Huawei blasted from all Sides

Huawei blasted from all sides

It does not seem to be a coincidence that so many news outlets are blasting one aspect or another of Huawei's business.  Today, the Wall Street Journal had a story on the U.S. perceived lack of need to "show proof" that Huawei was spying on business and government outside of China.  Reuters has one that says Universities are backing away from Huawei's equipment, blaming President Trump for this seemingly alarmist reaction to nothing.   And there were others that are becoming so numerous they are hard to keep up with.

As to proof that Huawei is cooperating with the Chinese intelligence services to collect information on those who buy their equipment, the U.S. already knows whether that is true or not.  I have several times cited a list of leaks from the Obama Administration that indicate the government knows about those links.  Starting in 2013, a long line of intelligence agency leaders have said there is evidence of Huawei spying for the Chinese government, though no details have ever been provided in public.  That is not unusual, since those reports are classified and would not normally, anywhere outside of the Washington Post and New York Times,  be presented in  public forums.  Both have run articles on this in the past.

Huawei has ignored most of the public comment because it makes good business sense to do that.  The more they protest their innocence, the less likely they are to escape these continued accusations.  Having some of its employees arrested for espionage and Iran sanctions violations has not helped them keep this out of the limelight.

Second, China needs to end this use of public companies to undermine the Internet and use it for spying on the rest of the world.  Google stopped honoring Chinese certs for networks because some of them were bogus.  The government bears most of this responsibility.  If you follow the University of Toronto analysis of web browsers, you can see a trend there that point to a central collection policy mandated by the government.  It can't be coincidence  that so many companies have separately decided to collect my cell identification, my hard drive serial number, and the WIFI connections near my location.  Who needs that except their spies?  It isn't just Huawei and ZTE doing these kinds of things and we probably shouldn't be singling them out.  They are just the representatives of a much larger problem with using commercial companies to spy.  It is part of the culture of China and will take a long time to change.