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.

Comments

Boy who cried wolf

[Livius]

The US has squandered its credibility. I can't say that Huawei inspires me with trust, but US accusations mean nothing.

Re:Boy who cried wolf

[ffkom]

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?

Re: Boy who cried wolf

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Boy who cried wolf

[Aighearach]

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.

Re: Boy who cried wolf

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re: Boy who cried wolf

[mjwx]

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.

Does evidence of bad customer service count?

[shanen]

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).

Re:Does evidence of bad customer service count?

[Orgasmatron]

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?

Spy chips on SuperMicro boards and WMDs in Iraq

[ffkom]

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.

^ This.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:^ This.

[mentil]

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?

Boy who let the wolf in, better title.

[Anonymous Coward]

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

[ghoul]

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.

Bigger issues

[LostMyAccount]

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.