Presentations Point To Greater Huawei Role In China Surveillance Than Acknowledged (thehill.com) 45
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Hill: PowerPoint presentations from Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies indicate that the company has a larger role in China's surveillance efforts than was previously known, according to The Washington Post. The Post reviewed over 100 Huawei PowerPoint presentations, many of them labeled "confidential," in which the company detailed how the government could use its technologies to identify voices, track people for political purposes and monitor the movements of inmates within prisons, among other surveillance tactics.
While the Post could not confirm who the presentations were shown to, the newspaper said that PowerPoints detailing surveillance tactics specific to government agencies -- such as slides appearing to refer to China's controversial prison reeducation and labor programs -- may have been intended for government audiences. While China's Communist Party depends on tools such as facial recognition to find dissenters, it has warned tech companies like Huawei against misusing the technology in the private sector, the Post said. "Huawei has no knowledge of the projects mentioned in the Washington Post report," the company said in a statement to the Washington Post. "Like all other major service providers, Huawei provides cloud platform services that comply with common industry standards."
While the Post could not confirm who the presentations were shown to, the newspaper said that PowerPoints detailing surveillance tactics specific to government agencies -- such as slides appearing to refer to China's controversial prison reeducation and labor programs -- may have been intended for government audiences. While China's Communist Party depends on tools such as facial recognition to find dissenters, it has warned tech companies like Huawei against misusing the technology in the private sector, the Post said. "Huawei has no knowledge of the projects mentioned in the Washington Post report," the company said in a statement to the Washington Post. "Like all other major service providers, Huawei provides cloud platform services that comply with common industry standards."
Re: Sure. (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
Or perhaps the CIA is concerned with more important things than feeding your paranoia.
Re: (Score:3)
>PowerPoint presentations from Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies... Or perhaps from the US CIA. How would you tell?
Because the it's the NSA that is responsible for signals intelligence. So, if anybody was making up fairy tales about Chinese Telco equipment vendors in order to provide ammunition for Republican politicians's efforts to destroy Huawei it would be the NSA, not the CIA. That being said, any country that has telecommunications equipment manufacturers is going to bully them into integrating spyware on every piece of equipment they sell. The US is well known to do this, so why shouldn't the CCP do it? From my p
Re: (Score:2)
>any country that has telecommunications equipment manufacturers is going to bully them into integrating spyware on every piece of equipment they sell.
This is imperialist mind at work. Ericsson and Nokia come from Sweden and Finland respectively. Neither has the interests of spying of the kind that imperial nations like US, China, Russia, France, UK, Germany etc have.
This is because where large imperial nations have both great interests AND great ability to act to get those interests, while smaller natio
Re: (Score:2)
Chinabot shocked, SHOCKED that some nations aren't like his own. News at 11.
Re: (Score:1)
so Luckyo...who owns Nokia now...and where is it produced?
Re: (Score:2)
It's a publicly traded multinational headquartered in Finland. It has production plants across the globe. It's a publicly traded company owned by investors, and last I checked, no single investor owns more than 10-15%, with a very large chunk of the company owned by small investors.
Re: (Score:2)
>any country that has telecommunications equipment manufacturers is going to bully them into integrating spyware on every piece of equipment they sell.
This is imperialist mind at work. Ericsson and Nokia come from Sweden and Finland respectively. Neither has the interests of spying of the kind that imperial nations like US, China, Russia, France, UK, Germany etc have.
This is because where large imperial nations have both great interests AND great ability to act to get those interests, while smaller nations have much smaller interests and much less ability to act to get those interests. Hence the worst you'll usually get out of Ericsson and Nokia is that US or France or China pressures them to install spyware in certain installations.
Not that Swedish or Finnish government will.
Seems to me that just goes to my point. One can't get any telecommunications equipment that isn't riddled with spyware unless one make it one self.
Re: (Score:2)
I recommend reading it again.
Re: (Score:2)
I recommend reading it again.
You said:
First you say that Ericsson and Nokia gear is safe because Neither Sweden nor Finland has any interests interests in 'imperial
Re: (Score:3)
Reading comprehension is truly a lost art nowadays. Instead people simply project their own bias onto the text, dismiss everything that doesn't fit it and make conclusions that fit their original unmodified bias.
Re: (Score:2)
Me: Imperialist nations, [list that includes several European nations] behave like this. Also smaller nations not on the list can be sometimes forced by the imperialist nations to install their spyware.
You: Reading is overrated, let me kneejerk a stupid response.
Re: (Score:2)
Just so that we're clear. You really think that it's just as easy to get a foreign company to grant access as a domestic one?
Really?
Re: (Score:2)
OK, China bot.
Did you clear that with Winnie the Pooh first?
Re: (Score:2)
I do love it when projection gets to such a hilarious level, that in the same thread I get attacked by actual china bots and people complaining about china bots.
Over the exact same post no less.
You know you're right when both extremes are attacking you.
Re: (Score:2)
The choice really comes down to where you live. If you live in the US then it's better that the US can't spy on you, because the US is in a position to ruin your life. The Chinese can't really do much to do.
They aren't going to waste exploits on you though, not unless you are a very high value target. Simple industrial espionage isn't worth it.
It's also worth saying that it's not just the origin of the hardware you need to pay attention to, it's the origin of the standards. The NSA weakened some encryption
Re: Sure. (Score:2)
So, you're arguing that because you don't trust your government we should hand over our critical telecommunications infrastructure to a foreign adversary?
No.
Your logic about China not wasting serious exploits on you because you're of no value, also applies to your own government. They don't care either. Also, their ability to monitor you with wiretaps doesn't diminish because they use foreign switching equipment. CALEA is CALEA.
Re: (Score:2)
The choice really comes down to where you live. If you live in the US then it's better that the US can't spy on you, because the US is in a position to ruin your life.
Nope. We have courts, and legal rights here.
Re: (Score:2)
Good point, the NSA would never break the law.
Features, features... (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm curious about this. After all, my Apple Mac could be used for "listening to voices, tracking people" or bank robbing, goat porn exploitation or whatever else. That's no reason to fear Apple though - they only provide a range of features, and someone else co-opts them to do something bad with them.
I wonder how much Huawei actually get involved here? I mean, I'd imagine all 5G kit is able to listen to voices or track people - that's sort of what 5G (and 4G, for that matter) are supposed to do. The question is, can Huawei (or someone else) do this without the operators (ie. the owner of their gear) knowledge? Assuming a reasonable level of competence, if I were to setup a 5G service, would my service be unknowingly part of the Chinese surveillance state?
I guess the other thing to ask is if Huawei kit has some specific features in it, which they don't admit to, which could enable some form of surveillance (beyond what's possible without those features).
Re: (Score:2)
I wonder how much Huawei actually get involved here?
A lot. "Huawei was able to eavesdrop on Dutch mobile network". https://nltimes.nl/2021/04/17/... [nltimes.nl]
Re: (Score:3)
You apparently missed the story entirely, but they installed spyware, and tried to do a cover-up when asked about it.
Their behavior when it was discovered precludes the possibility that was not being used.
Re: (Score:2)
Derp derp derp derp derp. Derp derp derp derp derp. Derp derp derp derp derp derp derp derp derp derp derp derp derp!
(to the music of DoDoDo by AoA)
If you don't know anything about the story, why are you questioning it? Look it the fuck up. Then you can talk about it. No Social Credit for you.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I imagine it's a similar level of involvement that Apple has in the NSA spying programmes.
https://imgur.com/a/zgW0deU [imgur.com]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Interestingly Huawei is the only brand of 5G kit that allows its source code to be audited and compared to the binaries. They started doing it right when all this stuff kicked off about 4 years ago.
Re: (Score:1)
Next up, a congress hearing [wikipedia.org] will tell us that Huawei must have installed surveillance equipment to spy on babies and the cybersecurity-military-industry-complex will tell us that Huawei aid production of WMDs [washingtonpost.com].
-- DISCLAIMER: I don't work for Hill & Knowlton [wikipedia.org].
Re: Just remember who took a hard line and who did (Score:2)
Or, maybe you forgot it was President biting it signed the law banning Huawei? Trump talk tough, but walked like a pussy. Bought and paid for pussy.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/us-president-biden-signs-law-to-ban-huawei-and-zte-from-receiving-fcc-licences/ [zdnet.com]
Re: Just remember who took a hard line and who did (Score:2)
Did you mean this? https://apnews.com/article/north-america-donald-trump-trademarks-voting-ivanka-trump-0a3283036d2f4e699da4aa3c6dd01727 [apnews.com]
Big tech contracts with govt (Score:2)
So shocked (Score:2)
Surprised this is news to some (Score:4)
Huawei was featured in the 2019 ITV documentary Undercover: Inside China's Digital Gulag https://docuwiki.net/index.php... [docuwiki.net]
Ok. And? (Score:3)
Taking the powerpoint presentations at face value and assuming they are true, how are these capabilities any different from any other telco vendor? Are we to assume Huawei are the only ones that can do this? No other country in the world would pressure the providers in a pinch to use these capabilities?
Oh, we can do it too but it's ok cuz we're the "Good Guys".