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Britain and Germany Will Not Ban Huawei, Citing Lack of Spying Evidence (reuters.com)
An anonymous Slashdot reader writes from a report via Reuters: Despite persistent U.S. allegations of Chinese state spying, Britain said it is able to manage the security risks of using Huawei telecom equipments and has not seen any evidence of malicious activity by the company, a senior official said on Wednesday. Asked later whether Washington had presented Britain with any evidence to support its allegations, he told reporters: "I would be obliged to report if there was evidence of malevolence [...] by Huawei. And we're yet to have to do that. So I hope that covers it."
At the same time, German officials have told The Wall Street Journal that the country has made a "preliminary decision" to allow Huawei to bid on contracts for 5G networking. Catering to the surging populism, the U.S. has accused Huawei and other Chinese telecom equipments, along with European cars, as national security risks, even though the National Security Agency, American's cyber spying agency, was found to have wiretapped German Chancellor Angela Merkel, conducted economic espionage against France, and hacked into Chinese networks. Earlier this week, beleaguered Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei described the continued investigations by the U.S. into the Chinese firm -- including the arrest of his daughter and company CFO, Meng Wanzhou -- as politically motivated.
At the same time, German officials have told The Wall Street Journal that the country has made a "preliminary decision" to allow Huawei to bid on contracts for 5G networking. Catering to the surging populism, the U.S. has accused Huawei and other Chinese telecom equipments, along with European cars, as national security risks, even though the National Security Agency, American's cyber spying agency, was found to have wiretapped German Chancellor Angela Merkel, conducted economic espionage against France, and hacked into Chinese networks. Earlier this week, beleaguered Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei described the continued investigations by the U.S. into the Chinese firm -- including the arrest of his daughter and company CFO, Meng Wanzhou -- as politically motivated.
Every sufficiently capable country should be mandating a complete set of source code minimally and ideally developing homegrown designs and manufacturing capability for security reasons. Relying on the US, China, and/or other countries is a really bad idea. Some countries have recognized the threat and responded accordingly. At least India, Russia, and Iran have some home-grown design, development, and manufacturing capabilities that they are working on. If only they were offering competing products on the world stage we'd probably all be better off. Unfortunately you may not need a high performing or cost efficient CPU at least of your own to realize the security and so we end up with a very small number of companies and countries capable of producing commercial offerings.
The allegations against Huawei are as credible as the Bloomberg Story on spy chips on SuperMicro boards and the reports on WMDs in Iraq.
Sure one has to assume back-doors exist in network equipment and handle the risks - but in Cisco hardware, such back-doors (as trivial as "default passwords") pop up like every other month, even before the NSA tampers with the devices during shipment.
When a company like Huawei (or any company) does business with the US, has assets or people in the US, officers? Yeah, law does matter, bitch. Spread em and cough, here comes the delouser. And I hope you like cantina food.
Oh yeah, in this country? You get a full trial. WITH Lawyer, ACTUAL lawyer, not a court lackey joke like in China. You get actual rights. Especially if you're a Billionaire like Meng, it's kind of ridiculous.
You don't just get swept up off the street into a black site for months like in China. You don't just get an arbitrary court ruling without public scrutiny, you get an actual trial in the public eye. Reported. Transcripts. Evidence.
Fuck the false equivocationalists. Let them see the inside of a Chinese court with their own closed eyes. The truth shall set them free, unless they're Uighurs or their social status score drops below 200.
Huawei is not a private company. It is a state-run institution. The only private companies in China are small to medium operations. Everything big enough to be strategically important is owned and/or managed by the Chinese army or the Chinese Communist Party.
Americans tend to assume that the rest of the world is like the US, but it isn't. Here, we have private companies. They are usually willing to cooperate to some extent with the government, but they are still mostly privately owned and managed. That is approximately the current situation throughout most of Western Civilization, but it is actually quite rare elsewhere.
Most importantly, China does not run on that model at all. The Chinese Communist Party owns the government and military, which in turn owns almost all of the industry and technology.
Imagine if the NSA got into the business of building cell phone network equipment using chips produced by the Air Force Cyber Command's semiconductor foundry and financed as a joint venture by the CIA and the Pentagon. No big deal, right?
See that "Preview" button?
Well, TFA is about Huawei doing business elsewhere, and the authorities there have decided that whatever stuff US spewed about the "rich Chinks", as you call them, is baseless.
This is a welcome change, as Brexitannia has until recently followed the US repeating its lies about Iraq, Syria, Russia and whatnot to the letter.
So we see, when it comes to real money, propaganda still fails.
You're just repeating the flamebait summary, when actually the UK is only refusing to "completely ban" them. They're still agreeing that extensive "mitigation" is necessary, and they won't be allowed everywhere. So only a partial ban.
You're just some foreign propagandist's tool. Like a bot, but stupider.
The US government is just looking out for US corporations, trying to secure a bigger piece of the estimated 3.5 trillion dollars that 5G will generate by spreading FUD about their biggest competition.
If you think US Industry and US Government are not connected when the corporations basically buy the elections for their favorit politicians than I have a bridge to sell you. US National Security is defined as whatever is good for US business. Huawei was alright till it was making copies of Western Tech. Now that they have actually overtaken and hold most of the 5G patents they are bad for US business and hence bad for US National Security.
Whether the companies are state owned or the state is company owned in neither China or the US system do you have independent govt and industry.
**Life is too short to be serious**