US Blocks Chinese Company From Contract Bid: Worried China Might Spy On US Just As US Spied On Others
from the what's-sauce-for-the-goose-is-sauce-for-the-gander dept
Preserving national security is obviously crucially important, but that concern is hardly the preserve of any one country. The US government seems to have forgotten this in banning Huawei from bidding for a major US telecommunications contract:
Worried about potential spying, the U.S. government has blocked a bid from China�s telecommunications giant Huawei to help build a new national wireless network for first responders such as police, firefighters, and ambulances.
Huawei �will not be taking part in the building of America�s interoperable wireless emergency network for first responders due to U.S. government national-security concerns,� Commerce Department spokesman Kevin Griffis told The Daily Beast.
What's the fear here?
Griffis declined to elaborate on those concerns. But current and retired U.S. intelligence officials tell The Daily Beast the longstanding concern about Huawei is that the company�s chips, routers, and other technical equipment will be bugged in a way that gives China�s government a cyber back door into sensitive information networks.
The technique of bugging equipment or writing software in such a way as to allow undetected access has also been used by U.S. intelligence agencies in the past to gain a window into the communications of other foreign governments.
So, in effect, the US government is worried that the Chinese might do to it what the US has done to other governments.
That's a perfectly reasonable fear: by now, the Chinese intelligence agencies doubtless have the technological capability to do so. But China actually has rather more grounds for concern when buying US communications technology or software: after all, the US has already carried out spying in this way.
This latest move just gives China the perfect excuse for blocking US companies bidding for "sensitive" Chinese projects in the future. When the US complains � as it surely will � the Chinese will simply point back to this episode, noting the symmetry of the situation, and their own worries about national security.
Wouldn't it have been wiser to come up with better tools for detecting attempts to introduce back doors into hardware and software? That would have raised the US's general readiness in this area against all such threats, not just those from China, and would not have given China or any other country a pretext for shutting the US out from their markets.
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Filed Under: china, spying, telco infrastructure, us
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In fact, I bet Chinese actions in the US/China dynamic is behind a lot of the political will to pass the asinine IP laws that are discussed here.
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Not only would the US Govt be worried about China putting in back doors on their turf. The US Govt would want whichever US company that builds the network to put in their own back doors so that the US Govt can spy on it's own people.
With Huawei involved, the US Govt wouldn't be able to keep that secret. Not that it's a huge secret with all the warrantless wiretapping going on.
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Re:
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The Chinese are so innocent though right?
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If a US firm bids on a telecom project in China...
Oh, wait... They do that already.
Sorry, my bad.
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Um, yeah...
Example:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110522/23484014387/cisco-sued-helping-china -repress-falun-gong.shtml
Is Cisco helping other countries "manage" their wide area networks? Sure. Wonder how much control they'll really have if push comes to shove.
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Re:
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That's not to say the US is any different, but I trust my evil empire more than I trust theirs.
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Re: Re:
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http://news.softpedia.com/news/FBI-039-s-Own-Offices--Infected-with-Counterfeit-Cisco-Hardware-8 5312.shtml
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Meh
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Heh
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Re: Re: Re:
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If You Want An Example Of What The US Has Done ...
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spying?
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Re: The Chinese are so innocent though right?
The US Government did this as recently as last year, and that was documented. So I find it amusing that the US is all high and mighty about this now, when it's probably been an issue for many years.
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Made in the USA
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And the fact that the government is willing to risk a trade war over it just may put some value into the words of those people, you are risking something, this is not something that comes easy.
I don't think any government in the world should trust a third party with their infra-structure this is something every country in the world should strive to get it done at home.
This is why the US has little saying when it comes to GPS competitors that sprung up all over the world nobody will put their own missiles in the trust of the American controlled system, not the Europeans, not the Chinese, not the Russians and not even the Japanese, these are all the countries that have their own GPS like constellations of satellites, with only the Europeans the only other group who will have global coverage.
And yes this is a form of discrimination and most probably is a trade violation, and it is good that people make noise about it and all that so it doesn't become the rule and it starts to be used a lot, but I will look the otherside on this one.
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Re: Meh
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Doesn't the DMCA or some other poorly written law disallow you from even trying?
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Intel
> that the Chinese might do to it what the US
> has done to other governments.
Yep. That's the way the intelligence business works. You do to them, then guard against them doing it to you.
Just like we do everything we can to keep foreign intelligence agencies from spying on us, while at the same time operating a group you may have heard of called the CIA, whose sole mission is to do to other countries exactly what we don't want them doing to us.
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Re: Re: The Chinese are so innocent though right?
> and mighty about this now, when it's probably
> been an issue for many years.
I find it amusing how deeply naive so many people here seem to be.
Yes, the US tries to prevent foreign nations from spying.
Yes, the US spies on foreign nations.
Welcome to the real world. EVERY country does this. It's how the intelligence business works and has done for centuries.
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Re: spying?
> responder networks
Yeah, that can get messy. The last thing you want during a crisis is a bunch of shit clogging up your network. ;-)
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Re: Re: Re:
though the point, which is 'and why the hell should we take any meaning from your statement other than that you're a spiteful arse', stands none the less.
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Re: Re: Re: The Chinese are so innocent though right?
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Re:
then again, 'trust' can mean many things. (trust someone to be honest, trust them to be predictable, trust them to have your best interests as a primary objective, trust them not to be an idiot...) some are more dependant on the availability of data and past actions than on actual trustworthyness, i guess.
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Re:
doesn't mean it's necessarily Wrong. (doesn't make it necessarily Right either...)
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Re: Re: Re: Re: The Chinese are so innocent though right?
> bit. or if they were i missed it.
Well, the article itself seems to be pointing out a double-standard or hypocrisy by the US.
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Down with all anti-china fools and morons and let them be removed from the senate, congress and admin now!
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The Chinese are so innocent though right?
The notion that there is something hypocritical about that is, well...hypocrisy is irrelevant to international relations. As it should be.
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The Dance
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