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U.S. bans equipment from Huawei and ZTE, citing national security concerns

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Re: U.S. bans equipment from Huawei and ZTE, citing national security concerns

#101

Post by bitexploder »

usui wrote: post #55
bitexploder wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would this help shape policy in some way or are you just curious as a technologist? I don’t really need to know, as a long time infosec practitioner I have a fertile imagination for the shenanigans they could be up to.

Of course it will help shape policy, AND I want to know, as a technologist! How can we know what standard to apply in our work when we don’t know which standard has been broken?! As a fellow infosec practitioner who works at one of the world’s biggest security companies, I don’t want to leave it up to imagination, I want to know exactly what the wrongdoing is, because my job may depend on it in the future!

That is fair, but the threat model is pretty open too, right? In a few hours in a room we could come up with a pretty credible one I bet.

* hardware

   * deep backdoors in radio chips

   * physical supply chain TM goes here

   * etc etc
* software

    * we can audit and monitor this easier

    * etc
There is a lot to read between the lines, but it is guess work based on supply chain advisories and high level behaviors of govt entities on both sides and our community is good at missing the forest for the trees on this speculative thinking. I think also there is the possibility of minimal actual wrong doing. It could just be entirely political. Ahh well, I guess I have seen enough of this over the years that I accept there is stuff we will never learn about.

Re: U.S. bans equipment from Huawei and ZTE, citing national security concerns

#102

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

rgbrenner wrote: post #28

Reminder of how this started... when Huawei and ZTE decided that because they weren't American companies, they didnt need to answer questions from Congress, and even outright lied about the structure of their companies to conceal CPC/government involvement: https://stacks.stanford.edu/file/druid:rm226yb7473/Huawei-ZT...

This is a very detailed examination of Huawei's ownership structure: [0].

It was written after claims that Huawei is secretly state-owned. The author goes into some detail about Chinese corporate law, and shows that Huawei is effectively employee-owned (effectively, because Chinese corporate law limits the numbers of shareholders in private companies, so there is a legal structure that holds shares on behalf of employees).

0. https://www.pekingnology.com/p/who-really-owns-huawei-a-resp...

Re: U.S. bans equipment from Huawei and ZTE, citing national security concerns

#103

Post by skorpeon87 »

beebeepka wrote: post #88
skorpeon87 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> China's gov't has a hand in every company in its borders, or so it is suspected Not merely suspected, it's a matter of Chinese law that the Party is represented in any company large enough for them to take notice of.

Quoted post unavailable.

Sorry, it's not clear what you think I'm wrong about or what you're trying to say at all. Can you please clarify? Preferably without the insults and layered sarcasm.

Re: U.S. bans equipment from Huawei and ZTE, citing national security concerns

#104

Post by [deleted] »

galdosdi wrote: post #65
huntertwo wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn’t everybody have the right to not answer questions? Americans don’t have to do this either

Americans do have to answer questions posed by Congress or a court in many, many situations. It is commonplace for large public companies for example, to have to answer questions from regulators or Congress. For example, any time there's a merger, the federal government must approve it to ensure anti-monopoly laws are not violated by the new market arrangement. Or you may recall the famous cases of auto executives be…

[deleted]

Re: U.S. bans equipment from Huawei and ZTE, citing national security concerns

#105

Post by imgabe »

bigbacaloa wrote: post #33
imgabe wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s called the US protecting its own interests. Yes, the US prioritizes itself over other countries, as every country does.

That doesn't make it right.

Countries that compromise their own national security so that people can have some sort of warm fuzzy feelings about how nice and good they are don't get to continue existing as countries for very long.

Re: U.S. bans equipment from Huawei and ZTE, citing national security concerns

#106

Post by thayne »

jser wrote: post #74
usui wrote: post #39

Every article I’ve ever read that cites “national security concerns” never, ever explicitly goes into the exact, computational mechanism in which it is a security concern. It’s always something like “Chinese company under Chinese government, therefore bad”. Never anything concrete or substantive from a software engineer POV, such as what exactly is phoned-home, or what actual subversions are happening currently, only…

Many examples, e.g. https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/31/16072786/amazon-blu-suspe... . “In November 2016, security firm Kryptowire detected pre-loaded remote surveillance software on BLU phones sold online through Amazon and Best Buy. In August 2017, Amazon pulled BLU Products from its website over security vulnerabilities that resulted in BLU consumer user data being covertly sent to China.”

Imagine if other countries applied the same policy to US-based companies, because some US companies covertly sent data to the US.

Re: U.S. bans equipment from Huawei and ZTE, citing national security concerns

#107

Post by protoc »

keewee7 wrote: post #37
dingi wrote: post #32

Whe you consider China's restrictions against US companies, these things are a drop in a bucket.

A lot gets buried in the privacy discussions but the unfair trade practices are also a problem. For example Western app makers don't have access to Chinese consumers the same way Chinese app makers have access to Western consumers.

App needs to meet the standards of local laws, its not like China is just targeting American apps. The US has laws bases on color tone lol

Re: U.S. bans equipment from Huawei and ZTE, citing national security concerns

#108

Post by MattGaiser »

k_paleologos wrote: post #61
rgbrenner wrote: post #28

Reminder of how this started... when Huawei and ZTE decided that because they weren't American companies, they didnt need to answer questions from Congress, and even outright lied about the structure of their companies to conceal CPC/government involvement: https://stacks.stanford.edu/file/druid:rm226yb7473/Huawei-ZT...

Is government involvement problematic? Many firms have government involvement, often in an under the table manner. For example Airbus. Government involvement is in itself no grounds for banning a company.

Which government is involved is what matters here. The governments involved in Airbus are allies.

Re: U.S. bans equipment from Huawei and ZTE, citing national security concerns

#109

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

lordfrito wrote: post #91
DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #24

"National security" has been increasingly been used over the last 5 years as a justification for measures that are actually much more broadly geopolitical in nature. A private individual using a Huawei phone or router isn't a national security threat to the US. However, in a broader sense, the US government sees the technological development of China as a threat to American strategic dominance, and has been taking ev…

> Americans should consider if they really want to turn their relationship with the world's largest economy into one that is purely hostile. The relationship is far from "purely hostile". We're giant trading partners. The relationship is mutually beneficial. As was said here, our restrictions on Chinese companies are nothing compared to their restrictions on ours. And they've built their economy using so much stolen…

> As was said here, our restrictions on Chinese companies are nothing compared to their restrictions on ours.

This is something that is widely believed in the US, but which is not actually true.

American companies have very large market shares in many sectors of the Chinese economy. Chinese companies are not active in the US market on any comparable level.

China used to have many more restrictions on market entry, but that was during a time in which investment was almost entirely in one direction (into China). Those restrictions were meant to prevent foreign companies from completely supplanting Chinese companies, which were technologically far behind and incapable of competing with foreign giants like Volkswagen.

The deal was that foreign companies got to exploit cheap labor in China and gain a dominant position in China's growing market, and in exchange, they took on local joint-venture partners, to which they transferred some amount of technology. As China has developed, those restrictions have been dropped from most sectors.

> As has been said here, what's wrong with deciding who your friends are and aren't?

There's a very big difference between not "being friends" and implementing broad sanctions intended to bankrupt another country's entire high-tech sector. The US is attempting to prevent any company anywhere in the world from doing business with any major Chinese tech company. This is really an unprecedented level of economic warfare, at least in the last several decades. I don't think many Americans are aware of how far their government has gone here.

Re: U.S. bans equipment from Huawei and ZTE, citing national security concerns

#110

Post by javajosh »

nazgulsenpai wrote: post #30
acidburnNSA wrote: post #8

Original source: https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-bans-authorizations-devices... This covers Dahua, which I believe is the supplier that underlies cheap security cams like Amcrest, which have been a common choice for people who want local-only non-cloud cams for a long time.

Ouch, I own a few of these cameras. I chose Amcrest because they have a local US distributer who does all of the technical/warranty support. Interesting.

Why ouch? If they are local-only the max mischief they might cause is relatively limited, right? Or do you suspect them of phoning home behind your back?
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