Slashdot Mirror
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.
Catering to a bunch of rich chinks, and hoping to be allowed to stay active in the country, reuters throws any sense of objectivity out the window and shows their ass, full screen.
The US has squandered its credibility. I can't say that Huawei inspires me with trust, but US accusations mean nothing.
According to the British:
Britain says Huawei has not fixed ‘serious’ problems affecting network security
Top British cybersecurity officials on Wednesday said the Chinese telecom equipment provider Huawei has yet to fix “serious” engineering problems that could leave civilian networks vulnerable to compromise, at a time when the United States is pressing its case that the company’s ties to China’s government make using its gear an unacceptable security and surveillance risk.
Sounds like Slashdot posted some more Chinese propoganda.
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.
Or corrupt, no real third option here.
The real problem would be finding evidence that American companies can be trusted, eh?
From the purely economic perspective, China has the most to lose if they allow any private companies to get involved in spying. I'd go even farther and say that the Chinese leaders (including Xi) have redefined "communism" to mean "whatever makes money". That means it would now be an attack on "The Party" if Huawei did anything that threatened their corporate profits.
Having said that, I think the real threat to Huawei's profits is bad customer service. I've actually owned about 6 Huawei devices going back more than a decade. Technically they have all been on the scale from good to excellent, and the prices have put them on the scale from excellent value to superior, but the customer service has always been on the scale from none to miserable. I think if Huawei seriously wants to be an international player in broader areas of consumer electronics, they desperately need to rethink and redo their entire customer service operation. Nuking the support part of their website would be a good start. (Maybe it isn't so gawdawful in Chinese? I'm sure it can't be worse.)
Then again, there are some features to look for to determine if ANY maker's devices have been designed with espionage in mind. Level 0 would be things like unmentioned microphones, but the google just won that boobie prize. Level 1 would be reasonable features like EEPROM that has legitimate purposes but which could be used to install malware. After all, every device may need an upgrade at some point.
Level 2 would be clever design for fail safe concealment of the espionage-related capabilities. For example, a DRAM without power protection could be used for holding malware that would automatically disappear when the power is cut for any reason. Part of the POST could check for the network environment so as to detect if the device has been moved into a trap or DMZ (thus preventing re-installation of the spyware).
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Orange Man say china bad, therefore china good
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.
Trumps response:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kx6-NzLpf0
Why is the USA letting the BND and GCHQ say no to US directions on Communist telecom equipment?
The NSA allowed the BND and GCHQ to grow. Their staff worked with the NSA/CIA for decades.
This is how the BND and GCHQ responds to the USA after decades of US support and sharing?
The USA asked Germany and the UK for one telco thing over the decades and the UK and Germany say no the USA?
All the training, equipment, crypto help, tracking of the IRA and the UK says no after decades of free US support?
All the help the USA tax payers gave West Germany with the Stasi and Soviet Union?
Time for the USA to get its Special Relationship going with Canada and New Zealand.
Give more supportive nations like New Zealand the full NSA upgrades and let Germany and the UK enjoy their Communist telecom equipment.
5 eye nations that like the USA, the NSA and its decades of support. Nations that appreciate US tax payers support.
The US supported the UK and West German, now Germany for decades.
Now Germany and the UK will trade that US support all in for one generation of Communist telecom equipment?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Got a little girl? Beware JEWS https://tech.slashdot.org/comm...
no dobt your guy sanders has a backroom deal with those chinks to fund his socalist agenda
Whether or not a single senior UK official has personally seen evidence or not is your exclusive qualifier for whether or not such evidence exists in any record, eh?
Enjoy your bondage, march on. Facts will not stop you. One single unnamed person during the BREXIT fiasco catering to China's government convinces you.
And surely, on that basis, you wish to convince others that not only do they not need to look at the historical record of Huawei's transgressions, but that it doesn't exist?
Yeah. There's a phrase for that. Go fuck yourself, illiterates.
When the British are willing to publicly turn their nose at their 'ally' in a big way like this, you know it is bad.
Personally, having used rooted Huawei phones, and having previously had them be one of the few phone companies to allow unlocking without having to phone in, I can say that Huawei phones are/were nicely engineered, had unique features compared to their competitors and were immensely reliable (I only stopped using mine after misplacing it for a few weeks, and having a replacement purchased for me.)
Having said that, the US and its corporations are more of an immediate threat to my security and freedom than the Chinese are. If they really want everyone backing their horse, they need us to not feel like we're just getting their brand instead of the Chinese one.
You're funny!
Wow you're an angry anonymous coward. Woosa, have you tried some Chinese noodle soup? Very good in the winter or even some Pho.
China's government is the enemy of Chinese people in my country. YMMV, but I don't think it actually does. Pho is Vietnamese. Clue in anytime guailo, you're supposed to snort tiger wang, not suck it, yang.
Huawei's problem is that they didn't figure out how to transfer $500,000,000 to Trump's family like ZTE did.
To help spy on all their new "imports" and see if they're planning any random acts of peace and diversity spreading...
"Catering to the surging populism"
WTF? Uhh citation please?
thanks for sharing this plot for sale in g14
even though the National Security Agency
Nothing the NSA has done in the past, to anyone, has any bearing whatsoever on the legitimacy of any accusations against Huawei.
https://www.businessinsider.com/second-huawei-employee-arrested-in-poland-on-suspicion-of-china-spying-2019-1
https://www.hongkongfp.com/2018/12/12/three-hong-kong-passports-arrested-huawei-exec-meng-wanzhou-revealed-canadian-court/
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/dec/07/meng-wanzhou-huawei-cfo-court-bail-fraud-sanctions-breach-canada
https://www.businessinsider.com/second-huawei-employee-arrested-in-poland-on-suspicion-of-china-spying-2019-1
https://www.scmp.com/business/companies/article/2177512/huawei-and-skycom-firm-accused-breaching-us-sanctions-shared-web
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-huawei-tech/huawei-units-to-be-arraigned-on-u-s-criminal-charges-on-feb-28-idUSKCN1PN2WP
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/third-canadian-detained-in-china-following-arrest-of-huawei-exec-2018-12-19
https://www.forbes.com/sites/arthurherman/2018/12/10/huaweis-and-chinas-dangerous-high-tech-game/
https://www.hongkongfp.com/2018/12/12/three-hong-kong-passports-arrested-huawei-exec-meng-wanzhou-revealed-canadian-court/
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/dec/07/meng-wanzhou-huawei-cfo-court-bail-fraud-sanctions-breach-canada
https://www.businessinsider.com/second-huawei-employee-arrested-in-poland-on-suspicion-of-china-spying-2019-1
https://www.scmp.com/business/companies/article/2177512/huawei-and-skycom-firm-accused-breaching-us-sanctions-shared-web
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-huawei-tech/huawei-units-to-be-arraigned-on-u-s-criminal-charges-on-feb-28-idUSKCN1PN2WP
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/third-canadian-detained-in-china-following-arrest-of-huawei-exec-2018-12-19
https://www.forbes.com/sites/arthurherman/2018/12/10/huaweis-and-chinas-dangerous-high-tech-game/
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**
One of the few things I'll give to the US is that they do Open Source pretty well, both in terms of the quality of available software and following the appropriate license terms.
If you've had any dealings with Chinese companies, on the other hand, you'll know that they're very good at appropriating Open Source software as their own and never making contributions back to the original projects, nor making their changes available to their customers. Creality seems to be one of the few exceptions to this, but this only happened after they got publicly shamed - and somebody in the company actually cared enough to change their internal policies.
Copyyright is not an authors' right. It is a distributors' privilege to a temporary monopoly (rememeber: otherwise a crime for good reasons) for the purpose of erecting an (de-facto inenforceable) artificial scarcity (another crime), to make something infinitely abundant (and hence worthless) into something that you can squeeze money out of, without actually having to work yourself.
A profit multiplier.
Just make the artist work once, ideally pay him once (or pay tiny silly amounts like <3%), but make the licensee pay an infinite amount of times (for which he usually also had to pay an infinite amount of times, unless he's making his money in similar not honest ways).
It's a license to "print" money.
And they could just have used the same business model as every other service business uses since the dawn of commerce. You work once, you get paid once. Works for everything from prostitution to fixing a car to building apartment complexes.
Needed a lot of money? Well, so did others too. And yet they aren't calling the repair on your car their "property", nor demand that everybody who drives in that car has to pay 20 cent until the end of the universe!
Ask every artist: The biggest enemy of the artist industry is the media/distribution industry. An industry that lost its point with the Internet, and since its very beginnings only existed to leech on artists through the power of being an investor.
Which nobody needs anymore nowadays. There's Kickstarter, Patreon, marketing firms to help you with getting publicity, and if all you do is e.g. music, the tools are afforable to anyone who can afford a computer.
The whole idea of "intellectual property"... whose conception I had to observe personally in the 2000s ... only stems from that situation, and their panic that they would not be able to keep leeching, after MP3s, Napster and Scour Exchange woke them up hard.
See, I worked in those industries. Music, film and games. And cocaine is as normal as drinking soda in the summer used to be. Whose side-effects are massive over-confidence (they think they are entitled to that leeched profit) and extreme paranoia ("everybody's stealing from us! waah!").
And that's all it is.
No artists involves except as victims, and now a new generation who sadly grew into the brainwashing propaganda, think " intellectual property" is real, and now believe they need to act like that too.
Yeah, such credibility. Much trust. Heil..., I mean Wow!
Wanna bet the UK did no such thing, and it takes some quite creative spin doctoring to produce such a statement that's still swallowable.
Germany here. Lizzen. We don't throw out people for spying on us. After all, your CIA headquarters -- uh -- Berlin embassy is still there, after you listening in on Merkel's phone, you baddy-baddy.
The problem the US have with Huawei is about more than whether they have been spying or not - it's about the fact that the US as a nation have lost control of the technology because the Chinese are the only credible firms producing 5G equipment. That means that they can control or break the standards in subtle ways, and then deliberately make it much harder or impossible for US (or other non-Chinese) firms to compete on a level playing field (by making only Chinese equipment truly cross-compatible). I don't know if this is actually happening but it is a legitimate concern - it's like the difference between Microsoft's OOXML vs ODF - the OOXML standard is technically open but it's close to impossible to truly implement something which is properly cross-compatible with MS Office.
A level playing field with open and transparent standards is something we should all be concerned to maintain because the next logical stage will be for the firms benefiting from the closed standard is to leverage that "lockin" to raise prices.
Only sensible post here.
Do not trust Huawei. Do not trust Cisco. End of story.
If the US wants us to stop using Huawei all they have to do is provide evidence of spying.
If they do that we will stop using Huawei instantly. They are our ally, why is it so hard for them to provide proof?
It isn't like they do much. They make censored state versions of a few things and they adapt some software to run on their cheap knock off devices.
Is there any decision on Cisco? Juniper? They have both been proven definitely, and repeatedly to insert back-doors into their telecom equipment.
The question now is what kind of flippant false-flag sabotage operation America will engage in, to further hurt Huawei and try to save their own Cisco and Juniper, and access to foreign countries communications.
isn't our word good for it anymore? Oh well, its time to free British and German people from their cruel oppressive regimes - what their are doing to their people is horrible. We just need to buy a few 'friends' to help us first.
People often forget that most telecommunication companies used to be owned by their own government before 1990, and there are still many in Western Europe. Deutsche Telekom, present in the USA, has 38% state ownership. Do you care about German spies? Nope.
Convenient paranoia. Use interoperable global standard equipment and donâ(TM)t over rely on any suppliers. Huawei could be useful for promoting competition lower $ and by allowing minority equipment. Likewise China will feel compelled to reciprocate buying Nokia and Ericsson. Better than a trade war.
...now the UK just have to stop threatening to send their war ships into sensitive areas[1] and that'll help avoid pissing off the Chinese and perhaps help them post Brexit.
[1] If they really want to ensure freedom of navigation, why not send a dirt great oil tanker or something? TBH, I imagine there are very many British ships going through those seas every day. Is there any evidence of the Chinese trying to prevent *anyone* using those waters? ...anyone who isn't an obvious threat to them, that is.
Max.
Britain is facing Brexit and a bunch of trade and economic issues. They'd rather stay in the good graces of the Chinese, the idea being they can replace stuff they would have bought from Europe with Chinese goods. And then there's the idea that if they don't get on board with 5G at a price point they can afford, their economic disadvantages will be worse yet.
The Germans probably figure they're just too smart to worry about hacked Chinese equipment, especially if they can isolate it with some good homegrown or European sourced technology. Plus they may well have come up with counter-espionage techniques that defeat Russian and American penetration that defeating the Chinese can't be any harder.
And in both cases, we can blame Trump's idiotic foreign policy for some of this. I'd wager if we had made Britain feel like they had a trade ally in Brexit and not shit all over German foreign policy, they might have gone along with us on Chinese telecom equipment.
Mobile phones are a minor risk since easy to replace and detect. Infrastructure a bigger concern since harder to rip out. Democracies should ensure their vendors are less susceptible to influence to avoid over reliance. China and lately India limit foreign influence so prevalent behavior. Then there is Sketchy Corp behavior with IP and sanctions violations as another concern. But even US Cos sue each other over IP like Qualcomm vs Apple.
The second is nothing new for the USA either.
Third one is nothing new for the USA.
Fourth one is just an allegation. Not proof.
Fifth is the USA acting as judge, jury and executioner without proving the guilt first. IOW same as the first one.
Sixth, ditto.
Seventh no different from what canada did, so nothing new there. USA did it too several times.
Eighth is a claim again, not a proof.
Kiddie porn ban is censorship. Don't hear you claiming slashdot must change that.
Since such sanctions aren't in the constitution, it is a states thing. Each state should be sanctioning, not the federal government.
Why do I think the Germans and British are stupid? Better yet ignorant. Either they haven't been following all the technology Huawei has been documented in stealing or don't care about political prisoners being executed by the communist nor about the 2,000,000+ Muslims in concentration camps. Doing business with such a country is nothing to worry about?
Thats a distinction without a difference. Neither US is a capitalist country nor is China a Communist country. Both of them are Crony Capitalist or Fascist (Like Mussolinis Italy).
Fascism without the racism comes down to state directed capitalism where the State instead of being a regulator (as in Capitalism) or owner (as in Communism) is a promoter of industry. State directed capitalism. Mostly directed through export licenses, tax incentives, tariffs, exemptions to worker laws.
Nothing wrong with fascism (as long as you can keep the racism out of it) as it can lead to rapid progress like in Italy and Germany prior to WW2 (and prior to Hitler wasting resources on killing Jews) but please lets stop pretending that the US and Chinese systems are really different.
**Life is too short to be serious**
Is it the contradiction between, on the one hand, Oz gov won't use Huawei stuff since the Chinese might be spying, but on the other, Oz gov demands the ability for itself to spy/intercept?
Or is it examples of what retaliation might look like, for example https://www.abc.net.au/news/20...
Looks like the 5 eyes said "you first" to Oz, and now UK and NZ are saying "on second thoughts..." (yeah, I know this particular story mentions Germany, not NZ)
Remember when Obama was in office and there was outrage over spying on Angela Merkel's phone? Yeah, figured you forgot about that.
So Germany can either get in bed with America again, where the Germans know for an absolute FACT that America will be spying on them... or, they could take a gamble on Huawei.
As a government, I wouldn't trust either, but since they are not making the technology themselves, they will have to choose the lesser of the evils.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
The use of Huawei products will be used by the british codename "Kim Philby".
If Huawei really is an innocently accused company that has nothing to do with the Chinese state and its intelligence branches, they should state so and if necessary move out of China to escape any forced cooperation. But this hasn't happened and to me it is a clear admission that all the rumors are true.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --