Europe Should Be Afraid of Huawei, EU Tech Official Says (reuters.com)

The European Union should be worried about Huawei and other Chinese technology companies because of the risk they pose to the bloc's industry and security, the EU's technology commissioner said on Friday. From a report: "Do we have to be worried about Huawei or other Chinese companies? Yes, I think we have to be worried about those companies," Andrus Ansip told a news conference in Brussels, days after a top executive at Chinese tech giant Huawei was arrested in Canada as part of an investigation into alleged bank fraud.

Huawei, which generated $93 billion in revenue last year and is seen as a national champion in China, faces intense scrutiny from many Western nations over its ties to the Chinese government, driven by concerns it could be used by Beijing for spying. Ansip said he was concerned because Chinese technology companies were required to cooperate with Chinese intelligence services, such as on "mandatory back doors" to allow access to encrypted data.

He also said those companies produce chips that could be used "to get our secrets." "As normal, ordinary people we have to be afraid," he said, adding he did not have enough information about the recent arrest in Canada.

Comments

this sounds familiar "mandatory back doors"

[EnOne]

this could easily be rewritten

"Huawei, which generated $93 billion in revenue last year and is seen as a national champion in China, faces intense scrutiny from many Western nations over its ties to the Chinese government, driven by concerns it could be used by Beijing for spying. Ansip said he was concerned because Chinese technology companies were required to cooperate with Chinese intelligence services, such as on "mandatory back doors" to allow access to encrypted data. "

to

"Apple, which generated $233 billion in revenue last year and is seen as a national champion in US, faces intense scrutiny from many nations over its orders from the US government, driven by concerns it could be used for spying. Ansip said he was concerned because US technology companies were being forced in FISA courts to cooperate with FBI investigations, such as on "mandatory back doors" to allow access to encrypted data."

"Normal people" will be fine.

[Luckyo]

This story isn't really about "normal people", which typically refers to an average citizen. Those have nothing that Chinese intelligence would want. It's the same reason why we "normal people" are relatively safe against the likes of NSA too. We have nothing NSA wants.

It's the corporations that are engaged in competition with China, and state structures that need to be worried. They actually have things Chinese intelligence wants. But that doesn't sound as scary to the "normal people" unfortunately, because they often have trouble connecting "myself" to "my state" and "large corporations in my state that directly affect my livelihood".

Re:"Normal people" will be fine.

[DNS-and-BIND]

That's why the intelligence agencies are getting freaked out and ringing the alarm bell - they don't have back doors in Chinese equipment. Thus, using Chinese equipment is safest for me, the ordinary American. I have much more to fear from my own government than any distant one. The US government kills people left and right with no conscience problems.

They're not protecting YOU, they're protecting themselves. It's all the compassion of a farmer installing electric fences when his cattle think they might be better off not being slaughtered. This isn't some kind of loony conspiracy theory, we know for a fact they lied about spying on us. On March 12, 2013, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told Congress that intel officials were not collecting mass data on tens of millions of Americans. NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden soon revealed material that proved Clapper's testimony false: The government had been gathering and storing data from ordinary Americans' phone records, email and Internet use.

https://wikileaks.org/gifiles/docs/12/1210665_obama-leak-investigations-internal-use-only-pls-do-not.html

Re:"Normal people" will be fine.

[Luckyo]

Did you notice the last sentence in my post? Your writings presented a very good example of exact problem I outline. The security services in your country are ultimately about serving the interests of your country. Which in turn are you interests, because foreign entities would love to exploit you to the maximum potential.

Is the current NSA snooping regime bad on a principle? Absolutely. Not even a shred of doubt. Snowden was a hero for bringing what is happening to light. It needed to be brought to light.

But they still have the interests of your state in mind first and foremost. That is why they're doing those things. From leadership all the way down to rank and file people. That's why they're not interested in people like you and me. We're not relevant to interests of the state. They're interested in people who actually have some kind of connections to interests of the state, which means state security, technology and macro level economics.

The reason why they're protecting themselves first is the exact same reason why paramedics will not go into the active shooter situation before shooter is contained. They are the part of the system that they're protecting, and to protect the state, the system itself must be functional and intact. That means they insure the safety of themselves first, just as paramedics do, and of the object of their protection second. Because if they fall, it's not just that it doesn't help to solve the issues. It makes the issues that need to be solved much worse.

P.S. I'd be shocked if NSA didn't have significant amount of backdoors in Chinese hardware, considering that much of what China has is on base level literally copied with minimal understanding of what each component of what they're copying does.

Re:this sounds familiar "mandatory back doors"

[MindPrison]

Yep, it's always "EVIL" when it's the other side spying. Now if they had total control themselves, they wouldn't cry "wolf" like this, but they'd shut up about it and tell the denizens to go back to their normal lives and live it as if nothing was afoot.

Truth is - we need open source processors and alternatives, so we have an alternative to big corporations that can be forced to make decisions based on the powers that be.

Re:this sounds familiar "mandatory back doors"

[rtb61]

How about simply reality. YES, you should be very much worried about all foreign supplied technology in your countries infrastructure. It basically places you hostage to that other countries control of the companies that supply you that technology. It can be backed doored in all sorts of ways, to intercept data, to censor data, to shut down the transmission of data, YES, it is extremely risky to place the control of your countries infrastructure in the hands of other countries governments via their control of the companies supplying the technology.

Who would I trust the least, well, you know the easy answer would be the USA but in reality Saudi Arabia and Israel would be fucking worse, and a bunch of other corrupt countries but to be honest I would trust China ahead of the USA, quite a ways ahead. Other countries should really stop using code or electronics coming out of the US, it is way more back doored than most would believe, oh yeah, multiple back doors.

I bought a Huawei scale.

[aliquis]

The app want to know my web history, bookmarks and installed apps.
I think I'll return it even though it's cheaper.

Also bought their semi-broken tablet, I have no idea how that spy or whatever it will be fixed (breaks apps + shit antenna) may return that too.
S3 32 GB 3999 SEK
Vs
Mediapad M5 64 GB 3333 SEK.
Scale AH100? 290 SEK Vs Nokia Body+ for 590ish or beuer bf700/750 for 400-500ish or possibly Amazon but I live in Scandinavia.

Re:this sounds familiar "mandatory back doors"

[Geoffrey.landis]

But so far Apple has resisted the mandatory decrypting and back doors.

https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/05/02/apple-other-tech-companies-continue-to-resist-encryption-backdoor-proposals-by-fbi-us-doj

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/19/apple-fbi-privacy-encryption-fight-san-bernardino-shooting-syed-farook-iphone

https://www.imore.com/why-apple-was-right-resist-government-demands-back-door-ios

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-wants-apple-to-help-unlock-iphone-used-by-san-bernardino-shooter/2016/02/16/69b903ee-d4d9-11e5-9823-02b905009f99_story.htm

Classic whataboutery [Re:china... scary! Russia..]

[Anonymous Coward]

That's whataboutery.

We know that Russia and China are spying.

Replying "but what about X? What about Y?" doesn't mean that Russia and China aren't spying, or that we shouldn't worry about it: it is only an attempt to change the subject.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Whataboutism

Re: Why???

[Anonymous Coward]

If you look how Chinese companies are structured, by their law, a Chinese official has to be on the board, and has the ultimate decision authority. It is equivalent to having someone from the NSA, CIA, DHS, or DEA be the deciding person on a US company's board in every decision made. Yes people argue, but US companies can give the middle finger to the government. Not so in China where attempts to do so will have people and their families send off somewhere to be "re-educated".

Even a foreign company doing business on Chinese soil cannot do so unless a Chinese counterpart (and thus the PRC) owns 51% of the venture.

So, yes, China is a threat, as anything Huawei gets, the Chinese government gets, and that info can be easily sold. They may not hurt you or your family, but they can find someone who can.

China copies US

[Framboise]

Over the years we have learned that many US high tech products (processors, motherboards, USB devices,...) contain backdoors, and US developped cryptographic algorithms are deliberately weakened. Now the Echelon states warn EU that China does the same. Smokescreen to the EU ?
   

Re:Worried about a cell phone?

[keithdowsett]

OK, so we get the occasional nutcase from North Africa intent on suicide for religious reasons, but they kill less people a year than a single home grown, god fearing, gun toting nutcase in America.

Probably more concerned about not spying for us.

[Anonymous Coward]

The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) just came up with eTLS, a version of TLS1.3 that can be decrypted by middleboxes because it uses static keys instead of ephemeral keys from a DH key exchange. This eTLS version is to be used so that companies can decrypt TLS connections to inspect for viruses, information leaks, etc., but also so that data inspection requirements of law enforcement can be fulfilled. American companies are subject to American spy agencies and can be forced to implement backdoors that they cannot tell any of their customers about. The existence of National Security Letters leave not a shred more trust in these companies' products than the reign of the Chinese government over Huawei leaves in their products. Nobody's warning about using Erricson, Nokia, Alcatel, Juniper or Cisco in our networks. These are companies which are beholden to "the good guys", right? They are not more secure, but we can tell them to give us backdoor access. We cannot tell Huawei to open a network for us. I think that's the actual reason behind those warnings. Nobody is trustworthy. The difference is who will cooperate with us.

"Secrets"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's be honest here, China doesnt give a flying fuck about *my* secrets, and frankly I'd rather the Chinese or Russians had a backdoor to my data than my own fucking government, Duh.
Funny how the government(s) here dont like backdoors in their *own* shit, but want to mandatory install them in *everyone else's* shit.

Yeah, little trouble ginning up sympathy here for anyone other than joe and jane consumer, who get fucked either way.

But Still -- Who's Side Should You Pick?

[Slicker]

The U.S. government is not perfect but I think a great deal not as bad as the Chinese government, in so many ways. And China has been particularly aggressive in its spying, using technology and human assets in the United States and Europe. Chinese aggression against its weaker neighbors is legendary, pushing them around in the the South China sea and other places -- even Chinese fishermen boarding other nation's boats and attacking them with clubs.

Furthermore, the "disappearances" of people in all regions but particularly minority regions has been vast and relentless for decades. Chinese denials of shooting Tibetans crossing the border on foot toward Nepal, for example, was shut down after European mountain climbers video recorded it. China has led the world and the predominant supplier of human organs. The company that builds its "death mobiles" was bragging about growing production demand for them, about 5 years ago when production rates were 1000 per year. Those bodies exhibits, each holding around 200 bodies, in various cities around the U.S. simultaneously were interestingly stocked with Chinese youth, roughly in their 20's (almost exclusively). And of course, there are the camps with millions of minorities for re-education. How many Tibetan monks taken have every been seen again? At one time, over 8,000 were taken never to be seen again.

Our country (the United States) has all kinds of problems but I really think we need to not lose perspective.

Re:But Still -- Who's Side Should You Pick?

[Anonymous Coward]

As a non-american (and non-chinese) I'm more concenrned about american espionage, because americans so far have a big lead in technology (that, granted, is going to erode over time), and a lot more resources to go into espionage. I'd prefer if you guys didn't engage in that kind of thing, but power corrupts, no two ways about that.

Re:But Still -- Who's Side Should You Pick?

[DNS-and-BIND]

Chinese aggression against its weaker neighbors is legendary

Gimme a break. The United States is the world's leading bully. Does the United States require seventeen intelligence agencies that alone cost more than Russia spends on defense? Particularly when they have a long history of lying, incompetence and in some cases criminality (torture, murder, support of genocide, etc.). It seems to me that if Trump eradicates some (CIA), reduces some in size (NSA), merges those that overlap (NRO and NGA) and focuses on those that are any good (DIA), it'll make the United States safer and the world better. If anything, during the Cold War the KGB ran merry circles around western agencies that were all hilariously incompetent. You could have had German shepherds staff the CIA and get about the same result.

The US has repeatedly interfered in a multitude of elections, coups and power-struggles in an enormous variety of countries over the last hundred and fifty years. They're probably the worst offenders internationally. Here are a couple of highlights:
* Syria 1949: The democratically elected government of Shukri al-Quwatli was overthrown in a CIA backed coup. It installed a military dictatorship under Husni al-Za'im.
* Iran 1953: The democratically elected government of Mohammad Mosaddegh was overthrown in a CIA and MI6 backed coup. It reinstalled the Shah and indirectly facilitated the 1979 Iranian Revolution.
* Guatamala 1954: The democratically elected government of Jacobo Ãrbenz was overthrown in a CIA backed coup. It installed a military dictatorship under Carlos Castillo Armas.
* Chile 1973: The democratically elected government of Salvador Allende was overthrown in a CIA backed coup. It installed a military dictatorship under Augusto Pinochet.
* Let's not forget Iraq 2003. No WMD were ever found.

And I haven't even mentioned any of the many, many countries the US invaded during the 20th Century. Let's imagine China declaring itself an "East Pacific" power, intervening in America's back yard, installing nuclear weapons in Mexico and Venezuela and establishing a strong military presence in the Caribbean. The American will to dominate the planet with its nonsensical assertions that it's maintaining the international "order" and encouraging "democracy" is an updated version of the old colonial "White Man's Burden."

Re:But Still -- Who's Side Should You Pick?

[turp182]

I won't speak to US related regime change in the Middle East, but here's the list of our activities in South America.

There are 11 countries listed. I didn't read the whole thing, but 30,000 people "disappeared" when the US helped overthrow a democratically elected president in Argentina (circa 1976).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

China does play with their citizens and their neighbors. The US does this stuff world wide (secret prisons, abductions, etc.).

Re:But Still -- Who's Side Should You Pick?

[fatwilbur]

The US has repeatedly interfered in a multitude of elections

Don't forget Canada, 2015. Numerous American commentators joined the "anyone but Harper" campaign, and were part of the reason we're currently stuck with a high school drama teacher leading the country, getting his ass handed to him economically by Donald Trump.

Whenever someone from the USA talks about the Russians "hacking their election" for posting a few memes on facebook, I have to laugh in their face.

bank fraud?

[anonieuweling]

US is wanting the Huawei executive for sanctions evasion.

Alternative to Huawei

[Keruo]

Viable alternatives to Huawei on operator level are really either NSN or Ericsson. Both are EU based manufacturers so supply is not really the problem.

Re:Probably more concerned about not spying for us

[Anonymous Coward]

The big concern is that if you are a tech business and use Huawei products in your infrastructure at some point a Chinese competitor of yours will end up with your trade secrets.

Re: Why???

[DNS-and-BIND]

Even a foreign company doing business on Chinese soil cannot do so unless a Chinese counterpart (and thus the PRC) owns 51% of the venture.

That is a flat-out lie. You are fake news.

A wholly foreign-owned enterprise (WFOE) is a company established in China according to Chinese laws and wholly owned by one or more foreign investors.

http://www.china-briefing.com/news/setting-up-a-wholly-foreign-owned-enterprise-in-china/

Be very afraid...

[sudden.zero]

...I worked in the mobile industry for years, for many cellular manufacturers, programming mobile devices, and testing them for on-boarding with the carriers. The one thing that seemed to be a standard across the board with most Chinese manufacturers, I won't name names due to non-disclosure agreements, is that location services was turned on in the EPROM whether it was off in the UI or not. So, Chinese devices failed location services tests almost every time, and the carrier would send the device back. The "bug" would be fixed, tested with QXDM or other diagnostic tools, and then submitted as fixed. Then when the next version of software was put out the "bug" would be back, and it would have to be fixed again. This was never the case with Japanese, Korean, or American manufacturers...only the Chinese manufacturers. For this reason I won't buy cellular devices manufactured in China. If I turn my location services off I want them off period! If they are doing that with LBS think what they are probably doing with the rest of the data on your device. Credit Card info, Banking info, personal data, etc. nothing is safe...or as safe as it can be in this world.

Re: Why???

[Anonymous Coward]

How is this any different when US companies receive secret FISA warrants?

EU should be afraid of US technology...

[Vapula]

We have an huge dependency on US products... and US has killswitch on many of them...

Countless iPhone/iPads that can be remotely locked by Apple

Army's planes like the F-35 which "phone home" continuously and can be remote-disabled

Microsoft that can remote disable any computer by saying that "the key has been used for pirate distribution"

HDMI peripherals that can be revokec by the HDCP

and so on...

Reliance on US device is very dangerous... should one day US decide to go against us...

Re: Why???

[Miamicanes]

Actually, government & commercial are additive in both countries, not mutually exclusive.

China: companies officially beholden to CCP, AND they want to know everything about you to sell you more stuff (though both are largely indifferent to you unless you're either a threat to the CCP *or* a potential consumer in China)

US: companies can be compelled to secretly do the federal government's bidding (upon the relevant law enforcement agency or intelligence agency getting a court order), and they want to know everything about you (regardless of where you are) so they can sell you stuff.

To be honest, China worries me less. China's government wants to exercise total control over people in China, but doesn't give much of a shit about anyone else. The US's government wants to exercise jurisdiction over everyone on earth, and has the de-facto power to at least indirectly impose it upon a large plurality of earth's inhabitants.

"Wants to" + "sort of able to" is FAR more dangerous than "Indifferent to" + "generally incapable of (unless you're Chinese)"