Shaked: We will fight with all of our might against attempted cyber attacks

China cyber chief: We remain open to world despite regulating foreign groups.

By YONAH JEREMY BOB
Updated: JUNE 20, 2016 23:59
Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked (photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM)
Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked
(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM)
Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked told an international cyber conference at Tel Aviv University on Monday that “we will fight with all of our might against every attempt to use cyber attacks against us.”
Returning to the world of computers where she worked before entering politics, Shaked stated that “democracies across the globe are struggling with hard questions regarding leading social media companies that make possible open discussions with no oversight.”
She said that “international law must find a way so that social media creativity does not encourage dangerous terrorist activities.”
The justice minister explained that Israel is not only a leader in the technological realm, but also in balancing a free society on the web with increasing oversight when it comes to terrorism, cybercrime, cyber bullying and pornography.
She pointed out that the Justice Ministry has already had a special new cyber division up and running for a year in order to properly address the full range of new cyber threats and problems.
Following Shaked’s speech, China Bureau of Cyber Security director-general Zhao Zeliang made his first-ever speech in English to deliver a reassuring message to the international community about cyber issues and doing business in China.
Despite recently passed laws which foreign groups have complained about as crunching them economically and pressuring them to transfer technology to China, Zeliang quoted Chinese President Xi Jinping that “opening up is a basic state policy of China and China will never close its open door to the outside world.”
On the one hand, the Chinese cyber chief stated that, as the Internet becomes “an indispensable component in people’s life and work,” China and other countries must have laws “in cyberspace so as to safeguard security and interests of nations, enterprises, individuals in cyberspace.”
This means that China wants cyber products from foreign companies to be “secure and controllable.”
The benefits of secure and controllable are to ensure that “no organization should exploit users’ dependence on products or services for unjust interests” by threatening to suspend technical support, said Zeliang.
Another benefit, he noted, is that Chinese users can make independent decisions about whether to allow their data to be accessed, modified or transferred At the same time, he said he recently reassured a Tel Aviv cyber business that foreign companies do not need to disclose their source codes to do business in China.
He added that China continues to “welcome Israeli enterprises and other countries’ companies to invest and do business in China.”
In contrast to Zeliang’s reassurances, an April law passed by China reportedly granted broad police authority to register and search the offices of foreign nonprofit groups, and foreign companies have claimed China does pressure them to transfer technical know-how as a cost of doing business.