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Chinese Firm Helps Iran Spy On Citizens
New submitter politkal excerpts from a report at Reuters: "A Chinese telecommunications equipment company has sold Iran's largest telecom firm a powerful surveillance system capable of monitoring landline, mobile and internet communications, interviews and contract documents show. The system was part of a 98.6 million euro ($130.6 million) contract for networking equipment supplied by Shenzhen, China-based ZTE Corp to the Telecommunication Co of Iran (TCI), according to the documents. Government-controlled TCI has a near monopoly on Iran's landline telephone services and much of Iran's internet traffic is required to flow through its network. ... Human rights groups say they have documented numerous cases in which the Iranian government tracked down and arrested critics by monitoring their telephone calls or internet activities. Iran this month set up a Supreme Council of Cyberspace, headed by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who said it would protect 'against internet evils,' according to Iranian state television."
That's terrible they're taking marketshare from Cisco, Bluecoat and gang!
Now the NSA is going to outsource to China too. What is left for the domestic high tech industry?
how about a headline like: "Israeli firm hels USA to spy on citizens" or "American firm helps Sweden to spy on citizens".. this is happening everywhere. Google "lawful intercept".
It's a well known fact that Chinese produce low-quality knock-offs that can't stand the test of time (or your pesky and stubborn dissidents).
I strongly suggest you procure top-quality American equipments - they let you go to eleven. Pay a little now and nail whole lot more pests in the long haul.
A long time ago, during the time of the Shah, the U.S. government helped sell weapons to Iran.
Then the U.S. government helped sell weapons to Iraq, to fight a war with Iran.
Now the Chinese are encouraging hostile behavior against the welfare of Iran. Will China become the new money-for-destructiveness king?
A XXX telecommunications equipment company has sold YYY's largest telecom firm a powerful surveillance system capable of monitoring landline, mobile and internet communications, interviews and contract documents show.
These days, it's surveillance systems, all the way down.
Everywhere.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Six years ago, I saw a ZTE branded IPTV router at a hotel in Shanghai. Cheap build quality on the plastics used, but it at least powered on and worked. Par for the course in China. Last year, I saw that the cheapest cellphone Verizon sold was by ZTE.
People buy cheap. It's how successfully companies generally start out by selling lower tiered products and eventually working their way up to high-end offerings. Watch for it! This company will be as huge as LG at their current rate.
Life is not for the lazy.
These days, it's surveillance systems, all the way down.
Too true. If you want to make network gear for the US market, for example, it must be capable of packet intercept per CALEA.
Parity: What to do when the weekend comes.
Do we really care about Iranian citizens???
US and Europe has put economic embargo on Iran which directly harms normal Iranian. 30 years of embargo on civil aviation, directly supporting Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Iraq_during_the_Iran%E2%80%93Iraq_war) , and now embargo on Iranian banks and swift banking communications have all been affecting normal Iranian citizens (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._sanctions_against_Iran).
In my mind I have an idea for someone's dystopian novel where a weak president comes into office of the USA. Then Iran finds a US citizen defaming something. Then the USA president extradites the citizen over. I guess it is bad enough they put a fatwa on a comedian. And police are fighting against peaceful protestors in the USA. Maybe I keep thinking of dystopian futures because it seems like things keep heading that way.
God spoke to me
Intel, AMD, Texas Instruments, Motorola, Analog Devices, Xilinx, Altera, IBM, nVidia, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Ratheon, General Dynamics, Microsoft, Google, Oracle, and Apple.
There's more, those are just the ones that readily come to mind. By extension this means every desktop processor, and nearly every computer processor period (Hitachi and ARM being the two exceptions), every FPGA, much of the world's small signal electronics (opamps, DACs, etc), one of three major airplane manufacturers, most of the world operating systems, and so on.
Sorry, but I get a little sick of this snark of "The US has no industry!" In fact the US has a massive amount of industrial. It's industrial output is second only to China, and then only recently. More, in terms of high tech the US has it in spades. Take Intel as an example. Far and away the processor found in most computers in the world, desktop and server. US headquartered, and massive US production facilities (of their 10 fabs 7 are in the US including the newest, 1 is in Ireland, 1 is Israel, and 1 in China). The only company in the world with a working 22nm node process online right now (everyone else is 32nm node or 28nm half node). None of this meantions their other areas (networking, storage, satellite, etc). Ya, just slightly high tech, slightly huge.
The US produces a LOT of things. If you don't know what the failing is yours, not the US's.
If governments can produce such powerful systems, as they claim, why cannot they do something as simple as stopping spam, which, by the way, really hurts economies.
My guess is that these systems suffer from the usual contracts' weaknesses: kickbacks, wow-presentations, bugs, etc.
I do not know about landlines, but regarding mobile, this technology is part of the 3GPP standard, and all operators in the free world have this equipment installed as well.
Without this monitoring Iranian children could be reading all sorts of evil perverted stuff on the internet. The Bible, the United nations declaration of human rights, or even the Bhagavad Gita.
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/11/04/1626247/iranian-police-tracking-dissidents-using-tech-from-western-companies Western companies have also sold domestic surveillance tech to Iran.
Have you listened to anything a state Attorney General with his eye on re-election(or better things) says about the internet when some 'cyber-bullying' case is in the media or somebody is shocked, shocked to discover that there may be prostitution on craigslist?
Never mind, of course, the actual fundamentalist dingbats, not just the cynical politicians.
Anonymous Coward is an unusually apt username today...
the uighurs, and a few other minor exceptions, yeah. the chinese communist party doesn't tell anyone what to do.
some people will complain, especially americans, who keep brining up this old 'korean war' thing, where chinese troops were killing UN troops who were trying to drive out a horrible dictator who murdered hundreds of thousands of people. but hey. there are whiners in every bunch.
The first set of employers is for Engineering Majors; the second set is for Liberal Arts Majors. Flame away Baristas, I have the karma to withstand it.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is usually crucified.
So, what your saying is that a site like Slashdot would result in a lot of people in trouble with the government? It's common for people to very extremely critical or their governments on this site. Then there is a difference between the West and China.
I'm sure people who kept their mouths shut were happier in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union too.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is usually crucified.
Warrantless snooping on the Internet
Whistle-Blower Outs NSA Spy Room
How else could they find, and execute (by painful suspension hanging) people for such crimes as: witchcraft, apostacy, homosexuality, blasphemy, and crimes against chastity?
What could we expect from a country where woman are being stoned to death for adultury?