China wants to require companies to install backdoors too

China is weighing a far-reaching counterterrorism law that would require technology firms to hand over encryption keys and install security “backdoors”, a potential escalation of what some firms view as the increasingly onerous terms of doing business in the world’s second largest economy. A parliamentary body read a second draft of the country’s first anti-terrorism law this week and is expected to adopt the legislation in the coming weeks or months. The initial draft, published by the National People’s Congress late last year, requires companies to also keep servers and user data within China, supply law enforcement authorities with communications records and censor terrorism-related internet content. Its scope reaches far beyond a recently adopted set of financial industry regulations that pushed Chinese banks to purchase from domestic technology vendors.