President Obama wants China to know that the United States government is the only one that can ask Western tech companies to include backdoors in their consumer products.
Obama told Reuters that China’s mandates “would essentially force all foreign companies, including U.S. companies, to turn over to the Chinese government mechanisms where they can snoop and keep track of all the users of those services.” That, obviously, would be bad.
But the most telling part of the interview came from Obama’s remarks on tech companies’ willingness to hand over such access to a government — not a “foreign” government, just “a government” — despite increasing pressure to do so. As he explained to Reuters:
Those kinds of restrictive practices I think would ironically hurt the Chinese economy over the long term because I don’t think there is any U.S. or European firm, any international firm, that could credibly get away with that wholesale turning over of data, personal data, over to a government.
That’s interesting, considering the US has been attempting to gain such access to tech platforms for the last several years, and FBI Director James Comey has been lobbying to force tech companies to include backdoors in their consumer products. Sound familiar?
Those efforts prompted a group of Congressmen, led by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), to introduce a bill that would prevent the FBI from requiring the creation of those backdoors.
Those efforts prompted a group of Congressmen, led by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), to introduce a bill that would prevent the FBI from requiring the creation of those backdoors.
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