China passed a similar law last year[1] forcing citizens and companies to provide assistance with state intelligence matters. Are these laws just a public ackn

China passed a similar law last year[1] forcing citizens and companies to provide assistance with state intelligence matters. Are these laws just a public acknowledgement and formalisation of what has been going on since early civilisation? In the cold war it was bugged typewriters[2] and sabotaged chips and industrial components. Ten years ago it was counterfeit chips from China causing early failures in US military equipment[3] and US backdooring of cryptography standards[4]. More recently, Chinese companies have been factory backdooring hundreds of millions mobile phones[5] and Western countries have been vacuuming up the Internet[6]. How many integrated circuits purchased from factories abroad today can be trusted when hardware backdoors have been shown to be almost undetectable even to the best resourced labs?[7][8] Instead of manufacturers around the world being coerced into backdooring technology[9][10] without regulation, at least there may now be some formality. These laws don't change how much trust can be placed in foreign technology (answer: not much at all). It shouldn't be a shock that Australia has banned Chinese equipment from the likes of Huawei and ZTE from broadband and 5G mobile network rollouts[11]. And it shouldn't be a surprise to Australian companies if China bans the import of Australian technology. [1] https://www.lawfareblog.com/beijings-new-national-intelligence-law-defense-offense https://www.lawfareblog.com/beijings-new-national-intelligen... [2] http://www.cryptomuseum.com/covert/bugs/selectric/ http://www.cryptomuseum.com/covert/bugs/selectric/ [3] https://web.archive.org/web/20081011075757/http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_41/b4103034193886.htm?chan=magazine+channel_top+stories https://web.archive.org/web/20081011075757/http://www.busine... [4] https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/10/government-announces-steps-to-restore-confidence-on-encryption-standards/ https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/10/government-announc... [5] http://www.kryptowire.com/adups_security_analysis.html http://www.kryptowire.com/adups_security_analysis.html [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surveillance_disclosures_(2013%E2%80%93present) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surveillance_disclosure... [7] http://www.emsec.rub.de/media/crypto/veroeffentlichungen/2014/07/03/BeckerChes13.pdf http://www.emsec.rub.de/media/crypto/veroeffentlichungen/201... [8] https://web.eecs.umich.edu/~taustin/papers/OAKLAND16-a2attack.pdf https://web.eecs.umich.edu/~taustin/papers/OAKLAND16-a2attac... [9] https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/08/27/nsa-snowden-russia-obama-column/2702461/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/08/27/nsa-snowde... [10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93Apple_encryption_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93Apple_encryption_d... [11] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-23/huawei-banned-from-providing-5g-mobile-technology-australia/10155438 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-23/huawei-banned-from-pro...