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Is China Wiring Africa For Surveillance?
Daniel_Stuckey writes "Huawei has invested billions of dollars in Africa over the last two decades, providing affordable cell phones, internet access, and telecommunications networks to the continent. Over the last few months Huawei has closed major deals in Africa to get more areas on the grid. The company says it's bridging the digital divide, but others suspect it's wiring the continent for surveillance."
I guess if it comes for free, that's one thing, but how much money do you think China wants to invest exfiltrating data from Africa as opposed to their first-world competitors?
Nobody cares enough about Africa to listen in on them. The only thing Africa has is resources, and China already is buying them. Is the infrastructure subject to surveillance? Sure, but every infrastructure is, even heterogeneous ones like the US.
no.
"Hmm, government backdoor access to data through communications technology. Where would the NSA get an idea like that?"
Talk about throwing rocks in glass houses!
China is the greatest enemy of the USA, and ALL major US military planning is designed for future conflict between these two powers. So, no surprise then that the owners of Slashdot ensure a constant stream of articles attacking China. Attack Iran, attack China, praise Israel. Is there anyone here so thick that they do not notice this tedious pattern?
PS do the owners of Slashdot still prevent citizens of Iran from accessing the open-source websites they also control. And NO, there is no US law requiring this.
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No they aren't. Just same as they don't do crazy APT shit.
Just same as US can't even imagine doing legit business without employing coercion or fucking with other countries networks.
Stop with the FUD.
Cisco, Lucent etc. probably play ball with NSA. Huawei maybe not so much. No wonder NSA is uspset.
Who, the NSA believes their are losing ground?
It's about time somebody started spying on Africa.
Everytime they have a TV show about Africa, it's just a bunch of f**king lions and elephants. Where are all the people?
What the heck's going on there? It's about time somebody found out.
About 4 years ago, I took a trip to Ethiopia. One guy I talked to there was the head of an aid organization that helped build infrastructure in the more rural parts of the country. He explained to me that while the Western countries like the US, Germany, the UK, etc donated money to local organizations, the Chinese preferred to come in and do the job themselves. It saves on the corruption and waste, and they get to build a positive impression themselves. So you see lots of Chinese companies there building roads, burying cable, building farms/industry, etc.
He told me they had the right idea. The Chinese are *investing* in Africa as opposed to donating to it. That's going to have a long-term impact on who has more influence in Africa. So yeah, they're going to build surveillance...they're building the infrastructure. If we wanted to stop them, we'd go start building too.
it seems everyone's spying on everything everyone says anyway the who and where doesn't matter anymore almost
when the Australian broadband network put out tenders, Huawei was not allowed to bid for any contracts. there's a bloody good reason why: the Australian government knows that Huawei are putting in back doors into hardware. there's plenty of proof. for example: buy a Huawei usb dongle modem, watch your firewall and count the amount of times it talks back to chinatelecom. once you see the pattern, it's easy to block the dongle from communicating back to China. I think everyone should be concerned that an arm of the PLR are installing comms equipment anywhere in the world. Huawei haven proven themselves over and over again that they cannot be trusted.
They could be propping up regimes that routinely use torture and abuse human rights, and randomly killing innocents with drones. But then there'd be nothing left for the US to do...
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
...China taking away jobs from the US.
Dammit, spying on the world is OUR job! They took uuur juuuuubs!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If Africans knew what Chinese really think about blacks, they would be shocked.
Chinese money would paper over the wounds, however.
Dammit Grandpa! How did you get out of the retirement home again? What's with the pith helmet and why are you talking about Wild Kingdom again? We've gotta get your 4 digit UID ass back to the home before we have to go to court AGAIN.
Exactly why do we discuss articles like this? There is zero evidence so far that China is doing mass surveillance outside of China.
The articles acknowledges it, and asks questions that cannot be answered, while providing no new insights.
"but others suspect it's wiring the continent for surveillance".
With todays knowledge: probably yes,
Thanks again mr. Snowden for revealing the truth.
Such a shame. It should have been NSA surveillance equipment, but they will find an other way.
Privacy is terrorism.
Now that we know the US Gov. has our country (plus Europe at a min) completely wired up for surveillance who are we to complain about the Chinese.
http://goo.gl/U5Eb87 https://www.openrightsgroup.org/campaigns/cameron-stop-sleepwalking * https://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2013/sleepwalking-into-censorship?utm_campaign=Buffer&utm_content=bufferbb116&utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=buffer https://www.openrightsgroup.org/campaigns/cameron-stop-sleepwalking * http://wiki.openrightsgroup.org/wiki/Campaign_against_online_porn
... welcome our new Chinese overlords.
You see, as the widow of the late Jacob Bugarundi, minister of mining, I have been looking for assistance to kindly help me transfer money from secret diamond sales from my account to yours. But after repeated attempts failed to contact trusted friends in Western countries, I now see new hope with good men Chinese investors.
So when China networks Africa, it is part of an evil plan, when the US ravages and destabilizes oil-rich nations, it is liberation.
Haters gonna hate
"The loudest concerned party is former NSA and CIA head Michael Hayden, who has repeatedly raised warning flags about Huawei's suspected espionage."
When all you have is a hammer...
Get rid of the NSA. It's just an overrated govt make-work project, it does not and has never contributed anything that would remotely justify its cost (except maybe plot elements to a few good movies), and the same goes double for the CIA. Seriously, what has either done for you lately, or ever, except divert your money to adult children playing spy vs spy? Here's your opportunity, yanks, to turn conventional wisdom on its head and show the rest of the world how comparatively useless intelligence agencies are today, if not actually detrimental most of time to the national security they profess to uphold.
I'm sure the US is far far far worse than China here.
The burgeoning population is stripping the lands and forests of everything that can be eaten.
Africa is one of the largest supplier of Europe's natural resources. So much so that France sends out armed forces to procure them (they call the justification "terrorism" too, PR).
Even still, most of their resources remain untapped. In the next two decades, a large focus is going to be around Algeria, Mauritania, Mali, and Niger as they are rich in untapped resources and exploitable in labor.
Having an omnipresence would give an advantage to China as a global superpower. Not saying it's right or good...
No.
Huawei is a company motivated by the desire to do business with people. There's nothing fishy about them trying to sell lots of your products to an emerging market.
China almost certainly does have espionage interests in Africa, and Huawei equipment might be a vector. But I'm sure they're joined in that noble endeavour by the NSA, GCHQ, etc...
China is the new west, for decades, we had UK, Then USA, Now, we have china to deal with. While i
Write
, the chinise move in deeper into every city in Africa while USA is making war with the Koreas :(
Rhetorical question is rhetorical.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Natural resources is the name of the game. And its not just China eyeing the riches.
100. Finally, to keep my subjects permanently locked in a mindless trance, I will provide each of them with free unlimited Internet access.
Well played China...well played...
Look, if someone else were wiring Africa (who have a better penetration of wireless phone access than many first world countries, since they have no infrastructure that incumbents can squeeze for more free profit, hence delay the move off it), would it be "Is France Wiring Africa for Surveilance"? Murica? Brits? Canadians? Wombles????
Listen, the problem seems to be that China is selling stuff, and this means others aren't being paid for selling stuff they get china to make and rebadge for them to sell.
Plus Betteridge.
NO.
It was that there's been a crash and the selling of stuff is being done now in an increasing proportion by China, stalling recovery of the "Western World".
When China was mostly producing goods for the international conglomerates to rebadge, stick a profitable mark-up and give a stick to beat both workers and governments over (Do as we ask or we'll move abroad), China was fine.
When it started selling its stuff directly (cheaper, because they don't add on the second set of profits that the rebadging corporation puts on), which happened about the same time as the regime change in the USA, it became a "problem".
If it were a USA company providing the 'services' it would be because the USA is just a 'good guy' trying to bring Africa up to standards with the rest of the world, not to mention the potential market. But... China is evil, because... China!
Christ, can this type of mindset be more pedantic?
Once again, /. eds miss filtering out the transparent propaganda.
... Fox News was horrified that China was doing business with Afghanistan. Of course, the US news show failed to mention the US military and other US interests had been in the country for 7 years.
Before it was "Communism evil; USA good". Now it's "Muslims evil; USA" good. Soon it will be "China evil; USA good".
Is this in any way different to the US doing the same things?
When an article title ends with a question mark, the answer is NO.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines
China is already on record for having sold surveillance tech to Mugabe - who wants to bet that there is either a backdoor or an information sharing agreement - my guess is the former is more likely.
Wiring for communications is the same as wiring for surveillance.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
That all nations see the digitization of communication as a way to gain leverage over competitive fields in which they're participants People gotta talk and what they talk about and say is everything. So no surprises here. Everything is always an arms race and always will be until such time as 1) everyone has enough of everything 2) the innate jealousies, innate anti-social appetites , the innate urge to be alpha and have more than other people or hurt other people instead of just leaving them alone, are removed from human character.
Until then, it's going to be like this. People possessed of religious belief needing to kill or convert others. Men and women competing for limited power, prestige, mates and stuff . This is what we evolved to do. This is what had survival value. This is the ground upon which all other considerations are framed and no one even questions it and no one is immune.
This is what we are and will continue to be until and unless we decide that enough is enough and begin the process of re-working our nature from the genes up.
that's a bit of a nasty spin. The facts are that 1
. Surveilance is byproduct of technical advancements 2
. Europe and US have ignored africa apart from ore, oil and gems. China on the other hand is building infrastructure (e.g. most of the recent builing of road network) manufacturing
We had agesw to get things moving and did little.more than charity work and resource stripping. Now we wallow in scaremongering, jealousy, and a few tantrums. I say well done to chinese
Who cares if there's more elsewhere?
A shopkeeper who leaves customers' money on the table because there's someone with more money over in another shop is an idiot.
If the point is "corporations aren't X, people are X", then that is the argument that corporation personhood is a fallacy and therefore there should be no corporate veil, the person who is X must be open to prosecution or censure for their having X.
Except you don't really want that, do you? You want the people protected "because it's the corporation, not that individual", but the corporation held blameless "because it's the people in there, not the corporation".
There's no evidence here and the only "source" is General Michael Hayden, "the first NSA director to betray the country’s trust by ordering wholesale violation of what was once the First Commandment at NSA: 'Thou Shalt Not Eavesdrop on Americans Without a Court Warrant.'"
http://consortiumnews.com/2013/07/21/gen-haydens-glass-house/
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4037371&cid=44438241
When the US is doing it, it's natural because that's what countries are supposed to do. When China does it, it's shady and evil.
That will save us the trouble of doing it ourselves.
China has a VERY long memory & written history.
Sun Tzu in the Art of War 2500 years ago said (paraphrazing from memory) "I would rather have one good spy than 10,000 good soldiers."
Africa has two choices in front of them -- they could spend more money contracting US companies and being spied by NSA or they could spend less money contracting to Chinese companies and being spied by Chinese government. The choice is clear when you don't have the money.
They could post whiny comments on Slashdot trying to make false equivalences to steer any and all discussions to the US rather than talking about the fact at hand!
Seriously, quit with this shit. One of the most annoying things about Slashdot these days are the folks like you that just can't deal with any discussion that isn't about the US, in particular how bad the US is. It is a sort of arrogance that if the discussion isn't about something you know and care about, you can't deal with it and thus have to steer it back around.
Stop it. Discuss the article in question. Stop twisting everything back around to your pet topic.
Just FYI Africa is a continent, below Europe. This is where black people (negroids) come from.
Carefully tracking elephants in their natural environment maybe they could figure out how they manage to become invisible in american's rooms.
As someone responsible to approve contracts between African govts. and one if the two major telecoms in China, I can tell you, yes, the country is being (has been since 2005) wired. The Chinese are following the Japanese model, where you build the communications infrastructure so you can know who is doing what logging, mineral and transportation work, etc., thereby providing your countries' vendors and early place in line with the local government when it's time to bid. It doesn't hurt to loan money to those govt. agencies. with strings tied to spending inside your country as part of that process.
It’s great that these areas are getting on the grid, but what is Huawei gaining from this? With all the rumors of China’s surveillance programs, I don’t see this idea being too far fetched. It’d be easy for Huawei to gather data on an entire country when they’re the ones providing the technology for it. What happened to the days of spies hiding behind costumes instead of keyboards?
I'd rather have the Chinese spy on my internet traffic than the US. :), being in western europe, I am better in physical reach of the US secret service than of the Chinese secret service. The Chinese knowing things about me affects me less.
Reaon: If I would have anything to hide (of course I don't