Before Chinese President Xi Jinping visits President Obama, he and Chinese executives have some business in Seattle: pressing U.S. tech companies, hungry for the Chinese market, to comply with the country’s new stringent and suppressive Internet policies.
The New York Times reported last week that Chinese authorities sent a letter to some U.S. tech firms seeking a promise they would not harm China’s national security.
That might require such things as forcing users to register with their real names, storing Chinese citizens’ data locally where the government can access it, and building government “back doors” into encrypted communication products for better surveillance. China’s new national security law calls for systems that are “secure and controllable”, which industry groups told the Times in July means companies will have to hand over encryption keys or even source code to their products.
Among the big names joining Xi at Wednesday’s U.S.-China Internet Industry Forum: Apple, Google, Facebook, IBM, and Microsoft.
Gary Edwards on 22 Sep 08Fighting this killer feature is Microsoft Word's own killer feature, which is: Everyone in business has Word, and most people know how to use it effectively. There are plenty of people who would use a simultaneous editing feature in Word if it had one, and who aren't going to switch to Google just because it does. A new service, Plutext, currently being developed, will bring nearly live editing to Word documents. I saw a demo at the Office 2.0 conference.
