I don't see anyone else talking about it. Around January 2018 it came out that China had hacked the African Union headquarters which it had built as a gift to the AU. [1] More recently, reports have come out that implicate Huawei in that hack. [2] There is a law in China that says citizens and corporations are required to cooperate with its intelligence services. While there has been no strong evidence against Huawei released publicly, the logic is that China asked for a backdoor and that Huawei had to comply.
>Ms Cave said Huawei had been implicated in alleged cyber theft of data from the African Union’s Ethiopia headquarters. According to multiple reports this year, data was transferred every night from the building for five years. “There’s no proof that Huawei was asked to participate or turn a blind eye to the breach, but we know that there was a breach and Huawei was the key provider,’’ Ms Cave said.
Sure. And I don't think anyone is claiming any different.
And due to the five eyes agreement between US and commonwealth countries there is a lot of espionage data changing hands there. European telephone networks were compromised a long time ago to my understanding
But from a geopolitical ourside vs. their side standpoint Huawei from US point of view is on the wrong side of the fence.
A certain level of spying is always expected. Did Huawei actually breach some unacceptable level, or is this just a manifestation of the US vs. China tradewar, I don't know.
Typically this is done via FISA warrants aside from that period during the Bush admin. China doesn't guarantee due process and get request information on anyone for any reason including dissidence. Every government will spy on their citizens to some degree, but that doesn't make them equivalent.
Just because most requests are granted doesn't mean that the court is a rubber stamp. It's just the opposite.
Most criminal indictments are also end in the state's favor, but that doesn't mean the jury system is rigged, it means that prosecutors don't bring cases that they are likely to lose. Similarly, the FBI doesn't apply for a FISA warrant unless they are certain its well warranted and the court's decision will be easy.
Regardless of how strong the government's case is, we have a right to face our accuser. The existence of the FISA court, and all its decisions, are, if not illegal, morally bankrupt. I don't care how strong the government's case against me is, I want and am entitled to my day in court. No quantity of legal talmudicry by government lawyers can change this fact, and therefore can't change any right-thinking person's mind that FISA, or anything like it, has no place in a democratic society.
A warrant is a warrant. An expression of the governments investigative powers.
The police aren't required to inform you and give you a chance to argue your case in court for why thy shouldn't raid your house for the drugs they're pretty sure you have.
Cops don't need your written permission to point speed radar at your car.
With a "real" warrant, I will eventually find out that it's been issued, either because I'll be served with it, or because the evidence will show up in court and the prosecutor will have to explain how they got it. It's totally possible that literally all people on Earth are currently being surveilled under a single FISA warrant, with any prosecutions in real courts being disguised by "parallel construction". We don't, can't, and probably won't ever know if this is the case.
FISA warrants are rarely denied because the intelligence agencies submit drafts to the court who tell them what is needed to get approval. Hence they never submit a warrant application that they aren't already assured will be approved. Anything insufficient is withdrawn before judgment.
Convenient, and perhaps legitimate, but not provably so. Courts are supposed to be adversarial, that's why we have prosecution vs. defense or grand jury. Judges are meant to be impartial arbiters. In the FISA system, judges play a dual role as both arbiter and defense, which is a conflict of interest.
It'd be a real court if there were a sort of public defender, and the judges simply mediated between both sides. You could see it working in the warrants rejected.
It is provably so. Namely if this is a serious interest I suggest you write to the House or Senate Select Permanent Committee on Intelligence [1] [2] and request documentation of such.
In fact the court is adversarial, though not like you seem to be envisioning. There are many courts in the US, in fact most where no litigation happens because it's inappropriate for the task. So the idea that they are playing "both sides" is a non sequitur.
The role of the court is to ensure that requests are legal and there is sufficient evidence to pursue the task as requested. It's exactly the same as when a judge issues a warrant.
Regardless of that, I think the greater concern is what it means for the rest of the world (the non-citizens). There is no reason to expect any sort of friendly/just process from foreign entities.
FISA warrants don't apply to this situation at all: they only apply within the US.
And even within the US, FISA warrants are only applicable to data collected which is intended to be presented in court. The CIA and NSA have no mandate whatsoever to gather data suitable for presentation in court, and investigatory agencies such as the FBI/DEA/ATF, which do have such a mandate, have lots of ways to launder evidence. In practice, FISA warrants are often issued long after the data has already been collected, and the FISA warrant is only requested as a means of laundering the evidence via one of the exceptions to fruit of the poisonous tree (parallel construction, inevitable discovery, or the good faith exception).
As it applies to this situation, I don't see any reason to believe the US is any less likely to spy on anyone than China. If you don't have the means to produce needed technologies yourself, then I'd choose the US or Chinese manufacturers based on other factors, such as cost, or which nation has incentives to use the data they collect against you.
I think this should be fairly obvious, but if you’re extremely concerned about American intelligence and law enforcement having access to your data, you should avoid American services and products. If you’re concerned about Chinese intelligence and law enforcement, you should avoid Chinese products, etc.
Interestingly, I think this would often mean that Americans who are engaged in illicit activity would probably be better off using Chinese services and vice versa.
The alternative to Huawei for telecommunications equipment isn't a US corporation so framing it as the US vs China serves no purpose. I'll be happy if neither the US nor China made telecommunications equipment for countries.
I don't understand why people feel the need to defend Chinese mega corporations.
edit: I managed to offend a few people with this comment
I’m not sure why this was downvoted so heavily, because it has a point. The US is obviously not a trustworthy partner, but neither is China.
At least American companies still reside in a somewhat democracy where they’ll actually protect our rights, even if we’re European. Sure it’s not for noble goals, they want to make money, and they won’t if they don’t care for data security.
Google cloud is the prime example of this. The European public sector is spending billions on Clouds these years, and none of that is going to Google, because Google doesn’t protect your data the same way Microsoft does.
I can physically visit the Azure instances that house our data, and nothing but our data, and it never leaves the union.
Maybe the NSA still listens in, maybe China does too, but it’s not legal for them to do so the way it would be in the Alibaba or google clouds.
Google cloud is the prime example of this. The European public sector is spending billions on Clouds these years, and none of that is going to Google, because Google doesn’t protect your data the same way Microsoft does.
What does Microsoft do that other cloud providers like Google do not do? If I store my data in GCP region europe-west3 (Frankfurt) are you saying that Google will leak that data to some third party or send it out of that region?
Maybe the NSA still listens in, maybe China does too, but it’s not legal for them to do so the way it would be in the Alibaba or google clouds.
What is the legal difference between the NSA intercepting European GCP traffic and European Azure traffic?
Google wouldn’t guarantee data wouldn’t leave EU for the longest time, and still don’t on some services.
They were also extremely slow to adopt EU legislation required, and still haven’t for all services.
Microsoft by contrast did so immediately, with Amazon doing so as well shortly after.
Still, when I ask our DPO which cloud is better, he’ll point to Azure, then AWS and directly advice against using Google.
Which is a shame, because I’d actually like to use firebase and flutter to up our production effectiveness on mobile. As one example.
It’s also why we solely rely on OpenStreetMap instead of using google maps, even though supporting OSM with server infrastructure to do so is more expensive. At least these days, OSM is a great map service, but we also used it when it wasn’t.
Hi there! Thanks for the info. I'd like to use Google Cloud in the EU - do you have a recent reference for this? I googled but could only find more generic info about GDPR compliance etc.
Strange schizophrenia from Microsoft - having actually presumably secure cloud instances on site, and actively making their other products less secure by monitoring users of their core OS and Office suites even if users specifically want to prevent that, even the top enterprise editions. I understand those are different parts of the company managed by different persons, but at the end, top of the pyramid is the same.
Corporations are like people - they don't change. You can put on different mask every day, but underneath its the same flesh and bones (or decision makers in this case). I would be wary of the notion that Microsoft is somehow a good moral company in one specific area, when it is amoral in others.
I agree. However, I don't think you should first at how moral or amoral they seem, but rather try to evaluate how credible their offer is. If their secure products make money, hopefully this kind of product offer will prevail, or at least survive within the beast.
Though, morality is part of corporate culture, and I think different cultures can have different levels of toxicity. Cough Oracle cough. If the corporation is too affected, it may be foolish to even waste time evaluating their, on paper, decent and secure offer. If you have reason to believe they will find a way to throw you under the bus anyway later on.
> Corporations are like people - they don't change. You can put on different mask every day, but underneath its the same flesh and bones (or decision makers in this case).
Yes, Satya Nadella is the CEO of the company, but Azure and Windows are in completely separate organizations, with completely separate senior leadership. The goals of the two organizations are also vastly different, with one is focused on consumer products (Windows) while the other is focused on developer and enterpirse services (Azure). Because of this, the decisions made by one SLT is not at all indicative of another SLT's decisions.
I don't think it's defending chinese companies as much as it is highlighting that companies on both sides are susceptible to more or less the same type of government control.
I personally think it's something worth mentioning when it's the most common reason cited for avoiding a chinese company.
You think the types of governmental control are the same between US and China? It seems clear that at least a few US corporations successfully resist meddling attempts.
Yet we have photos and video of US “customs” intercepting Cisco shipments and loading backdoored firmware or tampering with the hardware. They boast about it.
If it came to a war, the US and China are both going to shut down whatever communications channels their “enemies” are using. This is just one of the reasons that US DoD is so interested in SpaceX’s StarLink.
> Yet we have photos and video of US “customs” intercepting Cisco shipments and loading backdoored firmware or tampering with the hardware. They boast about it.
Having your shipments intercepted en-route by spies is very different than directly cooperating with those spies. None of those interceptions required cooperation by Cisco.
Apple has also famously resisted government demands to develop a backdoor for its hardware. IIRC, all indications were that the government's demands would have been rejected by the court system had the case progressed far enough to provide a definitive answer.
Cisco complained! That does so much... a customer getting a backdoored router doesn't really care if Huawei consented to adding the backdoor or Cisco didn't, they still get a backdoor.
Huawei says, in public, that it's important to their reputation to be known to ship un-backdoored devices. Cisco says the exact same thing.
What we think happened: Cisco complained to the government ... Apple resisted government demands.
What really happened: Intelligence Community: "So, we'll demand you backdoor devices, we'll intercept a few and modify them, and then you'll public complain and resist, and then after the media frenzy has died down..."
You pretty much have no idea what's happening in China. These companies are not happy at all to cooperate believe me. Jack Ma has expressed this many times, as much as he could without getting in bad terms with his own government. These companies are playing around in order not to comply with the government (which is exactly what US companies are doing as well). Pressure from the public or from other countries should get these companies some leverage when negotiating with the gov.
Exactly. iCloud Master Key? Done, no VPN in App Store? Done. List of Banned Keyboards in App Store? Done. iMessages, I assume is still encrypted, but China don't give a damn about it as long as they can get it via iCloud.
Apple was publicly able to say no, but what happened in private?
In fact TLAs would want it to appear that they'd been rebuffed -- there's not much point in them having access to devices that no one will use because they know about that access.
Apple has a vested interest in being honest and transparent about this specifically because nobody would trust them if it was discovered that they'd been secretly cooperating with everything in private while denying it in public. A revelation like that would literally ruin them as a company, and that's generally not the end goal for most companies.
As someone in Europe, I don't think the Chinese government has much of a reach, or even interest, as far as myself goes. I don't like them, but they're more regionally oriented.
Whereas the U.S. government regularly meddles around the globe, no matter where you are.
I don't think they are regionally oriented. If recent attacks on European aerospace intellectual property have shown anything it's that the Chinese government is determined to undermine any foreign technology sector that surpasses its own.
IMO this "attack on intellectual property" is probably used to create their own world class technology. The USA attacked European IP centuries ago to build its own industry.
Probably South Korea and Japan and any other advanced country did the same in the past to learn and to advance ASAP. The world has become a better place because of it.
But compare attacks on IP with politically relevant incidents like these:
You seem to be advocating for the end of all European intellectual property rules. Do you think that European businesses should give up trying to protect their industrial secrets all? I'm guessing you'd say not but that's just a guess.
Maybe the world would be better off but unless that's reciprocated by those Chinese companies creating world class technology based on European work then it's just suicide for European industry.
If Chinese companies are able to steal industrial secrets that allow them to produce better cars cheaper than say VW or BMW that might be very good for the world but not so great for European jobs.
You might be fine with that but I, personally, am not.
You are right that I am against European intellectual property and intellectual property in general.
The industry should be open for or even leading modern lifestyle trends of rich modern free societies. In particular, I think these EU politics are insane and extremely costly and prohibitive and detrimental too a modern society:
Poverty is detrimental to everyone and everything except slave holders and wage slavery.
A rich neighbor is better than a poor neighbor.
Technology removes poverty.
EU manufacturing has been transferred to China because of competition by low wages. As China advances, the people in China will hopefully demand a better quality of life instead of engaging in competition by low wage and low quality of life.
I am European and I hope that Europe will benefit the world by proposing a good lifestyle for modern wealthy societies and related products. I doubt that IP and keeping the rest of the world poorer and less developed is economically and technically and morally the right approach.
Unlike most physical goods, information can benefit everyone at almost no additional cost.
The sooner China and any other country can advance science and world class technology, the better for everyone. Europe will then "steal" from them.
If Chinese companies can produce products like cars and solar panels that help to fight climate change and air pollution and destruction of the environment for fossil fuel then they deserve their profits even more while VW and BMW do not.
> The employee, Roy Jones, 49, who was let go by the hotel giant, has revealed to the Wall Street Journal handled social media accounts from his desk at a customer engagement center in Omaha, Nebraska.
> According to WSJ, Jones says he had no idea that he would lose his $14 per hour job after "liking a tweet".
> > Friends of Tibet congratulate global hotel chain #Marriott International for listing #Tibet as a country along with #HongKong and #Taiwan. pic.twitter.com/SXKWb20v3e— Friends of Tibet (@friendsoftibet) January 9, 2018
> Jones told the WSJ he wasn’t aware of any instructions on dealing with China. He also said he didn’t fully understand what the issue was about.
> “This job was all I had,” Jones also said. “I’m at the age now where I don’t have many opportunities.”
It's not the Iraq war, but it's also not something you would want to happen to you. Currently Marriott employees are on strike... because of wages, nobody gives a shit about that guy. He's just gone, maybe he has another job now, maybe not, who cares.
And for what, again? For liking a tweet, which China doesn't like because they're occupying Tibet so brutally for so long now and think that gives them the right.
Though that employee had no clue what it was about, it boils down to that they want to force you to look the other way. Oh, you can know that other people are being tortured and killed, but you can't speak out, at all. So either you stay ignorant of what you can't help, or you have this on your mind.
But this not just another thing in life, like being disallowed entry into one country of hundreds. A person who is denied the right to speak out against the brutalization of others, is being brutalized themselves every second of their life from here on out. The fact it's in a way we don't recognize and internalize instead, make part of ourselves, makes it so much worse to me. I can't accept that others accept it, their acceptance is futile. They can have the world, they cannot have me.
> Mercedes, which is owned by Daimler, (DDAIF) ran afoul of China's stance when it paired a quote attributed to the Dalai Lama with a photo of one of its luxury sedans on Instagram -- a social media platform that is banned in China.
> "Look at situations from all angles, and you will become more open," the quote read.
> The ad was posted on Monday and garnered nearly 90,000 likes before Mercedes deleted it the following day, according to a screenshot posted by Chinese state media.
> The Global Times, a state-run newspaper that often strikes a nationalistic tone, criticized Mercedes, saying the company was quick to respond to the incident but shouldn't make such mistakes in the first place.
> Mercedes issued a statement in Chinese about the incident on Weibo, China's equivalent of Twitter (TWTR), offering a "sincere apology" three separate times.
They posted a "quote commonly attributed to the Daila Llama", without mentioning the name Dalai Llama, on their instagram, which isn't even accessible in China. And then they apologized three times after deleting it.
Don't just ask what X or Y are currently doing, ask what X and Y are. These two examples aren't the only ones, and I bet you, everything else staying as it is, they won't be the last. If you give totalitarianism the little finger, it cannot help but want the hand, just like a scorpion must sting.
> If the totalitarian conqueror conducts himself everywhere as though he were at home, by the same token he must treat his own population as though he were a foreign conqueror.
-- Hannah Arendt
That's why the Iraq war "predicted Snowden and killbots", if you just squint right.
I think the opposite is also true, if you want to control your people completely, you need to control more than "your" people. That both elements in China and elements in the US (and countries in the EU and many others, let's say all countries for the sake of simplicity) want that is of no help to, uhh, decent folk anywhere. They don't benefit from being used as cannon fodder against this other battleship that uses "its" people as cannon fodder. All oppressive regimes can make an agreement before you can say "oh shit", and then focus on subduing their own populations with the means they built while having other nations as an excuse.
So the fact that "we" or "others" are "doing it too" should make the alarm bells louder, not more quiet.
> Hitler can say that the Jews started the war, and if he survives that will become official history. He can’t say that two and two are five, because for the purposes of, say, ballistics they have to make four. But if the sort of world that I am afraid of arrives, a world of two or three great superstates which are unable to conquer one another, two and two could become five if the fuhrer wished it. That, so far as I can see, is the direction in which we are actually moving, though, of course, the process is reversible.
Every time China is critized, the US is brought up. Maybe just to "highlight" something, but here it takes up several pages before any actual discussion of the story. Every time the US is critized, China isn't brought up. Wouldn't that make great sense, too? "Snowden says the NSA X" "yeah, but China does Y!". I don't think I've seen that once, whereas "but the US!" is a constant companion.
I agree that responsibility matters. Like, I have opinions on things going on in the US or China, but I'm much more responsible for things my government does, or what companies I support with money do.
And in this case, it's even fair to point out the hipocrisy of the US asking allies to drop Huawei for reasons smart allies should also drop US produced things for. But then again, we know all that, and we actually do have threads about that stuff as well, so why not also have one about Huawei.
> as it is highlighting that companies on both sides are susceptible to more or less the same type of government control.
Except they aren't. Just the fact that you mention "both" sides shows your ignorance. The alternative to Huawei, as I have mentioned, is not an American corporation it is a European one (Ericsson or Nokia). This isn't a case of the American government forcing allies to abandon Huawei so an American corporation can profit.
It is my understanding that Nokia _acquired_ Alcatel-Lucent, and the only significant part of that conglomerate still in the US is Bell Labs (which are also now owned by Nokia.)
Alcatel is French-owned, you can buy their equipment.
P.S. using non-U.S. and non-Chinese equipment won't protect you from a hack. Both countries are known to have successful vulnerability exploitation programs.
Very good then, if we do this as Europe I say we do the same for any American company. There is _video_ proof of the NSA doing exactly the same thing they now accuse the Chinese of.
Look there is absolutely no debate that the US post-WW2 has been a force for good _in Europe_. They helped us rebuild, overcome communism and reunite under EU flag. Every single European owes a lot to the effort Americans put in to support us. And yes, I know they also did that because it helps them but you can't deny they've basically kickstarted every country that is now in the OECD. That generation of Americans will go down in history as some of the most influential humans ever. On par with Napoleon spreading the metric system and trade, the UK spreading the industrial revolution etc...
But they are also, really, unpredictable lately. George W. Bush was reelected after(!) starting 2 wars. Donald Trump is...well... unpredictable. And I have yet to see him be ousted in 2020. Let alone what the next Donald Trump looks like.
Imagine if someone came along with the same ideas who actually knows how to get stuff done in Washington.
It's just better to be self-sufficient in anything relating to critical infrastructure. As the Americans themselves say: hope for the best, prepare for the worst.
Ok - there's owes money, and there's owes gratitude.
I owe gratitude for the American soldiers who fought the Nazis - because if they hadn't done that I would live in a very different world. Probably I would not exist. So I am grateful to those people.
There's also the fact that historically those evil Chinese were those that had been attack (from colonial UK and co, then from the axis powers, etc.) and not the ones doing the attack -- whereas at least one European country (Germany) had been under US attack, and many had internal meddling (Gladio, dictatorships, corporate espionage, diplomatic meddling, etc to this day).
First, those are their neighbors with which they have territorial disputes, like every other country (as borders where not there when the Earth was created, nor where they god given). Not some colonial grab, just out of pure greed, thousands of miles away, and with no prior provocation or history between the two countries.
Second, Mongols invaded and dominated China. You got your facts reversed. Ever heard of this guy, Genghis Khan?
Third, if we considered the same for the EU/US for example, we'd add the genocide of native americans, the abduction and slavery of 20+ million blacks for 4 centuries in the US South, colonial grabs and wars all over the planet (at some point 2/3rds of Earth were slaves under European colonial powers, not the inverse), tons of wars, the land grab of Mexico (California, Texas, etc), Hawaii, Phillipines, and Puerto Rico, the genocide of indigenous people of the Americas [1], and so on and so forth, plus 2 world wars, the genocide of the Jews, and the only atomic bombs to even fall (and on civillians).
Sure, most countries have done a lot of bad shit in the past. Using that to convince someone of something is pointless. Since I am as foreign as an actual alien to China, I'll stand by my own country and the West if push come to shove, it's just the way it is...
Corporations are, but their employees and officers aren’t. For example, the US government could compel Lavabit (the company) to hand over signing keys; but they couldn’t compel the employees/founders of Lavabit to keep working there, nor charge them with anything for quitting. It’s not illegal to choose to dissolve a company in protest of a US government directive.
> Corporations are, but their employees and officers aren’t
Employees and officers of US corporations are not immune to government orders. Particularly, NSLs directed at information held by corporations can be, and often are, addresses to particular officers as orders to that officer, who is often ordered to deliver the requested material in person to the relevant government office.
> For example, the US government could compel Lavabit (the company) to hand over signing keys; but they couldn’t compel the employees/founders of Lavabit to keep working there,
No, but that doesn't protect them individually from government orders to provide information, the authority for which applies to any person, not just corporations (corporations are covered because they are juridical persons.)
> It’s not illegal to choose to dissolve a company in protest of a US government directive.
It actually is illegal to do anything (other than filing a sealed challenge in court to the non-disclosure provision) in protest of an NSL with a non-disclosure provision, since such a protest itself violates the non-disclosure provision.
And, yes, even aside from that, it would probsbly also be illegal to voluntarily surrender access to info you have been ordered to provide to the government rather than providing that info as ordered.
There might be a few American companies that may do it but not out of fear, and I suspect many companies and individuals would resist, oppose, leak, resign if this was the case in America as you often hear in the news. There are courts, public opinion, journalists that you could involve in the US. Ever hear of pushback in China from anyone?
Joseph Nacchio, former CEO of Qwest (now owned by CenturyLink), refused to surveil his customers at the NSA's request. Shortly thereafter, the NSA dropped a major contract with Qwest that they had been relying on to meet earnings targets. A few years later, he was chargrd with insider trading on the grounds that he made statements about earnings that were unachievable while selling his own shares. He attempted to claim in court that the charges were retaliation, but his evidence was removed for national security reasons.
His case was covered in the news, and he still went to federal prison for four years. And every other US telecom CEO knows it.
Another narrative, to my mind equally plausible, is that Nacchio was essentially a crook who got caught up in a wave of corporate crime enforcement in the wake of the Enron scandal for making somewhere between 32MM (Nacchio's experts' take) and 100MM (the USG's take) selling stock he knew, sometimes within days, would be worth a fraction of what he was selling it for.
But die by the sword, perhaps live by the sword: the NSA scandal provides Nacchio's best tool for rehabilitating his image.
I think a read of the case on PACER sort of bears out that narrative. You can just skip to the competing sentencing memoranda (note what Nacchio stipulates to) to get the particulars of what he's charged with, and get a sense for how sweeping the behavior was and how likely it was to have been tied specifically to NSA.
I don't like NSA any more than you do, but I think I like corporate crooks even less.
It sounds like you haven't seen the documentaries Silenced (2014), about persecuted US government whistleblowers (i.e. people who were actually in government agencies), or War on Whistleblowers: Free Press and the National Security State (2013).
Sure. But I was horrified how little difference it makes to the people in those documentaries. Their lives are ruined for being patriotic, intelligent, and truthful, for not being corrupt. And there's nothing they can do about it.
Doesn't the Snowden phenomenon kind of make his point? His leaks spawned a shitstorm of US/Western media coverage and even court cases against the government. What happens inside China if a Chinese national flees the country and blows the whistle? Basically no challenge to the government, media blackout, maybe his friends get sent to re-education camps, etc.
You forget to mention that both China and the African Union denied the hack, and that the report came from "anonymous sources". Not saying that it didn't happen, but it's far from confirmed, just like the Bloomberg report.
To balance it out, what motivations might the AU have to lie about a hack, in the case where it did happen? If the Chinese gifted them the embassy then they have to be quite close, maybe the AU leaders are conscious of the Chinese influence and seek to maintain it.
Isn't that standard protocol, don't admit when the other spies win. Confirmed leaked data is worth more than dubious leaked data. Pride comes in to play too.
At this point it seems most likely to me that the Bloomberg story was planted by the US government to sow FUD in a rival superpower. If this one Chinese motherboard had a tiny, quasi-magical chip (certainly technically possible but quite overkill as an engineering solution to achieve the alleged goal), can you trust any hardware purchase from China?
"There is a law in China that says citizens and corporations are required to cooperate with its intelligence services."
The US and its intelligence services have been doing the same with US tech companies. " The US National Security Agency (NSA) infected hard disk firmware with spyware in a campaign valued as highly as Stuxnet that dates back at least 14 years and possibly up to two decades – all according to an analysis by Kaspersky Labs.The campaign infected possibly tens of thousands of Windows computers in telecommunications providers, governments, militaries, utilities, and mass media organisations among others in more than 30 countries. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/02/17/kaspersky_labs_equa...
I don't see any evidence that the companies cooperated with this. The process of interdiction, described in the Snowden leaks, sounds more probable. It seems like a small distinction, but it makes a huge difference to the people who work at these companies who would never agree to this practice.
The outcome, of course, is the same. It is rich that the U.S. is asking other countries not to use Huawei equipment, when the Snowden leaks indicate the U.S. government was using interdiction to hack other countries' governments.
That was malware that infected a target product in the customer environment. No government coercion or backdoors. Kaspersky’s own report documents this thoroughly. Not even close to the same.
I think there's a lot of unfair finger-pointing at Huawei. China's hacking program is very prolific and has some impressive achievements. There's no reason why the Chinese government couldn't have found vulnerabilities in Huawei equipment and conducted a campaign that way, especially since that equipment is internet-connected at all times.
>Ms Cave said Huawei had been implicated in alleged cyber theft of data from the African Union’s Ethiopia headquarters. According to multiple reports this year, data was transferred every night from the building for five years. “There’s no proof that Huawei was asked to participate or turn a blind eye to the breach, but we know that there was a breach and Huawei was the key provider,’’ Ms Cave said.
1. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/30/china-african-...
2. https://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/national-s...