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Germany Refuses To Ban Huawei, Citing Lack of Real Evidence (phys.org)
hackingbear writes: Germany's IT watchdog has expressed skepticism about calls for a boycott of Chinese telecoms giant Huawei, saying it has seen no evidence the firm could use its equipment to spy for Beijing, news weekly Spiegel reported. "For such serious decisions like a ban, you need proof," the head of Germany's Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), Arne Schoenbohm, told Spiegel, adding that his agency had no such evidence. The U.S. has been pressuring German authorities for months to drop Huawei, according to people familiar with the matter, but the Germans have asked for more specific evidence to demonstrate the security threat. German authorities and telecom executives have yet to turn up any evidence of security problems with Chinese equipment vendors, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Separately, at a (secret lobster-themed) meeting in Canada in July 2018, espionage chiefs from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the U.K. and the U.S. -- all signatories to a treaty on signals intelligence, and often referred to as the "Five Eyes" -- agreed to do their best to contain the global growth of Chinese telecom (vendor) Huawei, the Australian Financial Review reported (paywalled). On the other hand, documents leaked by WikiLeaks and Snowden claimed that the NSA, the leader of the Five Eyes, tapped German Chancellery for decades and bugged routers made by Cisco, the leading American networking equipment vendor.
Separately, at a (secret lobster-themed) meeting in Canada in July 2018, espionage chiefs from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the U.K. and the U.S. -- all signatories to a treaty on signals intelligence, and often referred to as the "Five Eyes" -- agreed to do their best to contain the global growth of Chinese telecom (vendor) Huawei, the Australian Financial Review reported (paywalled). On the other hand, documents leaked by WikiLeaks and Snowden claimed that the NSA, the leader of the Five Eyes, tapped German Chancellery for decades and bugged routers made by Cisco, the leading American networking equipment vendor.
Editors, EDIT !!!!!!!
Otherwise it's "me too" all over again.
Was the meeting in Canada a secret? Or was the lobster theme the secret? And also, what is a lobster themed meeting anyway?
While using any foreign tech does have an element of risk, asking for some proof does not seem out of line.
Or will the Huawei block all steganographically embedded traffic to the NSA, while the Cisco deflects all secret traffic to the Chinese Ministry of State Security?
What a conundrum!
Just like the rest of the United States' foreign policy.
They were right with Iraq WMDs, Trump's planted collusion, etc!!
Could this scuttle the T-mobile merger with Sprint?
The problem that Huawei potentially brings is that the Chinese government could force them to embed spying functions into future firmware updates. Such a move would be difficult to counter once a country is highly reliant on Huawei for providing cell services. I am not suggesting that Huawei wants to so - but the Chinese government could easily dictate that they do so. In most other countries such requests would be challenged in court. For example, like how Apple refused to unlock a shooters iPhone a couple of years back. In China, we would never even know.
I like the little remark at the end implying that since the US spied on someone then no one should do anything the try to contain anyone else from spying. As if it would be best to have a communist totalitarian government that imprisons thousands of innocent people a year be conducting intelligence operations and no one else.
We should be demanding source code for all of our telecom gear, regardless of where it is made. And to be able to build from that source.
Nobody will be understand the Chinese source, but at least it makes it possible to prove hacks after they have been found.
It is a trade boycott, preventing critical mass, simple as that. If H gets away, from its current leading position. that entire high value added techsector will belong to the Chinese, much like Flat screens TV's went to Korea, Aerospace America, While Cisco and some high tech Americal comms firms have been rocked with confirmed CVE's that is more red-handed than the Chinese and in decline path, and certainly brand names tarnished..
At least the Germans are honest - show us the proof. Or is it more Bloomberg makeup? H has already agreed to have an open spec to big customers - to be met with 'we dont know and dont want to know'.
Predicably teh Chinese will double down on this, given Trumps firing shots.
Best bang for buck , plus a 25% US dollar appreciation means club USA jawboning
will not work. If H wants to stir the pot, it should move some factories to India or Saudi.
You don't want them anywhere near your communications.
Then again Apple and Google are also spies.
Corporatism != Free Market
Angela Merkel should avoid connection flights via Toronto.
Just saying.
Okay, people think that Germany was neutered after WW2. They think that the people there (and running the government) are completely different social and political animals than they were during the Weimar and Reich governments.
BZZZT!
WRONG!
They're still the Big Plan, all or nothing, for your own good, top down, total control socio-fascists they've always been.
They just exert themselves in different directions now.
In current Internet political parlance, they're new bag is being "Pathologically Woke". Because being such gives them ample opportunity to virtue signal how much BETTER they are. How much more caring. How much more understanding. How much more tolerant (so long as you're not directly opposing their hideous social engineering push).
I donâ(TM)t know, man.
This is what my Huawei Tablets wants to do, if I merely want to use a networked android app:
https://twitter.com/BramStolk/...
Straight up evil, if you ask me.
Bram Stolk http://stolk.org/tlctc/
Since US government embedded spy module into Cisco network equipment, Huawei copycat, when pirating the Cisco stuff, copied the spy module and channeled that to Chinese government instead. So it's all a matter of choosing whose economy you want to support and whose spy department you want your communication to be tapped on. We can't escape.
Give me a break -- almost every submission from this person is anti-US/pro-China propaganda. Have a look for yourself:
https://slashdot.org/~hackingbear/submissions
Sadly we're to puny to have an opinion...
Is this some kind of dig against Jordon Peterson?
the Chinese equipment supports interception the same way other equipment makers do
the problem is the network operators dont know how and when it might be enabled without them asking and with much of the SDN equipment the opportunity to detect it is reduced...
everyone spy's on each other, its the very nature of the security posture that the world has adopted
your spot on I find it hilarious anyone interested in privacy would choose Germany with what the BND can do they are pretty amazing !
Some things NEVER change.
How dare they come over here and take our aid and jobs?
Or was it those nasty Prussians, who came from Poland and Russia, to take our land?
Maybe you mean those damn Romans, who brought their culture? What did they ever do for us?
No, wait, of course you mean the Africans and Middle-Easterners, who invaded us, and took our land and women! Fuck homo sapiens! Neanderthal to the neanderthals!!
It still has racism, nationalism, literal torture camps, fascists ("neocons") ruling, and a Hitler-substitute president.
It also hired all the Nazi scientists and concentration-camp doctors, etc, after the war.
And was the only cuntry to ever nuke another country.
Anf has been perpeutally at "not"-war anf usig others as proxies/puppets since back then, with no pause.
Meddling with literally ALL the countries.
Going so far as to openly brag about manipulating th Russian electiony to get fat dancing bear Yeltsin elected, who then put Putin in power, so you have a convenient new scapegoat in your closet, to distract your literally mentally retarded brainwashed slave worker livestock population.
The USA is the only surviving one of the NAZI countries!
I see soo many US-Americans coming here (to Cologne), that it looks like when German scientists fled to the US before WWII, in reverse.
I guess they can smell that shit will go down too.
I wonder who will take on the USA though. And especially without global thermonuclear war.
China? Russia? Or the EU leaving its vassal status? They all do not sound realistic.
Then again, US intelligence "experts" stated that Germany is the factor that tips the whole scale of the EU between siding with the US or with "Russia" (They mean: Not USA. Nobody here wants to be with Russia either.)
Which usually leads to Ukraine-like scenarios, where the population can vote beween a russian puppet and a US puppet, while both breed terrorists (like the Swoboda or AfD) to scaremonger them into making the "right" choice.
Red danger! (purely ideological shit... New Cold War?)
the evidence is on the table. The Americans have been proven to spy on allies, breach and sabotage their networks, and to subvert their own communication equipment before selling to the world. But no evidence of China doing this has ever been presented. None. There have only ever been baseless accusations.
And given the U.S. track record of killing and murdering in foreign countries to get what it wants, over-throwing democratically elected governments, and more, China are saints in comparison. Even if China DID spy, I would probably trust them more with my browsing history than the paranoid and murderous Americans.
It's clear that the U.S. actions towards Huawei are entirely politically and financially motivated. Their own spyware companies, Cisco and Juniper most notably, are losing market to Huawei, and the U.S. can as a consequence not spy on foreign countries as easily, and so they are now scrambling to attack Huawei in any way they can.
American financial and political terrorism is what this is.
These problems are fake, imaggined, propaganda to prevent you from choosing a backdoor-free phone. I might buy my next phone from Huawei since obviously it's missing NSA backdoors. Why else would it get all this hate? Maybe just because it's associated with china, perhaps. But I feel that it's a solid choice either way. I'll have to do more research into their phones soon.
We should be demanding source code for all of our telecom gear, regardless of where it is made.
So use general-purpose computers as routers then. Run linux on them - you have the whole source and may audit the networking stack as much as you like.
"lack of real evidence", what evidence? I thought the entire western think make believe fairly tail, the most trust-worthy-guy, and multiple accusation are as good as "real evidence". I can show you 100 American plus a trust-worthy-gal who supported my view, that Huawei is a slim ball, and spy. What, not "real" enough for you? How many do you need?
I wonder how many people, even on Slashdot would be capable of reviewing, compiling code from source and ensuring it's free of back doors etc?
That number is tiny.
Which is kinda the point. Huawei gear is safer than Cisco gear. Simple mathematics.
One for sure would be Slashdot's own resident asshole Zero__Kelvin. I mean, he'll claim he can do it. He's got a lot of claims.
The correct philosophy is to assume YOU ARE ALREADY COMPROMISED.
...it like when Herr Biedermann invited the arsonists Schmitz and Eisenring to sleep in the attic.
General purpose operating systems are too slow to be core routers. I certainly advise people use a linux router at home rather than the crapware loaded into consumer level "routers", but you still pay a premium for the CPU/power required to do the job compared to the minuscule CPU in your WiFi modem/router/NAS/telephone.
The West German creation story with the USA going back to Reinhard Gehlen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... should be well known.
The USA needed non Communist it could trust with its spying and worked with the only spy ready West Germans it could trust.
Thats what created and advanced generations of West German and now German spies, mil and gov officials.
Advancement was only for Germans who show they will always put the USA/UK above their own gov.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"