Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
China

New Chinese Rule Requires Government Approval Before Companies Can Transfer Important Data Abroad (ap.org) 53

The Associated Press reports: Companies in China would need government approval to transfer important data abroad under proposed rules announced Friday that would tighten Beijing's control over information and might disrupt operations for international corporations...

President Xi Jinping's government sees information about China's 1.4 billion people as a potential security risk in private hands. It has issued a flurry of rules tightening control over how companies gather and handle information... Companies that want to transfer important data abroad would have to report on how much and what type of information is involved and security measures, according to the CAC. Regulators would decide within a week whether to accept that or conduct their own review, which could last up to 60 days. The rules would apply to transfers that involve "sensitive personal information" of at least 10,000 people or any company that handles information on more than 1 million people...

Rules imposed earlier prohibit companies from storing information about Chinese citizens abroad. That prompted complaints that global companies are put at a disadvantage because they can't combine information from China with other countries, while Chinese competitors can collect all their data at their headquarters...

Unlike data protection laws in Western countries, the Chinese rules say nothing about limiting government or ruling Communist Party access to personal information.

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

New Chinese Rule Requires Government Approval Before Companies Can Transfer Important Data Abroad

Comments Filter:
  • by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 01, 2021 @02:43AM (#61946347)
    Too many greedy service providers and corporations siphoning up all our data so that they can make a quick buck with advertisers. If every country had such rules at least they could only sell to local advertisers.
    • by Valgrus Thunderaxe ( 8769977 ) on Monday November 01, 2021 @02:56AM (#61946361)
      How about not selling (or giving) *anyone's* personal information to any advertiser. Advertising in any form has no value to me, whatsoever.
      • Agreed, however this is more about storing personal data on remote datacenters. This would force Google/facebook/etc (Actually I have no idea which social networks actually are allowed to run in china, china being china and all) to store their customers data in local datacenters.

        Its actually not uncommon. When I was last working government, we couldnt move data onto AWS in the US because of privacy laws, but we where allowed to use the Sydney datacenter. More expensive (at the time, no idea now), but had th

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        China is proposing to have some rules about that too. Advertisers will have a lot of restrictions placed on the data they can gather and use, and citizens will have the right to inspect it.

        Most importantly people will have the right to see why algorithms are making decisions about them, and to opt out. So for example they will be able to see why a social media site chose certain posts for their timeline, or certain ads. They will be able to opt out of personalization and just have the generic feed too.

        In so

      • Agreed about the PI part. Completely.

        However, I think you are fooling yourself if you think that advertising doesn't provide value for you. The ads themselves may not, but without the money from it a lot of services would not be available, or have to be paid for.

        I'm not saying that killing the ad industry would necessarily be a bad thing, but if you have ever gotten value from watching a clip on youtube or reading on slashdot, it has had value to you. Be careful what you wish for - you just might get it.

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
          • Some ads even spread malware.

            I think we need to go back to non interactive ads. Non animated banners, or maybe highlighted products inside an article or on a side box. Not every advertisement has to be a presentation or a mini game.

        • by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Monday November 01, 2021 @08:55AM (#61946923)

          There is a degree of Hypocrisy or at least naivete with a lot of people on the Internet.
          I want to use this Site, as said site has some value to me.
          However.
          I don't want Ad's
          I don't want a Pay Wall
          I don't want to pay a subscription
          I don't want to pay for a view.
          I do want all its staff to be well compensated and treated fairly
          I do want it infrastructure to stay current and up to speed
          I do want it to be secure and reliable
          I do want it to grow and have more people using it.

          I think a lot of issue, is because how the Internet has messed up the simple idea of Supply and Demand. If you have an Internet Information Service, your supply can always meet the demand, it has a very elastic supply curve, however your fixed costs and costs for growth (due to needing less elastic labor and materials to operate) means you need to price higher than the natural price, often creating an artificial shortage. Because of this we feel like we are always getting scammed.

          • Hey, the industry has taught us that our information has no value and that we should hand it out for free, so why do you now expect us to think that your information has any value?

            • so why do you now expect us to think that your information has any value?

              They have the receipts. They know exactly how much value the info has. So.. Give us a piece of the action, say, 50%

        • by thomn8r ( 635504 )

          However, I think you are fooling yourself if you think that advertising doesn't provide value for you. The ads themselves may not, but without the money from it a lot of services would not be available, or have to be paid for.

          If you are not paying for a service, you are the product, and in most cases you could probably live without that service.

      • Advertising in any form has no value to me, whatsoever.

        Same. DIfference between us is that I really don't care about advertising - no, it doesn't bother me that someone wants to advertise to me. Seeing advertising (even targetted ads) doesn't fill me with an uncontrollable desire to buy, Buy, BUY!!!.

        Which is why I'm utterly indifferent to the possibility that ads might be targetted to me....

        • by pacinpm ( 631330 )

          Ads are not to force you to buy but to force you to choose a product you know next time you need a new car/lawnmower/toothpaste.

          People (yes, you too) tend to choose known brands more often than unknown ones. Even if they know nothing about quality of the product.

      • I agree that selling personal information for targeted advertisements should be stopped, as we have learned it has became greatly abused, and used beyond trying to sell us products but to spread misinformation, or get us all angry and up in arms, about every little political or seemingly political thing that goes on.
        However "Advertising in any form has no value to me, whatsoever." Is not actually a correct statement. If we don't advertise than any of our advancements will not get any attention.

        The unfortun

      • by HiThere ( 15173 )

        That's actually not true. There really is "valuable informative advertising". Or at least there was, it may have becom extinct.

        But if I'm looking for a "dolilly that flangs the pollunts", I need to be able to find who is selling the thing. This would require advertising in the sense that the companies that sell it would need to put up a web page so that I could search for it. Like stores that post signs saying "We've got fresh peaches for sale today". It's advertising, but of a rather subdued style.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Advertising in any form has no value to me

        What makes you think any part of selling information to advertisers is about you? No one cares about you. You're nothing more than a supply of raw materials (information) exchanged for money.

        I'm curious as to what you woul... *Please subscribe to Slashdot Premium to see the rest of this comment.*

    • by Lonewolf666 ( 259450 ) on Monday November 01, 2021 @04:29AM (#61946435)

      The EU is doing that, the GDPR has a lot of similarity to the new Chinese regulations.
      In not quite related news, China is also starting to crack down on the culture of extreme overtime in industry.

      Overall China seems to develop some degree of care for its population. What remains abysmal is their stance on freedom of speech.

      • Well, not just freedom of speech. Freedom of thought. Cultural freedom. Oh, and then there are the slave camps and the genocides. Other than that, yeah, a lot of similarity with the West and caring for the population.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • China gives no fucks about people or their rights. They care about the bottom line. They are still convicting people of bogus crimes and breaking them up for parts, they don't give one shit about any person who isn't important to the established order somehow.

        • Does any government give a single fuck about their people's rights? Every politician is out there telling us how china's social credit system is the work of satan himself, but you and I both know that it's a governments wet dream to have something like that for their people.

          Truth is, China saw the writing on the wall. A country is STILL the sum of its people. If your people are overworked, constantly fighting poverty and have to take life-long loans just to educate themselves... you're not going far. The US

          • Does any government give a single fuck about their people's rights?

            Now THERE is the real question and objection. And my answer is yes, some give a single fuck. A few even give two fucks, although I do not place the USA among them.

            Every politician is out there telling us how china's social credit system is the work of satan himself, but you and I both know that it's a governments wet dream to have something like that for their people.

            Oh yes, I certainly do know that. And in fact we do have something like that in western countries, with the credit rating system. Under capitalism, it's the only measurement that really matters.

            Truth is, China saw the writing on the wall. A country is STILL the sum of its people.

            Oh no, it certainly is not. Some people are marginalized, while other people's impact is magnified. You cannot perform a simple sum and come up with an acc

        • Damn stright, we're better than that! We don't reuse the organs of the people we lock up for bogus crimes.

        • It may actually be about the bottom line, but still help the workers. Because for exacting work, more than 40 hours/week tend to be counterproductive in the long run. So the 9 hours/day for 6 days a week often found in Chinese industry might actually hurt the companies.
          A ban on that practice would improve overall productivity and also let the employees have some more recreation time. It would also show that sometimes even an authoritarian government can do a better job than the current management.

      • by gtall ( 79522 ) on Monday November 01, 2021 @07:12AM (#61946669)

        If by China you mean the CCP, since they are the only ones calling the shots over there. They don't give a flying rat's ass about the people except to the extent the CCP members need to be supported financially. They also don't care about the Uyghurs or the Tibetans or residents of Hong Kong or the Taiwanese except to hope they all die so the CCP can pick over their carcasses. The CCP is nothing more than a giant parasite on the Chinese.

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        China seems to be viewing Europe as something of a model for their development. Capitalist, but with strong socialist policies like maximum hours worked, minimum wages, and control of your own data.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Yep, one good way to fight back would be to dismantle surveillance capitalism in the West so that China doesn't have a relative advantage :-)

    • Yep, me too. Sounds perfectly reasonable to me for a long list of reasons that I can't be arsed to type out. It's just better for everyone if we limit what advertising agencies & foreign spy agencies can have access to our personal information, routines, habits, etc..
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Every day I see yet another reason China is superior and why the collapse of America into a civil war stricken smoldering 3rd world shithole as eminent and unavoidable. America no longer innovates, it litigates. And for far too long DC has turned their back on the protections for the working class consumer and instead colluded with Wall Street to drive the American working class into poverty. The only outcome for capitalism in the US is slavery â" by the 2040s the average American will be faced with th
  • by dwater ( 72834 )

    Finally, a government with some sense.

  • They should implement some kind of barrier to control international data transfer. Words escape me right now, but I'm picturing some kind of extraordinary flaming-fence type networking apparatus.

  • Unlike data protection laws in Western countries, the Chinese rules say nothing about limiting government or ruling Communist Party access to personal information.

    In the West government just ignores those rules, in China they don't even bother to pretend.

  • The US will not allow important data out either. We simply have a higher standard of what important data is - such as things declared to be top secret.

    The Chinese government however is foolish enough to think that embarrassing facts are 'important'. Basically, they are the poor family that is treating the ketchup packets they took from a restaurant as if it were their prized possession, because they can't afford bottled ketchup.

  • My Slashdot and other ads today: business-to-business crud, a picture of a cat lounging in someone's pants while they are pulled down for the toilet, 3 liter stainless steel mesh cold brew coffee filter bucket, an optical physics book that I browsed recently on Amazon, expensive hair care product apparently for Black women, marine towing service. The intelligence agency employment ads have disappeared, so I am probably also now on the no-fly list. Awaiting algorithm explanation and CGPDR pop-ups in Chines
  • But it won't because tech companies have to much money not to make the decisions.
  • We have a trade war with China, started by Putin.
    We have GOP Russian supporters arguing against the validity of the 2020 election, while obstructing justice on any investigation into the Trump-Putin terrorist attack on the 2016 election.

"Gotcha, you snot-necked weenies!" -- Post Bros. Comics

Working...