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Huawei Using NSA Scandal To Turn Tables On Accusations of Spying
Nerval's Lobster writes "Huawei Technologies, the Chinese telecom giant banned from selling to U.S. government agencies due to its alleged ties to Chinese intelligence services, is trying to turn the tables on its accusers by offering itself as a safe haven for customers concerned that the NSA has compromised their own IT vendors. 'We have never been asked to provide access to our technology, or provide any data or information on any citizen or organization to any Government, or their agencies,' Huawei Deputy Chairman Ken Hu said in the introduction to a 52-page white paper on cybersecurity published Oct. 18. Huawei was banned from selling to U.S. government entities and faced barriers to civilian sales following a 2012 report from the U.S. House of Representatives that concluded Huawei's management had not been forthcoming enough to convince committee members to disregard charges it had given Chinese intelligence services backdoors into its secure systems and allowed Chinese intelligence agents to pose as Huawei employees. But the company promises to create test centers where governments and customers can test its products and inspect its services as part of an 'open, transparent and sincere' approach to questions about its alleged ties, according to a statement in the white paper from Huawei CEO Ren Zhengfei. Can Huawei actually gain more customers by playing off the Snowden scandal?"
The bigger a nationally sponsored corporation becomes, the more obviously it becomes an asset. It's like choosing between corrupt police and the mob.
Just because the NSA spies doesn't prove Huawei doesn't. This line of reasoning is guaranteed to fool a few morons and nobody else.
We just comply
Prepare for Slashdotters to tell us how America is now worse than China when it comes to spying, privacy and human rights.
Yes, i'm suuuuuure a company with ties to the Chinese government will provide us all with a safe haven from government spying.
Spy Vs. Spy only it's not funny and it's real.
Imagine you had told someone 25 years ago that China offers you a safe haven from being spied on by the US and possible repercussions because of it...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
There was a Snowden brief a short while ago that showed that one of the major switch vendors had given NSA a direct backdoor into their products. One of the people covering that story said something like, "I can't tell you that it's Cisco, but it's Cisco". The real problem with this situation is that we really don't know which of these things is true.
Back when the USG banned the use of Huawei products, most people assumed that it meant that there was spying functionality in it that had been discovered. However, in light of Bull Run, it's definitely worth asking if what might have happened is that they refused to install spying technology and the USG report was meant as a way to discredit the company and prevent its market penetration.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
they did not include the US Govt approved NSA backdoor in their products
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
I'm an I.T. manager for a non-western company that has non-western defense contracts, one of those sort of conglomerates that does every activity under the sun. I doubt their ploy will actually work, we don't trust the US or the Chinese. It's a matter of "pick your poison". Still, anyone foolish enough to buy Huawei (Their firmware universally sucks, from modems to enterprise/service-level network and backhaul equipment) might be foolish enough to believe they're safer. In reality though, you're more at risk from the security exploits from Huawei's lazy half-assed programmers. I fear their coders more than any possible shadowy relationships.
Dear Huawei chairman,
open source all of your drivers and firmware, then we'll be forced to agree that your equipment is safe for use.
Huawei is already getting a lot more business inside China itself. Mostly, they're getting ex-Cisco customers, but Juniper is worried as well.
Upfront, i do trust neither. But the articles text i think is so... typical.
- forthcoming enough to convince committee members to disregard charges it had given Chinese intelligence services
Well... for that, concrete charges would be necessary. Otheriwse its like proving that something we dont really know doesnt exist. Show a malfunction, it can be fixed. If a user says SOMETHING doesnt work, and he cant tell us what, we cant help him. And if you dont have that, what made you think of it in the first place?
Request to committee: be forthcoming to convince us to diregard charges that US networking companies have given US intelligence services access to traffic
- playing off the Snowden scandal
Its not a Snowden scandal. Its an NSA / GCHQ scandal.
Of course they can. In fact, I suspect they already have.
One of the Cisco et al. selling points was "you can trust us with your data, can you trust Huawei ?" Now that is gone. Loosing a selling point like that, in a competitive market, means that sales will go to the companies it was directed against.
IBM's hardware revenue from China collapsed 40% in the 3rd quarter.
Lol. Selling my Huawei U8100 smartphone (Wind Mobile). No really. Anybody want it? It's in good shape! $30 in the GTA. I know you all love Android 2.1 and 3G data speeds. Heck, I've actually managed a positive score playing Counter-Strike 1.6 from my PC over 3G service, wireless tether, and server pings of 110ms! It's a beast! It's more powerful than a Pentium 2! Runs 16 bit emulators passably well! Maybe it spies on you, who the heck cares? We all know you only use it as a toy or a 2.1 test bed anyways. Let Chinese intelligence watch in awe as you play the Final Fantasy 1&2 remake for the Gameboy Advance! On turbo speed! Huzzah! Take that, Garland!
This "terrorist watchlist" is awful comfy, thanks NSA.
But seriously, by typing that I likely have been put on some watchlist now because obviously anyone that supports China is a spy, terrorist, murder or dictator-in-the-making. Banned from USA, on instant-arrest watchlist at every airport, etc.
You used to be cool USA. I actually used to respect NSA. Not now. There is doing things "illegally" within reason, then there is just straight-up abusive levels of illegality that they are presently doing.
Now that China are finally growing up, I actually respect them far more.
If only they got that whole censorship nonsense away. Isolationism is never a good thing.
China would benefit hugely by opening up more since they are a huge influence in many markets.
USA still seems to be stuck in the 60-70s at the government level.
Not that that is any better than the UK, they are still stuck in the dark ages, and they just discovered a time travellers computers.
God damn the IT in government is embarrassing for the most part. The sad thing is my friend couldn't get a job for years when he specifically could have fixed the stupid crap they had been doing with networking, AND they were "punishing" him for not finding a job through that terrible DWP system (which I suffer from as well due to illness, obviously everyone that is ill and isn't drooling from the mouth and have FIVE legs missing is a total lying junky that just wants free money)
Now he has a great job in a company that manages many varied clients and I've even done a bit of work for them here and there now.
You shouldn't be asking "Can Huawei actually gain more customers by playing off the Snowden scandal?", but rather if American vendors can keep their customers in light of the NSA scandal.
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That's a perfectly reasonable thing to do and a good opportunity for them.
Perhaps the reason for all the congressional/government banning of Huawei equipment was really not because there was any proof of Chinese government spying, but because there was no way for the NSA to get THEIR backdoors into Huawei equipment. The NSA could not allow US government and telecommunications companies to begin using equipment they could not hack.
There is little to no effective difference between an intentional backdoor and a backdoor created by incompetence and shoddy workmanship. Huawei has code quality problems it still needs to work thru.
I have no doubt as the company matures it is and will do much better.
I guess Huawei will start marketing the advantage of their "Water Gap".
"Our jack-booted thugs are water-gaped from your USA facility, while the same cannot be said of our competitors."
Place nail here >+
Definition of Chutzpah
Maybe the US banned their products because it's one of the few tech companies they couldn't get backdoors into. It works against the US interest to have hardware that they can't access out in the wild.
"'We have never been asked to provide access to our technology, " --just means that access happened without them being asked, of course! Duh, that should be obvious when the relevant Government is Authoritarian rather then democratic.
just open source firmware and software
Go well