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posted by martyb on Saturday February 15 2020, @10:07AM   Printer-friendly
from the don't-spy-like-I-do dept.

The US is charging Huawei with racketeering

Ratcheting up its pressure campaign against Huawei and its affiliates, the Department of Justice and the FBI announced today that it has brought 16 charges against Huawei in a sprawling case with major geopolitical implications (you can read the full 56-page indictment here).

Huawei is being charged with conspiracy to violate the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) statute. The DoJ alleges that Huawei and a number of its affiliates used confidential agreements with American companies over the past two decades to access the trade secrets of those companies, only to then misappropriate that intellectual property and use it to fund Huawei's business.

An example of this activity is provided in the indictment. Described as "Company 1," Huawei is alleged to have stolen source code for Company 1's routers, which it then used in its own products.

[...] Huawei is also alleged to have engaged in more simple forms of industrial espionage. While at a trade show in Chicago, a Huawei-affiliated engineer "... was discovered in the middle of the night after the show had closed for the day in the booth of a technology company ... removing the cover from a networking device and taking photographs of the circuitry inside. Individual-3 wore a badge listing his employer as 'Weihua,'

[...] Together, the indictment lists multiple examples of Huawei's alleged conspiracy to pilfer U.S. intellectual property.

It's a good thing that the United States would never do 'bad things' or act in a manner like this.


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by physicsmajor on Saturday February 15 2020, @04:33PM (3 children)

    by physicsmajor (1471) on Saturday February 15 2020, @04:33PM (#958534)

    This is the correct response. Not new, but I find it quite interesting that the DoJ is potentially interested in enforcement. Chinese theft of trade secrets has been business as usual for a very long time.

    Moving manufacturing to China generally results in 1) Cheaper products, shortly followed by 2) Nearly imperceptibly different knockoffs, probably on the same tooling in the same factory after hours, for which you don't get a thin dime.

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  • (Score: 1, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 15 2020, @04:55PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 15 2020, @04:55PM (#958541)

    Nobody is stopping the companies who have all the great intellect to sell their products to poor countries when their production has becomes cheaper and it has become profitable. Instead, the are happy selling it to only rich countries because that means higher profit margin i.e. Bigger war chest. I am very happy that Chinese are at least willing to sell to the poor. They have done more to increase the living standard of this world than gun selling "world-leaders".

    • (Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday February 15 2020, @05:40PM (1 child)

      by Bot (3902) on Saturday February 15 2020, @05:40PM (#958555) Journal

      Hello, soldier of the 50c army.
      You are among friends. Most of us are acutely aware that what china is doing now is exactly what the USA did, copying ideas and stuff from the europeans. Europeans stole the silk from the Chinese. The smarter among us also know that the current state of affairs (Soviet empire putting itself on sale without firing a shot, west helping the Chinese, Chinese helping africa and so on) cannot be explained in terms of nations, but needs a superior system, mirrored by the financial system, dictates what political leaders can or cannot do.
      So, let us have a lil fun on huawei, we don't peculiarly hate them anyway.

      --
      Account abandoned.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 16 2020, @01:29PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 16 2020, @01:29PM (#958776)

        I am not complaining about copyright. As someone who has actually known artists, the world will be a better place if artists had more money and the market valued their work more than it does latest CPU.

        What I am saying is that money isn't actually reaching the pockets of the creators, isn't it? Instead the cheaper production is being used to fund war machine and that should be the focus of our discourse, not who stole from whom.