5 ms·

Huawei, ZTE to be excluded from Australia's 5G network

13 points by mediawatch 8y ago

contingencies 8y ago
Unofficially they were already excluded as early as about four years ago by shady government visits to telcos implying covert monitoring of infrastructure related tender processes. This sort of thing no doubt came from US pressure or practice and could be argued to represent direct, covert, cross-border intelligence agency influence on 'free market' capitalism. Source: Guy managing network upgrade planning at the time for the major wireless internet provider in the country. Frankly, I think best practice is that no country or vendor should be trusted, networks and devices should be designed in such a way as to guarantee vulnerabilities are detectable and impact-limited, and politicians should stay out of network design. Only when carriers start acting this way will the situation improve. Notably, Australia had no problems selling Optus to Singapore, Inc., which is a strong US ally and no doubt strongly active in regional intelligence gathering owing to its central position on regional undersea cable networks.
- ggm 8y ago
  Unofficially they were already excluded as early as about four years ago by shady government visits to telcos implying covert monitoring of infrastructure related tender processes. This sort of thing no doubt came from US pressure or practice and could be argued to represent direct, covert, cross-border intelligence agency influence on 'free market' capitalism. I was told the "five eyes" required this, and that no government agency in any of the five eyes economies will confirm or deny what evidence justified it. The ironies here are supreme: We know within limits, Cisco and Juniper do backdoors. What we don't know, is who reads the backdoors Huawei do, but we can assume its not the US government. What I am also told, is that the only established proven concern is about state-company governance structures: Huawei were insufficiently transparent about the stock holdings of former Peoples-Army board members and the relationship of the state and the party to the company. I can believe there is a governance issue, but c'mon: we buy oil from countries which want to execute human rights workers, and this is the issue? I think we all know, this is "belt and road" vs "soft diplomancy" -China is being excluded for economic strategic reasons which have nothing to do with snooping risks. The Australian Huawei board includes former Australian politicians. Senior ones. Ex-cabinet ones. I interact with Huawei staff at IETF, and see them frequently at meetings in Asia. I don't view any of them as an existential threat, I think this is bullshit. Many of the Huawei staff at IETF are ex-Cisco, US and Canadian.
  - ksec 8y ago
    I sometimes wonder who do company operate that backdoor? I assume many engineers will know about it. What is there to keep them shut their months? Special Visit from Intel agency? What is there to prevent these people speak out? One of the good thing coming about SDN, is that hopefully everything will be open sourced. Since we cant trust no one, then we open it and at least allow many to look through it. I sometimes wonder why China hasn't taken this business model.

13 points by mediawatch 8y ago

Unofficially they were already excluded as early as about four years ago by shady government visits to telcos implying covert monitoring of infrastructure related tender processes. This sort of thing no doubt came from US pressure or practice and could be argued to represent direct, covert, cross-border intelligence agency influence on 'free market' capitalism. Source: Guy managing network upgrade planning at the time for the major wireless internet provider in the country. Frankly, I think best practice is that no country or vendor should be trusted, networks and devices should be designed in such a way as to guarantee vulnerabilities are detectable and impact-limited, and politicians should stay out of network design. Only when carriers start acting this way will the situation improve. Notably, Australia had no problems selling Optus to Singapore, Inc., which is a strong US ally and no doubt strongly active in regional intelligence gathering owing to its central position on regional undersea cable networks.

ggm 8y ago
Unofficially they were already excluded as early as about four years ago by shady government visits to telcos implying covert monitoring of infrastructure related tender processes. This sort of thing no doubt came from US pressure or practice and could be argued to represent direct, covert, cross-border intelligence agency influence on 'free market' capitalism. I was told the "five eyes" required this, and that no government agency in any of the five eyes economies will confirm or deny what evidence justified it. The ironies here are supreme: We know within limits, Cisco and Juniper do backdoors. What we don't know, is who reads the backdoors Huawei do, but we can assume its not the US government. What I am also told, is that the only established proven concern is about state-company governance structures: Huawei were insufficiently transparent about the stock holdings of former Peoples-Army board members and the relationship of the state and the party to the company. I can believe there is a governance issue, but c'mon: we buy oil from countries which want to execute human rights workers, and this is the issue? I think we all know, this is "belt and road" vs "soft diplomancy" -China is being excluded for economic strategic reasons which have nothing to do with snooping risks. The Australian Huawei board includes former Australian politicians. Senior ones. Ex-cabinet ones. I interact with Huawei staff at IETF, and see them frequently at meetings in Asia. I don't view any of them as an existential threat, I think this is bullshit. Many of the Huawei staff at IETF are ex-Cisco, US and Canadian.
- ksec 8y ago
  I sometimes wonder who do company operate that backdoor? I assume many engineers will know about it. What is there to keep them shut their months? Special Visit from Intel agency? What is there to prevent these people speak out? One of the good thing coming about SDN, is that hopefully everything will be open sourced. Since we cant trust no one, then we open it and at least allow many to look through it. I sometimes wonder why China hasn't taken this business model.