Britain and Germany Will Not Ban Huawei, Citing Lack of Spying Evidence (reuters.com)

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Britain and Germany Will Not Ban Huawei, Citing Lack of Spying Evidence (reuters.com)

Posted by BeauHD on Wednesday February 20, 2019 @01:30PM from the show-me-the-evidence dept.

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.

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Boy who cried wolf by Livius · 2019-02-20 13:44 · Score: 5, Interesting

The US has squandered its credibility. I can't say that Huawei inspires me with trust, but US accusations mean nothing.
1. Re:Boy who cried wolf by ffkom · 2019-02-20 14:05 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  The British, who are considered "5-Eyes"-spying comrades of the US, have, as you can read, not seen compelling evidence. And they have been the poodle fetching US-thrown sticks for decades now. What more non-evidence can you ask for?
2. Re: Boy who cried wolf by Anonymous Coward · 2019-02-20 14:42 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  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.
3. Re: Boy who cried wolf by Anonymous Coward · 2019-02-20 14:51 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  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.
4. Re:Boy who cried wolf by Aighearach · 2019-02-20 15:02 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  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.
5. Re:Boy who cried wolf by Mr.+Dollar+Ton · 2019-02-20 15:35 · Score: 2
  
  There is no "intellectual property". There are various temporary monopoly licenses given by the state (patents, copyrights, etc.) to the author of an intellectual work to recoup their costs. But the catch is that those licenses are limited.
  Trying to turn them into a perpetuity is a lawyer trick, which only feeds the "intellectual property" lobbyist and lawyers, and does nothing for the real authors, who actually come up with the clever ideas.
6. Re: Boy who cried wolf by Anonymous Coward · 2019-02-20 16:22 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  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.
7. Re: Boy who cried wolf by Anonymous Coward · 2019-02-20 19:12 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  You don't just get swept up off the street into a black site for months like in China
  
  You people are so funny. There are plenty of examples of America doing exactly this.
  When they dont just assasinate or drone strike the people instead.
  America 'justice' is so non existant most people just take plea bargains and never even make it to the 'fair trial' stage.
8. Re: Boy who cried wolf by Shaitan · 2019-02-20 20:48 · Score: 2
  
  IP laws are an international thing supported by international treaties, treaties China has repeatedly promised to enforce.
9. Re:Boy who cried wolf by Shaitan · 2019-02-20 21:02 · Score: 2
  
  What do states spying on states have to do with states spying for businesses? States spying on each other is fair game and it has been no secret the US spies on everyone and everyone spies on the US since at least the 80's. The only surprising thing with the leaks is how successful they are at it but what they don't generally do is bring government sized and capabilities to promote private interests (except maybe in a rare instance where it a security interest). China is a different beast with the state and business tightly coupled.
10. Re:Boy who cried wolf by Freischutz · 2019-02-20 21:53 · Score: 2
  
  The US has squandered its credibility. I can't say that Huawei inspires me with trust, but US accusations mean nothing.
  ... and now that the US is being ruled by New York's village idiot and has decided to isolate itself, the EU is beginning to move closer to the fastest growing, and soon to be largest single economy in the world. The real irony of the situation is that this entire evolution is being driven by Trumpism and would not be happening if it wasn't for the Trump administration. American politics has devolved into a foot shooting contest.
11. Re: Boy who cried wolf by mjwx · 2019-02-21 02:17 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  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.
  Meanwhile the British and Germans are saving billions on not having backup infrastructure.. If we lose any data we'll just ask the Chinese government for it.
  
  Espionage based backup is insanely cheap.
  
  --
  Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
It's naive to think foreign designs are no threat by Anonymous Coward · 2019-02-20 13:49 · Score: 2, Insightful

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.
Does evidence of bad customer service count? by shanen · 2019-02-20 13:55 · Score: 4, Interesting

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.
1. Re:Does evidence of bad customer service count? by Orgasmatron · 2019-02-20 14:46 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  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?
2. Re:Does evidence of bad customer service count? by Freischutz · 2019-02-20 22:01 · Score: 2
  
  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?
  Huawei is not owned by the Chinese state. It is owned by the company's employees, Ren Zhengfei (founder & CEO) and some of the managers with the latter two probably owning a majority of the shares. The Company employees shares are managed by the employee union.
Spy chips on SuperMicro boards and WMDs in Iraq by ffkom · 2019-02-20 14:00 · Score: 4, Insightful

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.
BND and GCHQ say no to the NSA? by AHuxley · 2019-02-20 14:06 · Score: 2

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"
1. Re:BND and GCHQ say no to the NSA? by Anonymous Coward · 2019-02-20 15:27 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  ROTFLMAO.
  When the French bombed the "Rainbow Warrior", where was the USA, that's right , saying nothing, doing nothing because New Zealand had gone antinuclear.
  The US even put in trade barriers (while giving China Favoured Nation Status).
  At the Peal Harbour remembrance, the New Zealand navy was not permitted to be in the military base but in the civilian port.
  The US has ben taken multiple times to the WTO (which the US set up for its benefit) by NZ to fight trade barriers, tariffs , agricultural subsidies, etc.
  We have a centre left government.
  We were the first country in the world to set up a welfare system, we have universal healthcare and education.
  But, we are more "free" than the USA, are more democratic, less crime, fewer murders, greater freedom of speech, freedom of the press, education, welfare, etc etc etc are all better than the USA.
  Trust me, we don't want to sink to the levels the USA is heading to.
  And we have Huawei routers and switches, and wireless access points in our universities.
  And have a look at this to see how well the USA treated the UK
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qk_zpjK3cTo
  And understand that US citizens were the main supplier of weapons and money to the IRA.
  And the US has not only supported, but funded and equiped terrorists, though they called them freedom fighters, all over the world.
  The US only cares about the US, if they thought dropping a Nuke on London was the best for the US that plane would already be in the air.
^ This. by Anonymous Coward · 2019-02-20 14:29 · Score: 3, Interesting

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.
1. Re:^ This. by mentil · 2019-02-20 17:21 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Just because the backdoor was left open by China, doesn't mean they're the only ones who can walk in. Isn't that what we've been saying about "government-mandated backdoors" all along? Who's to say an American TLA won't use the same backdoor to find/plant incriminating evidence on your phone?
  
  --
  Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Boy who let the wolf in, better title. by Anonymous Coward · 2019-02-20 17:09 · Score: 4, Informative

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/
US Industry==US Governmnt by ghoul · 2019-02-20 17:13 · Score: 3, Insightful

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**
Re:It's because they're not ZTE by ghoul · 2019-02-20 17:20 · Score: 2

They already paid the Clintons. They dont want to pay again

--
**Life is too short to be serious**
Re:"catering to surging populism" by Shaitan · 2019-02-20 20:47 · Score: 2

I don't know, devalue their currency to steal our jobs and manufacturing, use that advantage to steal our manufacturing technology, hack our infrastructure/businesses, international business, steal our ICBM technology, industrial and tech IP, and siphon our wealth. Of and hire a sockpuppet using the nick "ShanghaiBill"
Bigger issues by LostMyAccount · 2019-02-20 23:37 · Score: 3, Interesting

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.