FCC Bans Authorizations for Devices That Pose National Security Threat
fcc.gov
fcc.gov
Trade barriers cloaked in National Security cloth are nothing new, they were common in the old Soviet Union (a lot of US made computers were forbidden from entering, and of course the US refused to sell more advanced computers based on National Security concerns), they have been active on and off with China as well.
But the interesting thing for me is the reversal, which is as good an endorsement that Chinese industry is legitimately reached parity on a development scale with US goods as any press release the PRC would push out to the news wires. What it says is that China can deliver compelling solutions in the communications and surveillance space with entirely organic (and thus not controllable) supply chains resulting in products that US customers want to buy and US security interests can't insure aren't compromising their buyers. Having the shoe on the other foot has got to feel a bit weird right?
Banning China from having EUV today will just force them to double down. They’ll eventually get it and then surpass it. It should be obvious at this point that China will dominate the hardware space in the next 10-20 years.
I don't think it's a foregone conclusion that they are going to dominate cutting edge computer hardware at all.
Keep in mind, a fair amount of overlap between US military and the US intelligence community. These are the people that build things like Cheyenne Mountain and Raven Rock and ARPAnet and fund lots and lots of computer security research. They are paranoid patriots. Some might be patriotic paranoids, but the general trend is "both". They don't want leaky machines inside their borders.
[1]: https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-389524A1.pdf
[2]: https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/3919
Also, I didn't know the covered list was being updated. Does anyone know what AO Kaspersky is? Is that the official corporate name for the anti-virus Kaspersky?
Deployments at-scale where vendor support engineers could theoretically use cellular gear for passive collection? Major concern.
Hytera being used for commercial 2-way radio? Similar concerns on the repeater side, not to mention questions about encryption quality if they are used by governments.
You have to name the vendor for commercial 2-way radio licenses, for USDA RUS funding, etc. Lying on those forms brings far worse penalties than what a random individual buying a Hytera DMR for ham use off Amazon would face.
Hikvision is the odd name here. AFAIK they do not make cellular handsets or base stations and were already prohibited from being used on government contracts.
Either way, it certainly has not gone through the required tests for not producing unacceptable levels of interference, and so could at the very least create problems in your environment and other devices.
However if they are simply selling a device that is not approved and registered with the FCC, they are violating FCC regulations but it is not "fraud and a counterfeit"
>so could at the very least create problems in your environment and other devices.
First that assumes facts not in evidence, there is nothing proving FCC provides any actual value to society in the realm of testing. Other standards bodies or even an international approval outside of the FCC can more than fill that void. Look at electrical safety, there is no governmental body that approves devices for electrical safety that is 2(?) private organizations the most famous being UL, but there are others
Second outside of regulatory requirements one would have to assume a consumer even cares if a device is "FCC Approved" I suspect most do not care at all.
While I'm sure you meant "It" vs "If", it was a typo for me to write only "and" vs the intended "and/or".
I can also point out from having dealt with the FCC that it is a very common practice to do what you said and affix a label for a different approved device to a non-approved device.
As far as the FCC's value, it has been a while and may have changed, but IIRC it is up to the device manufacturer to get tests run in an approved RF lab and provide the results to the FCC (so it works/worked a lot like you are suggesting); AFAIK they do selected tests, not all tests.
And yes the FCC DOES provide significant value here. While no one cares about the "FCC Approved" label while buying, without the process there would be a huge amount of interference and most wireless stuff wouldn't work at all. There are thousands of ways to unintentionally fork-up a radio design and thousands more to fork-up a circuit design so it unintentionally emits and receives interference.
Only by being required to check and comply with emissions limits is the RF space even half-way usable — and we're talking about not only your wireless earbuds or car radio, but GPS and aircraft navigation. Even aircraft navigation systems are an issue today because of old-generation equipment and new 5G bandwidth usage creating interference, so they need to rework the standards and install upgraded devices.
Just because the average consumer doesn't know or care does not mean it's unimportant. The average consumer also doesn't know or care about the entire food safety regime, they just expect that they can eat what the get at the grocery store and not die. Similarly, because of the FCC regs, we can expect that we can bring home and turn on a new device and not have it make every other device on the street fail.
Laws that everyone follows, 100% of the time NEVER get changed. For example Marijuana is only becoming legalized because of MASSIVE violations of the law and the public rejecting the idea that society should be punishing people for a plant, nor that tax payers should pay the costs to lock someone in a cage because they had a plant that was not approved by the government.
Further laws and regulations are only fleshed out, solidified, or invalidated via violations of the law. Rarely would have person even have standing to challenge a law unless they first violated... This is why you often see the government drop charges if they think the person will fight a law or regulation on constitutional grounds because they would rather take the single loss, then have their regulation ruled unconstitutional
i still weep for the Citizens United decision
While Amazon -- given its vast resources -- has no excuse not be a good citizen, obviously the burden on retailers and marketplaces needs to be balanced.
The local mom and pop toy shop selling a few uncertified RF-controlled cars isn't exactly the ideal place to initiate enforcement actions. I'd suggest volume importers or facilitators of volume imports.
”Assume they got our phones, assume they got our houses, assume they got us, right here, right now as we sit, everything. Assume it all.”
We should criticize China for human rights violations, not for copying useful ideas and trying to learn to build tech on their own.
IP should be abolished universaly.
For example, if you sell a microwave oven, you need to use the ISM band or whatever they deem appropriate, and they won't mind whatever EMF goo it puts out. If your microwave oven deviates from allowed parameters, it will fail cert. If it interferes with telecommunications or other equipment and you sell it anyway, you can get in big trouble with Uncle Sam.
If you sell a widget that is functionally insecure but you don't lie about it in a negligent or fraudulent way, that isn't necessarily a problem. If you have a backdoor for some nefarious purpose, that could run afoul of numerous criminal or civil statutes. Some of these statutes vary by state, too, so best practice is full disclosure, of course.
How do we know that the Cisco equipment also isn't backdoored and if I send a few malformed TCP packets it opens up its control plane on the receiving port?
Compared to the last few decades, it seems like a strong hand banning these companies. Personally I would like all electronics and products to be made in countries that respect some level of human rights I am comfortable with, but that doesn't really seem like an option currently.
If Cisco has problems, that should also be dealt with.
But because Cisco has problems doesn't mean that Huawei shouldn't be dealt with.
In Western cultures, we have the notion of "Two wrongs don't make a right."
This is a classic Chinese government talking point. "Don't look at what we're doing. Look over there, instead!"
For decades it's been using the same tactic when anyone criticizes China for trade imbalances and human rights abuses. It's really boring and base at this point.
A pessimistic and frankly rude reading of my comment.
Cisco also has it's equipment manufactured outside of the united states, making them susceptible to similar backdooring without x-raying every board produced.
> But because Cisco has problems doesn't mean that Huawei shouldn't be dealt with.
Cisco is not getting banned by the FCC - so the comparison is moot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huawei#Collusion_with_Chinese_...
Weather such targetted/discriminatory regulation as opposed to universal regulation is a legal action is a valid question.
This particular law seems to give grant too much discretionary powers to the Executive, which never is a good idea.
I do not think it is specific to Western culture. And yes two wrongs definitely do not make it right and both must be punished. Now call me back when we see the first wrong being punished. We only seem to punish countries that fit very narrow criteria and murdering say hundreds of thousands is not the determining factor. Until then yes "Look over there" is a very valid argument.
The CIA did an analysis and discovered that Huawei was dumping wireless equipment to small wireless providers in areas around US military basis at a loss. At the very least, the ability to disrupt communication of those military bases were easily achievable.
I had my doubts, but not after the CIA said it's true.
I wouldn't 100% trust anything built in China, but there must be some reason people are only taking action now? Unless it's just "better late than never" response after years of this.
IMO, it was a classic mistake of underestimating a potential rival while stroking our own egos about how smart, capable and powerful we are in comparison. Reality finally trumped hubris.
Large, strong countries do what they want and small, weak countries do what they must. That's the way it is and the way it's always been.
I think the world was more fair during cold war, having 2 superpowers pushed both of them to keep each other in check. This one state world, seems worse
At a certain point you have to question whether they believe in free trade at all.. or just paying lip service to it to make themselves rich.
Think about the opposite of what you are suggesting… should China now start subsidizing US businesses by buying made in USA when they don’t have to? If we make good products, they have no choice but to buy it because their citizens will demand it.
And your last sentence is wrong— Chinese are not free to buy us made goods if they think they are better. China places heavy tariffs and other protections on imports.
Since you seem to be unaware.. that’s what you’re arguing for: the right of China to place heavy tariffs on foreign goods, while using wto rules to prevent other nations from doing the same to Chinese goods.
Counties agree to wto rules so they can export more.. those rules apply in both directions. If China doesn’t like wto rules, they can withdraw and do as you say: everyone applies whatever tariffs they want on Chinese goods; and China does the same.
Despite tariffs iPhones still sell well and take a majority of profits in China, because it’s a superior product. Tariffs are just a form of subsidy and subsidies protect companies but make them less competitive. Apple wouldn’t exist if America was protectionist.
Ironically, speaking of freedom, the Libertarian candidate was the only one to support it officially.
More than US seeing how PRC has significantly less disputes (normalized for acession time), both as initiator and target per WTO stats and generally abides by WTO disputes ruled against her favour. Even PRC's accession protocol was made extra onerous via US objections who still got outplayed - it isn't/wasn't PRC paying lip service while blocking WTO dispute resolution system. PRC believes in free trade more than US because she's learned to play the game better vs US flipping over the gameboard. Which is fine, globalism no longer in US interest, but lets not pretend US isn't systematically the worst exploiter of free trade even while being the most influential rule writer, and increasinly worse when as those priveleges erode.
>If Beijing keeps breaking free-trade rules to make its foreign-policy points against rival nations, it will hurt domestic markets and lose international stature
https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2083166/opini...
> Beijing’s attempt to bully Canberra has been a spectacular failure.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/11/09/australia-china-decoupl...
You eating biased media diet doesn't invalid the statistical reality that PRC, relative to her signifcant trade volume and relationships is objectively one of the better adherents at WTO relative to countries that whine about PRC unfairness. From TWO DSS database:
- PRC 65 disputes, 21 as complainant, 44 as respondant
- USA 279 disputes, 124 as complainant, 155 as respondant
- SKR 39 disputes, 21 as complainant, 18 as respondant
- JP 42 disputes, 26 as complainant, 16 as respondant
- AU 25 disputes, 9 as complainant, 16 as respondent
- EU 190 disputes, 104 as complainant, 86 as respondent
Another apt comparison: India 56 disputes, 24 as complainant, 32 as defendant, while 1/5th smaller than PRC.
Normalize for trade volume and accession time (PRC has been WTO member for 21/27 years, with again, more onerous accession requirement than typical) PRC is better than all USA, SKR, AU. In fact substantially better than other major powers. And as US has demonstrated, historically, it's completely normal to jetison trade rules for national security / foreign policy.
Another examples is that the DoD has for quite a long time declared China as the primary adversary, or as they politely say it "pacing challenge".
I know there are other complaints, but this is the core issue.. and I strongly suspect the us would look the other way on those issues if there was equal access, like they have in the past (to maintain access to the market).
Being on good terms with them and dealing with inflation by using their labor force bought the US some time but US politicians just acted more irresponsibly (warmongering) instead of capitalizing on the temporary windfall.
The Chinese government doesn't play fair, and the West has been letting them get away with it for decades. They take full advantage of open markets available in the rest of the world, but close their markets to outsiders; at best, outsiders can get a piece of the action, but only through the oversight and partial ownership of a local company. The idea that China is still a "developing nation" and should have special status and privileges is a joke.
While I won't claim that Western nations don't have issues with censorship and freedom of speech, the Chinese government punishes foreign corporations (economically) that say anything critical of China or its government. The Chinese government exports its propaganda and censorship policies through informal economic sanctions.
I'm not particularly interested in allowing an authoritarian government that pushes pervasive propaganda and censorship to become the next world hegemon. (I'll freely admit that the US is no saint in that role, but I think it should be obvious and defensible why I'd prefer the US in that position rather than China.)
Note that this is all about the Chinese government. I have no problems with Chinese people; by and large, those I've met on my few trips to China (granted, my last trip was over 10 years ago) and those I've met who travel to and live in the US have been good, friendly, intelligent people. It's perfectly reasonable to be against the constant, widespread actions of a foreign government without being branded a xenophobe.
And the US befriended China for important strategic reasons starting with Nixon. If they underestimated anything it was the ability of an authoritarian regime to retain power through such a period of economic growth. Middle classes tend to want western products and media. But the economic growth itself was a deliberate goal of US policy.
As for xenophobia being the opposite, I imagine the comment being referenced (now several levels above) was using -phobia in the common modern sense of including bias or prejudice and not literally fear.
No government or organisation does, and I wouldn’t fault any state for doing it’s best to edge it’s bets.
So "stack the odds in its favour” then?
However, my argument is that the West, in general, underestimated China because of beliefs of cultural, economic, political, intellectual, ethnic, moral, etc superiority. Those beliefs were ultimately weaknesses.
It has become especially clear over the past few years, first with COVID highlighting the fragility of supply chains dependent on such one-sided relations and now with the invasion of Ukraine showing that such relations may also not be as strong of a deterrent against war as previously hoped.
The traded deals by the west were based on the benefit to the western countries. It is not a charity. The low inflation, the record profit of the western companies and bonuses are from cheap labour and resources from more desperate countries.
In the same way that the US and EU going to war or even just breaking off diplomatic ties is extremely unlikely to happen due to how much they have integrated with each other on the back of mutual benefit.
I am sure there are legitimate concerns as all countries spy on each other. But China has become a real industrial and scientific competitor to China and the US just simply would not tolerate a threat to their leading position. I think they are quite explicit about this. We hear all the time about "vital interests".
Yeah sure, this sounds like an iron clad proof.
Some people that worked at Nortel at that time already spoke on HN what happened - hint: it was internal Nortel's issues. Something similar happened to Nokia, better products appeared and company wasn't able to compete.
Defeating the biggest military and geopolitical superpower known to mankind is trivial if you understand you can just ignore all that and instead buy it all up, and it becomes even more trivial if your enemy straight up gives you the monies for it. Literally free real estate.
So kudos to China, they know how to play to win and they're playing to win at all costs while we keep hoisting our own petards.
https://prospect.org/power/congressmembers-tried-to-stop-sec...
Both democrats and republicans, it's just musical chairs, they are all pilfering us.
https://financialpost.com/news/fp-street/earnings-management...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nortel_Retirees_and_former_emp...
Reds in the bed kind of fud here.
Riiiiight. The dotcom crash followed by the accounting scam had absolutely nothing to do with it. It's not like the management pretended that they wouldn't see a downturn and then faked the numbers so that they'd get their bonuses.
Oh, wait.
He'll tell you a different story. When you mention the "espionage / sabotage" he doesn't laugh or shake his head, it actually just outright infuriates him. Such a naive narrative only angers him because it seems to absolve the people who managed the company of outright incompetence and corruption, which is how it should be remembered.
For example: one story I vividly recall because I could never fully fathom it involved a specific female executive who was traveling for business - first class overseas. She never made her intended engagement because she was immediately arrested upon disembarking the plane. She had got drunk and (although married) decided to perform overt sexual acts with the gentleman sitting adjacent to her. On the plane. In her seat.[1]
At some point the culture of the executive at Nortel, for whatever reason, became completely incompetent and outright immoral. Rather than Huawei underhandedly perpetrating the perfect crime, it was simply the people at the head of the organization that solicited the crime to pursue their own benefit above all else.
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2000/04/06/former_nortel_exec_fi...
Huawei's espionage was well documented at Nortel, it's not within any level of dispute.
Nothing so sophisticated is required. Look at the sheer number of "default credential" and "static credential" for a whole variety of products:
https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvekey.cgi?keyword=Cisco+crede...
Regardless of the whataboutism argument in Internet forums, it’s not in the national interest to give a hostile foreign power the ability to do something like that.
Supply chain management is a thing. Devices aren't assumed to get from the factory to you without interference and there is a lot of work behind the scenes to make assert they aren't interfered with.
Except the agent had a pretty obvious command runner on one of the message handlers. I was a little afraid to ask them whether it was deliberate or just a really incompetently written backup update mechanism.
To be fair, I was looking for arbitrary command execution for my own purposes at the time...
I do get a decent chuckle when I see their OUI in scan results when out and about now. (About ~0.12% of the recorded results in Wigle it seems)
Imagine Germany selling radios to the UK in 1937...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-16/chinese-s...
https://www.engadget.com/huawei-contractor-pakistan-backdoor...
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Huawei-caught-red-handed-The-c...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-30/vodafone-...
Knowing the absolute mess this would cause diplomatically, they still said there was a back door: https://apnews.com/article/a0031b16e3a511e431b1e0a5f20edbf9
https://www.scmagazine.com/news/apt/microsoft-defender-advan...
Etc.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-huawei-iran-sanctions-exc...
Some others have pointed out some Huawei incidents, but that’s not the big problem.
The big problem is, if you build your entire telecom infrastructure on Huawei gear, and then you go to war, it will then be weaponized. In the best case scenario, you have a telecom infrastructure for which you can’t get any parts, patches, or support. Replacing your entire telecom infrastructure is not something you want to do during the opening months of WWIII.
It’s the same reason why we don’t want to rely on Chinese parts for our missiles.
Thankfully the truly advanced stuff exists in Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and the EU. But for cheap mass manufacturing, all of these parts end up in China.
The west really needs to suck it up and have electronics designed and manufactured in the west. There are some good signs with the CHIPs act (if only the American companies were as patriotic instead of optimising for share price) and the EU are also making moves to be self sufficient for silicon. However, the entire electronics chain really needs local alternatives. It's crazy that I can get a prototype PCB manufactured and delivered from China faster and cheaper than anywhere local.
Now if only they'd turn this lens on American-made devices which are likewise opaque, insecure, and likely to be weaponized against us as soon as security updates stop....
At some point you have to think these are deliberate.
Network hardware is to operate in the adversarial landscape which is the open internet. It requires an extreme, exhaustive workflow to ensure bugs do not slip through. That we repeatedly see these failures does not raise confidence.
- 2016-01 https://tools.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurit...
- 2018-03 https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/csa/cisco-sa-2018...
- 2018-10 https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/csa/cisco-sa-2018...
- 2019-07 https://tools.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurit...
Edit: formatting
https://www.wired.com/2016/01/new-discovery-around-juniper-b...
If my job were to ensure backdoor access to everything I could, at least to get started I'd sort a list of hardware vendors by marketshare.
Fixed that for you. :/
How? Even ignoring ASICs, I just don't see how it's possible. Even if you had no binary blobs anywhere (we are already in the wonderland), with process for turning source to binary, you need to trust compiler, cpu, flashing hardware and software and the whole lot of other things.
And that's all ignoring the fact that hiding bad stuff in open source is many orders of magnitude cheaper than finding it.
I don't think we have even a theoretical plan for fixing computer security, it just becomes ML bots arena.
"We should not solve this solvable problem because other problems exist" is false.
Meanwhile the other problems have solutions, like reproducible builds, so that the attacker not only has to compromise your compiler/CPU/hardware, they also have to compromise any others the output result gets compared by, or one of them will differ and the attack will be detected.
Without commenting on the truthiness of the comment you are replying to, you have constructed a strawman argument here. They weren't saying that the problem shouldn't be solved because other problems exist, rather that it might not be solvable b/c of so and so obstacles that don't seem to have a solution.
See: https://media.ccc.de/v/36c3-10690-open_source_is_insufficien...
I think we do, but the implications of it are terrifying, overwhelming and just make people shrug and say "That'll never happen".
How I see it there are two sides.
Those who want a functioning technological society with all the benefits we believe in as hackers - transport, medicine, communications, planning... For that we'll have no choice but to make computers secure.
That side is "society".
In the other corner are those who do not want computers to be secure (despite what they say). They benefit from insecurity. These are;
- Criminals.
- Governments.
- Industry.
For secure computing to ever happen three well organised, well funded and determined groups would have to lose against a disorganised, distributed, and poor remainder.
There are two things on our side to give us hope;
- That the enemy of my enemy is a temporary friend.
- Mathematics.
It’s the “distributed remainder” you are taking about, and what we are betting one is for the governments of the world to print so much money that everyone loses faith in them. That will act as a check on their power and they’ll need to start earning trust and support rather than taking it for granted.
The hypocrisy is that this is the exact anti-competitive behavior the US has been criticizing China for years.
It's possible these companies are doing nefarious things. In which case create a country-agnostic legal framework and take them to court and prove your case. If it's all super-secret-spy-stuff then just do the damn parallel construction and show all these secret backdoors you claim to have found.
If you don't like foreign equipment near military bases or whatever else, then make laws against it
After the Bloomberg microchips-embedded-into-motherboards fantasy stories you can't help but think all this is the product of some CIA director's overactive imagination and isn't based on reality. It does feed into the US frothing-at-the-mouth anti-China rhetoric of the past few years so people eat it up - but cutting out the judicial process and singling out companies/countries just looks horrible imho
I mean that's like a "bigger" issue. I think it's a completely fair to decide you should just not conduct business with companies under authoritarian regimes (see N.Korea Iran Myanmar etc.). If you wanna blacklist the whole country then okay.. but here it's some indefensible middle ground where you continue to do business with them, until it's inconvenient and some bureaucrat decided it's making you look bad so lets just ban some of their strongest companies to cripple them. We will do business with you as long as you only make low end widgets thankyouverymuch.
That might not be what's actually happening, but that's how it looks
The US government alleges they (Huawei ZTE etc.) colluding to put backdoors in infrastructure equipment. The companies say "no we don't" and the US government just says "well.. we think you're lieing!" - and that's the end of the story. It's all just amateurish and undermines the rule of law and sense of fairness when dealing with America and the American market.
If there was some formal process where countries are semi-sanctioned and all thing made in some super long list of authoritarian countries was not allowed to be used in some other long list of "critical infrastructure" .. well at least there would be a sense of impartiality.
The way things stand.. it looks like Huawei's 5G and infrastructure technology got too good, it threatened the pseudo-monopolies of some big American companies with deep government connections, so the US bureaucrats curb-stomped them as best they could .. and now they can't even sell their laptops/cellphones in the US? It's just completely nonsensical, arbitrary and vindictive.
There is also just very little logic to it, b/c even if all the allegations about their tentacles in networking equipment are true and were proven to be true, why should I be prohibited from buying some completely unrelated consumer good - like a Huawei laptop, but an Apple or Lenovo laptop (also made in China) is totally fine? It's like the US government is in some state of war with these firms and is out to destroy them (based on no public evidence or accountability) - and the threat on US infrastructure seems to have devolved to be a convenient pretext.
Maybe the intentions of the US authorizes are good and pure and they have a good reason for all of this. But they way they're going about it is vindictive, authoritarian and undermines the impartial fairness of the American system
Are OTA software updates considered a “backdoor”? Because they essentially are one, even if the company is not doing anything nefarious yet.
I dunno man, in the US you don't just ban people and companies for stuff they haven't yet done. Sure potential attack surfaces are important and you should think about stuff like that. But that's kinda my point.. you should make laws about that and regulate critical infrastructure. (maybe networking equipment shouldn't get OTA updates at all? Maybe that's too simplistic..）
The Covered List (which lists both equipment and services) currently includes communications equipment produced by Huawei Technologies, ZTE Corporation, Hytera Communications, Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology, and Dahua Technology (and their subsidiaries and affiliates).
“””
Is Starlink a national security threat? What about a hardware wallet?
Yes, you can use pre-approved modules, but your new assembly still requires a spurious emission test (in place of a full emission test). It's a cheaper, faster, simpler test, but approval is still required to sell the new product legally.
The FCC is a massive regulatory moat against hobbyist electronics. You have to make something expensive enough or with enough scale to make enough profit to be able to pay for the expensive testing. If you fail the test and aren't able to fix it on site all of that money will be a waste and that will have been a waste of money.
Also in order to use Bluetooth you will have to pay a few thousand dollars in SIG fees to properly license it without infringing their IP.
the usual suspect, huawei, has been on americas shitlist ever since they beat US telcos to market with 5g. their cellphones all meet or exceed the build quality of a samsung or iphone and to date america has failed to produce any real evidence of a security issue except 'china scary.'
toward the end of the presser its refreshing to see an octogrnarian made sure to remind us all these companies are to some extent "government funded" as if americas subsidies to auto and airlines are somehow any different. "government owned" also gets condescendingly asserted as if the reader isnt familiar with how a planned economy under post soviet marxist theory works.
ever since the net neutrality fiasco ive lost a lot of faith in the fcc. largely a toothless organization of corporate business interests.
This has no impact on sales to the consumer market for Video, the covered list [1] limits the ban to "the extent it is used for the purpose of public safety, security of government facilities"
Ring, Nest etc are used for personal home and small business not likely covered under that ban, and the people buying Hikvision as an example most likely are not the target consumer of Ring devices. Hikvision is / was popular is commercial segment of professionally installed products, I know of zero professional installers doing commercial deployments of Ring. Companies like Axis however do get a boost as Axis is often many times more expensive than Hikvision
Like with most government officials I care less what they say in Press Conferences, that has ZERO regulatory weight, or validation and is often hyperbolic or out right false
I care about the actual regulation, and rules as implemented and enforced.
Also even if they are expanding the devices, this would only apply to camera's with WiFi, Most commercial camera's are POE ethernet not wifi. Using WiFi security camera's is just asking for trouble since it is easy for criminals to take out wifi remotely
Serious question, have the the likes of Ericsson and Nokia managed to catch up with Huawei when it comes to 5G telco equipment?
Last I dived into this was about 2-3 years ago, when that Huawei executive got arrested in Canada or some such, and if I remember right the discourse back then was that Huawei's 5G equipment was both cheaper and better compared to what the Western companies were able to provide at the time.
Most readers of the article can be fairly assumed to know this. Most consumers (including b2b) outside of various tech and policy circles cannot, and the policy is aimed at short circuiting the banned functionally SOE’s from embedding themselves into the communications infrastructure. Gathering intelligence from automotive and aerospace dominance yields substantially less actionable information than from dominance of communications infrastructure.
The subsidies you are comparing are fundamentally, qualitatively different.
It isn’t just the FCC. The entire US government at all levels down to local is captured by corporate business interests. Doesn’t mean every policy decision solely caters to those interests and ignore national defense interests. Also doesn’t mean the US intelligence apparatus isn’t in bed with Western communications technology manufacturers.
Though the argument is more fair in relation to their DVR/VMS products, but it's difficult to see a reason to use those as better alternatives running on your own hardware exist.
As a gov't installation your worries are different of course. I'd worry about, say, a specialized firmware finding its way to me, which can be commanded to disrupt surveillance in response to QR codes or other visual or auditory signals.
How does that logically follow? Can billion dollar companies not be security threats?
> the usual suspect, huawei, has been on americas shitlist ever since they beat US telcos to market with 5g. their cellphones all meet or exceed the build quality of a samsung or iphone and to date america has failed to produce any real evidence of a security issue except 'china scary.'
No one and not even Huawei believes that.
By your logic, you admit China has banned all these US websites as they are afraid of competition and not any other reason?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_ma...
I would like tonsee rigorous benchmarks for vode quality and trustworthyness, not arbitrary and whinsical political decision-making
> "We have evidence that Huawei has the capability secretly to access sensitive and personal information in systems it maintains and sells around the world," Robert O'Brien, national security adviser, reportedly said.
https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/us-finds-huawei-has-backdoo...
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-officials-say-huawei-can-co...
The links you provide have unspecified official sharing his views of intelligence of unspesified quality. There appears to be no code review and no spesific information about what information Huawei has access to, which equipment is affected, etc.
I am not sure we can treat this level of intelligence with complete trust, it could be a PR excersise