Lenovo Under U.S. Probe for Spying

BigControversy writes "The DailyTech has a report indicating that Lenovo, the giant Chinese PC manufacturer, is under a probe by the U.S.-China Economic Security Review Commission (USCC) for possible bugging. Apparently, the government has ordered 16,000 PCs from Lenovo but is now requesting that Lenovo be investigated by intelligence agencies. The fear is of foreign intelligence applying pressure to Lenovo to equip its PCs so that the U.S. can be spied on." From the article: "Despite the probe, Lenovo says that its international business, especially those that deal with the US, follow strictly laid out government regulations and rules. Lenovo also claims that even after purchasing IBM's PC division, its international business has not been affected negatively. Interestingly, in an interview with the BBC, Lenovo mentioned that an open investigation or probe may negatively affect the way that the company deals with future government contracts or bids." There just has to be better uses of our intelligence community's time.

Comments

Re:Disagree on the last comment

[Uber Banker]

Interesting point this. If these PCs were ordered from Dell which Levono purchased and which I'd reason was in part a basis for this deal, would an investigation have been ordered.

IMHO, it is good practice to have standing procedures to investigate all contracts/purchases, be them government, business or personal. And it would be extremely bad procedure for a foreign government to attempt such a poor spying procedure, but no harm in checking, which I doubt would be very hard.

But I think this is a very valid threat from a community like China who has been known to have spies in the US at all times. Well, the same is true of almost all countries I'm sure. And I'd also hazard a guess that social networking, for example having an operative in place for years only to pop in a USB key (or even manually scribe) and get what they want, is a much greater threat.

I would disagree with use use of 'threat from a community like China' in your statement: China is booming because of free trade, they have a declining population (young people, infact the population is projected to increase for a while as life expectancy from the incumbant increases), and virtually everything to lose from any kind of hostile activity - its not as if a communist ideal exists in China today to peddle to the rest of the world.

The story seems a bit of a non-entity. US government check out foreign contractor, probably a few man hours work. More important are the day-to-day checks. At least this doesn't seem to be a farce as the blocked Dubai-funded purchase of ports were.

Re:So let me get this straight..

[hcob$]

If you're looking for Blade Servers:

Diversified Technology, Inc. Everything is designed and manufactured in-house. They even do custom projects.

Re:MicroSoft

[dominator]

And Microsoft gave into the Chinese government's demands and released their source code so that it could be audited. This is just the cost of doing business with powerful governments with large budgets. Lenovo should, like Microsoft, suck it up, or lose the US government's business. Turnabout is fair play, after all...

You are dead wrong, Zonk

[analog_line]

This is exactly the kind of thing our intelligence communities should be getting involved in. First off, this kind of stunt would be the first thing our own intelligence agencies would try to do if the Chinese government were buying computers built by an American company on American soil. Some arm of the US intelligence community planted bugs in wine bottles and other amusing places near the UN ambassadors on the Security Council during the buildup to the Iraq War.

The Chinese practically wrote the book on espionage. For some interesting reading on the subject take a look at The Tao of Spycraft". Interesting, if extremely dry, reading if you're interested in the intelligence community. A very good look at the LONG history of intelligence practice that the Chinese government has to draw on. I got interested working in computer security when everyone else in my office was ex-mil intelligence.

And not being particularly antagonistic toward us doesn't mean anything. Back in 1999/2000, the general opinion by most of my co-workers who knew something about it was that France and Israel were the countries that were spying on us the most, with China coming in third. The only reason Britain wasn't number 1 on the list was "we already give them everything we know."

I wouldn't put it past us to try it on them, so it would be ridiculous to trust that they wouldn't try it to us too.

Re:You are dead wrong, Zonk

[Lawrence_Bird]

dude.. you really need to get a grip. You think the Chinese had no prior ability to do things like you suggest before they actually purchased the laptop biz? And the USCC is not the intel community:

Composition: The Commission is composed of 12 members, three of whom are selected by each of the Majority and Minority Leaders of the Senate, and the Speaker and the Minority Leader of the House. The Commissioners serve two-year terms.

I said many times during the DPW brooha that one cannot easily pick a point where things are 'secure' from foreign security risk. Don't want a foreign made pc? Then buy one from a US company that manufactures all the components in the US, assembles in the US and only employees US nationals. Good luck.

Re:Disagree on the last comment

[Frymaster]

Absolutely! This is what the counterintelligence agencies DO!

it is? it seems like mostly what the 'intelligence' community does in the united states these days is spy on unarmed, constitutionally-protected demonstrators. like these cases, for instance:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11751418/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2006/03/14/AR2006031401520_pf.html
http://www.dailytexanonline.com/media/paper410/new s/2006/03/24/TopStories/Students.Fbi.Lecture.Displ ays.Watch.List-1716066.shtml?norewrite200603281210 &sourcedomain=www.dailytexanonline.com
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/artic le_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001995631
http://www.upi.com/SecurityTerrorism/view.php?Stor yID=20060214-053955-9494r
http://www.tbo.com/news/metro/MGBTP976FJE.html

DOES NO ONE REMEMBER THIS SLASHDOT ARTICLE????

[slashnot007]

read this. it's about backdoors being put in the routers. this was in 2004. given modern virtualiztion technology and large chip real-estates, the idea of hiding a hardware backdoor into a cpu is not as difficult to imagine as it once was. But of course there's plenty of other places to put stuff that would be damaging. In the bios roms, in the wi-fi, in the grpahics cards and the USB controller chips. just imagine putting a key logger in every usb handler chip. Not to hard ot imagine is it.

Re:This is a good argument for open source hardwar

[theLOUDroom]

Such a policy would effectively prevent spying devices because many people would be able to examine the design.

Spying devices are not documented! When things like this are done, a select few people from a supplier are dragged aside to make a modified version of the product. Having access to the drawings for the original, unmodified product does nothing to prevent this.
The ONLY way to tell is to tear the actual product apart, having two vendors and lots of documentation does nothing to help with this.

Re:Disagree on the last comment

[Anonymous Bullard]

While I understand and in fact largely share your "anti-american" sentiment (any sane person is worried about the US government's evangelical neo-mccarthyism), you appear to go too far in your accommodation of China's totalitarian regime, as some people do when trying to find some counter-balance to the Bushites.

The US continues to trade with and indeed support many despotic regimes, but at least they nominally support change towards more democracy. China on the other hand *prefers* to deal with despotic rulers. For instance, China vetoed UN intervention in the Darfur genocide as they had lucrative oil and business deals with the military regime there.

The mad regime in North Korea only stays in power because Beijing finds it in their interests to prop it up for strategic reasons. Same with Burma.

Chinese state-owned military companies have certainly "disseminated" nuclear and missile technology to other despotic regimes to win influence there, with the "father" of Pakistan's nuclear programme proliferating Chinese and North Korean technology further yet. Not to the democratic India though, which China sees as a strategic competitor to be contained (thus Chinese support to both Pakistan and Burma, and the invasion and militarization of occupied Tibet).

While China isn't invading Middle Eastern states (yet?), it has *annexed* several neighboring states and peoples by military force (Tibetans, Uigurs and Mongols to name the most prominent ones). The expansionist policies of the most murderous dictator in human history, Mao Zedong, still persist and the dictator continues to be hailed as *the* national hero.

Living in China for a short period (probably in the more liberal Han-Chinese areas as well) and having some Chinese friends doesn't necessarily give one any knowledge or insights into the policies of the ruling regime there. I have closely followed the developments in China, both from inside and outside, since the 1980s, besides having familiarized myself with their contemporary and dynastic history, and still don't consider myself as an expert on China. The vast majority of Chinese, however, only get to "learn" what their regime wants them to believe and never get to understand China's foreign policy in other than glorious patriotic terms.