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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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
Libya was going to offer cheap, African telco options with its cash help for a Pan-African satellite.
Less EU cash flow per call and the tracking options via the EU for African calls would have been less easy.
Now other firms are going to re connect Africa away from the USA and EU.....
Wont someone think of the need to track the digital generations, they might learn about the market value of their mineral exports.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
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.
Lolwut? If it was a backdoor you wouldn't see that on your computer's firewall because it would be done from withing the HSPA modem itself, on the outboard side of the USB port, beyond the firewall. I hate to break it to you, but something on your computer is connecting to these evil Chinese IP addresses. You should probably work out what it is before it turns your computer Communist.
(Yes, I do have a Huawei HSPA modem; no it doesn't connect to Chinese IP addresses in any way visible through a firewall on the computer; no I haven't tried tapping the air interface to check for actual hardware backdoors; no I don't believe China is out to get me or the parent.)
+1 for you You id is too low.
I think GP is referring to Betteridge's law of headlines, which says that "any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no".
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...
They have only ever put one back door in their hardware. They copied Cisco's IOS so thoroughly that they copied Cisco's backdoor. When notified, they removed it. Cisco just moved it so it was hidden again. Huawei is looked at so closely that if they ship an actual back door, it's found instantly and documented and published. Cisco got away with it for years.
That you don't know what a driver auto-update looks like in Windows firewall isn't proof of wrongdoing.
Learn to love Alaska
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...
When an article title ends with a question mark, the answer is NO.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines
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
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".
You seem to claim to know what I want, and yet get it wrong.
How often are you wrong, mr anonymous coward?
"His name was James Damore."
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4037371&cid=44438241
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.
An a shop keeper who loses money on every sale an expects to make it up on volume is a bigger idiot.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
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.
Until you are the only shop left in town... then you hike prices.
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