Surprise: U.S. Cost Of Ripping Out And Replacing Huawei Gear Jumps From $1.8 To $5.6 Billion

from the patriotic-grift dept

So we've noted that a lot of the U.S. politician accusations that Huawei uses its network hardware to spy on Americans on behalf of the Chinese government are lacking in the evidence department. The company's been on the receiving end of a sustained U.S. government ban based on accusations that have never actually been proven publicly, levied by a country (the United States) with a long, long history of doing exactly what it accuses Huawei of doing.

To be clear, Huawei is a terrible company. It has been happy to provide IT and telecom support to the Chinese government as it wages genocide against ethnic minorities. It has also been caught helping some African governments spy on the press and political opponents. And it may very well have helped the Chinese government spy on Americans. So it's hard to feel too bad about the company.

At the same time, if you're going to levy accusations (like "Huawei clearly spies on Americans") you need to provide public evidence. And we haven't. Eighteen months of investigations found nothing. That didn't really matter much to the FCC (under Trump and Biden) or Congress, which ordered that U.S. ISPs and network operators rip out all Huawei gear and replace it to an estimated cost of $1.8 billion. Yet just a few years later, the actual cost to replace this gear has already ballooned to $5.8 billion and is likely to get higher:

"The FCC has told Congress that applications to The Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Reimbursement Program have generated requests totaling about $5.6 billion – far more than the allocated funding. The program was established to reimburse providers with 10 million or fewer customers who must remove Huawei Technologies Company and ZTE equipment."

That's quite a windfall for companies not named Huawei, don't you think?

My problem with these efforts has always been a nuanced one. I have no interest in defending a shitty global telecom gear maker with an atrocious human rights record which very well may be a proven to be a surveillance lackey for the Chinese government. Yet at the same time, domestic companies like Cisco have, for much of the last decade, leaned on unsubstantiated allegations of spying to shift market share in their favors. DC is flooded with lobbyists who can easily exploit both xenophobia and intelligence worries to their tactical advantage, then bury the need for evidence under ambiguous claims of national security:

"What happens is you get competitors who are able to gin up lawmakers who are already wound up about China,” said one Hill staffer who was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter. “What they do is pull the string and see where the top spins.”

But some experts say these concerns are exaggerated. These experts note that much of Cisco’s own technology is manufactured in China."

So my problem here isn't necessarily that Huawei doesn't deserve what's happening to it. My problem here is generally a lack of transparency in a process that's heavily dictated by lobbyists, who can hide any need for evidence behind national security claims. This creates an environment where decisions are made on a "noble and patriotic basis" that wind up being beyond common sense, reproach, and oversight. That's a nice breeding ground for fraud.

My other problem is the hypocrisy of a country that doesn't believe in limitations on spying, complaining endlessly about spying, without modifying any of its own, very similar behaviors. AT&T has been proven to be directly tethered to the NSA to the point where it's literally impossible to determine where one ends and the other begins. Yet were another country to ban AT&T from doing business there, the heads of the very same folks breathlessly concerned about surveillance ethics would explode. What makes us beyond reproach here? Our ethical track record?

And my third problem is that the almost myopic, focus on Huawei has been so massive, we've failed to take on numerous other privacy and security issues, whether that's the lack of a meaningful federal privacy law, the rampant security and privacy issues inherent in the Internet of things space (where Chinese-made hardware is rampant), or election security with anywhere close to the same level of urgency. These all are equally important issues, all exploited by Chinese intelligence, that see a small fraction of the hand-wringing and action reserved for issues like Huawei.

Again, none of this is to defend Huawei or deny it's a shitty company with dubious ethics. But the lack of transparency or skepticism creates an environment ripe for fraud and myopia by policymakers who act as if the entirety of their efforts is driven by the noblest and most patriotic of intentions. And, were I a betting man, I'd wager this whole rip and replace effort makes headlines for all the wrong reasons several years down the road.

Filed Under: china, fcc, infrastructure, networking equipment, surveillance
Companies: huawei

Internal Documents Show Huawei Is Staying On The Cutting Edge Of Oppression Tech

from the great-work-if-you-can-plausibly-deny-it dept

Pretty much exactly a year ago, the Washington Post obtained documents that showed Chinese tech giant Huawei was working with the government to create facial recognition on steroids: a system capable of not just recognizing faces, but also certain ethnicities.

There's only one reason for developing ethnicity recognition in China. The government's war on its Muslim Uighur population continues with no sign of letting up. Huawei's tech would enable the government to identify and track its most undesirable citizens, most likely to find any reason at all to disappear them into the country's many prisons and reeducation camps.

Huawei denied involvement in this project. It did not deny the documents seen by the Washington Post were legitimate, however. Instead, it claimed the documents referred to a test project that had not been deployed. According to its spokesperson, the company would never provide the powerful Chinese government with tools developed for the purpose of targeting Uighur citizens.

It was a pretty weak denial, considering Huawei's disadvantaged position. If it wishes to maintain its healthy market share in China, it will have to comply with the government's demands. That's how it works in China and that's how it's worked for years. And, no matter where they're located, companies don't often spend money on test runs of products they don't intend to sell or deploy in the future. Some testing may be done to see if something is feasible. But if the product works well enough to put on the market (or sell to governments), it will eventually result in real-world applications.

One year later and it's the Washington Post again obtaining documents about Huawei's relationship with the Chinese government. Huawei has suggested it's not working directly with the government to create surveillance gear, claiming it's nothing more than a provider of apolitical networking hardware and software.

But the documents seen by the Post strongly suggest otherwise.

A review by The Washington Post of more than 100 Huawei PowerPoint presentations, many marked “confidential,” suggests that the company has had a broader role in tracking China’s populace than it has acknowledged.

These marketing presentations, posted to a public-facing Huawei website before the company removed them late last year, show Huawei pitching how its technologies can help government authorities identify individuals by voice, monitor political individuals of interest, manage ideological reeducation and labor schedules for prisoners, and help retailers track shoppers using facial recognition.

Pretty disturbing stuff. Also, sadly, pretty normal stuff for the Chinese government, which has shoved thousands of people into hard labor/reeducation camps and subjected its more "free" residents to always-on monitoring of pretty much everything they do.

Huawei, of course, denies this. It told the Post that it "had no knowledge" of the documents referred to in the article. This is a strange statement to make considering the documents were posted on Huawei's site and contain a Huawei watermark.

It also said this:

“Privacy protection is our top priority,” the company said.

Well, clearly it isn't. It's top priority is whatever sells. And it appears to have a lot of products in the pipeline that may prove lucrative if and when it decides these are ready to go live.

The Post reviewed more than 3,000 PowerPoint slides Huawei apparently inadvertently left exposed on its site. The presentations appear to be legitimate and created by the company. However, it's unclear whether these pitches have been made to government agencies. But some of the presentations appear to have been specifically created with the Chinese government in mind.

The Post could not confirm whom the Chinese-language presentations were shown to, or when. Some of the slides showcase surveillance functions specific to police or government agencies, suggesting that Chinese government authorities may have been the intended audience. Many of the PowerPoints have a creation timestamp of Sept. 23, 2014, with the latest modifications to the files made in 2019 or 2020, according to the presentations’ metadata.

That echoing noise you hear is Huawei's claiming ringing hollow. The government's statements in support of Huawei don't actually deny its interest in buying more surveillance gear that can be used to target Uighurs, government critics, and other undesirables. The statement from the government refers only to Huawei's "no back door" agreement, which is really a shot at the US government's blacklisting of Huawei products, rather than a clarification on the products and services discussed in the presentations.

One presentation describes voiceprint analysis developed by Huawei and iFlytek. The latter company has been sanctioned by the US Commerce Department for its human rights violations against the Uighur population. Supposedly, this tech would be used for "national security" purposes -- a purpose heavily exploited by the Chinese government to do everything from imprison Uighur Muslims to imprison protesters fighting its premature takeover of Hong Kong.

Other documents posted by the Post are clearly government-oriented. There's a "smart prison" platform for managing inmates and their reeducation. There's a location tracking system for "political persons of interest." And there's a "Xinjiang surveillance system" that targets the region of the country where most Uighur residents are located.

Huawei's denials are pretty weak in the face of this evidence. It would clearly like to sell surveillance tech to the Chinese government -- tech that will enhance its oppression of minorities and political opponents. That's not going to get it excused from any blacklists, though, so weak denials it is. The Chinese government has long since stopped caring what anyone thinks of it, so it's likely hoping these new and exciting oppression enhancers will be on the market sooner, rather than later.

Filed Under: china, facial recognition, privacy, surveillance
Companies: huawei

Chanel Loses Trademark Dispute With Huawei Over Latter's Logo

from the smells-like-a-loss dept

It's no secret that Chanel, the famous French luxury brand most notable for concocting things that make us smell better, is also a voracious protector of its trademarks. As evidence for this, one needs only to recall that the company once bullied a 2-person candy purveyor over its use of the number "5". The point is, when Chanel comes a-calling complaining about trademarks, you really need to view it all with narrow eyes.

Chanel's years-long trademark row with electronics company Huawei is no different. This story begins way back in 2017, when Huawei attempted to register a logo for its hardware division with EUIPO.

The dispute dated to 2017 when Huawei sought approval from the EU Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), a trademark body, to register its computer hardware trademark which has two vertical interlocking semi-circles.

Privately owned Chanel objected, saying that the design was similar to its registered French logo of two horizontal interlocking semi-circles used for its perfumes, cosmetics, costume jewellery, leather goods and clothing.

How similar are the logos? Well, the answer is very, very similar... if you mean that they are exact opposites.

The Chanel logos are on the bottom and the Huawei logo in question is up top. Yes, there's a circle enclosing both symbols. Yes both include interlocking shapes. But beyond that, the logos are essentially opposites. And, frankly, not the kind of opposite that calls to mind Chanel's logo at all. Add to all of that the fact that these two companies compete in wildly different markets and it's fairly crazy that Chanel thought it should kick off this dispute to begin with.

But it did. And then, in a 2019 decision by the trademark office, it lost. The trademark office indicated that the logos really weren't similar at all. For some reason Chanel appealed that decision and lost there too.

The French luxury house subsequently challenged the ruling at the Luxembourg-based General Court, which dismissed the appeal in its ruling on Wednesday.

"The figurative marks at issue are not similar. The marks must be compared as applied for and registered, without altering their orientation," the tribunal of judges said.

The tribunal said the visual differences in the two logos were significant.

"In particular, Chanel's marks have more rounded curves, thicker lines and a horizontal orientation, whereas the orientation of the Huawei mark is vertical. Consequently, the General Court concludes that the marks are different," it said.

It's a decision as right as Chanel's decision to start this fray was wrong. There is little if any chance of public confusion in this case, given the differences in the branding coupled with the divergent markets in which these companies operate.

The better question is why famous brands so often feel the need to gum up the works like this to begin with?

Filed Under: eu, luxury brands, trademark
Companies: chanel, huawei

Huawei Attempts To Rebuild Trust By Using... Fake Twitter Telecom Experts

from the not-helping dept

So we've noted that a lot of the accusations that Huawei spies on Americans on behalf of the US government are lacking in the evidence department. The company's been on the receiving end of a global blocklist based on accusations that have never actually been proven publicly, levied by a country (the United States) with a long, long history of doing exactly what it accuses Huawei of doing. While scrutiny of Chinese gear is certainly warranted, at the same time it's a rather idiotic rabbit hole filled with xenophobic politicians being played by US companies that like to drum up NatSec hysteria for political advantage.

That of course doesn't mean Huawei, like so many telecom giants, isn't a terrible company that routinely makes unethical decisions. Like when the company was busted helping several different African governments to spy on political opponents and journalists. Or when it was shown to be eagerly helping China build facial identification systems to quickly identify Uighur Muslims. Or, more recently, when the company was busted creating entirely fake people in a ham-fisted bid to try and boost its reputation.

Last week, the company was busted for creating at least fourteen different Twitter accounts pretending to be respected telecommunications experts, writers, and assorted academics. Their goal, to cast doubt on Belgian legislation attempting to limit "high risk" vendors from building the nation's 5G networks. The bogus, pro-Huawei accounts used computer generated profile pictures. Their Tweets were then amplified by official, and real, Huawei executives:

"Kevin Liu, Huawei’s president for public affairs and communications in Western Europe, who has a verified Twitter account with 1.1 million followers, shared 60 posts from the fake accounts over three weeks in December, according to Graphika. Huawei’s official account in Europe, with more than five million followers, did so 47 times."

To be clear, creating fake people to generate fake support for various policy proposals certainly isn't unique. US companies do it fairly routinely to generate fake buzz and shape the discourse on social media platforms. Fake people were used to applaud the FCC's repeal of net neutrality at the telecom industry's behest just a few years back. Chinese Pro-Trump media outlet, The Epoch Times, was also busted using bogus people to push conspiracy theories the last few years.

It's quite the blossoming little business sector. One recent report out of Oxford identified 63 examples in which public relations firms were involved in online disinformation operations in 2020 for government or corporate clients. In this case, Twitter took down the fourteen fake accounts immediately after being notified by the New York Times. Graphika, the company that first unearthed the astroturf effort, connected the dots after it noticed that several accounts used in previous campaigns began sharing pro-Huawei arguments and attacking Belgium's regulatory approach.

A common practice or not, it's monumentally idiotic to think that the best way to show you're trustworthy as an international telecom vendor is to create fake people to make your case for you. Then, apparently, assume you were being so clever that nobody would ever discover the charade. But again, much like spying on your own citizens at the behalf of government, it's something companies like AT&T also engage in, which undermines any serious attempt by the US to hold the moral high ground.

Filed Under: china, fake experts, trust
Companies: huawei

Huawei Is Crafting Facial Recognition Tech That Will Make It Easier For The Chinese Government To Target Citizens It Doesn't Like

from the be-as-evil-as-possible dept

The Chinese government's war against its own citizens continues. The repression and persecution of China's Uighur population has been well-documented. The Chinese government is fighting a surveillance war on multiple fronts, beginning with its own citizens, who must maintain a positive "citizen score" to live life without too much government harassment. Its attempt to hold Hong Kong to the same oppressive standard has been met with significant resistance. But, in the end, China will consummate its takeover of Hong Kong with a removal of its independence.

Uighur Muslims have been the focus of the government's unmitigated wrath for years. China wants these residents either locked up or living in another country entirely. And it's pressuring tech companies to assist in their oppression. Far too many have complied. Documents seen by the Washington Post show Huawei has decided to be the Chinese government's posse, helping the government locate and target Uighur residents.

The Chinese tech giant Huawei has tested facial recognition software that could send automated “Uighur alarms” to government authorities when its camera systems identify members of the oppressed minority group, according to an internal document that provides further details about China’s artificial-intelligence surveillance regime.

The tech Huawei is developing attempts to determine a person's age, sex, and ethnicity using only facial shots. Given that this tech hasn't proven itself able to reliably recognize faces, it seems unlikely it will perform these extra tasks with better accuracy. False positives are guaranteed. And a false Uighur positive in China means citizens will be detained and subjected to a lifetime of brutal punishment just because they happened to trigger a Huawei "alarm."

According to Huawei, this proposed system has not gone live.

Both companies have acknowledged the document is real. Shortly after this story published Tuesday morning, Huawei spokesman Glenn Schloss said the report “is simply a test and it has not seen real-world application. Huawei only supplies general-purpose products for this kind of testing. We do not provide custom algorithms or applications.”

Maybe this is true. But it's also the sort of statement a company would release when being pressured by a government to avoid revealing ongoing surveillance programs.

Even if the system isn't live at the moment, that doesn't change the fact that it will be live at some point in the future. And the Chinese government will have a tool it can use to target a small percentage of its population -- a tool whose ability to recognize faces alone is already questionable. Adding in other factors only increases the possibility of false positives.

Then there's the mission creep. If it "works" for China, other countries looking to target people for their sex, race, or age will have a tool that's been field-tested and ready for deployment. China's not the only authoritarian regime looking for exciting new ways to persecute certain citizens. Following through with development of this tech means Huawei will be the go-to source for countries looking to add to their human rights violation rap sheets.

Filed Under: china, civil liberties, civil rights, facial recongition, surveillance, uighurs
Companies: huawei

Small ISPs Being Forced To Eat The Costs Of FCC's Huawei Ban

from the do-as-we-say,-not-as-we-do dept

We've repeatedly noted that while Huawei certainly engages in some clearly sketchy shit (like many modern US telecom giants), the evidence supporting the Trump administration's global blacklist of the company has been lacking. Despite more than a decade of accusations and one eighteen month investigation that found nothing, the Trump administration still hasn't provided any public evidence supporting the central justification for the global blackballing effort (that Huawei works directly for the Chinese government to spy wholesale on Americans).

While there's certainly some valid natsec concerns in the mix when it comes to letting an authoritarian government dominate global network builds, at least some portion of the effort appears to be protectionism driven by US network hardware makers that simply don't want to compete with cheaper Chinese gear. Some of the effort is also Trump trying to obtain leverage for his often ridiculous tariff and trade war, which at least, for some advocates, is driven more by partisan patty cake or bigotry than substantive reason.

Regardless, the US effort to blackball Huawei from all global technology networks continues apace, without much concern about (1) the lack of public evidence, (2) the fact that the United States routinely does most of the stuff we're accusing China of, and (3) much of this pearl clutching has been co-opted by US companies that simply want to avoid international competition (especially in the smartphone and 5G network realm), but have had great lobbying success disguising those motivations under the guise of national security hyperventilation.

There are other problems with the campaign as well. This week the FCC formally announced it would be banning companies that take taxpayer subsidies from using any Huawei or ZTE hardware in their networks. At the moment, the ban just prohibits them from buying new Chinese gear or maintaining it, but the FCC may expand eventually to forcing these ISPs to remove existing gear entirely. Smaller telecom and broadband providers were quick to note that they're not exactly thrilled:

"As a result, rural carriers who have deployed Huawei or ZTE equipment or services in their networks will now lack the ability to support their critical networks that are serving hundreds of thousands of rural Americans and those traveling through rural America. Given the difficulty in demonstrating where specifically their USF support is being utilized in their networks, this puts rural carriers in a precarious situation while they strive to offer extended payment terms for their customers as requested by FCC Chairman [Ajit] Pai, adjust to the fallout of the T-Mobile/Sprint merger, and continue to keep rural Americans connected to broadband and telephone services during the COVID-19 pandemic."

Smaller carriers state that while the FCC is granting waivers, they didn't give carriers enough time to apply. And while there was also talk about helping fund these network gear removal and replacement efforts, that money appears lost in regulatory and legislative purgatory, according to FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Sparks:

"Funding is the missing piece. Congress recognized in the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act that many carriers will need support to transition away from untrustworthy equipment, but it still has not appropriated funding for replacements. I look forward to working with Congress and my colleagues to ensure there are sufficient funds to get the job done."

In the interim small ISPs have to apparently just eat those costs, at the same time they're being expected to maintain connectivity during a pandemic, which is... not great. Of course broadband subsidization has a long, ugly history where we throw billions at giant companies for doing less than nothing. Here we have the small businesses US leaders routinely pay ample lip service toward being forced to (for now) foot the bill for policy that doesn't seem fully thought out.

None of this is to suggest that the Chinese government and Huawei don't engage in terrible behavior. They do. But the US approach of a blanket global blacklisting is a cumbersome, evidence-optional mess. The UK and Germany have kicked back a bit against the US approach, arguing that existing security standards (where you judge the safety of each piece of hardware based on its actual lack of security or vulnerabilities) makes a lot more sense than a cumbersome, global blackballing effort based at least in part on protectionism, and so far justified by very little in the way of hard, public evidence.

There's also the hypocrisy of a country that routinely engages in all manner of sketchy global surveillance lecturing other countries on sketchy global surveillance. Can you imagine if other countries began blacklisting AT&T for the fact it's effectively bone grafted to the NSA? The amount of patriotic pearl clutching from fans of the blackballing effort would easily make your head spin. There's an underlying logic at play that because the US does it, it must be good, and the "do as we say, not as we do" messaging at play here gives off a ripe stink of hypocrisy.

Filed Under: broadband, china, competition, fcc, protectionism
Companies: huawei

Senator Cotton Dumbly Claims Huawei Building 5G Networks Is Like Letting The USSR Build US Cold War Submarines

from the ill-communication dept

We've noted for a while that the "race to 5G" is largely just the byproduct of telecom lobbyists hoping to spike lagging smartphone and network hardware sales. Yes, 5G is important in that it will provide faster, more resilient networks when it's finally deployed at scale years from now. But the society-altering impacts of the technology are extremely over-hyped, international efforts to deploy the faster wireless standard aren't really a race, and even if it were, our broadband maps are so terrible (often by monopolist design), it would be impossible to actually determine who won.

A huge part of the idiotic "race to 5G" narrative involves ample fear mongering over China, or the idea that if China somehow deploys 5G faster to Chinese residents, that somehow means... anything to the consumers in the US already facing high prices and patchy availability. The reality is that China is well ahead of the United States in terms of 5G deployment already, and the 5G being deployed here in the States is notably slower than many overseas 5G deployments because of a lack of mid-band spectrum (aka policy failure). It's simply not a race, and the monopoly-dominated US telecom sector isn't likely to "win" it.

Yet another aspect of the whole "race to 5G" narrative is the endless pearl-clutching and face-fanning about Chinese telecom giant Huawei, and its role in helping build global 5G networks. The Trump administration has repeatedly tried to claim that Huawei should be unequivocally banned from participating in global 5G builds. Many lawmakers in Germany and the UK have repeatedly balked at this request, quite correctly noting that nobody in the Trump administration has been able to provide any public evidence that Huawei has spied on Americans or Europeans at scale.

Companies like Microsoft have expressed skepticism as well:

"When Microsoft asked US lawmakers to explain the threat, they've been too vague for Smith's liking. Huawei is a major customer of his company: Its laptops come with Microsoft's Windows operating system. "Oftentimes, what we get in response is, 'Well, if you knew what we knew, you would agree with us'," Smith told Bloomberg. "And our answer is, 'Great, show us what you know so we can decide for ourselves. That's the way this country works.'"

To be clear, Huawei engages in shaky, unethical behavior. But so does AT&T. So does Verizon. So does the NSA, routinely. And while there's certainly security considerations when it comes to using Huawei's gear, a lot of this hysteria has been driven in DC by companies like Cisco for years, simply because they don't want to have to compete with cheaper Chinese hardware. It's extremely easy to bury anti-competitive motivations under the din national security. And it's pretty easy to hoodwink press outlets that can't identify, much less navigate, their own patriotic bias.

Enter Senator Tom Cotton, who this week equated letting China help build global 5G networks to letting the USSR develop US submarines during the cold war:

"Tom Cotton, who represents Arkansas, said he had geopolitical and technical objections to Huawei and claimed that, if hacked, its equipment could track the movements of key parts for F35 fighter jets. Deploying Huawei, the politician continued, “would be as if we had relied on adversarial nations in the cold war to build our submarines, or to build our tanks. It’s just not something that we would have ever considered."

Except that's hyperbolic nonsense. Keep in mind, the US has already banned Huawei from its networks. And all the UK is proposing is letting Huawei participate in up to 35% of its network builds, which will need to undergo elaborate security and standards checks under the watchful eye of heavy skepticism. And again, there's also this annoying fact that nobody has been able to provide public evidence that Huawei uses its gear to spy on Americans on behalf of the Chinese, despite fifteen years of vague allegations of this type, including a 18 month investigation by the US government that found... bupkis.

If there was evidence, the administration would have found some way to release at least a heavily redacted version of it. As a result, countries like the UK and Germany have argued that instead of engaging in a costly (and probably unenforceable) game of global blackballing, countries can simply refuse to use gear that can clearly be proven not to be secure via the elaborate security and safety processes that already exist. Many UK leaders are also quite correct in noting that this isn't a subject the United States really has much credibility on given its history of surveillance, falsehoods, and leadership failures:

"Stewart McDonald, an SNP MP, also challenged Cotton, arguing that the behaviour of Donald Trump, particularly during the George Floyd crisis, adversely affected the United States’s ability to lead on the issue. “The current presidential leadership and, in particular, his style of leadership is grossly undermining,” McDonald said."

Huawei, meanwhile, is likely correct in noting that the origins of this entire effort stems from companies that don't want the Chinese giant encroaching on the US dominated smartphone and network hardware markets:

"Speaking after the hearing, Victor Zhang, the vice-president of Huawei, said the hearing demonstrated that the senator’s principal concern was that the company had become too successful in an industry where the US has traditionally dominated. "It’s clear its market position, rather than security concerns, underpins America’s attack on Huawei as the committee was given no evidence to substantiate security allegations,” he added."

This is true. There's an entire cottage industry of US industry lobbyists driving this train that simply don't want to lose revenues via more intense Chinese competition. How much of this is genuine national security concerns? How much of this is lobbyist gamesmanship? Would the ratio even be measurable?

Again, Huawei is no saint. There's evidence that the company has helped some governments in Africa spy on political opponents and journalists. But again, this is all stuff the United States, NSA, and partners like AT&T engage in on a regular basis, and you don't see folks calling for a blacklisting of AT&T (can you imagine the US hyperventilation if a foreign government tried?). The United States has been such a rabid supporter of unchecked global spying -- and bullshits so frequently on this subject -- that it's pretty hard to take us seriously when it comes to doling out advice on trust and surveillance.

Again it's a complicated subject, and few involved with it seem up to the task of separating patriotism, bigotry, and the motivations of US giants like Cisco from intelligent global policy.

Filed Under: 5g, china, conspiracies, infrastructure, networking equipment, tom cotton
Companies: huawei

US Takes Baby Steps Toward Providing Actual Public Evidence Of Huawei Spying

from the ill-communication dept

We've noted a few times now how US claims that Huawei routinely spies on Americans haven't been supported much in the way of actual public evidence, a bit of a problem given that's the primary justification for the country's global blackballing efforts. Previous White House investigations 18 months in length couldn't find evidence of said spying, and many US companies have a history of ginning up security fears simply because they don't want to compete with cheaper Chinese kit.

The US has been making its blacklisting case for much of the last year, but had been criticized previously by Germany and the UK for being a bit light on actual evidence. That shifted slightly this week courtesy of a report in the Wall Street Journal (paywalled, here are Ars Technica and Gizmodo alternatives), which quoted US National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien as saying the US has hard evidence that Huawei has backdoor access to mobile-phone networks around the world:

"We have evidence that Huawei has the capability secretly to access sensitive and personal information in systems it maintains and sells around the world."

Again, this is a step up from previous US claims that it didn't actually need to provide public evidence to justify a massive global blackballing effort that's been debated and discussed for more than a decade:

"The US kept the intelligence highly classified until late last year, when American officials provided details to allies including the UK and Germany, according to officials from the three countries. That was a tactical turnabout by the US, which in the past had argued that it didn't need to produce hard evidence of the threat it says Huawei poses to nations' security."

US officials quoted in the piece say they've known about the backdoors "since observing it in 2009 in early 4G equipment," though officials declined to say whether the US has actually observed Huawei using this access. The Journal notes how telecom operators are required by law to build backdoors for authorities to access the networks "for lawful purposes," but they "are also required to build equipment in such a way that the manufacturer can't get access without the consent of the network operator," restrictions the US claims Huawei is violating in several countries:

"US officials say Huawei has built equipment that secretly preserves the manufacturer's ability to access networks through these interfaces without the carriers' knowledge. The officials didn't provide details of where they believe Huawei is able [to] access networks. Other manufacturers don't have the same ability, they said."

Still, some were quick to note that claims of evidence isn't the same as public evidence, while some infosec reporters lamented the report for being a bit vague:

Again, there are certainly plenty of valid security concerns about both China and Huawei. Huawei is certainly no saint, and like so many telecom giants has some truly grotesque and greasy habits. But a healthy chunk of the hand-wringing over China and Huawei is the product of competitors like Cisco, who adore over-hyping Huawei's issues in DC for competitive gain. Without public, verifiable evidence, it remains difficult to assess what percentage of the US hand-wringing is valid cybersecurity concern, and what percentage is just K Street bullshit (see: the "race to 5G").

There's also the fact that the United States continues to dole out surveillance ethics lectures despite having an abysmal track record on the subject. Recall the NSA broke into Huawei as early as 2009 to install its own backdoors, and has also been busted intercepting Cisco products in transit to embed them with surveillance tech. There was also this blockbuster Washington Post story this week highlighting how the US bought cryptography company Crypto AG, then abused that ownership for decades to weaken encryption and spy on its allies.

The US of course absolutely loves backdoors. And the US loves using companies like AT&T as an extension of its global surveillance efforts, to the point where you truly can't tell where the NSA ends and AT&T begins. But were foreign companies to then suggest that AT&T should be banned from doing business worldwide, the backlash and demands for transparent and open evidence from these exact same sources would register on the Richter scale. This "do as we say, not as we do" logic only has the effect of making it harder to take the US seriously when it suddenly expresses concern about rampant surveillance.

In short if the US truly wants to convince the world to not only ban Huawei, but to also spend the money needed to rip its equipment out of every network on Earth, (a particular issue for cash-crunched rural operators) it's going to need to provide more than some unverified claims in the Wall Street Journal.

Filed Under: china, networks, surveillance, us
Companies: huawei