4 ms·

Targeting Huawei: NSA Spied on Chinese Government and Networking Firm

49 points by wrongc0ntinent 13y ago

RainforestCx 13y ago
It makes me sad that Huawei may now be driven to an even greater distance from the US market—particularly the consumer market. The phones that Huawei makes are quality enough, and cheap enough for me to consider them a staple of the Maker movement (at least that involving android smartphones). If I'm gonna tear apart a phone or at least put it in harsh conditions (like we do at http://rfcx.org http://rfcx.org), I at least want it to be reliable and expendable, financially. It's now hard enough to get Huawei phones in the US, and I fear it's now only going to get harder. I know that's not really the point—this article is really about spying, and US is not alone in doing so, by any means, but this news affected me on another level.
eliteraspberrie 13y ago
So they got a taste of their own medicine. Huawei has spied on and stolen from US companies. For example, Huawei copied Cisco's iOS -- including source code comments and bugs -- and even copied their user manuals verbatim. [1, pp. 8-10,12; 2] Besides, the facts that non-Chinese employees cannot own shares in Huawei; [3, p. 23] that the Communist Party appoints an anonymous "Party Committee" within Huawei; [3, p. 30] and that Huawei was involved in selling US network-monitoring equipment to Iran [4] -- makes them a legitimate target for NSA, in my opinion. [1] Cisco's motion for preliminary injunction http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/Cisco_Mot_for_PI.pdf http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/Cisco_Mot_for_PI.pdf [2] http://blogs.cisco.com/news/huawei-and-ciscos-source-code-correcting-the-record/ http://blogs.cisco.com/news/huawei-and-ciscos-source-code-co... [3] Investigative Report on the U.S. National Security Issues Posed by Chinese Telecommunications Companies Huawei and ZTE http://intelligence.house.gov/sites/intelligence.house.gov/files/Huawei-ZTE%20Investigative%20Report%20(FINAL).pdf http://intelligence.house.gov/sites/intelligence.house.gov/f... [4] http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/08/us-cisco-zte-iran-idUSBRE89709N20121008 http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/08/us-cisco-zte-iran-...
- synctext 13y ago
  Sorry, in my opinion spying on China's president, tracking source code on product lines and deep infiltration of a company is clearly crossing the line. IPR skirmishes differ from mass surveillance and are not a taste of their own medicine. Or did I miss something?
  - mpyne 13y ago
    For starters, this isn't "mass surveillance" on China, so maybe you should use the right buzzwords. :) Also, "IPR skirmishing" is actually worse I would think. Military/strategic intelligence-gathering is as old as Caeser (and for that matter, Sun Tzu...) and is well-recognized as legitimate (if distasteful). However even that doesn't directly affect the economy of either party. With "IPR skirmishing" it's possible to go almost straight to the acquisition phase of a particular tech without having to do the R&D, which can have substantial effect to the groups who actually did have to pay for that R&D.
    - austinz 13y ago
      Stealing technological secrets is older than you might think. China lost its monopoly on silk production and trade with the West after Byzantine monks smuggled silkworms out of China using their canes, defying an imperial edict forbidding such a thing.
      - mpyne 13y ago
        ! Great point, I'd quite forgotten that since high school but you're right, that was an incredibly big swing in geopolitical affairs of the time.
- olalonde 13y ago
  Basically, tu quoque? I personally believe both NSA and Huawei's actions are morally reprehensible.
  - Zigurd 13y ago
ianhawes 13y ago
Could someone please explain to me why it is justifiable for Edward Snowden (and by extension, Glenn Greenwald) to leak this information?
- intslack 13y ago
  Could you explain to us why the US government is partaking in exact same tactics that they tried to drag the Chinese through the mud with? Hypocrisy seems to be the name of the game here: spying on attorney-client communications, pwning sysadmins to get access to infrastructure and rifling through trade secrets of companies. The last two of which the U.S. has put on their outrage face and publically shamed the Chinese for doing. Regardless, the Snowden cache was bulk, and was given to Greenwald, Poitras, and Gellman. Snowden isn't giving marching orders in the background, he left it up to journalists to decide what gets published. While they probably still collaborate, Poitras is in Berlin and is most likely one of the primary journalists behind this story and not Greenwald.
  - austinz 13y ago
    It's realpolitik: doing and saying anything and everything to get an advantage over a perceived opponent or rival. This includes intentionally making misleading statements and convincing people you care about moral standards when you don't. Before Snowden changed things, it was readily apparent that everyone was ready to believe the US and nobody was ready to believe China. So the accusations were a rational thing to do. The US isn't the only country that does this, obviously, and people are divided over whether or not it is the 'right' way to conduct international relations.
    - EthanHeilman 13y ago
      > This includes intentionally making misleading statements and convincing people you care about moral standards when you don't. Another possible is that several groups within the US government aren't on the same page. Elements of the State Dept might work to end torture in S. America, while the CIA secretly trains S. American governments in torture. This sort of, hack everyone/steal everything isn't in the long term interests of the US government because the US has the most to lose in terms of IP/infrastructure, but engaging in this damaging behavior may allow some agencies to "get the job done" in the short term. Makes sense that groups tasked with grand-strategy would oppose this behavior, whereas groups tasked with short-term results would ignore the long game. A predictable result of a failure of oversight (left hand plays against the strategy of the right hand).
DerpDerpDerp 13y ago
Isn't spying on the Chinese government and Huawei exactly what we pay them to do?
- mpyne 13y ago
  Yes.
- autodidakto 13y ago
  I want my money back.
dan_bk 13y ago
> NSA workers not only succeeded in accessing the email archive, but also the secret source code of individual Huwaei products. Software source code is the holy grail of computer companies. We need to open-source everything (soft/hard/firmware) and modify these business models.

It makes me sad that Huawei may now be driven to an even greater distance from the US market—particularly the consumer market. The phones that Huawei makes are quality enough, and cheap enough for me to consider them a staple of the Maker movement (at least that involving android smartphones). If I'm gonna tear apart a phone or at least put it in harsh conditions (like we do at http://rfcx.org http://rfcx.org), I at least want it to be reliable and expendable, financially. It's now hard enough to get Huawei phones in the US, and I fear it's now only going to get harder. I know that's not really the point—this article is really about spying, and US is not alone in doing so, by any means, but this news affected me on another level.

eliteraspberrie 13y ago

So they got a taste of their own medicine. Huawei has spied on and stolen from US companies. For example, Huawei copied Cisco's iOS -- including source code comments and bugs -- and even copied their user manuals verbatim. [1, pp. 8-10,12; 2] Besides, the facts that non-Chinese employees cannot own shares in Huawei; [3, p. 23] that the Communist Party appoints an anonymous "Party Committee" within Huawei; [3, p. 30] and that Huawei was involved in selling US network-monitoring equipment to Iran [4] -- makes them a legitimate target for NSA, in my opinion. [1] Cisco's motion for preliminary injunction http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/Cisco_Mot_for_PI.pdf http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/Cisco_Mot_for_PI.pdf [2] http://blogs.cisco.com/news/huawei-and-ciscos-source-code-correcting-the-record/ http://blogs.cisco.com/news/huawei-and-ciscos-source-code-co... [3] Investigative Report on the U.S. National Security Issues Posed by Chinese Telecommunications Companies Huawei and ZTE http://intelligence.house.gov/sites/intelligence.house.gov/files/Huawei-ZTE%20Investigative%20Report%20(FINAL).pdf http://intelligence.house.gov/sites/intelligence.house.gov/f... [4] http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/08/us-cisco-zte-iran-idUSBRE89709N20121008 http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/08/us-cisco-zte-iran-...

synctext 13y ago
Sorry, in my opinion spying on China's president, tracking source code on product lines and deep infiltration of a company is clearly crossing the line. IPR skirmishes differ from mass surveillance and are not a taste of their own medicine. Or did I miss something?
- mpyne 13y ago
  For starters, this isn't "mass surveillance" on China, so maybe you should use the right buzzwords. :) Also, "IPR skirmishing" is actually worse I would think. Military/strategic intelligence-gathering is as old as Caeser (and for that matter, Sun Tzu...) and is well-recognized as legitimate (if distasteful). However even that doesn't directly affect the economy of either party. With "IPR skirmishing" it's possible to go almost straight to the acquisition phase of a particular tech without having to do the R&D, which can have substantial effect to the groups who actually did have to pay for that R&D.
  - austinz 13y ago
    Stealing technological secrets is older than you might think. China lost its monopoly on silk production and trade with the West after Byzantine monks smuggled silkworms out of China using their canes, defying an imperial edict forbidding such a thing.
    - mpyne 13y ago
      ! Great point, I'd quite forgotten that since high school but you're right, that was an incredibly big swing in geopolitical affairs of the time.
olalonde 13y ago
Basically, tu quoque? I personally believe both NSA and Huawei's actions are morally reprehensible.
- Zigurd 13y ago

ianhawes 13y ago

Could someone please explain to me why it is justifiable for Edward Snowden (and by extension, Glenn Greenwald) to leak this information?

intslack 13y ago
Could you explain to us why the US government is partaking in exact same tactics that they tried to drag the Chinese through the mud with? Hypocrisy seems to be the name of the game here: spying on attorney-client communications, pwning sysadmins to get access to infrastructure and rifling through trade secrets of companies. The last two of which the U.S. has put on their outrage face and publically shamed the Chinese for doing. Regardless, the Snowden cache was bulk, and was given to Greenwald, Poitras, and Gellman. Snowden isn't giving marching orders in the background, he left it up to journalists to decide what gets published. While they probably still collaborate, Poitras is in Berlin and is most likely one of the primary journalists behind this story and not Greenwald.
- austinz 13y ago
  It's realpolitik: doing and saying anything and everything to get an advantage over a perceived opponent or rival. This includes intentionally making misleading statements and convincing people you care about moral standards when you don't. Before Snowden changed things, it was readily apparent that everyone was ready to believe the US and nobody was ready to believe China. So the accusations were a rational thing to do. The US isn't the only country that does this, obviously, and people are divided over whether or not it is the 'right' way to conduct international relations.
  - EthanHeilman 13y ago
    > This includes intentionally making misleading statements and convincing people you care about moral standards when you don't. Another possible is that several groups within the US government aren't on the same page. Elements of the State Dept might work to end torture in S. America, while the CIA secretly trains S. American governments in torture. This sort of, hack everyone/steal everything isn't in the long term interests of the US government because the US has the most to lose in terms of IP/infrastructure, but engaging in this damaging behavior may allow some agencies to "get the job done" in the short term. Makes sense that groups tasked with grand-strategy would oppose this behavior, whereas groups tasked with short-term results would ignore the long game. A predictable result of a failure of oversight (left hand plays against the strategy of the right hand).

DerpDerpDerp 13y ago

Isn't spying on the Chinese government and Huawei exactly what we pay them to do?

mpyne 13y ago
Yes.
autodidakto 13y ago
I want my money back.

dan_bk 13y ago

> NSA workers not only succeeded in accessing the email archive, but also the secret source code of individual Huwaei products. Software source code is the holy grail of computer companies. We need to open-source everything (soft/hard/firmware) and modify these business models.