The Cost of Complying with Chinese CT Law

Paul Mozur and Jane Perlez in the New York Times yesterday [http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/05/17/technology/china-quietly-targets-us-tech-companies-in-security-reviews.html?referer=https://news.google.com ] lay out a quiet strategy by the Chinese government to examine "national security" issues with some companies operating in China.  For China, national security means something a little different than it does in the U.S.  Even so, we should consider any actions taken by China towards our businesses operating there as a measuring stick for reciprocity.  They want source code and encryption software provided to them and we should ask for the same things.

Companies have been called in and questioned about commercial products, a dangerous and potentially conflicting way of getting access to trade secrets and proprietary information.  Their intelligence and Army officials are participating.  The Chinese are doing it quietly because they know what the U.S would say about the kind of stunt they are pulling.  They know we will not be happy about having them poke around in Apple software hoping to find something that might allow one dissident to communicate with another.  They call this Counter Terror legislation, when it blatently is not.  It is just another way to steal the source code from U.S businesses, which before this, China stole openly.  As the criticism of their actions mounted, they decided a better way to go would be Counter Terror.  Everyone understands the need for it.  Nobody would want to be seen as not cooperating with a counter terror measure.  If that was what it was, we might even agree.

It is time for new legislation that levels the playing field.  Chinese businesses have to be subject to the same types of review in the U.S that they place on foreign companies in China.  Let's get some of those cell phones and computers that China makes and start going over the software and hardware to see what they might have done to allow terrorists to communicate without the U.S being able to get to those communications.  We should bring in NSA and the CIA to help out.  They will be allowed to communicate anything they find to Dell and Apple, at the very least.   That is what reciprocity is about.