China Passes Antiterrorism Law That Critics Fear May Overreach
By CHRIS BUCKLEY

BEIJING — China’s legislature approved an antiterrorism law on Sunday after months of international controversy, including criticism from human rights groups, business lobbies and President Obama.

Critics had said that the draft version of the law used a recklessly broad definition of terrorism, gave the government new censorship powers and authorized state access to sensitive commercial data.

The government argued that the measures were needed to prevent terrorist attacks. Opponents countered that the new powers could be abused to monitor peaceful citizens and steal technological secrets.

In the end, the approved law published by state media dropped demands in the draft version that would have required Internet companies and other technology suppliers to hand over encryption codes and other sensitive data for official vetting before they went into use.

But the law still requires that companies hand over technical information and help with decryption when the police or state security agents demand it for investigating or preventing terrorist cases.

Telecommunication and Internet service providers “shall provide technical interfaces, decryption and other technical support and assistance to public security and state security agencies when they are following the law to avert and investigate terrorist activities,” says the law.

“Not only in China, but also in many places internationally, growing numbers of terrorists are using the Internet to promote and incite terrorism, and are using the Internet to organize, plan and carry out terrorist acts,” an official, Li Shouwei, said at a news conference in Beijing.

The approval by the legislature, which is controlled by the Communist Party, came as Beijing has become increasingly jittery about antigovernment violence, especially in the ethnically divided region of Xinjiang in western China, where members of the Uighur minority have been at growing odds with the authorities.

Chinese leaders have ordered security forces to be on alert against a possible terrorist attack of the kind that devastated Paris in November.

Over the weekend, the shopping neighborhood of Sanlitun in Beijing was under reinforced guard by People’s Armed Police troops after several foreign embassies, including that of the United States, warned that there were heightened security risks there around Christmas.

In addition, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Saturday that it would expel a French journalist, Ursula Gauthier, for a report that suggested the Chinese government’s unyielding policies were stoking violence by Uighurs in Xinjiang.

Uighurs are a Turkic ethnic minority, largely Sunni Muslim, who have become ever more discontented with controls on their religion and culture and with an influx into Xinjiang of ethnic Han migrants. The government says that violent acts by disaffected Uighurs have been inspired and instigated by international extremist groups, but critics say the conflict arises from homegrown disaffection.

In March of last year, Uighur assailants used knives to slash to death 29 people at a train station in Kunming, a city in southwest China. Last month, the government in Xinjiang said Chinese security forces had killed 28 people who were accused of orchestrating an attack on a coal mine that killed 16 people.

Human rights groups have warned that the law will give even more intrusive powers to the Chinese government, which already has broad, virtually unchecked authority to monitor and detain citizens and to demand information from companies and Internet services.

“While the Chinese authorities do have a legitimate duty in safeguarding their citizens from violent attacks, passing this law will have some negative repercussions for human rights,” said William Nee, a researcher on China for Amnesty International who is based in Hong Kong, via email.

“Essentially, this law could give the authorities even more tools in censoring unwelcome information and crafting their own narrative in how the ‘war on terror’ is being waged,” Mr. Nee said.

International companies that use encrypted technology in China had been worried by provisions in the draft law that would have required them to hand over code and other information so that the authorities could monitor users. The law could affect multinational companies like Cisco, IBM and Apple, all of which have big stakes in China.

“These companies have been dealing with this increased, let’s call it oversight, for the last two or three years,” said Scott D. Livingston, a lawyer who works for Simone IP Services, a consulting firm in Hong Kong, and who has followed the discussions over the law. With the antiterrorism law, Mr. Livingston said, “from the government’s perspective, you have a stronger basis to request this access.”

In January, foreign business groups wrote to President Xi Jinping to voice collective unease about China’s Internet policies, including the draft legislation, which could have required handing over sensitive data and commercial secrets.

In an interview with Reuters in early March, Mr. Obama criticized the proposed legislation and similar initiatives by the Chinese government, and warned that technology companies would not go along with the intrusive demands laid out in the draft law.

A few days before the antiterrorism law passed, Hong Lei, a spokesman for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said at a regular news briefing that criticism from the Obama administration was unfounded.

Mr. Li, the criminal law expert with the National People’s Congress, insisted that the new law was no reason for multinationals to be alarmed. “These rules will not affect the ordinary business activities of the firms concerned,” he said.

陸反恐法將上路 美企業集體焦慮

大陸人大常委會27日通過「反恐法」，將於本周五開始實施。此前該草案即已在國際間引起爭議，人權組織、工商界與美國總統歐巴馬皆加以批評，科技界則認為將嚴重影響營運。

大陸全國人民代表大會常務委員會會議27日通過反恐法，2016年開始實施；法案第18條規定，電信與網路業者須向公安與國安機關提供解密技術支援。所謂提供解密技術，恐讓個人隱私毫無保留。

反恐法也規定，相關部門應落實網路安全及信息內容監督制度，防止恐怖主義及極端主義信散播，箝制言論的情況可能加劇。

批評者說，該法對「恐怖」的定義過於廣泛，不僅使大陸當局取得審查的新權力，授權公務機關取得敏感的商業資料，甚至監控一般民眾、竊取科技機密。國際特赦組織香港研究員倪偉平說：「中國當局誠然負有保護人民，使其免於遭到暴力攻擊的責任。然而這項法律將對人權產生負面衝擊。」

使用加密科技的大型企業尤其擔心。資訊界憂心，臉書、谷歌、蘋果、思科、IBM等業者將面臨營運規範。美方早在中方3月提出草案時，即表達不滿的立場。

部分外國企業團體今年元月即曾致函大陸國家主席習近平，表達它們對大陸網路政策的集體焦慮，其中包括反恐法草案。歐巴馬3月初接受訪問時，對該草案與其他類似措施表達批評之意。他說，該法將迫使「包括美國企業在內的所有外國企業隨時向中國當局交出相關數據，使其得據以窺探並監控這些服務的使用者。科技公司不可能願意配合。」

然而巴黎恐攻與與加州槍擊案後，美國也面臨要求電信業者，針對反恐提供用戶資訊的壓力。蘋果公司執行長庫克說，除非明確涉及恐怖活動，蘋果公司不會交出解密資訊，因為這屬於使用者的隱私。

新華社指出，美方對大陸反恐法的批評是它在因應恐怖問題時，採用雙重標準的另一明證。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/28/world/asia/china-passes-antiterrorism-law-that-critics-fear-may-overreach.html

紐約時報中文版翻譯：
http://cn.nytimes.com/china/20151228/c28china/zh-hant/

2015-12-28．聯合晚報．A6．國際焦點．編譯陳世欽