Huawei Using NSA Scandal To Turn Tables On Accusations of Spying 183
Nerval's Lobster writes "Huawei Technologies, the Chinese telecom giant banned from selling to U.S. government agencies due to its alleged ties to Chinese intelligence services, is trying to turn the tables on its accusers by offering itself as a safe haven for customers concerned that the NSA has compromised their own IT vendors. 'We have never been asked to provide access to our technology, or provide any data or information on any citizen or organization to any Government, or their agencies,' Huawei Deputy Chairman Ken Hu said in the introduction to a 52-page white paper on cybersecurity published Oct. 18. Huawei was banned from selling to U.S. government entities and faced barriers to civilian sales following a 2012 report from the U.S. House of Representatives that concluded Huawei's management had not been forthcoming enough to convince committee members to disregard charges it had given Chinese intelligence services backdoors into its secure systems and allowed Chinese intelligence agents to pose as Huawei employees. But the company promises to create test centers where governments and customers can test its products and inspect its services as part of an 'open, transparent and sincere' approach to questions about its alleged ties, according to a statement in the white paper from Huawei CEO Ren Zhengfei. Can Huawei actually gain more customers by playing off the Snowden scandal?"
It's not mutually exclusive. (Score:3, Interesting)
The bigger a nationally sponsored corporation becomes, the more obviously it becomes an asset. It's like choosing between corrupt police and the mob.
Just because the NSA spies doesn't prove Huawei doesn't. This line of reasoning is guaranteed to fool a few morons and nobody else.
Bizarro world (Score:5, Interesting)
Imagine you had told someone 25 years ago that China offers you a safe haven from being spied on by the US and possible repercussions because of it...
Did Huawei Rebuff the NSA? (Score:5, Interesting)
There was a Snowden brief a short while ago that showed that one of the major switch vendors had given NSA a direct backdoor into their products. One of the people covering that story said something like, "I can't tell you that it's Cisco, but it's Cisco". The real problem with this situation is that we really don't know which of these things is true.
Back when the USG banned the use of Huawei products, most people assumed that it meant that there was spying functionality in it that had been discovered. However, in light of Bull Run, it's definitely worth asking if what might have happened is that they refused to install spying technology and the USG report was meant as a way to discredit the company and prevent its market penetration.
Re:Doubtful Tactic (Score:4, Interesting)
we don't trust the US or the Chinese
Don't blame you. As an American, I also don't trust either.
you're more at risk from the security exploits from Huawei's lazy half-assed programmers
At least when you find a backdoor in Cisco products, you know it was meant to be a backdoor.
As an American I'd like to believe the Huawei programmers are incompetent. OTOH it would be very clever to disguise a backdoor as a bug, or turn a bug into a backdoor. Hold it, Microsoft/NSA has already used the latter approach. Damn Chinese just copy our ideas.
Re:Prepare for Slashdotters... (Score:3, Interesting)
You HAVE to live in either America or Europe. You obviously have no knowledge about Asia.
Why do you think that vietnam is cuddlying up with USA these days? Why do you think that EVERY ASIAN NATION except China, North Korea, and sometimes Russia wants USA in on meetings for those areas?
What do they know that an ignorant person like you does not know?
Perhaps they know that China has invaded ALL of asia over and over. Perhaps they know that China threatens just about all of them NOW, and says that they want control of areas that was not theirs in a minimum of 100 years and in some cases, over a 1000.
Perhaps they are watching China put DIVERSIONARY dams on the headwaters that go to south east asia, as well as lower asia (i.e. India).
Perhaps it is the economic warfare that is being conducted while they manipulate their money against the other nations.
Re:I trust China more than the USA. (Score:4, Interesting)
Banned from USA, on instant-arrest watchlist at every airport, etc. You used to be cool USA. I actually used to respect NSA. Not now. There is doing things "illegally" within reason, then there is just straight-up abusive levels of illegality that they are presently doing. Now that China are finally growing up, I actually respect them far more.
Why? Because at least they never claimed to be the land of the free? However bad the US is, China is worse (or if not, they're working on the tech). It's just that I hold my own country to a higher standard.
People think China is potentially some bastion of openness because it's better than when Mao ran the show. That's a pretty low bar. And heck, the Tiananmen square massacre was 24 years ago. They've changed so much - might as well be talking about the Qin dynasty, right?
If only they got that whole censorship nonsense away.
If only the Chinese government wasn't the Chinese government.
China would benefit hugely by opening up more since they are a huge influence in many markets.
The same is true of the US, and we've actually had experience doing that. It's just that things have been retrograde for the last decade or so.