May 24, 2016

The workforce is concerned about National security and hacking.

Wirth Consulting have reported that they are in receipt of a copy of a letter sent to President Obama by a group named “Lexmark International for Ethical Conduct”, requesting that the President blocks the planned acquisition of Lexmark International by Apex Technology. Citing U.S. national security as a concern, the group said that this would be compromised. The acquisition has to be approved by the U.S. Committee on Foreign Investment and has been but the group state that “The overall risk to (U.S.) national security is real, immeasurable and unpreventable unless the sale of Lexmark to a Chinese firm is disallowed.”

The letter is reported to be on behalf of 13,000 employees but is not signed by an individual. It requests the President to “intervene and block the sale of …Lexmark International to the Chinese firm Apex Technology…this sale should be disallowed due to extreme national security risks.” The letter also states that “unlike older analog copiers, because Lexmark copier/MFP/printers are “smart” digital copier/MFPs that are controlled by a PC operating system, they are vulnerable to hacking, noting, for instance, that they make a digital copy of every scanned document before printing it or transmitting it via fax or email; this stored information is vulnerable to being accessed by unauthorized user”.

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