7 ms·

Nothing, just like nothing will happen to the outlets who are currently pushing this "Huwai is spying on everybody" narrative with not an ounce of evidence for

Nothing, just like nothing will happen to the outlets who are currently pushing this "Huwai is spying on everybody" narrative with not an ounce of evidence for it except for unfounded and unsourced claims by FiveEyes intelligence services [0]. Afaik that whole Bloomberg/Super Micro thing was similarly set up, referring to "anonymous intelligence/industry services", not even naming the company that supposedly did the security audit. People have to realize that these kinds of narratives are often pushed by parties in the West, with a vested interest, just as much as it happens in the supposedly "propaganda riddled" East. It's for those same reasons that the amendments to the Smith-Mundson act, which happened back in 2013, haven't seen any widespread attention or even mention anywhere in the mainstream [1] because the good guys don't do "propaganda", they do "interventions" [2] and "information campaigns" [3]. [0] https://www.ft.com/content/afa7fd54-79b1-11e8-bc55-50daf11b720d https://www.ft.com/content/afa7fd54-79b1-11e8-bc55-50daf11b7... [1] https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/14/u-s-repeals-propaganda-ban-spreads-government-made-news-to-americans/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/14/u-s-repeals-propaganda-... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation-social-networks https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-op... [3] https://vimeo.com/67739294 https://vimeo.com/67739294

na85 8y ago
Regarding the five eyes sources, are we really expecting that intelligence agencies will give sources/proof?
- ghostly_s 8y ago
  I wouldn't, but I also wouldn't expect a reporter to publish this info without finding anything corroborating. This whole story is about physical sabotage devices, supposedely planted in large quantities, why couldn't they find any of these devices or a single person willing to state they saw one?
- dpwm 8y ago
  Yes.
- StavrosK 8y ago
  Are they expecting us to believe whatever they say without any examination?
- freeflight 8y ago
  If they want their claims to be taken seriously, then they really should. Without that, it's just hearsay, hearsay by agencies who have deceit as part of their job description and as such should be taken with a massive grain of salt. Imho they've also become shy about openly sharing sources because it allows them plausible deniability, they don't want an Iraq style curveball [0] all over again, where the attribution of the misinformation can be too easily traced back straight to them. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curveball_(informant) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curveball_(informant)
  - threeseed 8y ago
    This argument is illogical. They don’t share sources because simply it would reveal the sources. It has nothing to do with plausible deniability because they don’t care whether you believe them or not. The governments do and that’s all that matters.
  - scottlocklin 8y ago
    I dunno, maybe they've (who is "they" anyway?) become shy because when their claims are examined, they so often turn out to be nonsense? When was the last time anonymous "government sources" or even "five eyes official" told us something which is demonstrably true? Cuban missile crisis?
- Bartweiss 8y ago
  They do provide sources sometimes - even when their stories are false - which makes credulity without proof that much more surprising. They're not inviting anyone into Langley, and if this were a claim about e.g. cyberattacks on Ukraine we might not expect evidence. But for something evaluated domestically, especially with physical evidence like SuperMicro, it's relatively common for intelligence sources to point to people who can confirm key elements. That might be a non-government firm which examined the physical evidence, a non-intelligence researcher who can assess the context of a factual claim, or an affected business which can verify what they experienced. When a CIA source told Judy Miller that Iraq was buying aluminum tubes to centrifuge uranium, they claimed that Oak Ridge nuclear scientists had confirmed their assessment of what the tubes were for. They hadn't, but she apparently didn't bother to check. When "U.S. officials" told the Washington Post that Russian Grizzly Steppe malware had infected the US electric grid, they provided the name of the utility company which had been attacked - Burlington Electric. Again, this was untrue (the code was found on one laptop unconnected to 'the grid'), but the reporter involved didn't check. In the SuperMicro case, there doesn't seem to have even been a name given to check, just vague assertions that some company had performed an audit. That ought to have been a warning sign, but it looks like Bloomberg accepted source diversity in place of concrete or verifiable details - we're told of six national security officials, three Apple insiders, two AWS sources (and a partridge in a pear tree).
narrator 8y ago
Seems like anonymous sources inside the intelligence agencies is how a lot of the news gets generated these days. Anonymous figures don't have to worry about their reputation or credibility and can just leak occasionally true information to keep getting published.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  Amid all the fake news / paid troll armies dramas, "anonymous government agent" is a pretty old-school approach.
- godelski 8y ago
  They do have a reputation, to the journalist. It's not as far reaching, but you bet that journalist isn't going to trust that source again if they are caught lying. Or even that agency.
  - Bartweiss 8y ago
    This is certainly how things ought to work, but it's far from clear that it does. A reporter on an international affairs beat can't possibly dismiss sources as broad as the State Department or CIA - which makes it very possible to rotate through mouthpieces as they're proven unreliable. (And that's usually when clear dishonesty is found, not just plausibly-mistaken claims.) And anonymity is usually protected even when a source is found to having knowingly mislead journalists, which means a dishonest source is only burned for a single reporter or outlet and can go seek out a new audience. Multiply the number of mid-level employees at a major government body by the number of reputable news orgs and this starts to look completely sustainable. It's something (reputable) news accountability groups have been upset about for years, but no one seems to have solved it. Conventional wisdom appears to be that publications are scared they'll lose source access completely if they start unmasking dishonest USG sources. https://fair.org/home/should-media-expose-sources-who-lied-to-them/ https://fair.org/home/should-media-expose-sources-who-lied-t...
    - freeflight 8y ago
      > A reporter on an international affairs beat can't possibly dismiss sources as broad as the State Department or CIA It's actually worse, the power dynamics are completely lopsided: He/she can't disgruntle his governmental sources or else there's the very real possibility of being cut out of the loop/any access at all in the future. Which isn't a great prospect for any journalist because you can't get any "scoops" when your competitors have privileged access to information.
asituop 8y ago
Not that Huawei is the only and surely some other brands are even worse, but still Huawei phones are full of spyware, just open NetGuard or another example here : https://mobile.twitter.com/fs0c131y/status/1051568180748013569 https://mobile.twitter.com/fs0c131y/status/10515681807480135... But once again surely other brands, Western companies included, are also spying, but it doesn't change the fact that Huawei does it too.
- Drdrdrq 8y ago
  Can't open the link because of rate limiting - hn effect? Anyway, is any phone-home spying? What if it phones US servers, say Google's? Unfortunately I can't think of a popular brand that doesn't spy on its users (no matter what the reasons are).
  - timecube 8y ago
    Twitter's mobile site does that all the time, just refresh and it'll work.
  - reissbaker 8y ago
    It's not just a phone-home. It's sending your entire browsing history (unencrypted!): every web request you make gets sent back to servers in China.
    - thisgoodlife 8y ago
      That's interesting. Links please?
    - lulwot 8y ago
      thats not entirely true, while isp's do get a copy of your plain text data if its not end to end encrypted(and likely offsell it), bgp routes would likely need to hijacked or somehow compromised while the data was in transit for a chinese server to get a copy of that data
    - jake_the_third 8y ago
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
lawnchair_larry 8y ago
Those are very different cases. Also, public citations of classified intel is a dumb thing to require. I hope the reason why is obvious. In the SuperMicro example, the same shadowy government organizations you accuse of conspiring to build a narrative against China are some of the people who debunked this story.

na85 8y ago

Regarding the five eyes sources, are we really expecting that intelligence agencies will give sources/proof?

ghostly_s 8y ago
I wouldn't, but I also wouldn't expect a reporter to publish this info without finding anything corroborating. This whole story is about physical sabotage devices, supposedely planted in large quantities, why couldn't they find any of these devices or a single person willing to state they saw one?
dpwm 8y ago
Yes.
StavrosK 8y ago
Are they expecting us to believe whatever they say without any examination?
freeflight 8y ago
If they want their claims to be taken seriously, then they really should. Without that, it's just hearsay, hearsay by agencies who have deceit as part of their job description and as such should be taken with a massive grain of salt. Imho they've also become shy about openly sharing sources because it allows them plausible deniability, they don't want an Iraq style curveball [0] all over again, where the attribution of the misinformation can be too easily traced back straight to them. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curveball_(informant) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curveball_(informant)
- threeseed 8y ago
  This argument is illogical. They don’t share sources because simply it would reveal the sources. It has nothing to do with plausible deniability because they don’t care whether you believe them or not. The governments do and that’s all that matters.
- scottlocklin 8y ago
  I dunno, maybe they've (who is "they" anyway?) become shy because when their claims are examined, they so often turn out to be nonsense? When was the last time anonymous "government sources" or even "five eyes official" told us something which is demonstrably true? Cuban missile crisis?
Bartweiss 8y ago
They do provide sources sometimes - even when their stories are false - which makes credulity without proof that much more surprising. They're not inviting anyone into Langley, and if this were a claim about e.g. cyberattacks on Ukraine we might not expect evidence. But for something evaluated domestically, especially with physical evidence like SuperMicro, it's relatively common for intelligence sources to point to people who can confirm key elements. That might be a non-government firm which examined the physical evidence, a non-intelligence researcher who can assess the context of a factual claim, or an affected business which can verify what they experienced. When a CIA source told Judy Miller that Iraq was buying aluminum tubes to centrifuge uranium, they claimed that Oak Ridge nuclear scientists had confirmed their assessment of what the tubes were for. They hadn't, but she apparently didn't bother to check. When "U.S. officials" told the Washington Post that Russian Grizzly Steppe malware had infected the US electric grid, they provided the name of the utility company which had been attacked - Burlington Electric. Again, this was untrue (the code was found on one laptop unconnected to 'the grid'), but the reporter involved didn't check. In the SuperMicro case, there doesn't seem to have even been a name given to check, just vague assertions that some company had performed an audit. That ought to have been a warning sign, but it looks like Bloomberg accepted source diversity in place of concrete or verifiable details - we're told of six national security officials, three Apple insiders, two AWS sources (and a partridge in a pear tree).

narrator 8y ago

Seems like anonymous sources inside the intelligence agencies is how a lot of the news gets generated these days. Anonymous figures don't have to worry about their reputation or credibility and can just leak occasionally true information to keep getting published.

TeMPOraL 8y ago
Amid all the fake news / paid troll armies dramas, "anonymous government agent" is a pretty old-school approach.
godelski 8y ago
They do have a reputation, to the journalist. It's not as far reaching, but you bet that journalist isn't going to trust that source again if they are caught lying. Or even that agency.
- Bartweiss 8y ago
  This is certainly how things ought to work, but it's far from clear that it does. A reporter on an international affairs beat can't possibly dismiss sources as broad as the State Department or CIA - which makes it very possible to rotate through mouthpieces as they're proven unreliable. (And that's usually when clear dishonesty is found, not just plausibly-mistaken claims.) And anonymity is usually protected even when a source is found to having knowingly mislead journalists, which means a dishonest source is only burned for a single reporter or outlet and can go seek out a new audience. Multiply the number of mid-level employees at a major government body by the number of reputable news orgs and this starts to look completely sustainable. It's something (reputable) news accountability groups have been upset about for years, but no one seems to have solved it. Conventional wisdom appears to be that publications are scared they'll lose source access completely if they start unmasking dishonest USG sources. https://fair.org/home/should-media-expose-sources-who-lied-to-them/ https://fair.org/home/should-media-expose-sources-who-lied-t...
  - freeflight 8y ago
    > A reporter on an international affairs beat can't possibly dismiss sources as broad as the State Department or CIA It's actually worse, the power dynamics are completely lopsided: He/she can't disgruntle his governmental sources or else there's the very real possibility of being cut out of the loop/any access at all in the future. Which isn't a great prospect for any journalist because you can't get any "scoops" when your competitors have privileged access to information.

asituop 8y ago

Not that Huawei is the only and surely some other brands are even worse, but still Huawei phones are full of spyware, just open NetGuard or another example here : https://mobile.twitter.com/fs0c131y/status/1051568180748013569 https://mobile.twitter.com/fs0c131y/status/10515681807480135... But once again surely other brands, Western companies included, are also spying, but it doesn't change the fact that Huawei does it too.

Drdrdrq 8y ago
Can't open the link because of rate limiting - hn effect? Anyway, is any phone-home spying? What if it phones US servers, say Google's? Unfortunately I can't think of a popular brand that doesn't spy on its users (no matter what the reasons are).
- timecube 8y ago
  Twitter's mobile site does that all the time, just refresh and it'll work.
- reissbaker 8y ago
  It's not just a phone-home. It's sending your entire browsing history (unencrypted!): every web request you make gets sent back to servers in China.
  - thisgoodlife 8y ago
    That's interesting. Links please?
  - lulwot 8y ago
    thats not entirely true, while isp's do get a copy of your plain text data if its not end to end encrypted(and likely offsell it), bgp routes would likely need to hijacked or somehow compromised while the data was in transit for a chinese server to get a copy of that data
  - jake_the_third 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

lawnchair_larry 8y ago

Those are very different cases. Also, public citations of classified intel is a dumb thing to require. I hope the reason why is obvious. In the SuperMicro example, the same shadowy government organizations you accuse of conspiring to build a narrative against China are some of the people who debunked this story.