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Chinese Firm Helps Iran Spy On Citizens

Posted by timothy on from the they're-like-the-bluecoat-of-china dept.

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."

11 of 98 comments (clear)

  1. Terrible! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That's terrible they're taking marketshare from Cisco, Bluecoat and gang!

  2. Anything to make money. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?

    1. Re:Anything to make money. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Don't forget that USA still has the largest spying machines on earth, Echelon, Facebook and Google. Echelon is installed on major ISP's backbones and monitors the traffic of the whole world, while Google and Facebook collect as much information as possible about every human being on planet.

    2. Re:Anything to make money. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      And before that the US and UK Gov helped overthrow Iran's government and install the Shah. I won't be surprised if most Iranians are still aware of that event in their history.

      The Chinese are just selling to whoever wants to buy from them. If the Iranian people don't want their current government that's a different issue. The Chinese never claimed to be the good guys, nor do they go around telling others how to run their countries.

      Not long ago the Palestinians democratically elected their government. The US Gov didn't like the election results and promptly said so in public.

      So to me the USA has little credibility whenever they talk about what government the Iranians (or others) should have, and what the Iranians actually want. The USA has been overthrowing democracies for a long time.

    3. Re:Anything to make money. by miletus · · Score: 5, Insightful

      How dare the Iranian gov't of the 1950s try and nationalize the oil under their land that rightfully belonged to British Petroleum! Those evil people weren't respecting the rule of law, the same way Chinese people refused to respect the British right to sell them opium!

      Furthermore, we all know the great democracies of the USA and Britain never stole any land or resources from any other people (remember how the Cherokee left Georgia because they new the African slave volunteers needed a new home?), which of course grants them the right to intervene in other, inferior democracies.

      Thank god we have people like you to clarify our rights.

  3. Re:The real question is... by DigiShaman · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.
  4. Re:Only China and Iran? Business as usual. by starfishsystems · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.
  5. Re:An outrage by wmac1 · · Score: 5, Informative

    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).

  6. Re:oh crap... by game+kid · · Score: 5, Funny

    Patent suits!

    --
    You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
  7. Re:Holy God.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That's cute except its not true. You only THINK you have more influence in America but in reality you're just as fucked as them.

    What is/was your influence on SOPA? TSA? Patent laws? Weed? Death penalty? Stem cells? I see lots of talking and controversies with very little "deciding" and a lot of "here is what we have decided". Just because people didn't protest as much as they should about these issues doesn't mean its not worth protesting for.

  8. Off the top of my head? by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.