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Chinese Media Calls For Boycott of Cisco
An anonymous reader writes "China's state-run media is calling on the country's wireless carriers to move away from Cisco products. According to reports, using Cisco products allows the U.S. to 'attack China almost at will,' and forms a 'terrible security threat.' Chinese officials are urging the companies' wireless carriers to switch to hardware made by Huawei and ZTE Corp. Citing cybersecurity concerns, the United States has banned the use of equipment from both Huawei and ZTE in its cellular networks. Cisco has not yet been named in documents describing the NSA's global wiretapping operations. Apple, a company named in leaked documents, has slashed iPhone production for the second half of this year on falling overseas sales."
Actually, this is just the pot calling one of the many kettles black. Huawei and ZTE allow this type of "access" as well, but it's just on behalf of the Chinese government rather than the US government.
There is a war. Huaewei is dragged through the mud by witless/gutless/dimwits in the US Congress. Turnabout is fair play.
The silly thing is, that all of the cell phones across the planets are like little location devices, revealing your location, your contacts, your texts, and your conversations.
Cisco is on the slide anyway, and this won't really have a dramatic effect on the US economy. The problem, you see, is that the warriors aren't making enough money right now, and with moderate Middle East peace, there's no good money to be made from that.
Trade war? Insignificant. Sorry. Just not gonna happen.
If the boycott of Cisco takes place then a trade war has begun. Cisco is one of the most important tech companies in the USA. What if they boycott Apple, Microsoft, and several others? I expect there will be a trade war as well as a cold war among hackers.
If you're being sarcastic, you're deluded. China improving it's defenses, even against the US is not your loss, and the US successfully spying on the Chinese is not necessarily to your benefit. It's only a problem for you if it becomes one-sided, which will take a lot more than Snowden's actions. Meanwhile, Snowden has brought to light the US government shitting on it's own constitution.
If that is a sincere thanks to Snowden, I agree.
And Cisco saved DS9 countless times.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
So the boycott surrounding Huawei is ok then? Who fired the first shot?
Cisco either stands on its own, or doesn't. If Cisco can't prove that it's not sending backdoor info to the NSA, then is China justified in its concern? Let the Chinese boycott whomever they want. There is no right to sell something anywhere. There is value or there is not.
The war with hackers has been going on for a decade. We do stuff (from the USA) and they do stuff (from mainland China). You're surprised?
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
The Chinese have successfully copied Cisco's HW so there's no reason to buy the genuine product.
Counterfeit Cisco equipment.
http://www.networkhardware.com/counterfeit-cisco-chat#.Ucmxi_m64zI
The idea really is that the counterfeits were finding their way into US Government via Authorized Cisco sellers buying up such devices from eBay.
The thing is, if it talks like a duck and walks like a duck, it's still a duck. If the hardware was working, just using cheaper chinese knockoff parts, the MTBF is likely a lot shorter.
But don't confuse counterfeit hardware, meant to look and act like the original, with aunthentic gear that's been refurbished and compromised in the process. Notice how malware gets onto storage devices (like digital picture frames) because somewhere along the production path, pirated software was used? This is the same principle in play.
The reason ZTE and Huawei aren't allowed to sell to US Government is because they (the US) can't wire-tap that gear. Likewise Cisco may have been complicit (or even forced at gunpoint for all we know) to allow wiretapping in their products. If those same products were sold to China, then it's equally likely the Chinese government can wiretap it as well if they figure out how the US does it.
But the point in all these Snowden related problems is that Cisco is going to suffer losses from this. Like the most "evil" companies in the US are the wireless carriers (Verizon, AT&T), Cisco (who provides them with hardware), Oracle (Databases), IBM and Microsoft. I wouldn't put it past any of these companies to be complicit with government requests to access or provide backdoors into their products.
More to the point, If you're fond of using cloud services (Gmail included) which the data is hosted in US data centers, guess what, the Patriot act says the US Government can access it all they damn well please.
It would be wonderful if some court found that the US can not spy on Americans or foreigners who's data is stored or transits in the US under the fourth amendment and to throw out the patriot act. But no, once the government takes rights away, it never gives them back.
You know, China, I have no issue with a sovereign nation looking to its own industry to provide the technologies it needs to defend itself from threats, whether they are of an analog or digital nature. You shouldn't depend on foreign suppliers for your defense, not only because they may be somehow compromised with unknown backdoors, but also because you have no control of the supply. So sure, drop Cisco; it's probably for the best.
But if you are considering Huawei switches and routers to provide you any sort of security, you may wish to rethink that particular course of action. The NSA doesn't /need/ to install backdoors when the software is vulnerable by default.
Cisco hardware may be compromised with backdoors, but at least they are /competently/ compromised...
It's not a capital offense to critique the government in china. Though sure, you might get locked away and all that stuff.
But at least they are openly authoritarian. Unlike the US where you are supposed to have all these right but in the end you can still be locked away and all that stuff for arbirary reasons. Or bombed by drones, or assassinated by the CIA.
When it comes to replicating that authentic 1984 feeling, the US is far in lead with the twisting of language and concepts and covertly doing the opposite of what is stated. Lets see.
Perpetual warfare: check
Removing your rights in the name of preserving them in doublespeak fashion: check
Doing its best to achive universal surveillance: check
Demonizing the enemies while presenting self as bastion of glorious freedom and prosperity, while false flagging, assassinating and shitting everything up: check
And so on.
Now one thing is certain for me: The US is slipping into a totalitarian state at a rate I wouldn't have believed a couple of weeks ago. Even the revelations and proof that the US government is stashing all the data it can get on its own citizens in spite of the constitution and the law only triggers anger over the dude that revealed it all.
People, this guy should be a national hero by now, not a fugitive.
So, totalitarian it will be and the US population is gently coming along apparently.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
Before facebook was seen as the fuel for the social revolutions, twitter the next media platform but now because of all the NSA snooping revelation, it has made all our software companies look like snitches.
Furthermore, it was a lone whistle blower rather than the powerhouse companies that fought against this, it has the made the software companies look placid and complaint to questionable data gathering.
XBox One unveiling response was that it looked like a perfect spying machine not a gaming machine, new cellphones or OSes will be thought to be full of back doors and websites to be perceived to be constantly monitoring data and handing them over to the authorities.
This might drive customers away from US software industry products.
I wish this were not the case. Maybe the US, Russia, and China need to do what European countries did in 1945 to 1945 and allow their students to travel freely among the nations. That way, the historic French/German hatred has waned to brawls at football matches and not trenches/tanks.
I probably sound crazy, but it might do good for an open border policy among the three superpowers. This doesn't mean that sovereignty has to be given up, just like Spain is still Spain, but at least the people in the country are not just seeing what is spoon fed to them in the press.
The 1946 decision to let Europeans wander among nations has done wonders for Europe... maybe we should consider the same thing here in the US?
So then what's the story? The US government has been making noise about banning Chinese gear for a while. Reciprocation is entirely fair.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
Don't you understand what just happened? We are now entering a trade war ...
We have already been in a trade war with China for many years. Its merely been a one side trade war allowing China to do as they please ...
It starts with a 20-30% price discount on all goods and services due to currency manipulation. It continues with dumping products in targeted industries below "cost". Sometimes literally, sometimes indirectly by not enforcing Chinese wage and pollution laws. Yes such laws exists, they are merely selectively ignored for strategic industries and markets. It then continues with barriers to entry for US goods and services, entry may only be allowed with domestic partnerships and technology transfers (free R&D).
A very interesting read on this topic:
http://www.amazon.com/Death-China-Confronting-Dragon-Global/dp/0132180235/ref=sr_1_1
This has nothing to do with Snowden. This has everything to do with backlash against the US for blocking use of backdoored Chinese hardware in our networks. Since we blocked them from selling to us, they are trying to match the move by blocking us from selling networking gear to them, regardless of if there is a back door or not. It's Tit for Tat, nothing more.
AJ Henderson
One day, hopefully before it's too late, you dimwits will realize there's this other option called WE. We are all humans. Once you get used to the fact that killing/supressing/enslaving/opressing others to support an unsustainable lifestyle is unsustainable, maybe we can make real inroads into sustainability and cooperation.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
Well, quite frankly, how could they not?
If all of these companies are helping with this, and allowing them to spy on global communications, how can we believe they aren't complicit?
The US government can force you to add in back doors and not tell anybody due to secrecy laws, and looking at the scope of this spying issue, you pretty much have to assume there's a good chance that those products do have a backdoor.
How could China (or any other country) trust that this gear hasn't been written in such a way as to enable this kind of spying any more than the US believed this Chinese made gear?
The US has more or less said "for our security it's our right to spy on everybody", which means we should also assume that every other country has decided they should be able to do the same damned thing.
Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Cisco ... if you've been named as part of this, the assumption simply has to be that, as an entity, you aren't safe to trust. It also means you should assume those same entities will be forced to help every other damned country carry out the same level of spying.
It's not like they could claim they aren't willing to help government spying, because they've already been doing it. At which point, saying 'yes' to the US government and 'no' to any other country is an untenable position.
When you get your corporations involved in spying, it's a natural conclusion that your corporations might be involved in spying.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.