At China’s Internet Conference, a Darker Side of Tech Emerges
China’s tech industry is becoming more serious about grappling with its products’ unintended consequences — and about helping the government.
Discussions of technology’s promise were leavened with contemplation of its darker side effects, such as fraud and data breaches. A forum on protecting personal information featured representatives from China’s highest prosecutor and its powerful internet regulator. And several tech companies pledged their support for Beijing’s counterterrorism efforts, even as China faces international criticism for detaining and indoctrinating Muslims in the name of fighting terrorism in the western region of Xinjiang.
Emissaries from Silicon Valley were also in short supply. Last year, the speakers at Wuzhen included Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, as well as Sundar Pichai of Google. This year, the sole Western tech executive to give a keynote address was Steve Mollenkopf, the chief executive of the chip maker Qualcomm.
Among Chinese companies this week, private enterprises showed off the ways in which they increasingly support and work with the government, while state-backed companies demonstrated they were not doomed to be tech laggards.
Mr. Chen said Tencent reports illegal activity discovered on its platforms to the government, after which the authorities can request specific user information. Metadata describing when and where users logged into a Tencent app can be stored for up to six months, he said. But Mr. Chen denied that the company gave law enforcement officials a back door through which they could freely peruse chat records and user data.
“We only store the content that the law prescribes,” he said. “However long the law says to store it, that’s how long we store it. Whatever the law says to store, that’s what we store.”
See the full story here: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/08/technology/china-world-internet-conference.html