2020 is indeed an upside-down year. In a discombobulating development, China, American Civil Liberties Union, Electronic Frontier Foundation and a host of other global civil society organisations have found themselves on the same side of a debate — standing up against backdoors to end-to-end encrypted platforms. A Chinese Foreign Ministry official, on October 13, accused the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, the US in particular, of double standards for asking companies to build backdoors to encrypted communications. Zhao Lijian’s, the Foreign Ministry spokesperson, instead cited China’s own framework on data security that asked technology and telecom companies to not install backdoors. He said that the Five Eyes’ “wanton” accusations against Chinese companies of installing backdoors in their products are proof of their political motives and their “intention to suppress foreign companies”. Zhao questioned the Five Eyes’ intentions: fighting crime or gathering intelligence? He said that if countries need data stored overseas for law enforcement purposes, they should access it through judicial assistance or the relevant bi/multilateral agreements. However, law enforcement agencies, especially in India, have long contended that bilateral treaties such as the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) make it very difficult to get access to data and content in time. “Without any evidence, the Five Eyes have long been wantonly accusing Chinese companies of installing 'backdoors' in products, which they say threaten the security of supply chains and personal privacy. However, they baldly ask companies to insert 'backdoors' in encrypted apps; it is typical double standard. It not only reveals…
News
China accuses Five Eyes nations of hypocrisy for demanding backdoors to encrypted communications
Please subscribe to MediaNama. Don't share prints and PDFs.
You May Also Like
News
Google has released a Google Travel Trends Report which states that branded budget hotel search queries grew 179% year over year (YOY) in India, in...
Advert
135 job openings in over 60 companies are listed at our free Digital and Mobile Job Board: If you’re looking for a job, or...
News
By Aroon Deep and Aditya Chunduru You’re reading it here first: Twitter has complied with government requests to censor 52 tweets that mostly criticised...
News
Rajesh Kumar* doesn’t have many enemies in life. But, Uber, for which he drives a cab everyday, is starting to look like one, he...