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Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956
The U.S. Intel Community's Demonization of Huawei Remains Highly Hypocritical
We've noted for some time how Chinese hardware vendor Huawei has been consistently accused of spying on American citizens without any substantive, public evidence. You might recall that these accusations flared up several years ago, resulting in numerous investigations that culminated in no hard evidence whatsoever to support the allegations. We're not talking about superficial inquiries, we're talking about eighteen months, in-depth reviews by people with every interest in exposing them. One anonymous insider put it this way in the wake of the last bout of hysteria surrounding the company:
We knew certain parts of government really wanted" evidence of active spying, said one of the people, who requested anonymity. "We would have found it if it were there.
[...] This week, hysteria concerning Huawei again reached a fevered pitch, as U.S. intelligence chiefs, testifying before Congress over Russian hacking and disinformation concerns, again proclaimed that Huawei was spying on American citizens and their products most assuredly should not be used:
At the hearing, FBI Director Chris Wray testified, "We're deeply concerned about the risks of allowing any company or entity that is beholden to foreign governments that don't share our values to gain positions of power inside our telecommunications networks." Purchasing Huawei or ZTE products, Wray added, "provides the capacity to maliciously modify or steal information. And it provides the capacity to conduct undetected espionage.
Which values would those be, exactly? Would it be the values, as leaked Edward Snowden docs revealed, that resulted in the NSA hacking into Huawei, stealing source code, then attempting to plant its own backdoors into Huawei products? Or perhaps it's the values inherent in working closely with companies like AT&T to hoover up every shred of data that touches the AT&T network and share it with the intelligence community? Perhaps it's the values inherent in trying to demonize encryption, by proxy weakening security for everyone?
Previously: NSA Spied on Chinese Government and Huawei
U.S. Lawmakers Urge AT&T to Cut Ties With Huawei
Verizon Cancels Plans to Sell Huawei Phone Due to U.S. Government Pressure
U.S. Intelligence Agency Heads Warn Against Using Huawei and ZTE Products
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 23 2018, @05:17AM
TFA makes a claim that there is no hard evidence that Huawei spies on US citizens based on things like a White House report. And that may be technically true. Nevertheless the evidence that Huawei spies on certain US companies in order to learn trade secrets, obtain internal product designs, and to steal intellectual property is strong. We have caught Huawei using personnel plundering our IP. We have found Huawei products with a wholesale ripoff of our code and chip design.
Beyond stealing IP: We have also traced an infrastructure attack that used inside knowledge that came from inside persons who were working with Huawei. I’m not saying that Huawei did the infrastructure attack. I’m saying the inside knowledge they stole was later used by someone to launch the attack. The key that was used to launch the infrastructure attack was stolen by people working on behalf of Huawei. It would not surprise me if US intelligence failed an attempt to tie Huawei to the attack. We had no evidence that Huawei did the attack, only that they stole the key that was used be someone else to conduct the attack.
Certain thieves working with or on behalf of Huawei do spy and steal intellectual property from US competitors of Huawei. Moreover Huawei management seems to have no problem in using stolen IP in their products, counting on the poor patient protection under Chinese law to protect them. Sometimes we can block a stolen product for being sold in the US, but it is very difficult to block the Huawei sale of stolen IP in China, let alone across the world.
There are many honorable companies in China who do not steal like Huawei does. We have valuable partnerships with other Chinese companies who strictly enforce a mutual NDA. Huawei is not one of these honorable companies.
Huawei might not spy wholesale on American citizens but do spy on select US companies for the purpose of gaining an unfair advantage. And Huawei may also give key infrastructure details to groups capable of launching infrastructure attacks.
Huawei is an intellectual property theft company.