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Australian Gov't Bans Huawei From National Network Bids
An anonymous reader writes "It looks like paranoia regarding Chinese cyber-espionage is riding sky-high within the Australian Government. It was confirmed today that the country's Attorney-General's Department had banned Chinese networking vendor Huawei (the number two telco networking equipment vendor globally) from bidding for work supplying equipment to the government's $50 billion National Broadband Network universal fibre project. The unprecedented move comes despite Huawei offering to share its source code with security officials, and despite Huawei not being accused of breaking any laws in Australia. Questions over the legality of the Government's move are already being raised."
Surely some capitalist ideologue must be spinning in his grave...hey, I bet that could be harnessed to drive a generator.
He won't mind, it's a free market solution!
I think Huawei was also left out of consideration when AT&T and Verizon were looking to build more LTE towers in the US. Or was that the federal government didn't want their equipment out of this fear?
Would love if someone clarified this.
National security is a serious issue. I can't see any reason to expose our national information infrastructure to a foriegn owed company ... no matter where they're from.
Don't they mean Nortel's source code?
Women are like electronics: you don't know how damaged they are until you try to turn them on.
Cisco alleged Huawei stole their tech, but had to drop the suit after the chinese gov't made it uncomfortable for Cisco.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/01/24/cisco_sues_huawei_over_ip/
Huawei is an arm of the Chinese government. Officially and in practice. There are members of the Chinese Communist Party permanently assigned to it who monitor correctness and suggest policy (under pain of death). They will spy and steal tech if the Party thinks it's useful. That's just how they roll.
The only real question is whether anyone gives a damn what's going over Australia's National Broadband Network. If not, then Huawei may be cheaper.
Huawei already supplies 3G USB dongles, cheap android phones and tablets to the Aussie consumer. If that's the case, isn't the Chinese govt already harvesting data from our private citizens? Hmmm, paranoia much?
Conroy might partner with the Chinese on his great firewall of Australia - apparently they have expertise in such matters. ;-)
Also, their equipment sucks walrus balls. I've had the dubious joy of using some of their shitty switches and routers as a luser in Eastern Europe, where they are the king of supply for virtually every ISP, and I've never had as much trouble. No, most of the time it wasn't due to misconfiguration.
I just bet that Huawei networking has really neat built in ways to censor all sorts of content from pirated stuff, child porn, maybe even (gasp!) political comments. So maybe our (Oz) government really isn't interested in censorship?
Nah. On second thoughts, they were just too dumb to notice the opportunity.
See here and here.
But the Cisco incident is relevant too.
They will spy and steal tech if the Party thinks it's useful. That's just how they roll.
Any company or government will spy and steal if they think (reward > (risk * fine)). The way to deal with this is to require the source code to be inspected and encrypt anything important because you never know who is listening along the fiber (in fact, even if you own the ISP and the fiber there still could be someone listening on your traffic, so encrypt it anyhow).
I'd say the gov't is a bit late in acting...
Lots of Huawei mobile Internet products are already in use across AU.
Questions over the legality of the Government's move are already being raised.
...by people who support Huawei, most likely. Unfortunately for Huawei's defenders in Australia (and outside of Australia as evidenced by those), it puts them in the open as standing against their own country and having a greater allegiance for the PRC.
Stand strong Australia, and resist the urge to bend to the will of China. They will do everything to get you to back down - stop only when they give up and lose face.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
This is true - we know AT&T forwards all your packets to the NSA, pissing itself with its eagerness to do so, and the other ISPs probably do so as well.
In theory you should encrypt everything strongly. But in practice, people overwhelmingly just don't do that.
So this is the Australian government, who we know wants to inspect every single packet sent in Australia (since they've said so), deciding they want to limit it to companies under their thumb instead of under China's thumb.
The current Australian government has been making increasingly bizarre decisions, many of which will clearly will be to the detriment of Australian citizens. It's very likely this decision to ban a specific vendor, along with many other recent government mandates are at the behest of their puppet masters.
“Four Corners” itself noted that the key Labor coup plotters, as revealed in WikiLeaks cables, had long been secretly informing Washington about the internal workings of the Labor government. The same cables make clear that the Obama administration was disenchanted with Rudd over a range of issues, especially his attempts to moderate rising tensions between the US and China. Gillard, on the other hand, was viewed in positive terms as someone who could be counted on to toe Washington’s line.
http://indymedia.org.au/2012/02/22/the-role-of-the-us-in-the-leadership-crisis-in-the-alp
http://pirateparty.org.au/2012/03/22/pirate-party-disgusted-by-rampant-government-secrecy/
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Who needs to be paranoid when companies whos bottom line is to send out work to a low wage paying country so they can turn maddive profits at the expense of national security?
Cisco doesn't seem to care so why should any other company?
If you think for one moment that the Chinese governement doesn't have spies working in those factories and making coppies of every single chip and installing doomsday chips in those electronics you are very naive.
Having a copy of the source provides only minimal protection. See for example the Underhanded C Code Contest.
It would be an almost trivial exercise to introduce a vulnerability into a code base that wouldn't be picked up easily by either human or mechanical inspection. Even if such a vulnerability was detected, the vendor could simply claim that it was a coding error, fix it, and get away with it unpunished. By adding a few dozen such vulnerabilities, the vendor could play this game for years without anyone ever being able to prove wrongdoing.
There's no hope of isolating the equipment or software from the Internet either, because the use-case here is a National Broadband Network, the whole point of which is to create a new public Internet backbone.
That's a classic case of the 'Better safe than sorry' principle. They're just being prudent. Why take on risks when you can avoid it? It's really the same thing as an employer refusing to hire someone with a criminal record.
Looser in eastern Europe like me use locally-branded ZTE clone (provided for free from ISP) at last mile. ./ article about Indian govt strictly prohibited HUAWEI equipment in government network.
HUAWEI ships DSLAM and backbone equipment for national telecom.
I recall
Russian network expert (i personally met) consider Indian govt move as right-one.
G'day Clive, you fat bastard! How are your "Greens are a CIA plot" claims working out for you? Don't worry - we know what "China First" really means - but we won't tell anyone. *snort*
I see your problem.
Oh please. This is /doctrine/. Every company in China which employs more than three party members has a party office on site ( https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2012/03/23/which-way-for-china-part-two/ ). They don't make a secret of this - it's out in the open because you are officially still a communist country and companies are just... convenient and highly profitable: http://www.economist.com/node/21543575
So don't give me any weasel shit on this, when even your own government still champions it internally.
Source code is useless unless you also build and flash it yourself. Otherwise they can trivially give you one source base to review while they install something quite different in the hardware they ship you. Clearly the vendor has to deal with building, flashing, and support. They know the hardware, have the development resources, QA, etc. If they can't be trusted then they're not a viable equipment source.
G'day Clive, you fat bastard! How are your "Greens are a CIA plot" claims working out for you?
Clive's clearly a loon, but he's just a symptom of the problem.
Check each of the links below and ask yourself "Would this be happening in a country where the actions of the government are in the best interests of its people".
Let me know your answer. I'll be interested.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-03-21/australians-pay-highest-power-prices-says-study/3904024
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2012/s3460798.htm
http://www.crikey.com.au/2012/03/21/official-australia-the-best-place-for-miners-in-the-world-again/
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/billionaires-grow-fat-off-lazy-government-20120321-1vij7.html
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
No doubt you will feel cheated if Australia doesn't receive all the benefits of Chinese attention that the United States has received.
FBI cracks down on China's elusive army of amateur spies
The FBI estimates that more than 3,000 "front companies" have been established by Chinese nationals in the US specifically to purloin military and economic secrets illegally.
Let Me Count The Ways China Is Stealing Our Secrets
China: Suspected Acquisition of U.S. Nuclear Weapon Secrets
This CRS Report discusses China’s suspected acquisition of U.S. nuclear weapon secrets, including that on the W88, the newest U.S. nuclear warhead.
China's Secret War
Of course, why worry?
China warns Australia against military pact with US
Aussies fear threat of war with China
>toe Washington's line
Bless you for getting this phrase right. I was afraid everyone forever was going to write "tow the line", which doesn't even make sense.
I distinctly remember the previous Prime Minister Kevin Rudd declaring loudly that he was going to push through a Supertax of about 30% on mining. Next thing we knew there were rumbles and he was ousted very quickly. I personally suspected it was the big mining corporations that lent on the government. Just my two cents.
US makers are no less entrenched into US government and government in them. The only difference is xenophobia.
Learn to love Alaska
So just forget we sold a large, critical chunk of the Telstra to China, and pretend that any company that does tender won't have Chinese ownership.
Not to worry - the ONA is monitoring what China monitors, with the additional benefit that JIO doesn't have to do it because then JIO would be monitoring rather than, um, who was it JIO does the go-for-ing for again? (sigh)
No doubt you will feel cheated if Australia doesn't receive all the benefits of Chinese attention that the United States has received.
We're already receiving that same kind of attention from the USA, to the extent that they're choosing our political leadership for us.
America, China, neither have real Australians interests in mind, so what does it matter who's meddling most?
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
why waste billions in buying routers, start and grow your own industry, give grants to local companys to make routers.
Oh Australia is lazy, it rather spend $2b on USA routers, than spend $1b making its own.
Its not like its hard to make your own stuff, give lots of $$.
Just dont use 90% outsourced coders from agencies , hire them fulltime.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
WTO are not the king pheroh dictator of EARTH.
They can go screw them selves.
I mean, why would Iran trust an Israeli company to run their computer control systems for their Nuke plants?
Or would Israel trust an outsourced Muslim corporation from Dubai to run their water infrastructure?
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Oh please. This is /doctrine/. Every company in China which employs more than three party members has a party office on site
economist.com says 13% of companies have relationships with the Party. It is not every company. I checked Huawei's background and here is the article that says there is no government involvement - no party in Huawei
What's more, China has just forced lawyers to swear allegiance to the Communist Party.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-17470818
That's not just massively distasteful in regards to activists and regular people, that has enormous implications for doing business in China.
Business means contracts, and contracts means contract lawyers. Making lawyers hold allegiance to the Party and not the rule of law is a major spoke in the wheel of doing business with China. Australia has already found the current system is pretty shaky with the Rio Tinto "spy" debacle. That's enough to make Huawei unattractive, but with the business environment actually getting worse, forget it -- not interested at all.
The reason that india, Oz and the US blocked using chinese core networking equipment is because that don't have access to the firmware or can check that what they are told is the firware really is what is burned into the hardware.
Also they can have other dedicated stuff in the hardware that n one would know about.
so they worry that their core networks can be hacked by the chinese government.
this is why they are banned.
this is NOT a solution though. We have to leanr to co-operate.
The ONLY way that these types of crazy situation can be fixed is by social and democratic change world wide
G
The Red Chinese are culturally compelled to lie compulsively and steal anything that isn't nailed down. They hate us white devils like poison, and will do anything to get one over us.
They had MALWARE running on the personal PCs of Australias senior political leadership, for crying out loud!
Huawei is a defacto branch of the Chinese military. The Chinese CANNOT be trusted. Full stop.
So... the governments bad because there are 3 rich people and our transmission lines are being upgraded ?
"The price increases have many drivers, the biggest of which to date have been the massive investment in transmission and distribution networks and movements in the wholesale markets driven by drought and the mining boom. The increased network investment is driven by general demand growth, surging peak demand, higher reliability standards and ageing legacy networks." - http://www.jtsolar.com.au/news/why_electricity_is_so_expensive.html
Hey, but dont let the truth and objectivity get in the way of a crazy anti-government rant.
I haven't checked your other links - but I'm too lazy to
And you're also too lazy to read the white paper in the link, which clearly shows your regurgitation of the government argument is spurious. Other places with similar infrastructure needs have much lower prices e.g.
"Its research shows that Texas, which has comparable high-peak demand, is among the lowest in the world in terms of cost."
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Huawei is an arm of the Chinese government. Officially and in practice. There are members of the Chinese Communist Party permanently assigned to it who monitor correctness and suggest policy (under pain of death). They will spy and steal tech if the Party thinks it's useful. That's just how they roll.
Citation needed. This isn't North Korea. Huawei's (and for that matter the party's) primary concern is making money, and I doubt this cloak-and-dagger stuff is a good way to accomplish that.
China is what happens when technocrats come to power in a largely illiterate country. Call it any ism you like, but it can be reduced to "democracy? Steam engines don't need democracy, and they work perfectly."
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
You seem confused about the facts. Some Australians may have given notice to US diplomats that this was happening, but that doesn't mean that the US decided who was going to be the Australian PM any more than you complaining to your neighbor about a bad boss at work makes the neighbor responsible when the boss gets fired.
It was Australians who made the choice, and Australians who voted on who would be the PM, not the US.
Australian coup: the rise and fall of Kevin Rudd
The boy-faced former diplomat was unceremoniously dumped by senior Labour Party power brokers after failing to secure a lift in the opinion polls and angering MPs by his refusal to consult on important policies.
Based on the content that is at the link, I think I might see where you are going wrong on this point:
. . . the recent Four Corners program has revealed further evidence that the U.S. Government had advance notice of the coup against Rudd. I highly recommend the following article and others on the World Socialist Website to get the real story about Australian politics - make no mistake there is far more than a clash of personalities going on in Canberra right now
Maybe these will help:
How to Kill Poverty
The Black Book of Communism - - - One of the reviews
Why Doesn't Communism Have as Bad a Name as Nazism?
The Road from 1989
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Ironically meaning that you could in fact care less. Yes, well done that poster. I'm sure we were all champing at the bit to recognise their rare and correct rendition of this phrase.
Assuming this statement is serious and not just a gripe:
Assuming this statement is a joke and not a profound display of ignorance:
While I agree that the US is not a perfect example of democracy, their system closely resembles Australia's.
Yes. Both are festering cesspools of corruption and fascism, from the top all the way to the bottom.
The US government, through the preamble of the constitution, has a social contract with the people to uphold the democratic philosophy.
LOL
Despite the corruption evident in both the major parties in the US, I think it would be a little fascist to call the US a plutocracy.
The only thing 'fascist' is our government. Clearly you have no idea what the word even means.
You really, really need to open your eyes. I am really shocked that in 2012, there are people out there who still believe as you do.
To some extent, every large telecomms provider is an arm of its national government... e.g. AT&T was part of the U.S. government's warrantless wiretapping program. and in return for cosying up to the government, AT&T gets billions a year in tax breaks.
The real question is whether or not Huawei equipment has backdoors that allow spying, and also whether equipment from other vendors has such backdoors. A vendor should not be disqualified based on vague speculation about what might be possible. There were allegations years ago that the U.S. had used backdoored Cisco equipment to spy on the European Union parliament internal network - should the E.U. have banned Cisco from competitive tenders based on these allegations alone? Should we trust, say, Ericsson switches, even though we know that they come preloaded with "lawful intercept" capability that has been abused in the past?
Huh? Didn't he (or you) mean North Korea? Isn't that the rocket the Japanese threaten they will shoot down?
Between the military presence that is on site (in addition to the Huawei executives), the constant building of offices of Huawei near Symantec offices (when that was an issue), the various attempts to get inside First World infrastructure (like those of US/Australia), and various other stuff that isn't known but is a threat, make Huawei a valid target for any country-level ban.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
When companies are required to be closely integrated with the government as they are with China, government involvement as claimed (and verified) cannot be escaped.
Doubt it all you want at your peril.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
A mining tax is totally logical, keep in mind you are robbing future generations to feed today's generation greed. Europe has limited primary resources not because they had few to start with but because they used the cheaply accessible and highly profitable ones up.
When it comes to essential infrastructure any sound sensible government should always, always drive local production. This establishes and maintains an essential infrastructure skills base and ensures local supplies. Where private industry does not fill that need, rather idiotically sticking ones head in the ground and pretending it's not working, government need to establish government industries to provide that localised manufacturing base for essential industries. Fuck corporate greed, Bugger psychopathic economics, shit on for profit lobbyists, this is about maintaining the essential core infrastructure elements of a country and minimising corruptive and destructive foreign debt.
Look at all the countries that were economic crippled for foreign supplied and foreign debt driven infrastructure elements. In fact that foreign driven infrastructure development was nothing more than blatant global economic slavery in order for foreign corporations to be able to strip countries of their resources.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
It was Australians who made the choice, and Australians who voted on who would be the PM, not the US.
Except that we don't vote for the P.M.
-- Braden's law of data: All data spends some of its lifetime in an excel spreadsheet.
Lets just ignore that Texas drills and refines it's own oil.
Also lets ignore that the biggest problem in the Eastern states is the deregulation of the power market which allowed profit centred private corporations to set prices, which was a state government decision, not federal.
Power, as do most utilities in Australia fall under the banner of state government.
Also the study was flawed, their 2011 data started in July 2011 seeing as it's not July 2012 yet, which means half of it was projected, not actual costs.
But lets not let the facts get in the way of an ill informed rant shall we.
Personally, I pay about $120 per quarter on average. Higher in the summer but lower in the winter (due to Air conditioner use). Instant Electric HW systems are a very, very easy way to burn money though.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Lets just ignore that Texas drills and refines it's own oil.
So does WA. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_industry_in_Western_Australia
Also lets ignore that the biggest problem in the Eastern states is the deregulation of the power market
Nope, not ignoring, I agree with you. Which is why it's so shocking to see other states like WA following the same broken path.
That was just one example of many. I'll reiterate: Australian governments, state and federal, are lazy.
Australia has only two major domestic airlines, two major supermarket chains, four major banks, etc, etc. Consequently we pay near-monopoly rents for everything and the highest power prices in the world. We're frittering away some of the greatest minerals booms in history and allowing billionaires to take it all offshore, all the while submitting to demands from Washington that are to the detriment of Australian citizens.
The only merit this Labor government can claim is that it's a long way better than the basket cases in opposition. Which is very sad for Australians.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
China doesn't need it. All they need is one example of the end product, and they can deduce the rest.
Learn to love Alaska
Except that we don't vote for the P.M.
Last I knew it was Australian MPs that voted from the PM, so yes, it is still Australians that vote for the PM. Or has that changed?
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Slight correction:
Except that we don't vote for the P.M.
Last I knew it was Australian MPs that voted for the PM, so yes, it is still Australians that vote for the PM. Or has that changed?
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell