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China Walks Out of Wireless LAN Security Talks
Ant writes "A CommsDesign article reports that China walked out of a wireless standards meeting this week, accusing the International Organization for Standardization of favoring the IEEE's 802.11i ANSI-certified wireless LAN security scheme over its own controverisal proposal, EE Times has learned.
The gambit came after China's Wireless Authentication and Privacy Infrastructure (WAPI) security scheme was withdrawn and placed on a slower track by the ISO." From the article: "China initially agreed last year to refrain from making its WAPI security scheme mandatory for wireless LAN equipment in China. It then approached ISO with a fast-track submission in an effort to make WAPI an international security standard."
Seriously. Does China have a valid complaint or not? No one knows yet. Until then, there's nothing to report.
Perhaps China (or at least as personified by these officials) has forgotten where a lot of electronic equipment is manufactured.
Many of the chips in question are manufactured in Taiwan by TSMC. I guess some of them could be made in China at UMC.
Why not just take the new standard and profit on our willingness to buy their stuff, as usual?
Because chip manufacturers have no influence over the designers of Wi-Fi chips, which are mostly American companies (Atheros, Broadcom, Marvell, Intel, etc.). So it's not really their stuff.
they are growing... which is great for a communist country to do... if im not mistaken other than cold war russia and germany... they would probably be the first sucessful communist government to succeed in producing a government with a stable economy. its true that textiles are comming from china ( which by the way has closed a lot of factories here in columbus, ga and lost many people there jobs..but thats another story) but its hard to push your standard if the rest of the world is not using it. they could push all day long ...other companies will go with the flow and follow ISO standards ( big companies like Cisco/Linksys and others) it would make sense for China to discuss why they feel their standard is better instead of stroming out... you cant act like the 800 lbs gorrilla until you weigh 800 lbs? but you bring alot of good points to the table
Good Karma, Bad Karma, doesnt matter to me... I'm still going to say whats on my mind!
It seems that China wants to capitalize on the fact that they are considered a big potential market by the West. If they are insignificant, who would care if they want to use WAPI? It is greed by Western companies that have allowed China to do this--"hey, if I don't give in, some other company will and I cannot afford to lose potential market share in a country like China". The fact that they went to the ISO to give WAPI a fast-track course on standardization says out loud that as soon as WAPI is standardized, China will require WAPI.
You overlook the fact that if China meddles in international business to the degree of requiring them by fiat to adopt something, the likely result is a lot of companies deciding that maybe Thailand of Vietnam don't look so bad after all.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
"All right, but apart from sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?"
That's deliberate. As is the ignorance surrounding the middle east. It's much easier to hate if you don't realise that the people over there are just like you.
Tonights homework is Duck and Cover : An effective safety zone for your children during global nuclear warfare, or a tool for instilling fear and hate at a young age?
No matter where you are from, your country will have a pro bias to some countries, and an anti against others. The US seems to be anti almost everyone except a few select nations, and even then all they can do is make (badly informed) jokes about our teeth. ;-)
There is no Global body that makes laws!
There is no international legislature (the UN ain't it), there is no international monarch. They are the two groups that make laws. When there is a 1:1 correlation between cause & effect, if you don't have the cause (international legislature) you can't have the effect (international law).
So despite the lies that a bandied about, international law doesn't exist.
What people often mean when they say "international law" is "treaties," but they usually have some agenda they are hiding behind and intentionally misleading you. I assume that since God is dead and humans can no longer appeal to the moral authority of God that they feel the need to appeal the moral authority of some other fictitious being. In this case, international law (aka global standards).
Now on to treaties.
Treaties are just agreements between governments to enact laws. They aren't law by themselves. The US Constitution gives the President the authority to make treaties, but Congress gets to ratify and then make laws based upon them.
So, the US & AU make a treaty to do W, X & Y
When it gets run through the AU Parliament they don't like W. So they pass a law that allows for V, X & Y. That law is only enforceable in AU. It is an imperfect implementation of the treaty, but an implementation nonetheless. It is like a standard that is implemented but not fully.
Same thing happens in the US Congress. But they pass law with X, Y & Z.
Now you have 2 national laws. A AU law. A US law. You don't have an international law. Why? No international legislature remember.
You can sue in AU under the AU law, but not the US law. So in AU you are entitled to V, X & Y.
You can sue in US under the US law, but not the AU law. So in US you are entitled to Z, X & Y.
No where can you sue under the treaty. You never are entitled to W. Because te treaty (which entitled you to W) isn't a law, just an agreement to make a law.
You can't sue in NZ under either the AU or US laws. Because NZ, has neither of these laws and their courts don't care about US or AU laws.
Now we mis-use the term "treaty" to refer to both the AU & US laws collectively, but neither of them is really the treaty as negotiated by the PM/President.
Hey what about these international courts?
Well, they are really arbitration bodies.
They have no legal power beyond what the individual nations give them.
The UK may pass a law giving ICC judgments full effect, but that is due to the UK ceding sovereignty to the ICC, not because the ICC is inherently morally superior or because of some international law (which doesn't exist remember).
Now the US doesn't agree to cede its sovereignty to the ICC. So the ICC has no effect in the US.
Why no power beyond what the individual nations give them?
It comes down to a concept called jurisdiction.
See, ultimately might does make right. Not moral correctness, but the right to do something is ultimately based upon your ability to enforce that right.
To enforce a court order to, for example, the ability to forcibly imprison someone, take their personal and real property from them, you need an army and a police system. Nations have these things. NGO bodies don't. Even the UN has no standing military. It relies on borrowing the military of its member nations.
If the ICC has a judgement it wants enforced in the UK, it needs to get the approval of the UK government to use the UK police force to do that. Alone, the ICC is impotent.
Ultimately, every country acts unilaterally. Every country implements their own version of treaties. Every country decides whether or not to cede sovereignty to an international arbitration board.