U.S. Officials Say Huawei Can Covertly Access Telecom Networks
wsj.com
wsj.com
Meanwhile Huawei is supposedly actively created a workaround:
> U.S. officials say Huawei has built equipment that secretly preserves the manufacturer’s ability to access networks through these interfaces without the carriers’ knowledge.
Please let the "FISA court is a rubber stamp" myth die already.
Not trusting the government is the entire point of large portions of the US constitution...
I think it's interesting how many people point to how we need to get back to the roots of constitutionalism, but also say "I never trust anything governments do or say".
If that's the case, why do you think the constitution will help you there? The document itself requires huge levels of trust.
That's not what I, or the person you are originally replying to is doing. Rather we would say something like "you are asking us to trust the government when it is bypassing or ignoring the checks and balances put into the constitution precisely because of issues like this". For a few examples:
Checks and balances are why the 6th amendment requires to a "speedy and public trial". Which the FISA courts are not providing. They are why the 6th amendment requires the accused to be informed of the "nature and cause of the accusation", which is regularly being violated by these secret proceedings by way of parallel construction.
You bring up the topic of warrants, but warrants (by the 4th amendment) must "upon probable cause [... describe] the place to be searched, and the person or things to be seized". From what little we have seen of the FISA proceedings, neither of those conditions are being respected.
You bring up the judicial branch, but the judicial branch is required (by article 3 section 2 of the constitution) to hear only cases and controversies, one sided proceedings that aren't even released publicly after the fact to be challenged are neither. This clause exists (I believe) precisely because one sided arguments lack the necessary checks and balances to reach a fair verdict
The first one, for example, is
> 1: The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.
I'm expressing a mainstream opinion at the least if not the majority. Being a more secret court doesn't make me feel more trusting.
To extrapolate all the abuses of the wider justice system to a highly specialized court whose only purpose is national security would be a mistake, in my opinion. It's such a specific purpose and such a specialized role, it's hard to say for certain.
The only thing we have to go off is the testimony and opinions of those who have experienced it. We have no other barometer or metric, everything else is hearsay.
You're not wrong, it's just not a strong argument.
The state is not a monolith. It’s barely top-down. It’s a collection of people in many different departments with their own ideals and relations. The people who decide what dictators to arms are NOT judges, nor come from the domestic judicial branch.
What prison forever without a trial? Are you talking about the few captured during war in Guantanamo? Again, this is not the judges running secret courts that ok FISA requests.
If you’ve ever worked in a large company, you’ll see the diversity of opinions, dominions, political battles, and generally chaos. And yet the public sees the output as unified, when the input was anything but. Now just imagine the government, far bigger in size, full of people that came from all kinds of backgrounds and ways — thru elections, normal job applications, the military, etc... from a variety of political backgrounds and moral standards.
I encourage you not to paint with such broad brushstrokes.
Or official policy on StingRays and stuff. Basically, telling investigators to lie to prosecutors and judges.
That's fine - you can go ahead and vote. There's an election coming up. Collectively, most Americans probably agree with the current use, and there are actual control and oversight by the Judicial system. Which is unlike China.
You do now:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/fbi-director-carter-...
Damned if you do, damned if you don't!
It could easily mean that they've developed a formula to ensure that they meet* the standards set by the FISA court.
Maybe every single one of them has some kind of magic phrasing that's technically true, but kinda bullshit if you're able to view it from a wider viewpoint. Maybe all it takes is to say that this person has a connection to known terrorists. The connection could be incredibly distant, but hey - there's a sworn statement from some analyst/agent/whomever saying that there's a connection.
Because the courts are secret, there's no opportunity for those outside the intelligence community to review things and see whether there are routine abuses or other questionable situations.
Maybe if there were more transparency, it would.
The good guys have a non-transparent approval mechanism for permission which no one can audit. In reality, you have no basis for claiming it's an effective overall control mechanism because none of us can see most of the data. Further, there have been numerous documented cases of abuse like intelligence officials spying on their significant others, parallel reconstruction on cases where secret data shouldn't have been used, etc.
An administrative policy control where application of the control is handled by the people holding the data with 0 auditing by anyone outside the system is not a strict control. Do I trust American intelligence more than the Chinese government or Huawei? Definitely, but that does not let American intelligence off the hook or justify what they are doing with mass data collection.
Why would you trust American intelligence/law enforcement more than a foreign government (unless you have something to hide from that government, like if you are fostering unrest from abroad)?
There's not much reason for China to be interested in me, but there's lots of reasons I wouldn't want US law enforcement spying on me, since they are in a better position to make trouble for me.
While the US is not perfect and has executed a number of immoral/illegal projects, the world order under the US seems far superior to what a world order under China could be.
Which specific part of the Middle East are you thinking of with that little gem? I'm looking at Iran on a map and they are the last stable center amongst a sea of catastrophes from Syria to Afghanistan that all have the sticky fingerprints of American influence on them. The entire Arabian peninsula is a mess hold together only by US support and stands as a real-time embarrassment of all the rhetoric out of Washington in my lifetime.
Compared to that, what exactly is China likely to do that could be worse?
The US has a bunch of stuff they can be proud of, but nobody is going to (indeed nobody is) take them seriously when their ambassadors hand-wringing about the risks of foreign spies or foreign influence. The US has been doing whatever they feel like for decades with little regard for anyone else and they have not shown themselves to be particularly honourable when there are real stakes, like oil, on the table.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if Huawei backdoors stuff for its government. It's well known that US manufacturers have done that.
I would be surprised if they don't.
If you remove yourself from the current spat between USA and China, how can we take for good what "US officials" say, when we all have PROOF, post-Snowden, of what US officials were actually doing?
The previous sentence is a direct quote of a top-3 executive of Huawei I've witnessed personally at a press conference. He was absolutely right.
My point is: if you isolate statements like these, the discourse is going nowhere. Also, for the tapping of Merkel's phone we have proof, for most of the things "US officials" say, we have not, we're just asked constantly to trust what they say and take it at face value, but American institutions have squandered that luxury in the past 20 years.
This is also why telco companies in allied countries that have invested billions in 5G infrastructure from China are not really willing to cancel their plans only based on take-it-or-leave-it and trust-based intelligence.
The alternative providers aren't even USA owned, they're European.
Discourse is going no-where because some people have a fundamental misunderstanding that this is some sort of trial that requires proof, when in actually it's simple risk analysis.
Discourse is going no-where because some people somehow think it's unfair for Huawei to be banned from networks, when China routinely bans Western companies based on domestic security/market risk alone.
Discourse is going no-where because some people expect backdoors to have giant identifiable red flags, when instead they look like the openssl CVE's from 2006 that disappear and reappear in Huawei's firmware.
Discourse is going no-where because some people seem to think this is some attempt by the US to maintain some surveillance hold on telecom networks, when they can just compromise Huawei gear anyways.
Anyone sticking to Huawei hardware is doing it because it's extremely cheap, and they're either blind to (willingly or not) the risk or have factored it in (see UK's 35% deal).
I would personally rather be spied on by the US than by China, but I can see how a rational person would choose the reverse.
How is that even legal in a country where the free market is basically God? Free market as long as it's in the American interest?
Clearly some other countries are still sovereign anyways and have gone against the US's wishes.
No true free market exists.
Economic growth is for national security, specifically to fund and produce supplies for our armies. This is why we talk about economies in the context of nations. This is why nations frequently subsidize businesses or full-industries. This is why Alexander Hamilton sent spies to Britain to steal factory blueprints, or why Xi Jinping subsidizes Huawei, or why the PRC exists at all.
America wrote the playbook that china's following. That's why you can trust what America says about China. That's why it's good if america does something but bad if another country does it. Nations are all just horses in the same race. You're supposed to pick one.
Things in the last 200 years have changed greatly and I don't know if the ideology holds up anymore. The American Civil War, WWI and WWII showed that nation populations are greater than any transportation system can physically move to the battlefield, so improving the wellbeing of humans has taken a backseat to improving technology since the bottleneck of war isn't how many soldiers you have, it's how fast you can move and how fast you can kill off the other side.
The other bottleneck during the last couple major wars (aside from transportation) was the supply of raw materials. If America wasn't mineral rich and shipping ammunition to both sides during WWI the war would've ended a lot sooner. Today I wonder what war would be like because there's a near infinite supply of people, and raw materials.
Also there's a seemingly infinite supply of money currently in circulation. Everything seems to be getting bought and sold as global investors frantically try to find enough things to invest in. It's an absurd world we live in and I agree that the meaning of it all has completely broken down.
If the US is doing it, China is at least TRYING to do it.
http://manuals.zedt.eu/Huawei%20HG8245%20backdoor%20and%20re...
Because when one is discovered you use the other?
Redundancy is a hallmark of good systems.
If you put the backdoor in too soon, you get caught and you never get your devices implemented in the first place. But once you're in, the money for alternatives have already been allocated.
The only real answer though is not to worry about this stuff, use the cheapest switching hardware you can find (sure use Huawei if they're the cheapest) and own your own privacy, don't trust anyone and do your own end-to-end encryption.
The other issue regarding 5G is China's leveraging of the IP system to protect its own agency abroad, while not allowing any meaningful competition within its own borders.
Additionally, they're using a massive financing scheme to almost bribe carriers into buying equipment on extremely good terms with super low-interest rate loans.
I think it's much better to 'worry about it'.
There either has to be some very rigorous inspection scheme or, equipment can only be made by certified players (like Eriksson) because there's too much risk otherwise.
The West should consider completely ignoring China's IP on 5G, and frankly, using their IP. When China complains about being 'ripped off' we simply use the same deferential language they use on us.
Certainly, government-backed financing should be banned within any kind of trade deal. The equivalent would be the US government using the Treasure and literally the Federal Reserve to fudge currency to, among other things, provide super-cheap financing to customers around the world. Or maybe the US should just do that? Invest $10B in a new equipment maker, and then print $100B at the Fed to provide cheap financing to said companies customers?
It seems like maybe I'm beeing 'tongue-in-cheek' by making such preposterous and radical solutions?
The thing is I'm not ... in fact, what I'm describing parallels exactly what China does as part of their national strategy.
Our policy towards China usually reflects the kind of actions modern states might take among one another, but they are playing a completely different game, and it's as if we're collectively naive to it all.
These are big, serious games that involve massive intelligence issues, massive industries, massive industrial and IP control.
All of that said, maybe there is a nifty way to obviate the problem by using some kind of networking technique to render such back doors moot - that would be cool!
'Dumping' isn't 'making stuff cheaper', it's illegal in most countries. [1]
Second, it's not 'capitalism' when the government intervenes with massive subsidies, or worse, leverages the financial system and central bank to support an initiative.
You basically can't have any reasonable kind of trade with countries that engage in these practices. This issue is fundamentally why trade deals take so long: nations go to lengths to make sure the other side doesn't 'cheat'. One area of constant contention is agricultural subsidies. Because food production is seen as a 'strategic issue', countries feel the need to subsidize, but those subsidies aren't the same in each nation, causing serious competitive issues.
China plays the game to their advantage, fair enough - but the West should not simply allow China to have arbitrary leverage. It'd be better in the long run if everyone played fair, but so long as they want to play with shenanigans, those shenanigans should be returned in kind
Anyone who wants to make a moral judgment about which is "worse" should start with moral judgments of the American and Chinese governments.
Not going to pretend the US is perfect. But in a world where the future is basically a choice between one of two super powers to throw your lot in with, imma go with the US.
As an American, I expect that the US government, if it wants it enough, can obtain access to my communications (at least while using US infrastructure), assuming they're not e2e encrypted. Hopefully such access would be gated by a warrant, and I expect in most cases that's how it works, though I do expect there are abuses here and there.
The Chinese government, however, should not have any kind of access to any of my communications (unless I am visiting China, using their infrastructure; or perhaps am communicating with someone in China from abroad). In addition, if the relationship between the US and China ever sours to the point of war, presumably the Chinese would have no problem using any possible backdoors to disrupt US telecom networks.
Given this, I would much rather the US use US-built telecom infrastructure than Chinese-built infra. I think an argument over which government is more moral or trustworthy is just not useful here.
I mean, why else would you bring it up at all? No shit, governments are going to spy on people ... it's still useful and interesting to know which governments are doing the spying, and how, and who's accusing who of what (which is obviously not the same thing). It's newsworthy even without moral judgment. But the whataboutism drags morals into the picture.
I agree with your comment in the sense that it is a reasonably accurate description of reality and some notions of "should" in the (very fuzzy) [international] legal sense.
On the other hand, assuming that future people will have to live under both regimes, and given that "cyber-intrusions" are moves in a greater conflict that is likely to escalate and has profound implications for the future shape of human society and thought, I think it's quite useful to bring morals into the picture if one of our goals is to maximize good outcomes and minimize bad outcomes for other humans.
As an American it's probably easy to make a choice here, but as a 3rd party I'm not so sure. The US has definitely wreaked more havoc across the globe during the past century, from overthrowing democratic governments to bombing the shit out of countries. The Chinese are reckless whenever they see someone threatening their authority, but egoistically speaking, that 99% applies to Chinese nationals or people living in China. Not my problem.
If my country would go with US equipment, I already know they will get all my data because of things like the patriot act and all the niceties Snowden revealed the NSA et al have.
The Chinese probably have the same, but we don't know anything definitive, which makes it more scary, also they are evil commies. But then again, having access to telco infra only means they get meta data, since traffic is all encrypted nowadays, while the US still gets all my content thanks to Facebook/WhatsApp, Google/Gmail, Amazon, ..., no matter what the 5G equipment is. So is it safer to then say you better buy the 5G stuff from the US so only one party can steal all your data?
The simplest answer to all of this, seems to be - when it comes to technology, international trust is at an all time low, and we need systems that are trustless.
However, these standards are intentionally kept weak, so that any determined actor can break a door down if they don't have their own. (ala stingray).
For "national security" reasons, and if that doesn't work, to catch pedophiles. Because both of those force politicians to not stand against whatever is being proposed.
The US liberated the Philippines, Indonesia, Taiwan and South Korea after WW2 from Japanese slavery. As well as a large part of China.
Those countries should be eternally grateful to the US.
In the case of the Philippines and Indonesia, the US was not under any obligation to do anything.
With the Philippines, the original US military plan was to simply bypass them, but it was a pet of MacArthur.
For Indonesia, the US defeated the Japanese then told the Dutch to GTFO after 350 years of colonization.
Both island nations are close friends of the US until today, with Indonesia doing most military training in the US.
The US paid a terrible price in casualties and war materiel. So get your facts straight.
Free software / hardware doesn’t solve espionage.
But if Huawei can do it, so would be the case for NSN, ZTE, Ericsson and even samsung.
Besides backdoor access built in, these telecom equipment come with advanced diagnostic capabilities that are not accessible by anyone other then their own RND department.
In these days of Meltdown and Spectre and TSX Speculative Attacks, I'm not too sure anymore.
I cannot believe they don't see the contradiction. Chinese law enforcement isn't supposed to have backdoors in equipment sold around the world but the US is? Seriously? I can't believe any countries would buy sensitive communications infrastructure from any country that openly includes backdoors.
FVEY: It's right for us to spy on Belgacom
This is a good reason why Chinese needs to democratize totally and switch things up.
The issue is, when you live in China and luck strikes out, there's no choice but to conform, or face suffering, which if Xinjiang is any measure, includes deprivation of liberty. Take pity on the one who has disagreement with the system in PRC.
I don't understand a government lasting long without elections by the people. I don't get their end game on the world stage. They remind me of Kefka from Final Fantasy VI, or team rocket in Pokemon, because news often planning some conspiracy or trap that'd backfire on them in the end.
I mean, don't get me wrong, I'd be the last person to carry water for Huawei, but realistically each country that hopes to maintain its sovereignty should build their data infrastructure on their own. Especially first world countries who have the means and the technology to do so. Otherwise you end up with Barack Obama listening in on Angela Merkel's phone calls and stuff like that.
Put everything on ipv6 and use open standards.
I don't know if this is hugely revelatory or surprising, it has been common knowledge that all the telecoms are effectively government entities for a long time now. It's still just a bit surreal to see it all spelled out in black and white in the WSJ.
Some enterprise network gear even has CALEA modules built in to facilitate traffic intercepts. For example, here's some docs from both Mikrotik and Cisco:
https://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/CALEA
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/switches/lan/catalyst6...
As a practical matter, it all depends on your threat model: are you more likely to get into trouble if the US government knows your secrets, or the Chinese one? How much of a premium are you willing to pay to minimize this risk either way?