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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?"
Nope, but assuming both spy, whose spying would you care the most? As a home user, the Chinese government has no interest in me. I have no contacts with the Dalai Lama. The US government probably has, since I'm hurting their sponsors by downloading the latest movies.
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.
Well of course it does not. But one thing is at least certain, the chance that Huawei hands over everything and everything you give them to the US government is lower than Google doing the same. In return, your chance to be betrayed by Google when it comes to keeping secrets from China is higher.
In other words, you can essentially choose between the Chinese government knowing everything about you or the US government doing so.
And now ponder which country your country is more likely to hand you over to.
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)
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.
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.
That's an extremely paranoid, borderline tin foil hat, conspiracy theory. Given recent information that has helped people determine the veracity of such wild eyed ideas, there's a very good chance you're right.