Chinese telcos branded national security risk for US

[SajeevJino]

After what is claimed to have been an 11-month national security investigation, a
US government intelligence committee
says that the nation's corporations should
avoid buying telephone, internet or
cellphone networking equipment from
two Chinese telecomms companies,
Huawei Technologies and ZTE Corp, both
of Shenzhen.

In a report published today, the US
permanent select committee on
intelligence says the two firms represent
a clear and present national security risk
because of their alleged links with the
communist government. Committee
members fear that "backdoor" and
monitoring facilities could be secretly
present in their equipment, allowing, for
instance, industrial designs to be stolen
and copied before they are patented or
registered as copyright.


A draft version of the report was quoted
by Reuters as saying that Huawei and ZTE
"cannot be trusted to be free of foreign
state influence" and so represent a
national security threat, especially in the
light of the companies' move into
telecoms markets where their equipment
is used to control critical infrastructure
like the US power grid.


It is unclear, however, if the committee's
assertions are based on evidence, fear or
something close to commercial
protectionism. The unclassified version of
the committee's final report, due to be
published today, is not expected to
publicly reveal details on what, if
anything, has been found lurking deep
inside Huawei and ZTE hardware, software
and firmware.

Speaking in a CBS TV news programme at
the weekend, committee chairman Mike
Rogers, a former FBI and US army
wiretapping technology specialist, said
that US firms using Huawei and ZTE kit
should "find another vendor if you care
about your intellectual property; if you
care about your consumers' privacy and
you care about US national security".


Executives at Huawei and ZTE Corp have
strongly refuted the report's claims. Both
deny that they pose any threat, with the
former describing the allegations of
government control as a "baseless,
dangerous political distraction".


Indeed, aside from US-owned Cisco
Systems and Juniper Networks, the
telecoms switching and routing arena is a
field where many large players are
foreign. French-owned Alcatel-Lucent,
Swedish-owned Ericsson and the Finnish-
German joint-venture Nokia-Siemens
number among market-leading firms. As a
result, ZTE is baffled why the focus should
have fallen solely upon itself and Huawei.
The intelligence committee's move may
have vast repercussions: where does it,
for instance, leave mass-market devices
like the Apple iPhone, which is assembled
in China? Analysts already worry about a
possible "kill switch" being unknowingly
introduced into a billion transistor chips.


Will there now be a hunt for secret
surveillance Trojans - whether they are
hardware or software - in offshore-
produced gadgets..

One Per Cent: Chinese telcos branded national security risk for US

 

[marshal panda]

What is free knowledge, US gets for a cost.

 

[winton]

US will look after the US.

Of course we all know that the US will never put bugs and backdoors into their own equipment makers and even that of foreign ones like Crypto AG.

they are going by experience. if they do onto others than surely other will do unto them.