiring-tech-firms-to-hand-over-encryption-keys/
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(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 28 2015, @06:43PM
China just guaranteed that chinese online services will be that much easier to penetrate for their foreign competition.
Turns out that the Law of Unintended Consequences is an international one.
I don't see chinese providers being gutsy enough to support distributed security solutions (to the point that they don't actually hold any keys) but I anticipate that large parts of the rest of the world will get that sort of thing - and then we'll be in a better position.
I would have thought that China's government would be smart enough to figure this out by themselves. It's not rocket science.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 28 2015, @08:23PM
Turns out that the Law of Unintended Consequences is an international one.
Pffff, here in the US, we'll deal with that by outlawing unintended consequences. That will surely get rid of them.