Tech companies are pushing back against China’s controversial new cyber security bill that requires companies to share proprietary source code with Beijing.
According to the Wall Street Journal, under the new regulations, China will require software companies, network-equipment manufacturers and other technology companies to disclose their source codes—the building blocks of computer programs—in order to prove their products cannot be infiltrated by hackers.
However, tech companies are arguing that the disclosure policy does not ensure such safety, and may even heighten the risk of their code falling into the wrong hands.
Intel(INTC), Microsoft(MSFT), and IBM(IBM)alongside various Chinese tech companies, have come out against the new regulations. Rebuking the new bill, Microsoft wrote, “Sharing source code in itself can’t prove the capability to be secure and controllable. It only proves there is source code,” in a statement quoted by the Journal.
The tech giant had taken a proactive approach to improving its business relationship with Beijing, announcing it would open a “transparency center,” where government coders could test and analyze Microsoft’s products for security.
According to the Journal, Intel argued that the new regulations will hinder innovation—and as Coins2Day previously reported— the broad scope of the new laws may make foreign tech companies think twice about the risks of doing business in China.
In August, Beijing assured foreign investors that the new cyber security bill would not hamper foreign businesses.
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Chinese authorities cited espionage concerns, and disclosures made by Edward Snowden over “backdoors” built into U.S. Technology for the purposes of the National Security Agency, as one of the main reasons for the new regulations, reports the Journal.
For now Chinese legal experts do not see foreign companies leaving the country. “I don’t think they will pull out,” James Gong, a senior associate at Herbert Smith Freehills, a law firm that helps western companies handle Chinese laws, told the Wall Street Journal. “I haven’t heard of any company that has decided to leave.”