Chinese Firm Huawei In Control of UK Net Filters

AmiMoJo writes "The BBC reports that Huawei, one of the world's largest manufacturers of telecoms equipment, is controlling popular ISP TalkTalk's web censorship system. The system, known as Homesafe, was praised by Prime Minister David Cameron. Customers who do not want filtering still have their traffic routed through the system, but matches to Huawei's database are dismissed rather than acted upon. In other words there is no opt-out. Mr Cameron has demanded similar measures be adopted by all internet service providers (ISPs) in the UK, to 'protect our children and their innocence.'"

Comments

Expert Advice

[macromorgan]

If anyone knows how to filter internet traffic, it's the Chinese.

Re:Expert Advice

[jarle.aase]

Yes, and that is a good thing.

You know, what this is really about is not just protecting innocent children, - it's really about protecting our Freedom.

Freedom from the reds and the blacks and the criminals
Prostitutes, pansies and punks
Football hooligans, juvenile delinquents
Lesbians and left wing scum

Freedom from the niggers and the Pakis and the unions
Freedom from the gypsies and the Jews
Freedom from left wing layabouts and liberals
Freedom from the likes of you

To quote an old British song

With something as important as the British populations Freedom at stake, no wonder they go for the best Freedom-enhancing technology in the World.

Re:Expert Advice

[Thud457]

man, I don't know what kind of a sexual act a Tiananmen Square is, but it must be pretty damn depraved the way it's getting blocked.

Re:Expert Advice

[Sique]

Who makes the equipment also controls the backdoors.

Re:Expert Advice

[benjfowler]

Like a 'cleveland steamer', but with a Soviet-era tank.

metadata

[ckedge]

Oh look, another company to whom I've entered into a commercial agreement with that now has a right to my entire browsing history and "public metadata". Super.

Re:metadata

[ericloewe]

Even worse. A company with which you have never, ever dealt now has a right to your entire browsing history and "public metadata", courtesy of your friendly ISP.

All non-technical issues aside (the existence of some sort of filter is a matter for another discussion), the fact that all data gets sent through "Huawei's databse" should set off a few alarms, even ignoring the fact that it's Huawei (which is too close to the chinese government/chinese armed forces for comfort).

Re:metadata

[Anonymous Coward]

Even worse, the politicians in the UK are giving decisions of UK political sovereignty to a foreign entity.

Allowing a foreign firm to have intel on domestic interests and people is called one thing: Espionage.

Whomever allowed Huawei [1] to run this needs to be charged.

[1]: Huawei by themselves are not doing anything wrong. If MI5 got hired to do firewalling for another country, it isn't their fault. However, it is a sworn duty of a politician to protect domestic interests. Same reason why Buckingham Palace hasn't been deeded or rented to another country.

Re:metadata

[mwvdlee]

So Huawei has the power to effectively remove any content they dislike from the British peoples' internet and all the British government can do about it is file a bug report to a their helpdesk?
What could possibly go right?

Is filtered internet access really internet access

[RichMan]

The legal question, is filtered internet access really internet access. There is a technical definition of the internet defining packets DNS lookup and routability. I don't think a filtered internet access fully qualifies as internet access.

This could lead to legal challenges as the service providers are not selling true internet access. They are selling something else.

Network diagram anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

So do the chinese get to filter before or after the americans intercept?

AG

Re:Is filtered internet access really internet acc

[djsmiley]

I don't think what you think "internet access" is really matters.

They simply state your "access" is given as allowed by law, blah blah blah. Done.

Bullshit

[vikingpower]

'protect our children and their innocence.'"

Nonsense. Children are not innocent. Children are nasty, often cruel, little monsters in need of constant correction. "Innocent", in its original ( Latin ) sense, means "not (ob)noxious". Children are anything except "not (ob)noxious".

Re:Bullshit

[SuricouRaven]

I work with children. In my extensive experience, they are vile creatures indeed. Ill-mannered, inconsiderate, uneducated and ignorant. They lack the most basic common sense, and what they do have is overridden by their susceptibility to peer pressure and the forces of advertising. They have a compulsion to destroy all that they touch, leaving me to spend my working day endlessly repairing equipment which has been vandalized - past highlights include throwing a switch from a window, placing a power cable in a stapler and impaling a laptop keyboard on a pen. Through an informal concensus they work to perpetuate this youth culture by relentlessly bullying any child who shows signs of being different, until they cease these attempts and rejoin the mob. They are in no way innocent - and, while many are ignorant of more worthwhile fields, peer discussion ensures they mostly have an encyclopedic knowledge of sexual acts and insults, albeit one riddled with misconceptions and errors.

Re:Is filtered internet access really internet acc

[drinkypoo]

And this is why "common carrier" status is a useful concept.

Give me the line, untampered? Then what I do on it is my responsibility.

Give me the line, supposedly filtered? Then what I do on it is your responsibility, since it's your job to save me from myself.

The same Huawei the U.S. calls a security threat..

[MrKevvy]

... as they are basically a ministry of the Chinese government.

U.S. lawmakers seek to block China Huawei, ZTE U.S. inroads

"Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, at a press conference to release the report, said companies that had used Huawei equipment had reported "numerous allegations" of unexpected behavior, including routers supposedly sending large data packs to China late at night."

Expect Huge Advancements in UK IT

[organgtool]

Because nothing motivates a young boy to learn how to defeat technological filters than the promise of a nearly limitless supply of porn on the other side of those filters.

Re:Sensationalist bullshit title.

[badfish99]

The filtering allegedly works by checking every URL that you visit for porn (I've no idea how); if porn is found, not only are you blocked from seeing the URL, but it is also added to a blacklist.

The point of the article is that this checking is being done for everyone, even if they don't want filtering. So the ISP is, in effect, compiling a list of the URLs visited by their customers who do not want to be filtered.

And that list is being compiled on hardware that is alleged to be under the control of a foreign, potentially hostile, government.

Re:Sensationalist bullshit title.

[Jawnn]

'Yeah good morning, I'd like the porn filter on my broadband turned off, please?' 'What, are you some kind of PERVERT?'

And a year or three in the future...
"May it please the court, the state would like to introduce into evidence that the suspect did, in blatant disregard of the welfare of children everywhere, demand that his Internet service provider to remove all child-abuse protection filters from his account."