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by cmurf 3831 days ago
You want a cite for what? China now has a law requiring encryption keys on demand. What does that mean, what does it refer to? It could refer to the symmetric key (DEK) for disk encryption, and if so Microsoft already escrows that and Apple used to offer to do it. Does it refer to either the private key from these companies used for establishing TLS connections to their services? Or the private key generated on device for services using end to end encryption? I'd say the device private key is a huge freaking deal but still plausible they'd want that and get it upon request, more plausible than Apple, Google, whoever, saying no to China. The company's private key? I'd say no way they'd do that, they'd sooner use a cert issued by China for this purpose.
1 comments
zaphar 3830 days ago
Google has been known to say no to China before. Going so far as to pull most of their operations out. Whether they will say no now remains to be seen. I'd wait to see what happens before assuming what is plausible here.
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cmurf 3830 days ago
Well if I wait to see what happens, it's no longer necessary to assume, is it? These are for profit companies, and in theory they're amoral. So any sense of morality of giving up user keys on demand is very plausibly demoted in comparison to profits.

If profits from the rest of the world would increase for any company saying no to China, then companies might do so. But if it'll obviously cost them more, then they'll roll over.

Credit Suisse this year determined China has a bigger middle class than America, and it's growing faster. So I think Apple, Google, etc will roll over. If China actually thought these tech companies would say no, they wouldn't have actually enacted this law, they'd have continued to have conversations. The conversation is basically over.

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zaphar 3830 days ago
It's silly to disregard a companies previous actions when determining what they might do. In theory Google may be amoral but in reality they have shown themselves to act morally in certain situations. Disregarding that historical data means your assumptions are poor.
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