A contract awarded to TransCore, a U.S. tolling company owned by Singapore Technologies Engineering (ST Engineering), is raising national security concerns due to its links to China, according to the New York Post, Hannity reports. The New Jersey Turnpike Authority awarded TransCore a $1.73 billion E-ZPass contract, $250 million higher than the bid from Conduent, Inc., the company that previously held the contract for 22 years.
Conduent is protesting the decision, citing ST Engineering’s parent company, Temasek Holdings, being wholly owned by the Singapore government with ties to China. They highlight that Fu Chengyu, a former chairman of Chinese state-owned oil companies and a member of the Chinese Communist Party, was a member of Temasek’s board of directors until recently.
Experts are concerned that sensitive data collected by TransCore, including addresses, credit card numbers, and license plate information, could be accessible to the Chinese government.
Former U.S. Senator Robert Torricelli called the situation “worse” than the threat posed by TikTok, arguing that the Chinese could monitor the transportation patterns of U.S. government officials and track sensitive cargo.
“I don’t really understand why this hasn’t gotten a lot, frankly, a lot more attention,” Torricelli told FOX Business. “I would rather the Chinese knew what I was watching on TikTok than have the Chinese monitoring my car going up and down the New Jersey Turnpike. I don’t really understand why people aren’t more upset about it.”
The New Jersey Turnpike Authority declined to comment on potential data security risks. TransCore’s CEO, Whitt Hall, stated that the company operates with transparency and has security measures in place to prevent foreign access to data. He claims that TransCore is compliant with data and cybersecurity requirements, and has a National Security Agreement with the U.S. Departments of Justice and Treasury that ensures private data is inaccessible by foreign entities. Torricelli believes TransCore deserves further scrutiny, however.
“If, indeed, we ever got to a point of high tension with the Chinese, they would be monitoring our most important internal transportation,” he told FOX Business. “It would be inconceivable that an American corporation would be allowed to have access to the internal travel of Chinese government officials and sensitive information and goods — inconceivable. I don’t blame the Chinese, they’re not at fault. It’s us.”
{Matzav.com}