“China suspended bank-technology rules that drew protests from the U.S. government and business groups, according to an official notice, in a move that could help ease cybersecurity tensions between Washington and Beijing,” Gillian Wong reports for The Wall Street Journal. “‘To promote the steady and reasonable work on banking-industry information safety, the guidelines will be revised and perfected, after which they will be reissued for implementation,’ said the notice, which was dated Monday and jointly issued by the China Banking Regulatory Commission and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.”
“An executive at one of China’s largest state-owned banks said the suspension showed that ‘the regulators realized that banks can’t just replace these foreign servers overnight,'” Wong reports. “Beijing pushed the rules amid rising mistrust between the U.S. and China over cybersecurity issues. China has revved up efforts to rely more on homegrown technology after former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden said U.S. intelligence agencies used U.S. technology in their espionage efforts.”
“Business groups worried that the bank-technology rules were part of a broader effort to ensure the security of information networks in a range of industries in ways that would compel Western companies to transfer critical technologies to Chinese authorities,” Wong reports. “Last month, a senior U.S. Treasury official said China had agreed to suspend some of the rules, though the scope of the move wasn’t clear. On Monday, foreign trade groups sent a letter to China’s top cyberspace authority asking Chinese officials to issue a public notice about suspending the rules.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: AppleInsider‘s Roger Fingas writes, “Apple is believed to be working on bringing Apple Pay to China, but might balk if it were asked to turn over code and encryption keys. In general the company has refused to expose critical areas to third parties, one exception being its participation in the National Security Agency’s bulk data surveillance programs.” Read more here.
I’m a bit miffed here about this comment: “In general the company has refused to expose critical areas to third parties, one exception being its participation in the National Security Agency’s bulk data surveillance programs.”
Is Apple actually actively and willingly participating in the NSA’s bulk data surveillance program or does the author mean that it is participating non voluntarily, i.e. enduring the NSA’s subterfuge into collection data?
Didn’t Apple say they weren’t participating? Does Fingas have any REAL information to the contrary?
I’ve consistently had the impression that what China wanted was one way or another to surveil their citizen’s activities, be it via backdoors in software or secret extra decryption keys. Hopefully, this change in their rules is China getting realistic about how much the rest of the world is willing to give on cyber security.
As for Apple’s willingness to cooperate with Chinese self-surveillance and various NSA programs: Certainly Apple has consistently stated “NO!” But how are we supposed to really know? It is at least clear that Apple has stated they’ve locked up their data transmitted over the Internet with encryption. Whether extra decryption keys exist is not clear.
Ah yes. Chinese Regulation! LOL.