Overview
Bloomberg BNA quoted Stewart Baker in a November 5 article titled “TPP Countries Can’t Insist on Software Code Disclosure.” The article discusses the Trans-Pacific Partnership’s electronic commerce chapter, which prohibits participating countries from conditioning imports of software, or products containing software, on revealing the software’s code to the importing country’s government. According to the article, the provision excludes software used for critical infrastructure and commercially negotiated provisions of source code, and allows countries to require modifications to source code to comply with local law.
Mr. Baker says he expects the source code sharing provision to be controversial. “Obviously big mass-market software companies in the US want to avoid sharing their source code, and US users don’t really want other governments to have insights into the programs they use. But from the US national interest perspective, over the long haul, we may greatly regret adopting such a principle,” he says.
Mr. Baker tells Bloomberg BNA the encryption provisions cement Silicon Valley’s position on encryption into international treaty law. “If [Federal Bureau of Investigations director] Jim Comey wins his argument in a couple of years, and Congress wants to require some form of access to strong cryptography, it won’t be able to do so. That decision will have been made by the United States Trade Representative and his counterparts in other countries, and it can’t be changed without making trade concessions to those countries,” Mr. Baker says.
The full article can be read at Bloomberg BNA.
