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Chinese vendor Huawei has provided a longer response to US allegations of spying, claiming that it doesn't have the spying capability alleged by the US and pointing out that the US itself has a long history of spying on phone networks.
"As evidenced by the Snowden leaks, the United States has been covertly accessing telecom networks worldwide, spying on other countries for quite some time," Huawei said in a six-paragraph statement sent to news organizations. "The report by the Washington Post this week about how the CIA used an encryption company to spy on other countries for decades is yet additional proof." (That Post report detailed how the CIA bought a company called Crypto AG and used it to spy on communications for decades.)
Huawei's latest statement came in response to a Wall Street Journal report yesterday quoting US officials as saying, "We have evidence that Huawei has the capability secretly to access sensitive and personal information in systems it maintains and sells around the world." The US has been sharing its intelligence with allies as it tries to convince them to stop using Huawei products but still hasn't made the evidence public.
Huawei said:
US allegations of Huawei using lawful interception are nothing but a smokescreen—they don't adhere to any form of accepted logic in the cyber security domain. Huawei has never and will never covertly access telecom networks, nor do we have the capability to do so. The Wall Street Journal is clearly aware that the US government can't provide any evidence to support their allegations, and yet it still chose to repeat the lies being spread by these US officials. This reflects The Wall Street Journal's bias against Huawei and undermines its credibility.
[...]US allegations that Huawei secretly uses backdoors that were designed for law enforcement, if true, would bolster arguments from security experts that it's not possible to build backdoors that can only be accessed by their intended users in law enforcement.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Friday February 14 2020, @01:59AM (10 children)
The US has been doing it to everyone else for as long as it could, and Americans aren't exempt either.
However, it's possible for both things to be true at the same time, and that's a hell of a lot more likely than just the US doing it.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by arslan on Friday February 14 2020, @03:00AM (9 children)
Yea, that's my initial reaction as well - Huawei can point to all sort of other entities committing the crime all they want, but that doesn't really absolve them from the allegations.
Its like the support of their claim that they don't have the capability to do it others doing it better - weak sauce.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 14 2020, @04:45AM (2 children)
Well, let us just remember that, for now, it is only "allegations". So far, the US government has yet to show the public any evidence for these claims. I would like to see some real hard evidence, frankly. On the other hand, we already do have evidence that the NSA has been snooping on all our communications for quite some time.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by hendrikboom on Friday February 14 2020, @04:58PM
And the UK has an institution specifically investigating Huawei's 5G offerings with complete access to source code. Over several years they have not found any evidence of embedded malware.
Sounds like such inspection would be useful with a lot of software we already rely on every day.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday February 14 2020, @08:01PM
As you say, the US subverting hardware and software of espionage purposes is long proven from Mark Klein to Snowden while the allegations against Huawei have no credible evidence yet proposed. But the fact that the United States is already guilty of such behavior is exactly why it feels justified in lodging the allegations. "We did it, so they must be also" is the logical fallacy.
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(Score: 4, Interesting) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday February 14 2020, @08:05PM (5 children)
But the allegations against Huawei are only allegation, not evidence. (Unlike the opposite where evidence actually exists against the US). Those making the allegation are the ones who have the obligation to actually present evidence if they want the allegations believed.
And I can very much believe Huawei doesn't do it and China doesn't want it done either, because then they capture more market share because Huawei can be trusted. If there wasn't already untrustworthy competition then there would be no impetus to good. But in this case keeping the moral high ground may actually benefit Huawei and, by extension, China.
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(Score: 2, Disagree) by arslan on Monday February 17 2020, @02:04AM (4 children)
Completely agree.. except Huawei is now also making allegations. Both need to provide evidence. Not saying Huawei are not allowed to make allegations, they can since they're really just doing unto others and all that shite. Just pointing out things are not mutually exclusive is all - the logic Huawei's allegations that is.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday February 17 2020, @06:30PM (3 children)
Except that Huawei can point to items outside of themselves proving it. Their allegations are the first two sentences of their press release above:
If you don't think the Snowden leaks proved anything, well, can't help you much more there. The other story in the Washington Post [washingtonpost.com] seems rather compelling. And both are orders of magnitude above, "US Officials claim things about Huawei but are unwilling to put their proof in the public eye," giving even less evidence than they did about Iraqi WMD fraud.
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(Score: 2) by arslan on Monday February 17 2020, @10:08PM (2 children)
Sure. Like I said, what the US gov. did or did not do doesn't mean squat to the allegations against Huawei. Fine, I'll concede the US did all those stuff, in fact I'm firmly in the camp that believe they did. Again, doesn't do squat to the allegations against Huawei.
Its like a rapist's defense against their action is: "Your honor, my accuser is a murderer and rapist!". That is not a defense, that is a smokescreen as per the TFS.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Tuesday February 18 2020, @03:14PM (1 child)
Except that no defense is necessary when allegations are made without evidence. It's more like a known murderer and rapist alleging someone else is guilty of rape. Just because the murderer/rapist has murdered and raped does not give them the right to accuse someone else of the same crimes without any evidence. And I think it's fine for the one accused without evidence to point out that the original accuser is in fact already a murderer and rapist, which might color the credibility of such an accusation without evidence.
(And quite aside from that, the fact that nobody else seems to agree with the United States' position, including governments which might well be able to receive classified intelligence that the public cannot, speaks volumes for the credibility of the U.S. as well. Witness Trump's meltdown at Johnson, among other evidence.)
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(Score: 2) by arslan on Tuesday February 18 2020, @11:10PM
I don't disagree with any of that, sounds like you're saying the same thing. It applies to _both_ of them. Just because I called out Huawei specifically doesn't equate to me saying US gets a free pass.
And other governments have banned Huawei (5G) as well like here in Oz, sure they didn't outright confirm the US's allegations, but are taking same action that reflects that allegation.