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China's New Cybersecurity Program: No Place to Hide

661 points by lelf 7y ago

gii2 7y ago
> "No communication from or to China will be exempted. There will be no secrets. No VPNs. No private or encrypted messages. No anonymous online accounts. No trade secrets. No confidential data." I would guess the companies with subcontractors/branches in China has been assuming everything they submit there is no-longer a trade secret or secret at all.
- unstatusthequo 7y ago
  Have been for awhile. Just like operating in presumed breach state.
botwriter 7y ago
I can see the fall of China happening in the next 5 - 10 years. Plunging the world into a global recession. With this + the US trade war, why on earth would a multinational still invest in China.
- Simon_says 7y ago
  That’s certainly optimistic. I can see a boot stomping on a human face forever.
- pubby 7y ago
  What will be the cause?
- Quarrelsome 7y ago
  > in the next 5 - 10 years. this estimate is far too short even assuming a sequence of unprecedented negative events. A more tangible catalyst would be a power vacuum after the current leader dies filled by a very poor candidate. Even then it took lousy Roman Emperors hundreds of years to squander the legacy of Rome.
  - SteveNuts 7y ago
    Ancient Romans didn't have instantaneous access to information and global markets. The whole world economy could collapse basically overnight in the modern era.
    - Quarrelsome 7y ago
      barbarians are at the gates.
      - Ill_ban_myself 7y ago
        I hope you speak barbar
    - SubiculumCode 7y ago
      or nukes, which can end empires and the world order quicker than ever.
- SN76477 7y ago
  I imagine immense social pressure being disastrous for citizens mental health.
  - imglorp 7y ago
    Yes, and it's calculated to do that. Look at North Korea, literally torturing their people. Families and neighbors must turn each other in for infractions. They murder three generations of a family if someone dissents or escapes. The people are literally eating dirt. It's well established that surveillance alters people's behavior. Their will is so broken and opportunities so few, they will not revolt. The oppressed didn't revolt under Mao, why should they revolt now?
roenxi 7y ago
It is interesting to play compare-and-contrast. The US government has a policy that is substantially similar in many respect - if I want to have a digital conversation without the US government getting a copy I'm not sure how I would go about it in practice. Certainly in a work setting, everything may as well get CC'd to the local government and US government offices. The Chinese are upping the ante and this policy is going to be a social disaster for anyone involved in politics. But it is a good moment to reflect that the problem isn't the Communist Party of China specifically, it is a lack of private digital spaces. Spy agencies don't make us safe.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  > if I want to have a digital conversation without the US government getting a copy I'm not sure how I would go about it in practice Use an E2E encrypted messaging service?
  - WilTimSon 7y ago
    Yeah, this seems like a huge overshoot. The US government does try to snoop on everybody's business but an E2E conversation on Wire or Telegram won't be traced. Could say the same for WhatsApp before they decided to go and comply with the UK's ridiculous request for data. I do wonder how businesses deal with the snooping because I'm sure there are plenty of CEOs out there who wouldn't use a messenger to do deals or negotiations and many of them might be wary of an app they aren't familiar with. What happens then?
- devoply 7y ago
  Western governments are covert about surveillance. China is overt about it, you continuously feel insecure and watched... and much like US's security theatre in airports that's the aim. So anyone who might wish harm to the communist party's agenda to feel threatened. How much are people willing to tolerate this sort of behavior? Hitler showed us all the way. In fact from a social development point of view China is going through what the world went through when it experimented with Fascism. So how does this end? Well, probably with some sort of war, likely a cold war of sorts. It's also obvious that just like in WW2, American business will align itself with business interests even if those interests seem to be outright wrong. No matter, money is money. You would think we'd learned but we have learned nothing.
fenk85 7y ago
So what does it mean for US companies that have an office in China but most of its trade is outside of China? China govt gets to read all their data?
anvandare 7y ago
Good to see the mask (and gloves) are finally coming off. No one can pretend anymore that the emperor has clothes.
- psychoslave 7y ago
  Well, if you follow the fable, it's actually now that you should see everybody claiming that these clothes are wonderful. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor%27s_New_Clothes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor%27s_New_Clothes
  - erichocean 7y ago
    Apple, for one, is doing just that.
johannkokos 7y ago
> This system will apply to foreign owned companies in China on the same basis as to all Chinese persons, entities or individuals. No information contained on any server located within China will be exempted from this full coverage program. No communication from or to China will be exempted. There will be no secrets. Can the author provide a source for this? I couldn't find any reference to it from the articles linked by this blog.
- Thrwtz 7y ago
  See follow up blog post https://www.chinalawblog.com/2019/10/chinas-new-cybersecurity-system-there-is-no-place-to-hide.html https://www.chinalawblog.com/2019/10/chinas-new-cybersecurit...
- steelaz 7y ago
  If true, what does that mean to AWS regions in China?
  - desdiv 7y ago
    The China AWS region is operated by a Chinese company, with all servers physically located in China, thus accessible to the Chinese government.[0] The above also applies to Microsoft Azure China[1], and any other major cloud provider with a presence in China. [0] https://www.amazonaws.cn/en/about-aws/china/ https://www.amazonaws.cn/en/about-aws/china/ [1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/china/overview-operations https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/china/overview-operat...
  - goatinaboat 7y ago
    what does that mean to AWS regions in China? See https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/05/18/china_cloud_setup/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/05/18/china_cloud_setup/
- beatle_sauce 7y ago
  The law is called MPLS 2.0, also see the follow-up blog post.
mtgx 7y ago
What's even sadder is that a good portion of world's governments see this as an ideal they need to follow. China's online surveillance, censorship, "perfect citizen" scoring, and public facial recognition systems are seen as something they need to replicate, and the sooner the better, preferably. The US government came up with the idea for "Total Information Awareness" almost 2 decades ago, and it's been trying to achieve that goal since then, even though it's been denying that the program exists, in public. The UK has also been trying to achieve the same with Snooper's Charter and the Great British Firewall. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Information_Awareness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Information_Awareness https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/sep/14/gchqs-great-british-firewall-raises-serious-concern-privacy-groups https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/sep/14/gchqs-great-... If you've been paying attention over the past 6-8 years, you should've noticed that so-called democratic countries like the US, UK, Australia, and others, have also stopped trying to hold China accountable for "human rights abuses" in public. That's been a huge red flag for me that these governments aren't heading in a good, positive direction for humanity. Only very recently the US has started mentioning China abuses superficially, but only in the context of trade war, and as another reason to get everyone to "hate China" - but I don't feel they mean it and are doing it because they actually think those abuses are bad. It's just another tactic to manipulate the masses to accomplish a larger objective.
shp0ngle 7y ago
I do not believe the actual implementation will be so severe. Every major IT company in China, that interacts with the outside world, has a VPN to circumvent blocking and uses the VPN heavily.
- novok 7y ago
  And the article says, that won't be legal anymore. And it would be enforced. No more real encryption in china anymore.
  - shp0ngle 7y ago
    I do not believe it, as it will decimate all their IT industry. The communist party is embedded and makes money from the industry. They do not want to see it blow up. Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, JD, all would just die.
    - random42 7y ago
      China/CCP doesn't care.
    - mytailorisrich 7y ago
      There does not seem to be any ban on companies VPNs. They don't need to and that would weaken protection against external attacks. I think the aim, if I understand it as it is not very clear overall, is rather than government agencies may access the company's infrastructure (VPNs are irrelevant).
      - shusson 7y ago
        > rather than government agencies may access the company's infrastructure I think the law is closer to "government agencies may access any of the company's information".
        mytailorisrich 7y ago
bamboozled 7y ago
This will damage the government as much as it damages the citizens. It's now going to be easier than ever to intercept traffic in China. It plays into the hands of foreign intelligence agencies.
- andromeduck 7y ago
  Not really, it'll still be hard for foreign agents to exfil mass amounts of data without being noticed and data can still be encrypted in flight/at rest w/ root keys shared with chinese intelligence via some escrow system like how enterprise certs work right now.
kstenerud 7y ago
I don't see how any sizable foreign company could operate in China under rules like this. All sufficiently large companies are privy to certain trade secrets of partners, vendors, clients through agreements, technology, information sharing, etc, and will have legal arrangements in place for it. If the government gets carte blanche access to their data, no company could operate without violating those agreements.
- bayesian_horse 7y ago
  Many of them can't just extricate themselves from the Chinese market before these changes hit. They will take huge losses if they disrupt communications or restrict access to trade secrets. My guess is that many will try to ignore that law and just assume that the government isn't looking or that it is bound by local law not to give trade secrets to competitors and so on. Of course that's not worth a lot, but ...
  - melonkidney 7y ago
    If I was an employee or customer of a US/EU company that has a large percentage of (e.g., engineering) staff based in China, I'd be seriously concerned at this point. Large multinationals may be able to avoid/mitigate the restrictions somehow. But smaller companies that depend on a Chinese branch would surely try to "fly under the radar" and stick it out in the hopes of the law not being applied to the fullest extent.
    - koliber 7y ago
      From the sound of it, such small companies would not even know if the law was being applied or not. If the government needs the information, it will take it. It will not be necessary to ask permission, or even inform the affected company that such access took place.
- mirimir 7y ago
  So could US companies that bail claim extraordinary business losses?
- 7y ago
Peckingjay 7y ago
If such policies are truly enforced, there seems to be little to stop China from stealing absolutely all the technical know-how of a foreign company installed there and supplant it with one of their own later on. It really feels like they're pushing how much companies are willing to bear to get access to China's market and manufacturing capabilities to the limit.
- StreamBright 7y ago
  And why would they not? The west for a very long time favoured the CEOs and share holders over general population when it comes to globalisation. China exploits that as much as they can. https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikecollins/2015/05/06/the-pros-and-cons-of-globalization/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikecollins/2015/05/06/the-pros... It is quite amazing that you cannot voice anything on HN anymore without being downvoted, regardless if you literary quoting wikipedia or basic economics.
  - Peckingjay 7y ago
    I am aware that China has had no qualms to rig the game in its favor so far. Those measures would take it up on a whole new level though. I'm just not sure how many companies will be willing to abide by having almost all the data from their operations in China available to the government, unless they don't have other viable options, even though these might be a lot more expensive.
    - __warlord__ 7y ago
      China: At least they are up-front about it. West: NSA...
  - mattnewton 7y ago
    I’m not sure I agree that the “west” is a monolithic bloc re: the general population vs shareholders/CEOs. Especially not in the current wave of popularism. Also, from the HN guidelines - “ Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.” (And I definitely agree when it is some anecdote like this)
edejong 7y ago
Time to unpack those radios that operate slightly under the noise floor, using shared correlation codes and synchronized clocks. P2P for the win. [edit: grammar]
- bayesian_horse 7y ago
  And if you are caught you get sent to jail.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - bogwog 7y ago
    If you're lucky.
- generatorguy 7y ago
  If the signal is less than the noise floor how is it discernible from noise? Any references ?
  - edejong 7y ago
    By correlating on a shared code. But please don't take my word for it, I don't even have a license. See this [1] excellent Reddit discussion. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/amateurradio/comments/49yuwx/til_gps_signal_are_so_weak_they_are_actually/ https://www.reddit.com/r/amateurradio/comments/49yuwx/til_gp...
stephc_int13 7y ago
China is clearly hostile and I think this a wrong strategy to do business with them. If anything was ever close to the Big Brother society described in 1984 this is it.
- nickthemagicman 7y ago
  This, the surveillence cameras, the 'social credit score' system. It's all truly frightening developments.
- crispyambulance 7y ago
  > I think this a wrong strategy to do business with them. Of course it's wrong, unfortunately however, your corporate overlords don't mind "Big Brother" as long as there's a short-term "trade-off" for them.
  - eatbitseveryday 7y ago
    Let's not use code block formatting for quotes. Just use the sideways carrot '>' or italics.
    - crispyambulance 7y ago
      I don't care.
      - eatbitseveryday 7y ago
        I see in your latest comments on HN you had a change of heart :)
- SN76477 7y ago
  As a westerner, I just do not understand what they think they are doing. Why are they wanting to control every element of every persons life? They are even reading the brainwaves of children in schools. https://www.inkstonenews.com/tech/brainco-startup-tests-brain-reading-headbands-chinese-schoolkids/article/3005502 https://www.inkstonenews.com/tech/brainco-startup-tests-brai...
nickthemagicman 7y ago
People aren't stupid. They will realize that the internet is being monitored by the government and will simply use it for trivial things. The internet will be more or less useless.
- jplayer01 7y ago
  That's absurdly optimistic. We've seen how much people care about being spied on and having all their data collected indiscriminately in the course of the Snowden leaks.
- marapuru 7y ago
  A large amount of the population does not use the internet the way you do. I don't have the exact numbers, but by figure of speech I would dare to say that 80% of the population do not care about data collection or being spied upon as long as they get what they want.
  - ilkan 7y ago
    I disagree with that characterization of "the population". Internet use is mandatory, as government, banking and corporate services use more and more online-only application or submission processes. Lowers costs by eliminating paper, increasing speed and reducing the call center and paper processing jobs. For many thingsb the only choice is online forms, email and online display (anyone used bankbooks recently?)
bayesian_horse 7y ago
I'm not quite clear what "this change" is or means. As far as I know, VPNs had been illegal in China before, so maybe this could be mainly a toughening of the laws, and it still depends on the government's discretion to actually use the data, or to crack down on VPNs? In such regimes it can be a huge problem to find out what laws to take seriously and which ones not. And it often isn't as easy as taking all the laws seriously, because then nothing works either...
- mytailorisrich 7y ago
  VPNs are not illegal. VPN apps that are not authorised by the government are illegal, and using a VPN to bypass the Great Firewall is also illegal. I don't think any of this will change. Companies will still be able to use VPNs, but they will likely have to be by authorised VPN software vendors. Obviously the worry is that this may mean that the Chinese government could have backdoors or some other sort of access to data.
vezycash 7y ago
"But I've already invested and sacrificed so much money, time & effort on this deal, relationship, person, place..." This thought causes victim of scams to mortgage their houses and send the money to scammers - even in the face of overwhelming evidence. Causes victim of abusive relationships to remain even when their lives are in danger. It's also what will keep western companies in China - even as China slowly strangles them to death. Sunk Cost Fallacy
- pfortuny 7y ago
  I’ve paid the ticket, then I must travel.
  - im3w1l 7y ago
    I think the reason we adopt this mindset is because we are ambivalent. First you feel you wanna go, then you regret it because you are nervous about the rental car, then you wanna go again, then you regret it because there's a lot of stuff at work you want to deal with, then you wanna go, then you get scared of skin cancer from the strong sun etc etc Booking and cancelling and booking and cancelling and... It would be terrible to change your mind so often. So you decide to just go with the option you picked first even though it temporarily seems suboptimal.
    - esotericn 7y ago
      It's suboptimal to continually change your mind so rapidly too, not just 'terrible' mentally, because the real world around you imposes significant penalties for doing so. Switching flights and hotels on a moment's notice is expensive. Arbitrary days off work are difficult for most. For some travel you're looking at visas, rental cars, etc as stated. There's a lot of inertia in the boring and stable path.
- Peckingjay 7y ago
  All your data in China collected at will to be shared with all entities of the Chinese government and potentially any private company it owns feels more like a really fast and aggressive ramp-up than a slow strangulation to me.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
AlchemistCamp 7y ago
I wonder if HN is hosted in China at all. Edit: To clarify, I doubt any of it is. Still, having seen some seemingly unlikely events coming to pass over the past few years, it's natural to be curious and think through the scenario.
- tasuki 7y ago
  I don't think HN is hosted in China. Why should it be?
  - komali2 7y ago
    Like, random AWS server or something?
    - hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
      HN isn't hosted on AWS, and AWS doesn't have any data centers in China.
      - deadbunny 7y ago
        They do, they are just run as (what I assume is) a separate company entirely. https://www.amazonaws.cn/en/ https://www.amazonaws.cn/en/
  - AlchemistCamp 7y ago
    A common reason to host on both sides of the GFW is latency.
- tutux84 7y ago
  I was in mainland China (Shanghai and surroundings) in september for two weeks and HN was not accessible, probably because of the Great FW. So I doubt any HN instance is hosted there.
stephc_int13 7y ago
What about big companies like Supercell, owned by Tencent at about 80% ?
Invictus0 7y ago
The Stasi is back, now mechanized & equipped with machine learning.
xorand 7y ago
Are there any legal consequences if Sci-Hub is hosted in China?
Thrwtz 7y ago
Follow up post contains much more detail https://www.chinalawblog.com/2019/10/chinas-new-cybersecurity-system-there-is-no-place-to-hide.html https://www.chinalawblog.com/2019/10/chinas-new-cybersecurit...
frequentnapper 7y ago
Will YC China still continue to exist?
nomercy400 7y ago
No more trade secrets, so companies like ASML that have a physical presence with their know-how in China are now also legally screwed? Any of their chip making device can now be legally reverse-engineered, starting January 1st? Any produced wafer, chip design, IC, whatever is currently in China, can now legally be taken from your company and used by your competitors? Sounds like a good time to move out of China, as otherwise you will have government-backed competitors with your tech in 1-2 years.
- tjpnz 7y ago
  >Sounds like a good time to move out of China, as otherwise you will have government-backed competitors with your tech in 1-2 years. It's already happening.
xuesj 7y ago
It remind me of ancient Chinese saying "普天之下，莫非王土，率土之滨，莫非王臣", that means "all land belong to the king in the kingdom, all men are servants of the king in the kingdom"
- AlchemistCamp 7y ago
  It also reminds me of 天高皇帝遠 (the sky is tall and the emperor is far), which has a somewhat contrary meaning: as you get further from the capital, rules are looser.
  - dbuder 7y ago
    I like that, but I think the sky is full of cameras and drones and the Emperor's minions see all.
danmaz74 7y ago
TLDR: "This means intra-company VPN systems will no longer be authorized in China by anyone, including foreign companies. This in turn means all company email and data transfer will be required to use Chinese operated communication systems that are fully open to the China’s Cybersecurity Bureau. All data servers that make any use of Chinese based communications networks will also be required to be open to the Cybersecurity Bureau’s surveillance and monitoring system." If VPNs will really be forbidden, I guess that lots of companies will really be forced to pull out of China.
- McTossOut 7y ago
  They'll probably block ESP, since they aren't able to economically reconstruct that real-time. Fact is VPNs are architectural. Suppose the companies can use AH to maintain their architecture and comply. All that data they had intended to keep private is now tagged in bright red IPSec headers. In this case they only compromise information security, but their virtual links are still secured, not opening new security gaps in their architecture.
contingencies 7y ago
This article reads as alarmism from an actor with interest in projecting FUD. China broadly has the same effective policy as most governments: requiring access to be given when legally demanded. This is already the case and has been the case for a long time. The theoretical legal requirement and the practical reality of enforcement differ, such that everyone is forced to operate in a grey area. Such a situation is normal and expected in China. Should the authorities want something, they come and tell you. Exactly the same as the west.
- keiferski 7y ago
  "Because things are complicated both in China and in the West, ergo they are equivalent."
  - contingencies 7y ago
    s/they are equivalent/taking an alarmist tone is nonsensical/
- joosters 7y ago
  Yes, the article is not very well written, in that it blends factual statements about the new laws together with their own opinions, e.g. 'For that reason, the Chinese Cybersecurity Bureau does not plan to politely make a formal request for the information. The fundamental premise of the new cybersecurity systems is that the government will use its control of communications to simply take the information without discussing the matter with the user.' Does the author have some magical view into the Chinese Cybersecurity Bureau? Is he making this broad statement based upon something that the CSB has said? Or is it just his viewpoint? Much more likely is, as you state, when the government wants something, they are going to come along and demand it. And if you want to keep doing business in China, you will have to provide that data. This, while still a worrying state of affairs, is a far different scenario from 'all crypto is banned!' espoused by the writer.
  - Thrwtz 7y ago
    Refer to the follow up blog post where he goes into detail, including the actual law if you can read Chinese.
SteveNuts 7y ago
The irony here is that by advertising the fact that they have a massive amount of raw, unencrypted data, they're making themselves the biggest hacker target in the world. I really hope this backfires on them so the rest of the world will be hesitant to follow their example.
- lallysingh 7y ago
  This much is certain. It's going to be the biggest intelligence grab for non Chinese nations in decades. I wonder if they're serving birthday cake at the NSA cafeteria today.
- computerex 7y ago
  Except even if there is a massive breach no one will know about it because it's not like the Chinese government is going to openly admit to it. Losing face and all.
anovikov 7y ago
This is very worrysome: it this simply accelerates the already ongoing exodus of foreign owned businesses from China. Yes, human right activists, opposition members and such, will simply continue using obfuscation as they do now, they are out of the legal space anyway and change of laws don't change anything for them. But businesses need to stay compliant. So they will leaving and with their money, share of government ownership, and thus government control of things, in China will keep creeping up. They are basically returning to Communism. Good thing about it is that we know how it ends, Communism is not viable. Bad thing is that it leaves little hope for the current generation of Chinese...
justinclift 7y ago
The KPMG take on this seems relevant: https://assets.kpmg/content/dam/kpmg/cn/pdf/en/2019/05/mlps-insights-strategies.pdf https://assets.kpmg/content/dam/kpmg/cn/pdf/en/2019/05/mlps-... Also, does anyone know how to access the Chinese text version of the standards? (I have friends who grok Chinese well, can pass to them for reading over) The link from the article goes to a translation service which just wants to charge money for translation to English, with no way to access the original documents. Searching online so far just turns up similar translation services, without the original docs.
- yorwba 7y ago
  I didn't even see a link to a translation in the article, but I believe it's about the following three standards: GB/T 22239-2019 信息安全技术网络安全等级保护基本要求 Information security technology — Baseline for classified protection of cybersecurity http://openstd.samr.gov.cn/bzgk/gb/newGbInfo?hcno=BAFB47E8874764186BDB7865E8344DAF http://openstd.samr.gov.cn/bzgk/gb/newGbInfo?hcno=BAFB47E887... GB/T 25070-2019 信息安全技术网络安全等级保护安全设计技术要求 Information security technology — Technical requirements of security design for classified protection of cybersecurity http://openstd.samr.gov.cn/bzgk/gb/newGbInfo?hcno=9FB6EE8597B21436D0E99BF44FD42C4D http://openstd.samr.gov.cn/bzgk/gb/newGbInfo?hcno=9FB6EE8597... GB/T 28448-2019 信息安全技术网络安全等级保护测评要求 Information security technology —Evaluation requirement for classified protection of cybersecurity http://openstd.samr.gov.cn/bzgk/gb/newGbInfo?hcno=7E736CDF4502B6FF1258DD250AA3EC8C http://openstd.samr.gov.cn/bzgk/gb/newGbInfo?hcno=7E736CDF45... The link to read online requires Flash...
  - justinclift 7y ago
    Thanks, that looks very helpful. :) > The link to read online requires Flash... Ugh. Security holes galore. Not going to install it on any network connected gear I use. :(
alfiedotwtf 7y ago
tl;dr: Nothing is beyond our reach. ... sounds familiar
darronz 7y ago
Perhaps there is an upshot. If the Chinese government have complete access to all traffic in China, they will be unable to deny knowledge of hacking originating from their own IP blocks. By the same token you would expect that all unlawful traffic originating in China to cease.
- thoughtstheseus 7y ago
  Why would that be the expected?
  - Ill_ban_myself 7y ago
    Because if it did not stop it would imply the Chinese government accepts and approves of the criminal acts
    - mtgx 7y ago
      Why wouldn't they say something like "The NSA hacked our computers from which it then launched an attack on France." Even with total surveillance of its internal networks, it's not like anyone is expecting China to end all cyber attacks against its computers, especially when so many run unpatched.
    - ppf 7y ago
      And then?
      - kristofferR 7y ago
        Hehe, it's completely off-topic, but the combination of China and "And then?" reminded me of this hilarious movie scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqwzuiSy9y0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqwzuiSy9y0
        ppf 7y ago
        It's not an accident ;-)
diggidydogg 7y ago
I think all countries should enforce these same rules for Chinese company's operating on foreign soil.
- goatinaboat 7y ago
  What would be the gain other than symbolic gestures? China has no IP at risk.
  - Ill_ban_myself 7y ago
    Exactly. The rule should be that China must pay western wages and subsidize western working conditions if they want western trade secrets
- SkyBelow 7y ago
  Would be much better to reverse it. Anything given to China is also put in the public domain. Keeps things a bit more fair and makes people think twice about giving something up.
  - andromeduck 7y ago
    why not both
diggidydogg 7y ago
Can we apply the same rules to Chinese company's operating on foreign soil?
trentnix 7y ago
As explained by Guo Qiquan, the chief cheerleader for the plan, the main goal of the new system is to provide “full coverage”. As explained by Guo, “It will cover every district, every ministry, every business and other institution, basically covering the whole society. Sauron is envious.
- sorokod 7y ago
  almost like a Palantir
  - TheRealDunkirk 7y ago
    This is one of my hot takes, too. At least China is making it all "legal."
  - i_am_nomad 7y ago
    I don’t think all of my emails and files get automatically decrypted and processed through Palantir, but of course I’d like to know if I’m mistaken about that.
    - sangnoir 7y ago
      Parent was referring to Tolkien's Palantir - not Thiel's
      - sorokod 7y ago
        Yes
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
mark_l_watson 7y ago
As an opinionated non-expert, I have to ask: isn’t “” This means intra-company VPN systems will no longer be authorized in China by anyone, including foreign companies. This in turn means all company email and data transfer will be required to use Chinese operated communication systems that are fully open to the China’s Cybersecurity Bureau. All data servers that make any use of Chinese based communications networks will also be required to be open to the Cybersecurity Bureau’s surveillance and monitoring system.”” really the Chinese government shooting itself in the foot? This reminds when a decade or two ago Senators Hillary Clinton and Frits Hollings tried to pass Disney written SSCA legislation that would require every Internet device like smart TVs, computers, etc. to have backdoors so companies like Disney and the government could check for copyright material. In either the Clinton bill or what the Chinese are doing there is a huge risk of third party getting access to encryption keys and other form of access. Large scale organized crime would love this as would bad behaving state actors.
phkahler 7y ago
Is it possible this causes a lot of competition in the US as some companies bring work and manufacturing back home? Or will they just move to another country?
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
bumbacloth 7y ago
maybe the Chinese internet will have a single point of failure, the government? I think they will have a massive problem with ransomware if all servers are accessible with the same backdoor.
naringas 7y ago
what about China's own "national security concerns"? will those be out in the open? somehow I don't think so but that's only my supposition. I would bet they will keep their own one government party secrets private and encrypted. "privacy for us (the party) but not for you"
oefrha 7y ago
I read the follow-up blog post with details[1] as well as the actual Chinese regulation text[2]. The blog post seems to omit a lot of details and some claims are dubious. I don’t have time to translate everything, but here’s an example quote from the blog post: > The inspectors can fully access the system and they are permitted to copy any data they find. See Article 15. Whereas Article 15 reads (even if you can’t read Chinese, Google Translate will probably do a reasonable job) > ... look up and/or copy information on matters related to the audit and inspection of Internet security. ... So this is quite vague (not really surprising for any regulation), but at face value the law doesn’t seem to say “fully access” or “any data”. Does this cover any data that has nothing to do with security? Ostensibly not. Realistically I’m not sure. Either way, citing the law with an exaggerated translation doesn’t promote confidence in the blog post. [1] https://www.chinalawblog.com/2019/10/chinas-new-cybersecurity-system-there-is-no-place-to-hide.html https://www.chinalawblog.com/2019/10/chinas-new-cybersecurit... [2] http://www.gov.cn/gongbao/content/2018/content_5343745.htm http://www.gov.cn/gongbao/content/2018/content_5343745.htm Edit: to be absolutely clear, I was only commenting on the part of the blog post with explicit citations. Most of the blog post speculates on intent and actual scope, but since those are speculative and don’t deal with the text of the law directly, the author is of course entitled to his own interpretations.
- dangerface 7y ago
  Article 15 seems specific to pen testing at least thats what I think they mean by "public security organs" > Article 13 Public security organs conducting Internet security supervision and inspection may conduct on-site supervision and inspection or remote inspection.
  - TrueDuality 7y ago
    That sounds to me like it's authorizing them to remotely "access" the computers and networks, and failing that they can perform an on-site inspection. So yeah pentests, not necessarily with the corporation's knowledge...
    - oefrha 7y ago
lom888 7y ago
There is an article in this week's London Review of Books by John Lanchester which covers a similar theme: https://www.lrb.co.uk/v41/n19/john-lanchester/document-number-nine https://www.lrb.co.uk/v41/n19/john-lanchester/document-numbe...
TheRealDunkirk 7y ago
It's going to be entertaining to watch my Fortune 250 figure out how to work with this. We make big, expensive, technical things that have a lot of very-closely-held software on them. One current, big, internal effort is to encrypt the code on the controller, so that people can't dump it, or at least not modify it. What's going to happen when the Chinese government demands to escrow the signing keys for any product sold in their country? I fully expect that they will be handed over. That's pretty much a given. But what if they go further and demand to escrow the source code? That would get really interesting, really fast, for many reasons. Also, how will they continue to block Skype chat history in the US, based on dodgy interpretations of SOX and related laws, yet allow the Chinese government full access to all the logs? What happens when the CEO chats in China, or someone chats at him from China? I suppose it will be Microsoft to the rescue here, with a giant tick-box in the Skype FOR BUSINESS admin panel for "segregate retention policy based on CHINA," which is precisely the sort of thing that continues to make them the big bucks. All of these hosted infrastructure pieces, like Office365 and GSuite, are going to need huge exceptions built into them. (Maybe they already do, and I'm just ignorant.)
- choonway 7y ago
  That's why there's a hong kong you know.
  - jtms 7y ago
    Not for long
- microcolonel 7y ago
  Write the software onto the controllers in Taiwan at least.
- thescriptkiddie 7y ago
  I actually think it would be a good thing if governments required access to the source code for all software that they use.
  - 7y ago
Lio 7y ago
It would be interesting to know how this affects Taiwan. If the CPP regards Taiwan as part of greater China then does that mean they believe they have a right to all information held in Taiwan including that owned by foreign companies? Or does Taiwan get an exception for now at least?
LeoNatan25 7y ago
"By giving the Chinese government and its cronies full access to its data, the U.S. or EU company may very well be deemed to have illegally exported technology to China and it could face millions of dollars in fines and even prison sentences for some of its officers and directors. There is an inherent conflict between foreign laws mandating a company not transfer its technology and China’s laws which effectively mandate that transfer. Under China’s new cybersecurity system, there will be no place to hide." Very good. Put the Cooks and Pichais in jail. Only this will make them rethink doing business in China.
onemantaker1 7y ago
The rules makes no sense. The rules are very strict
ausjke 7y ago
which is why I withdrew the idea to set up a branch there, the internet access and censorship combined are enough to kill any idea to run business in China.
zelon88 7y ago
This is the scariest thing ever. But lets do a thought experiment with it! Like an episode of Black Mirror. Imagine being an upper-class engineer in China in 10 years. You're sipping your morning coffee and checking your emails. Every day you get an email with all the trade-secrets collected across China the night before; curated and tailored just for you. Kinda like Recorded Future but instead of passively analyzing the internet these secrets were beamed straight from the source. Their technology could advance rapidly as a result of this.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- basch 7y ago
  Question. Part of western awareness towards, paranoia, fear, and wherewithal to stand against certain government behaviors and the totalitarian state is obviously awoken from and influenced by fiction, including 1984, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, It Cant Happen Here, The Handmaid's Tale, A Clockwork Orange, Philip K. Dick, even We. This shared and collective "memory" of fables, many of which people havent even read but still discuss as if they had, give all a certain a framework, grammar, and shared understanding for talking about the future, and thusly what consequences may come from allowing said future to unfold unabated. Does eastern fiction not have this foundation of fictional dystopia from 50-100 years ago woven into societies consciousness? Are people more accepting of certain encroachments towards that type of future, because their legend and myth dont as often scream about potential slippery slopes and repercussions? Is it a fictional fear instilled in our cultural fabric that makes us so averse to what maybe isnt and wont ever be as bad as our stories tell us it will be?
  - thrav 7y ago
    Has to stem from the rise of the individual. My sense is that in the east, the collective takes precedent. Individual liberty is not sacred in that world, so freedom isn’t either.
  - godot 7y ago
    I lived in HK up until about 8th grade and I don't think there were similar readings there to 1984 in Chinese. I imagine in upper grades, 1984 itself and a few others may be English class reading, but certainly nothing similar in Chinese novels at least in school, or novels that were famous. Growing up, most famous Chinese novels were around the themes of ancient martial arts fictions (e.g. Jin Yong's series). You may find tangents on the topic of authoritarianism/dictatorships here and there, but not a whole book like 1984.
Chirael 7y ago
I wonder if there’s any relation between this and “Made in China 2025” [1]. Seems like it would be a lot easier if there are no more trade secrets from the government, and the government has representatives in various Chinese companies [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_China_2025 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_China_2025 [2] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/23/china-to-place-government-officials-in-100-companies-including-alibaba.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/23/china-to-place-government-of...
reaperducer 7y ago
"But Chinese law now requires complete government access to those secrets if those secrets cross the Chinese border for any reason." So if a routing burp just happens to send some data to China that was supposed to go from New York to London, then "Oops! So sorry. We read all of your company's plans. But that's OK, we kept a copy on that file share that your Chinese competitor has access to."
- oefrha 7y ago
  If you send all of your company’s plan unencrypted from New York to London, you have a much larger problem. Any intelligence agency worth their salt should be gobbling up as much as traffic as possible.
jquery 7y ago
So if I’m traveling to China is it now unsafe to use pre-Installed VPNs? Am I at risk of jail if I do so or set up my own VPN?
tempguy9999 7y ago
"the Cybersecurity Law and related laws and regulations are very clear that they apply to all individuals and entities in China without regard to ownership or nationality. There are no exceptions. More important, the new Foreign Investment Law that goes into effect on January 1, 2020 eliminates any special status associated with being a WFOE or other foreign invested enterprise. Foreign owned companies will be treated in exactly the same way as Chinese owned companies" If true? Talk about screwing your own pooch. With the milspec PoochBuster 9000.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
make3 7y ago
I'm starting to think we should all just systematically boycott Chinese products and pressure companies not to work with them. China is more and more a real threat to world stability, to democracy and to the humaneness of our world
yalogin 7y ago
China is the biggest failure of the western nations in a post USSR world. The fact that the whole world let China become so huge and powerful while being so authoritarian is a travesty. They have now completed integrating the internet and big data into their despotic regime. This is the worst place imaginable for a free thinking brain. Even now the the western world is just following along to their dollar tunes.
aykutcan 7y ago
China strikes back huh. This is big issue no matter how you look at it. Maybe "no trade secrets" is a bit exaggeration.
chaz6 7y ago
This could potentially mean they start making space a battleground when entites switch to foreign-operated satellite data services.
exabrial 7y ago
This sounds like a hackers dream: mandatory documented centralized backdoors literally everywhere.
logicchains 7y ago
I wonder if this will create a market for software that's inscrutable to anyone other than the creator, so it can't easily be adapted or modified. "Of course, here is my unencrypted source code. It's written in a homotopy type theory DSL I implemented in the C preprocessor, and completely verified with dependent types so any change will cause a type error. I haven't got around to implementing compile-time type checking, however, or error messages, so type errors will cause it to coredump at runtime."
- ETHisso2017 7y ago
  Even if you offered me something like that for free, I wouldn't run it or use it...
  - logicchains 7y ago
    If you were an executive and the only other choices were either giving away all your IP or leaving China and billions of dollars of revenue behind, you might think differently.
    - ETHisso2017 7y ago
      I was speaking from the customer perspective.
jiveturkey 7y ago
The blog itself is a law blog, not a political blog, so I understand that it is just putting out a very focused bit of information. (Which I will believe when I see reputable news source coverage.) But I'm amazed no one here has remarked or supposed that this is a reaction to tariffs. This is China playing hardball in a way that we can't react with tit-for-tat.
SolarNet 7y ago
Oh hey look another example of Rainbows End being spot on in predictions. At some point the U.S. will try something similar (hell under Trump there was already noise about it), and I think Rainbows End is necessary reading for what we will be up against.
- SubiculumCode 7y ago
  That was such an interesting novel. Of course in that novel the justification for total surveillance and lockdown of components was the extreme vulnerability to terror enhanced by technology, AI, and automation...which was hard to argue against in Rainbows End.
  - SolarNet 7y ago
    That was what it was for the US and EU polities. I think there is a throwaway line about China just doing it because China. When this happens in US and EU it will be because of terrorism, linked with technologies like amazon's drones, or uber's cars, or some other thing.
SubiculumCode 7y ago
Outlawing encryption is as futile as outlawing 'abstract' poetry. Hidden meanings can always be encoded.
pray4URenemies 7y ago
It really aligns well with the face scan initiative (and credit core system) https://www.businessinsider.com/china-to-require-facial-id-for-internet-and-mobile-services-2019-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/china-to-require-facial-id-f... what you browse, what information you read will define you. Basically it can make an automated prison, where you have to read Xi's commandment every morning to get +10 points... etc..
xorand 7y ago
On another thread [0] [1] "My Google account got suspended because of NewPipe". No place to hide. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21247759 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21247759 [1] https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/issues/2723 https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/issues/2723
pmarreck 7y ago
Just curious: Did no one in China watch https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_lives_of_others https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_lives_of_others ?
idoescompooters 7y ago
I hope people realize this is what Snowden told us is happening HERE in the U.S.
- mensetmanusman 7y ago
  But the NSA wasn’t handing the information out to western companies. That is the China modus op. at the moment...
justinclift 7y ago
Wwith access to all your files they'll also have your (software, GPG, etc) signing keys. So, it's not just a matter of being able to read from any system in your network. They'll be able to impersonate people (including with valid signatures), sign new software releases, and more. Sounds especially useful when disappearing people first, so there's no "Hey, I didn't send that!".
mensetmanusman 7y ago
Wow. This means it will be extremely risky to have any business in China, as it allows any intro-company email server to accessed. Since it is unofficial state policy to provide foreign company know-how to home grown competitors, this will be an amazing fireworks show.

661 points by lelf 7y ago

gii2 7y ago

> "No communication from or to China will be exempted. There will be no secrets. No VPNs. No private or encrypted messages. No anonymous online accounts. No trade secrets. No confidential data." I would guess the companies with subcontractors/branches in China has been assuming everything they submit there is no-longer a trade secret or secret at all.

unstatusthequo 7y ago
Have been for awhile. Just like operating in presumed breach state.

botwriter 7y ago

I can see the fall of China happening in the next 5 - 10 years. Plunging the world into a global recession. With this + the US trade war, why on earth would a multinational still invest in China.

Simon_says 7y ago
That’s certainly optimistic. I can see a boot stomping on a human face forever.
pubby 7y ago
What will be the cause?
Quarrelsome 7y ago
> in the next 5 - 10 years. this estimate is far too short even assuming a sequence of unprecedented negative events. A more tangible catalyst would be a power vacuum after the current leader dies filled by a very poor candidate. Even then it took lousy Roman Emperors hundreds of years to squander the legacy of Rome.
- SteveNuts 7y ago
  Ancient Romans didn't have instantaneous access to information and global markets. The whole world economy could collapse basically overnight in the modern era.
  - Quarrelsome 7y ago
    barbarians are at the gates.
    - Ill_ban_myself 7y ago
      I hope you speak barbar
  - SubiculumCode 7y ago
    or nukes, which can end empires and the world order quicker than ever.
SN76477 7y ago
I imagine immense social pressure being disastrous for citizens mental health.
- imglorp 7y ago
  Yes, and it's calculated to do that. Look at North Korea, literally torturing their people. Families and neighbors must turn each other in for infractions. They murder three generations of a family if someone dissents or escapes. The people are literally eating dirt. It's well established that surveillance alters people's behavior. Their will is so broken and opportunities so few, they will not revolt. The oppressed didn't revolt under Mao, why should they revolt now?

roenxi 7y ago

It is interesting to play compare-and-contrast. The US government has a policy that is substantially similar in many respect - if I want to have a digital conversation without the US government getting a copy I'm not sure how I would go about it in practice. Certainly in a work setting, everything may as well get CC'd to the local government and US government offices. The Chinese are upping the ante and this policy is going to be a social disaster for anyone involved in politics. But it is a good moment to reflect that the problem isn't the Communist Party of China specifically, it is a lack of private digital spaces. Spy agencies don't make us safe.

saagarjha 7y ago
> if I want to have a digital conversation without the US government getting a copy I'm not sure how I would go about it in practice Use an E2E encrypted messaging service?
- WilTimSon 7y ago
  Yeah, this seems like a huge overshoot. The US government does try to snoop on everybody's business but an E2E conversation on Wire or Telegram won't be traced. Could say the same for WhatsApp before they decided to go and comply with the UK's ridiculous request for data. I do wonder how businesses deal with the snooping because I'm sure there are plenty of CEOs out there who wouldn't use a messenger to do deals or negotiations and many of them might be wary of an app they aren't familiar with. What happens then?
devoply 7y ago
Western governments are covert about surveillance. China is overt about it, you continuously feel insecure and watched... and much like US's security theatre in airports that's the aim. So anyone who might wish harm to the communist party's agenda to feel threatened. How much are people willing to tolerate this sort of behavior? Hitler showed us all the way. In fact from a social development point of view China is going through what the world went through when it experimented with Fascism. So how does this end? Well, probably with some sort of war, likely a cold war of sorts. It's also obvious that just like in WW2, American business will align itself with business interests even if those interests seem to be outright wrong. No matter, money is money. You would think we'd learned but we have learned nothing.

fenk85 7y ago

So what does it mean for US companies that have an office in China but most of its trade is outside of China? China govt gets to read all their data?

anvandare 7y ago

Good to see the mask (and gloves) are finally coming off. No one can pretend anymore that the emperor has clothes.

psychoslave 7y ago
Well, if you follow the fable, it's actually now that you should see everybody claiming that these clothes are wonderful. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor%27s_New_Clothes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor%27s_New_Clothes
- erichocean 7y ago
  Apple, for one, is doing just that.

johannkokos 7y ago

> This system will apply to foreign owned companies in China on the same basis as to all Chinese persons, entities or individuals. No information contained on any server located within China will be exempted from this full coverage program. No communication from or to China will be exempted. There will be no secrets. Can the author provide a source for this? I couldn't find any reference to it from the articles linked by this blog.

Thrwtz 7y ago
See follow up blog post https://www.chinalawblog.com/2019/10/chinas-new-cybersecurity-system-there-is-no-place-to-hide.html https://www.chinalawblog.com/2019/10/chinas-new-cybersecurit...
steelaz 7y ago
If true, what does that mean to AWS regions in China?
- desdiv 7y ago
  The China AWS region is operated by a Chinese company, with all servers physically located in China, thus accessible to the Chinese government.[0] The above also applies to Microsoft Azure China[1], and any other major cloud provider with a presence in China. [0] https://www.amazonaws.cn/en/about-aws/china/ https://www.amazonaws.cn/en/about-aws/china/ [1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/china/overview-operations https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/china/overview-operat...
- goatinaboat 7y ago
  what does that mean to AWS regions in China? See https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/05/18/china_cloud_setup/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/05/18/china_cloud_setup/
beatle_sauce 7y ago
The law is called MPLS 2.0, also see the follow-up blog post.

mtgx 7y ago

What's even sadder is that a good portion of world's governments see this as an ideal they need to follow. China's online surveillance, censorship, "perfect citizen" scoring, and public facial recognition systems are seen as something they need to replicate, and the sooner the better, preferably. The US government came up with the idea for "Total Information Awareness" almost 2 decades ago, and it's been trying to achieve that goal since then, even though it's been denying that the program exists, in public. The UK has also been trying to achieve the same with Snooper's Charter and the Great British Firewall. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Information_Awareness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Information_Awareness https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/sep/14/gchqs-great-british-firewall-raises-serious-concern-privacy-groups https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/sep/14/gchqs-great-... If you've been paying attention over the past 6-8 years, you should've noticed that so-called democratic countries like the US, UK, Australia, and others, have also stopped trying to hold China accountable for "human rights abuses" in public. That's been a huge red flag for me that these governments aren't heading in a good, positive direction for humanity. Only very recently the US has started mentioning China abuses superficially, but only in the context of trade war, and as another reason to get everyone to "hate China" - but I don't feel they mean it and are doing it because they actually think those abuses are bad. It's just another tactic to manipulate the masses to accomplish a larger objective.

shp0ngle 7y ago

I do not believe the actual implementation will be so severe. Every major IT company in China, that interacts with the outside world, has a VPN to circumvent blocking and uses the VPN heavily.

novok 7y ago
And the article says, that won't be legal anymore. And it would be enforced. No more real encryption in china anymore.
- shp0ngle 7y ago
  I do not believe it, as it will decimate all their IT industry. The communist party is embedded and makes money from the industry. They do not want to see it blow up. Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, JD, all would just die.
  - random42 7y ago
    China/CCP doesn't care.
  - mytailorisrich 7y ago
    There does not seem to be any ban on companies VPNs. They don't need to and that would weaken protection against external attacks. I think the aim, if I understand it as it is not very clear overall, is rather than government agencies may access the company's infrastructure (VPNs are irrelevant).
    - shusson 7y ago
      > rather than government agencies may access the company's infrastructure I think the law is closer to "government agencies may access any of the company's information".
      - mytailorisrich 7y ago

bamboozled 7y ago

This will damage the government as much as it damages the citizens. It's now going to be easier than ever to intercept traffic in China. It plays into the hands of foreign intelligence agencies.

andromeduck 7y ago
Not really, it'll still be hard for foreign agents to exfil mass amounts of data without being noticed and data can still be encrypted in flight/at rest w/ root keys shared with chinese intelligence via some escrow system like how enterprise certs work right now.

kstenerud 7y ago

I don't see how any sizable foreign company could operate in China under rules like this. All sufficiently large companies are privy to certain trade secrets of partners, vendors, clients through agreements, technology, information sharing, etc, and will have legal arrangements in place for it. If the government gets carte blanche access to their data, no company could operate without violating those agreements.

bayesian_horse 7y ago
Many of them can't just extricate themselves from the Chinese market before these changes hit. They will take huge losses if they disrupt communications or restrict access to trade secrets. My guess is that many will try to ignore that law and just assume that the government isn't looking or that it is bound by local law not to give trade secrets to competitors and so on. Of course that's not worth a lot, but ...
- melonkidney 7y ago
  If I was an employee or customer of a US/EU company that has a large percentage of (e.g., engineering) staff based in China, I'd be seriously concerned at this point. Large multinationals may be able to avoid/mitigate the restrictions somehow. But smaller companies that depend on a Chinese branch would surely try to "fly under the radar" and stick it out in the hopes of the law not being applied to the fullest extent.
  - koliber 7y ago
    From the sound of it, such small companies would not even know if the law was being applied or not. If the government needs the information, it will take it. It will not be necessary to ask permission, or even inform the affected company that such access took place.
mirimir 7y ago
So could US companies that bail claim extraordinary business losses?
7y ago

Peckingjay 7y ago

If such policies are truly enforced, there seems to be little to stop China from stealing absolutely all the technical know-how of a foreign company installed there and supplant it with one of their own later on. It really feels like they're pushing how much companies are willing to bear to get access to China's market and manufacturing capabilities to the limit.

StreamBright 7y ago
And why would they not? The west for a very long time favoured the CEOs and share holders over general population when it comes to globalisation. China exploits that as much as they can. https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikecollins/2015/05/06/the-pros-and-cons-of-globalization/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikecollins/2015/05/06/the-pros... It is quite amazing that you cannot voice anything on HN anymore without being downvoted, regardless if you literary quoting wikipedia or basic economics.
- Peckingjay 7y ago
  I am aware that China has had no qualms to rig the game in its favor so far. Those measures would take it up on a whole new level though. I'm just not sure how many companies will be willing to abide by having almost all the data from their operations in China available to the government, unless they don't have other viable options, even though these might be a lot more expensive.
  - __warlord__ 7y ago
    China: At least they are up-front about it. West: NSA...
- mattnewton 7y ago
  I’m not sure I agree that the “west” is a monolithic bloc re: the general population vs shareholders/CEOs. Especially not in the current wave of popularism. Also, from the HN guidelines - “ Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.” (And I definitely agree when it is some anecdote like this)

edejong 7y ago

Time to unpack those radios that operate slightly under the noise floor, using shared correlation codes and synchronized clocks. P2P for the win. [edit: grammar]

bayesian_horse 7y ago
And if you are caught you get sent to jail.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- bogwog 7y ago
  If you're lucky.
generatorguy 7y ago
If the signal is less than the noise floor how is it discernible from noise? Any references ?
- edejong 7y ago
  By correlating on a shared code. But please don't take my word for it, I don't even have a license. See this [1] excellent Reddit discussion. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/amateurradio/comments/49yuwx/til_gps_signal_are_so_weak_they_are_actually/ https://www.reddit.com/r/amateurradio/comments/49yuwx/til_gp...

stephc_int13 7y ago

China is clearly hostile and I think this a wrong strategy to do business with them. If anything was ever close to the Big Brother society described in 1984 this is it.

nickthemagicman 7y ago
This, the surveillence cameras, the 'social credit score' system. It's all truly frightening developments.
crispyambulance 7y ago
> I think this a wrong strategy to do business with them. Of course it's wrong, unfortunately however, your corporate overlords don't mind "Big Brother" as long as there's a short-term "trade-off" for them.
- eatbitseveryday 7y ago
  Let's not use code block formatting for quotes. Just use the sideways carrot '>' or italics.
  - crispyambulance 7y ago
    I don't care.
    - eatbitseveryday 7y ago
      I see in your latest comments on HN you had a change of heart :)
SN76477 7y ago
As a westerner, I just do not understand what they think they are doing. Why are they wanting to control every element of every persons life? They are even reading the brainwaves of children in schools. https://www.inkstonenews.com/tech/brainco-startup-tests-brain-reading-headbands-chinese-schoolkids/article/3005502 https://www.inkstonenews.com/tech/brainco-startup-tests-brai...

nickthemagicman 7y ago

People aren't stupid. They will realize that the internet is being monitored by the government and will simply use it for trivial things. The internet will be more or less useless.

jplayer01 7y ago
That's absurdly optimistic. We've seen how much people care about being spied on and having all their data collected indiscriminately in the course of the Snowden leaks.
marapuru 7y ago
A large amount of the population does not use the internet the way you do. I don't have the exact numbers, but by figure of speech I would dare to say that 80% of the population do not care about data collection or being spied upon as long as they get what they want.
- ilkan 7y ago
  I disagree with that characterization of "the population". Internet use is mandatory, as government, banking and corporate services use more and more online-only application or submission processes. Lowers costs by eliminating paper, increasing speed and reducing the call center and paper processing jobs. For many thingsb the only choice is online forms, email and online display (anyone used bankbooks recently?)

bayesian_horse 7y ago

I'm not quite clear what "this change" is or means. As far as I know, VPNs had been illegal in China before, so maybe this could be mainly a toughening of the laws, and it still depends on the government's discretion to actually use the data, or to crack down on VPNs? In such regimes it can be a huge problem to find out what laws to take seriously and which ones not. And it often isn't as easy as taking all the laws seriously, because then nothing works either...

mytailorisrich 7y ago
VPNs are not illegal. VPN apps that are not authorised by the government are illegal, and using a VPN to bypass the Great Firewall is also illegal. I don't think any of this will change. Companies will still be able to use VPNs, but they will likely have to be by authorised VPN software vendors. Obviously the worry is that this may mean that the Chinese government could have backdoors or some other sort of access to data.

vezycash 7y ago

"But I've already invested and sacrificed so much money, time & effort on this deal, relationship, person, place..." This thought causes victim of scams to mortgage their houses and send the money to scammers - even in the face of overwhelming evidence. Causes victim of abusive relationships to remain even when their lives are in danger. It's also what will keep western companies in China - even as China slowly strangles them to death. Sunk Cost Fallacy

pfortuny 7y ago
I’ve paid the ticket, then I must travel.
- im3w1l 7y ago
  I think the reason we adopt this mindset is because we are ambivalent. First you feel you wanna go, then you regret it because you are nervous about the rental car, then you wanna go again, then you regret it because there's a lot of stuff at work you want to deal with, then you wanna go, then you get scared of skin cancer from the strong sun etc etc Booking and cancelling and booking and cancelling and... It would be terrible to change your mind so often. So you decide to just go with the option you picked first even though it temporarily seems suboptimal.
  - esotericn 7y ago
    It's suboptimal to continually change your mind so rapidly too, not just 'terrible' mentally, because the real world around you imposes significant penalties for doing so. Switching flights and hotels on a moment's notice is expensive. Arbitrary days off work are difficult for most. For some travel you're looking at visas, rental cars, etc as stated. There's a lot of inertia in the boring and stable path.
Peckingjay 7y ago
All your data in China collected at will to be shared with all entities of the Chinese government and potentially any private company it owns feels more like a really fast and aggressive ramp-up than a slow strangulation to me.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

AlchemistCamp 7y ago

I wonder if HN is hosted in China at all. Edit: To clarify, I doubt any of it is. Still, having seen some seemingly unlikely events coming to pass over the past few years, it's natural to be curious and think through the scenario.

tasuki 7y ago
I don't think HN is hosted in China. Why should it be?
- komali2 7y ago
  Like, random AWS server or something?
  - hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
    HN isn't hosted on AWS, and AWS doesn't have any data centers in China.
    - deadbunny 7y ago
      They do, they are just run as (what I assume is) a separate company entirely. https://www.amazonaws.cn/en/ https://www.amazonaws.cn/en/
- AlchemistCamp 7y ago
  A common reason to host on both sides of the GFW is latency.
tutux84 7y ago
I was in mainland China (Shanghai and surroundings) in september for two weeks and HN was not accessible, probably because of the Great FW. So I doubt any HN instance is hosted there.

stephc_int13 7y ago

What about big companies like Supercell, owned by Tencent at about 80% ?

Invictus0 7y ago

The Stasi is back, now mechanized & equipped with machine learning.

xorand 7y ago

Are there any legal consequences if Sci-Hub is hosted in China?

Thrwtz 7y ago

Follow up post contains much more detail https://www.chinalawblog.com/2019/10/chinas-new-cybersecurity-system-there-is-no-place-to-hide.html https://www.chinalawblog.com/2019/10/chinas-new-cybersecurit...

frequentnapper 7y ago

Will YC China still continue to exist?

nomercy400 7y ago

No more trade secrets, so companies like ASML that have a physical presence with their know-how in China are now also legally screwed? Any of their chip making device can now be legally reverse-engineered, starting January 1st? Any produced wafer, chip design, IC, whatever is currently in China, can now legally be taken from your company and used by your competitors? Sounds like a good time to move out of China, as otherwise you will have government-backed competitors with your tech in 1-2 years.

tjpnz 7y ago
>Sounds like a good time to move out of China, as otherwise you will have government-backed competitors with your tech in 1-2 years. It's already happening.

xuesj 7y ago

It remind me of ancient Chinese saying "普天之下，莫非王土，率土之滨，莫非王臣", that means "all land belong to the king in the kingdom, all men are servants of the king in the kingdom"

AlchemistCamp 7y ago
It also reminds me of 天高皇帝遠 (the sky is tall and the emperor is far), which has a somewhat contrary meaning: as you get further from the capital, rules are looser.
- dbuder 7y ago
  I like that, but I think the sky is full of cameras and drones and the Emperor's minions see all.

danmaz74 7y ago

TLDR: "This means intra-company VPN systems will no longer be authorized in China by anyone, including foreign companies. This in turn means all company email and data transfer will be required to use Chinese operated communication systems that are fully open to the China’s Cybersecurity Bureau. All data servers that make any use of Chinese based communications networks will also be required to be open to the Cybersecurity Bureau’s surveillance and monitoring system." If VPNs will really be forbidden, I guess that lots of companies will really be forced to pull out of China.

McTossOut 7y ago
They'll probably block ESP, since they aren't able to economically reconstruct that real-time. Fact is VPNs are architectural. Suppose the companies can use AH to maintain their architecture and comply. All that data they had intended to keep private is now tagged in bright red IPSec headers. In this case they only compromise information security, but their virtual links are still secured, not opening new security gaps in their architecture.

contingencies 7y ago

This article reads as alarmism from an actor with interest in projecting FUD. China broadly has the same effective policy as most governments: requiring access to be given when legally demanded. This is already the case and has been the case for a long time. The theoretical legal requirement and the practical reality of enforcement differ, such that everyone is forced to operate in a grey area. Such a situation is normal and expected in China. Should the authorities want something, they come and tell you. Exactly the same as the west.

keiferski 7y ago
"Because things are complicated both in China and in the West, ergo they are equivalent."
- contingencies 7y ago
  s/they are equivalent/taking an alarmist tone is nonsensical/
joosters 7y ago
Yes, the article is not very well written, in that it blends factual statements about the new laws together with their own opinions, e.g. 'For that reason, the Chinese Cybersecurity Bureau does not plan to politely make a formal request for the information. The fundamental premise of the new cybersecurity systems is that the government will use its control of communications to simply take the information without discussing the matter with the user.' Does the author have some magical view into the Chinese Cybersecurity Bureau? Is he making this broad statement based upon something that the CSB has said? Or is it just his viewpoint? Much more likely is, as you state, when the government wants something, they are going to come along and demand it. And if you want to keep doing business in China, you will have to provide that data. This, while still a worrying state of affairs, is a far different scenario from 'all crypto is banned!' espoused by the writer.
- Thrwtz 7y ago
  Refer to the follow up blog post where he goes into detail, including the actual law if you can read Chinese.

SteveNuts 7y ago

The irony here is that by advertising the fact that they have a massive amount of raw, unencrypted data, they're making themselves the biggest hacker target in the world. I really hope this backfires on them so the rest of the world will be hesitant to follow their example.

lallysingh 7y ago
This much is certain. It's going to be the biggest intelligence grab for non Chinese nations in decades. I wonder if they're serving birthday cake at the NSA cafeteria today.
computerex 7y ago
Except even if there is a massive breach no one will know about it because it's not like the Chinese government is going to openly admit to it. Losing face and all.

anovikov 7y ago

This is very worrysome: it this simply accelerates the already ongoing exodus of foreign owned businesses from China. Yes, human right activists, opposition members and such, will simply continue using obfuscation as they do now, they are out of the legal space anyway and change of laws don't change anything for them. But businesses need to stay compliant. So they will leaving and with their money, share of government ownership, and thus government control of things, in China will keep creeping up. They are basically returning to Communism. Good thing about it is that we know how it ends, Communism is not viable. Bad thing is that it leaves little hope for the current generation of Chinese...

justinclift 7y ago

The KPMG take on this seems relevant: https://assets.kpmg/content/dam/kpmg/cn/pdf/en/2019/05/mlps-insights-strategies.pdf https://assets.kpmg/content/dam/kpmg/cn/pdf/en/2019/05/mlps-... Also, does anyone know how to access the Chinese text version of the standards? (I have friends who grok Chinese well, can pass to them for reading over) The link from the article goes to a translation service which just wants to charge money for translation to English, with no way to access the original documents. Searching online so far just turns up similar translation services, without the original docs.

yorwba 7y ago
I didn't even see a link to a translation in the article, but I believe it's about the following three standards: GB/T 22239-2019 信息安全技术网络安全等级保护基本要求 Information security technology — Baseline for classified protection of cybersecurity http://openstd.samr.gov.cn/bzgk/gb/newGbInfo?hcno=BAFB47E8874764186BDB7865E8344DAF http://openstd.samr.gov.cn/bzgk/gb/newGbInfo?hcno=BAFB47E887... GB/T 25070-2019 信息安全技术网络安全等级保护安全设计技术要求 Information security technology — Technical requirements of security design for classified protection of cybersecurity http://openstd.samr.gov.cn/bzgk/gb/newGbInfo?hcno=9FB6EE8597B21436D0E99BF44FD42C4D http://openstd.samr.gov.cn/bzgk/gb/newGbInfo?hcno=9FB6EE8597... GB/T 28448-2019 信息安全技术网络安全等级保护测评要求 Information security technology —Evaluation requirement for classified protection of cybersecurity http://openstd.samr.gov.cn/bzgk/gb/newGbInfo?hcno=7E736CDF4502B6FF1258DD250AA3EC8C http://openstd.samr.gov.cn/bzgk/gb/newGbInfo?hcno=7E736CDF45... The link to read online requires Flash...
- justinclift 7y ago
  Thanks, that looks very helpful. :) > The link to read online requires Flash... Ugh. Security holes galore. Not going to install it on any network connected gear I use. :(

alfiedotwtf 7y ago

tl;dr: Nothing is beyond our reach. ... sounds familiar

darronz 7y ago

Perhaps there is an upshot. If the Chinese government have complete access to all traffic in China, they will be unable to deny knowledge of hacking originating from their own IP blocks. By the same token you would expect that all unlawful traffic originating in China to cease.

thoughtstheseus 7y ago
Why would that be the expected?
- Ill_ban_myself 7y ago
  Because if it did not stop it would imply the Chinese government accepts and approves of the criminal acts
  - mtgx 7y ago
    Why wouldn't they say something like "The NSA hacked our computers from which it then launched an attack on France." Even with total surveillance of its internal networks, it's not like anyone is expecting China to end all cyber attacks against its computers, especially when so many run unpatched.
  - ppf 7y ago
    And then?
    - kristofferR 7y ago
      Hehe, it's completely off-topic, but the combination of China and "And then?" reminded me of this hilarious movie scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqwzuiSy9y0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqwzuiSy9y0
      - ppf 7y ago
        It's not an accident ;-)

diggidydogg 7y ago

I think all countries should enforce these same rules for Chinese company's operating on foreign soil.

goatinaboat 7y ago
What would be the gain other than symbolic gestures? China has no IP at risk.
- Ill_ban_myself 7y ago
  Exactly. The rule should be that China must pay western wages and subsidize western working conditions if they want western trade secrets
SkyBelow 7y ago
Would be much better to reverse it. Anything given to China is also put in the public domain. Keeps things a bit more fair and makes people think twice about giving something up.
- andromeduck 7y ago
  why not both

diggidydogg 7y ago

Can we apply the same rules to Chinese company's operating on foreign soil?

trentnix 7y ago

As explained by Guo Qiquan, the chief cheerleader for the plan, the main goal of the new system is to provide “full coverage”. As explained by Guo, “It will cover every district, every ministry, every business and other institution, basically covering the whole society. Sauron is envious.

sorokod 7y ago
almost like a Palantir
- TheRealDunkirk 7y ago
  This is one of my hot takes, too. At least China is making it all "legal."
- i_am_nomad 7y ago
  I don’t think all of my emails and files get automatically decrypted and processed through Palantir, but of course I’d like to know if I’m mistaken about that.
  - sangnoir 7y ago
    Parent was referring to Tolkien's Palantir - not Thiel's
    - sorokod 7y ago
      Yes
deleted 7y ago
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mark_l_watson 7y ago

As an opinionated non-expert, I have to ask: isn’t “” This means intra-company VPN systems will no longer be authorized in China by anyone, including foreign companies. This in turn means all company email and data transfer will be required to use Chinese operated communication systems that are fully open to the China’s Cybersecurity Bureau. All data servers that make any use of Chinese based communications networks will also be required to be open to the Cybersecurity Bureau’s surveillance and monitoring system.”” really the Chinese government shooting itself in the foot? This reminds when a decade or two ago Senators Hillary Clinton and Frits Hollings tried to pass Disney written SSCA legislation that would require every Internet device like smart TVs, computers, etc. to have backdoors so companies like Disney and the government could check for copyright material. In either the Clinton bill or what the Chinese are doing there is a huge risk of third party getting access to encryption keys and other form of access. Large scale organized crime would love this as would bad behaving state actors.

phkahler 7y ago

Is it possible this causes a lot of competition in the US as some companies bring work and manufacturing back home? Or will they just move to another country?

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

bumbacloth 7y ago

maybe the Chinese internet will have a single point of failure, the government? I think they will have a massive problem with ransomware if all servers are accessible with the same backdoor.

naringas 7y ago

what about China's own "national security concerns"? will those be out in the open? somehow I don't think so but that's only my supposition. I would bet they will keep their own one government party secrets private and encrypted. "privacy for us (the party) but not for you"

oefrha 7y ago

I read the follow-up blog post with details[1] as well as the actual Chinese regulation text[2]. The blog post seems to omit a lot of details and some claims are dubious. I don’t have time to translate everything, but here’s an example quote from the blog post: > The inspectors can fully access the system and they are permitted to copy any data they find. See Article 15. Whereas Article 15 reads (even if you can’t read Chinese, Google Translate will probably do a reasonable job) > ... look up and/or copy information on matters related to the audit and inspection of Internet security. ... So this is quite vague (not really surprising for any regulation), but at face value the law doesn’t seem to say “fully access” or “any data”. Does this cover any data that has nothing to do with security? Ostensibly not. Realistically I’m not sure. Either way, citing the law with an exaggerated translation doesn’t promote confidence in the blog post. [1] https://www.chinalawblog.com/2019/10/chinas-new-cybersecurity-system-there-is-no-place-to-hide.html https://www.chinalawblog.com/2019/10/chinas-new-cybersecurit... [2] http://www.gov.cn/gongbao/content/2018/content_5343745.htm http://www.gov.cn/gongbao/content/2018/content_5343745.htm Edit: to be absolutely clear, I was only commenting on the part of the blog post with explicit citations. Most of the blog post speculates on intent and actual scope, but since those are speculative and don’t deal with the text of the law directly, the author is of course entitled to his own interpretations.

dangerface 7y ago
Article 15 seems specific to pen testing at least thats what I think they mean by "public security organs" > Article 13 Public security organs conducting Internet security supervision and inspection may conduct on-site supervision and inspection or remote inspection.
- TrueDuality 7y ago
  That sounds to me like it's authorizing them to remotely "access" the computers and networks, and failing that they can perform an on-site inspection. So yeah pentests, not necessarily with the corporation's knowledge...
  - oefrha 7y ago

lom888 7y ago

There is an article in this week's London Review of Books by John Lanchester which covers a similar theme: https://www.lrb.co.uk/v41/n19/john-lanchester/document-number-nine https://www.lrb.co.uk/v41/n19/john-lanchester/document-numbe...

TheRealDunkirk 7y ago

It's going to be entertaining to watch my Fortune 250 figure out how to work with this. We make big, expensive, technical things that have a lot of very-closely-held software on them. One current, big, internal effort is to encrypt the code on the controller, so that people can't dump it, or at least not modify it. What's going to happen when the Chinese government demands to escrow the signing keys for any product sold in their country? I fully expect that they will be handed over. That's pretty much a given. But what if they go further and demand to escrow the source code? That would get really interesting, really fast, for many reasons. Also, how will they continue to block Skype chat history in the US, based on dodgy interpretations of SOX and related laws, yet allow the Chinese government full access to all the logs? What happens when the CEO chats in China, or someone chats at him from China? I suppose it will be Microsoft to the rescue here, with a giant tick-box in the Skype FOR BUSINESS admin panel for "segregate retention policy based on CHINA," which is precisely the sort of thing that continues to make them the big bucks. All of these hosted infrastructure pieces, like Office365 and GSuite, are going to need huge exceptions built into them. (Maybe they already do, and I'm just ignorant.)

choonway 7y ago
That's why there's a hong kong you know.
- jtms 7y ago
  Not for long
microcolonel 7y ago
Write the software onto the controllers in Taiwan at least.
thescriptkiddie 7y ago
I actually think it would be a good thing if governments required access to the source code for all software that they use.
- 7y ago

Lio 7y ago

It would be interesting to know how this affects Taiwan. If the CPP regards Taiwan as part of greater China then does that mean they believe they have a right to all information held in Taiwan including that owned by foreign companies? Or does Taiwan get an exception for now at least?

LeoNatan25 7y ago

"By giving the Chinese government and its cronies full access to its data, the U.S. or EU company may very well be deemed to have illegally exported technology to China and it could face millions of dollars in fines and even prison sentences for some of its officers and directors. There is an inherent conflict between foreign laws mandating a company not transfer its technology and China’s laws which effectively mandate that transfer. Under China’s new cybersecurity system, there will be no place to hide." Very good. Put the Cooks and Pichais in jail. Only this will make them rethink doing business in China.

onemantaker1 7y ago

The rules makes no sense. The rules are very strict

ausjke 7y ago

which is why I withdrew the idea to set up a branch there, the internet access and censorship combined are enough to kill any idea to run business in China.

zelon88 7y ago

This is the scariest thing ever. But lets do a thought experiment with it! Like an episode of Black Mirror. Imagine being an upper-class engineer in China in 10 years. You're sipping your morning coffee and checking your emails. Every day you get an email with all the trade-secrets collected across China the night before; curated and tailored just for you. Kinda like Recorded Future but instead of passively analyzing the internet these secrets were beamed straight from the source. Their technology could advance rapidly as a result of this.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
basch 7y ago
Question. Part of western awareness towards, paranoia, fear, and wherewithal to stand against certain government behaviors and the totalitarian state is obviously awoken from and influenced by fiction, including 1984, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, It Cant Happen Here, The Handmaid's Tale, A Clockwork Orange, Philip K. Dick, even We. This shared and collective "memory" of fables, many of which people havent even read but still discuss as if they had, give all a certain a framework, grammar, and shared understanding for talking about the future, and thusly what consequences may come from allowing said future to unfold unabated. Does eastern fiction not have this foundation of fictional dystopia from 50-100 years ago woven into societies consciousness? Are people more accepting of certain encroachments towards that type of future, because their legend and myth dont as often scream about potential slippery slopes and repercussions? Is it a fictional fear instilled in our cultural fabric that makes us so averse to what maybe isnt and wont ever be as bad as our stories tell us it will be?
- thrav 7y ago
  Has to stem from the rise of the individual. My sense is that in the east, the collective takes precedent. Individual liberty is not sacred in that world, so freedom isn’t either.
- godot 7y ago
  I lived in HK up until about 8th grade and I don't think there were similar readings there to 1984 in Chinese. I imagine in upper grades, 1984 itself and a few others may be English class reading, but certainly nothing similar in Chinese novels at least in school, or novels that were famous. Growing up, most famous Chinese novels were around the themes of ancient martial arts fictions (e.g. Jin Yong's series). You may find tangents on the topic of authoritarianism/dictatorships here and there, but not a whole book like 1984.

Chirael 7y ago

I wonder if there’s any relation between this and “Made in China 2025” [1]. Seems like it would be a lot easier if there are no more trade secrets from the government, and the government has representatives in various Chinese companies [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_China_2025 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_China_2025 [2] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/23/china-to-place-government-officials-in-100-companies-including-alibaba.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/23/china-to-place-government-of...

reaperducer 7y ago

"But Chinese law now requires complete government access to those secrets if those secrets cross the Chinese border for any reason." So if a routing burp just happens to send some data to China that was supposed to go from New York to London, then "Oops! So sorry. We read all of your company's plans. But that's OK, we kept a copy on that file share that your Chinese competitor has access to."

oefrha 7y ago
If you send all of your company’s plan unencrypted from New York to London, you have a much larger problem. Any intelligence agency worth their salt should be gobbling up as much as traffic as possible.

jquery 7y ago

So if I’m traveling to China is it now unsafe to use pre-Installed VPNs? Am I at risk of jail if I do so or set up my own VPN?

tempguy9999 7y ago

"the Cybersecurity Law and related laws and regulations are very clear that they apply to all individuals and entities in China without regard to ownership or nationality. There are no exceptions. More important, the new Foreign Investment Law that goes into effect on January 1, 2020 eliminates any special status associated with being a WFOE or other foreign invested enterprise. Foreign owned companies will be treated in exactly the same way as Chinese owned companies" If true? Talk about screwing your own pooch. With the milspec PoochBuster 9000.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

make3 7y ago

I'm starting to think we should all just systematically boycott Chinese products and pressure companies not to work with them. China is more and more a real threat to world stability, to democracy and to the humaneness of our world

yalogin 7y ago

China is the biggest failure of the western nations in a post USSR world. The fact that the whole world let China become so huge and powerful while being so authoritarian is a travesty. They have now completed integrating the internet and big data into their despotic regime. This is the worst place imaginable for a free thinking brain. Even now the the western world is just following along to their dollar tunes.

aykutcan 7y ago

China strikes back huh. This is big issue no matter how you look at it. Maybe "no trade secrets" is a bit exaggeration.

chaz6 7y ago

This could potentially mean they start making space a battleground when entites switch to foreign-operated satellite data services.

exabrial 7y ago

This sounds like a hackers dream: mandatory documented centralized backdoors literally everywhere.

logicchains 7y ago

I wonder if this will create a market for software that's inscrutable to anyone other than the creator, so it can't easily be adapted or modified. "Of course, here is my unencrypted source code. It's written in a homotopy type theory DSL I implemented in the C preprocessor, and completely verified with dependent types so any change will cause a type error. I haven't got around to implementing compile-time type checking, however, or error messages, so type errors will cause it to coredump at runtime."

ETHisso2017 7y ago
Even if you offered me something like that for free, I wouldn't run it or use it...
- logicchains 7y ago
  If you were an executive and the only other choices were either giving away all your IP or leaving China and billions of dollars of revenue behind, you might think differently.
  - ETHisso2017 7y ago
    I was speaking from the customer perspective.

jiveturkey 7y ago

The blog itself is a law blog, not a political blog, so I understand that it is just putting out a very focused bit of information. (Which I will believe when I see reputable news source coverage.) But I'm amazed no one here has remarked or supposed that this is a reaction to tariffs. This is China playing hardball in a way that we can't react with tit-for-tat.

SolarNet 7y ago

Oh hey look another example of Rainbows End being spot on in predictions. At some point the U.S. will try something similar (hell under Trump there was already noise about it), and I think Rainbows End is necessary reading for what we will be up against.

SubiculumCode 7y ago
That was such an interesting novel. Of course in that novel the justification for total surveillance and lockdown of components was the extreme vulnerability to terror enhanced by technology, AI, and automation...which was hard to argue against in Rainbows End.
- SolarNet 7y ago
  That was what it was for the US and EU polities. I think there is a throwaway line about China just doing it because China. When this happens in US and EU it will be because of terrorism, linked with technologies like amazon's drones, or uber's cars, or some other thing.

SubiculumCode 7y ago

Outlawing encryption is as futile as outlawing 'abstract' poetry. Hidden meanings can always be encoded.

pray4URenemies 7y ago

It really aligns well with the face scan initiative (and credit core system) https://www.businessinsider.com/china-to-require-facial-id-for-internet-and-mobile-services-2019-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/china-to-require-facial-id-f... what you browse, what information you read will define you. Basically it can make an automated prison, where you have to read Xi's commandment every morning to get +10 points... etc..

xorand 7y ago

On another thread [0] [1] "My Google account got suspended because of NewPipe". No place to hide. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21247759 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21247759 [1] https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/issues/2723 https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/issues/2723

pmarreck 7y ago

Just curious: Did no one in China watch https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_lives_of_others https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_lives_of_others ?

idoescompooters 7y ago

I hope people realize this is what Snowden told us is happening HERE in the U.S.

mensetmanusman 7y ago
But the NSA wasn’t handing the information out to western companies. That is the China modus op. at the moment...

justinclift 7y ago

Wwith access to all your files they'll also have your (software, GPG, etc) signing keys. So, it's not just a matter of being able to read from any system in your network. They'll be able to impersonate people (including with valid signatures), sign new software releases, and more. Sounds especially useful when disappearing people first, so there's no "Hey, I didn't send that!".

mensetmanusman 7y ago

Wow. This means it will be extremely risky to have any business in China, as it allows any intro-company email server to accessed. Since it is unofficial state policy to provide foreign company know-how to home grown competitors, this will be an amazing fireworks show.