
Australia bans Huawei and ZTE from supplying technology for its 5G network - lambainsaan
https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/22/australia-bans-huawei-and-zte-from-supplying-technology-for-its-5g-network/
======
tynpeddler
The west is slowly starting to realize something that China has realized for
years; economic policy is not a question of economics but of geopolitical
strategy. Free markets are nice in theory (and often in practice), but once
you let in bad actors with the clout of a nation state, all the usual
assumption behind free markets no longer apply. It's pretty disappointing
that, based on what we now know, western economists aided China in gutting
western industry under the guise of "China is just subsidizing the west, we'd
be stupid not to take advantage." Even worse, we had already rejected that
argument when applied to companies like Walmart, but for some reason we
thought it would apply to whole national economies.

~~~
sangnoir
> The west is slowly starting to realize something that China has realized for
> years; economic policy is not a question of economics but of geopolitical
> strategy.

I do not believe that this is a recent realization - this goes back to at
least the Dutch East India company (VOC). The foundation of the British
economy were the vast resources of the British Empire (read colonies) for many
decades.

~~~
tynpeddler
It's one of those things that the west knew and then forgot in the 90's after
the cold war ended and we realized how great free markets were at improving
people's lives.

------
jazoom
"This new architecture provides a way to circumvent traditional security
controls by exploiting equipment in the edge of the network – exploitation
which may affect overall network integrity and availability, as well as the
confidentiality of customer data."

Hey Australian Government. You know what also protects confidentiality of
customer data? Encryption.

~~~
Kadin
Encryption isn't a magic bullet. If you have good visibility into the network
there's a hell of a lot you can do with traffic analysis and metadata. Plus,
if you own the end-user device you can just go around the encryption since the
data, by definition, has to be displayed to the user decrypted.

It's a hard problem. Encryption is part of the solution, but it's not _the_
solution.

~~~
A2017U1
Excellent response, I've become quite sceptical of the Australian calls for
encryption backdoors, frankly think the government knows they aren't necessary
and can back down to appease the public while silently scooping up everything.
Catchy lines like the laws of maths quote is a hugely successful distraction.

Mandatory metadata is already retained for 2 years at the consumers expense,
no one has ever released how much or what is actually kept as all freedom of
information requests by journalists have been denied. It's estimated that
every adult generates around 15000 data points a day, it's known that mobile
phone signal strength is kept allowing triangulation within 100m or so of
every citizen every few minutes.

Last year alone there was over 300,000 warrantless requests made by 60
government agencies, many more are legally allowed to make requests, right
down to small local councils in the middle of nowhere with 15 staff members
and obscure agencies such as horse racing officials.

There's absolutely no oversight, I'm stuggling to imagine how many people it
would actually take to investigate around 1000 requests a day, every day of
the week.

It's only a matter of time before some serious abuse of the system occurs.

------
torgian
This is kinda funny and hypocritical when you devote a few brain cells to
this.

Every country is gathering data on everyone. If you think they are respecting
your privacy, you’re naive.

The US has been doing it for years. Secretly. EU and I bet you Australia too.

And even China, yes. But hey, at least China is honest about what they’re
doing. Gotta respect that at least.

Point is, it’s just a show.

~~~
ethbro
I'm going to take issue with this, because I see this line of argument a lot
on HN recently.

There is a _fundamental_ difference between "like in kind" and "like in
severity".

Do the US and China both monitor telecom? Yes.

Has the US built a national firewall? No.

Do the US and China both have legal processes for acquiring court ordered
telecom intercepts? Yes.

Is the US legal system wholly subordinate to political goals? No.

Do the US and Chinese governments lean on companies to comply with their
wishes? Yes.

Do US companies survive at the whim of the US government and generally lack
independent legal recourse to fight pressure? No.

If you want to go through point-by-point with what's similar between Chinese
and US data monitoring regimes, I'm happy to do so. But they aren't close to
the same.

~~~
pelario
Not a fan or defensor of China here; but the US has way more history of
intervention in other countries; so I would be much much worried about US-
based companies that provide searching or social networking services

~~~
BLKNSLVR
But China has a worse record of human rights abuses. In regards to
intervention in other countries, China consumes them. Tibet, Taiwan no longer
exist according to China.

They've all got bad history. If God existed and was to strike down on the
unworthy nations of the world, very few would be spared.

And I dislike this as much as any rational person (hello? rational people...?)
but if it came to choosing sides in what appears to be inevitable future
conflict, I'd choose the US over China and Russia. I hate that it's the case,
but the US, I think, is the least worst option. This may be based purely on
cultural familiarity, but, well, there it is.

~~~
iforgotpassword
> This may be based purely on cultural familiarity, but, well, there it is.

Very much this.

> In regards to intervention in other countries, China consumes them. Tibet,
> Taiwan no longer exist according to China.

Oh dear. Taiwan never existed in the first place according to China because
they didn't accept them becoming independent. (Protip: google how many
countries actually regard Taiwan an independent nation). And Tibet? It has
pretty much belonged to China for over 600 years. Tibet has been very poor
even compared to China, and over the past 50 years China has greatly supported
the region, establishing basic infrastructure like hospitals, schools etc. You
usually never hear about this in the west though, since it doesn't fit the
whole "free Tibet" narrative.

Yes there is a lot wrong with China, as with any country on this planet. I
certainly don't need to get into US atrocities here for some obligatory
whataboutism. But at least get your facts straight when criticising. Like when
that Falun gong organ harvesting comes up. If you try to unravel this story
you find no halfway credible sources and always end up with this Canadian
politician who conveniently always resurfaces with that story when some
election is coming up. Or recently there was a report about one million
captive Uighurs in China (with a population of only 8 million), where the only
source was a UN Secretary saying this "not representing the UN"...

It's sad, because we so proudly compare our free press to the state controlled
propaganda in China, but for most people just knowing we have a free press
equals not ever having to doubt anything the news say, at least not if it's
about another country across the world you already know is evil.

~~~
ethbro
If China wants more accurate reporting about Uighurs, they can bloody well
allow foreign press into the region.

(Scroll down and watch the video halfway, where BBC journalists are constantly
harassed)

[https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-
china-45173573](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-45173573)

I get the Chinese government's default position is stonewalling information.
But at some point, if people say a thing, and you say it isn't so: you invite
them to see for themselves.

The fact that China (and the Soviet Union before it) don't...

~~~
iforgotpassword
Completely agree here. OTOH it's understandable that China is pretty paranoid
about foreign press. As laid out, our reporting on China is pretty one sided
and agenda-driven sometimes. which ironically enough, only fosters _our_
paranoia and conspiracy theories about these issues. And on it goes...

Tiananmen square was a rare exception in that regard since a lot of foreign
press was already in Beijing during that time, but we still have a very
incomplete picture, not only regarding the wildly varying figures regarding
the death toll.

~~~
candiodari
Talk to some Chinese. Or, even worse, people from Hong Kong. The behavior of
the Chinese state is disgusting. Even at a local level constant abuses are the
norm, in big cities and small. People are "disappeared". Not 1, not a few per
year, but hundreds of thousands per year.

Did you see the size of the Xinjang internment camps they built then tripled
in size ? But these disappearances are happening all over China, not just
Tibet, Xinjang and Hong Kong. All those regions, by the way, have populations
in the tens to hundreds of millions of people.

And there's the steady trickle of stories by people that somehow make it back
out of those camps, talking of torture, executions, slave labour, starvation.

Let's just stop mincing words here. China is executing a holocaust on it's own
people. That's the truth.

------
throw2016
This destroys the logic of free trade, competition that countries and a
plethora of global organizations like IMF, WB promote and enforced
aggressively over the last 40 years especially when looking for markets in
other countries.

But if its only applicable to a favoured set and suddenly has all sorts of
qualifiers when it comes to your own markets then the whole thing collapses.
And everyone can see its politics with a fig leaf of process designed for one
way benefit and as a system cannot deliver mutual benefits.

~~~
criddell
> This destroys the logic of free trade

That depends on the calculation. Maybe there's a non-zero risk that China
could remotely turn off their 5G network and including that in the calculation
makes local sources a better value even when the dollar price is higher.

------
greatabel
Maybe PRISM is also caused by Huawei and ZTE. There is nothing about politics.

------
crtasm
Cyber actors is one I've not heard before.

Sounds like a good idea, what are the downsides if any?

------
Rjevski
I wish they'd bad this equipment not because it's Chinese, but simply because
it's shit. Seriously, pretty much all mobile network equipment (including EU-
based Ericsson) has critical vulnerabilities. I wouldn't worry about Chinese
backdoors when _anyone_ can get privileged access to the core network.

~~~
sschueller
They should ban any 5G millimeter wave (30GHz-300GHz) devices until enough
testing on humans has been done. It is unclear what affects these waves have
on our corneas and requires more research.

~~~
ByThyGrace
Why especially the corneas?

~~~
sschueller
[https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10762-018-0497-z](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10762-018-0497-z)

~~~
striking
"These findings suggested that damage to the corneal epithelium was not
induced by corneal dryness alone, but by exposure of dried corneas to MMW-
induced heat to above body temperature."

So as long as I don't microwave my corneas with my phone, I should be alright.
Thanks!

edit: hell, even the researchers say this themselves:

"It is an important finding that corneal epithelial damage is induced by MMW
exposure, accompanying very strong pain, although it is cured within 1–2 days
after injury. Since humans blink more frequently than rabbits, exposure to
these levels of MMW is unlikely to induce corneal epithelial damage in
humans."

------
DyslexicAtheist
Tie my kangaroo down sport, that's good news. Now we just need the sleepy EU
to wake up so we get their spyware removed from our Mobile Operators
infrastructure here!

~~~
close04
Take it your mobile phone is built in Germany, with German components. ;)

It's just a matter of picking your poison. You think your Cisco router has no
backdoors? Your Intel CPU? Your Windows OS? Your Gmail account?

This isn't about making you safer, it's about removing competition (as crappy
as it may have been). And they eliminate competition both economically and in
the spying game. The more companies there are that want to spy on you, the
more you pay attention to security and you make life hard for everyone.

But phew, the spies were banned so no need to worry anymore :).

~~~
roenxi
Mmm. As an Australian, the main reason I'd be happy with using US telecom
equipment would be the fact that Australia makes up 1/5th of the 5 eyes.

I'd expect our security people to have a very good idea of what backdoors are
or are not present.

~~~
lx3459683
So US/AU government backdooring AU citizens is okay, but if China has access
it's bad?

People actually think like this now? We just collectively rolled over and
accepted mass surveillance?

~~~
zby
Even not looking on the democratic/dictatorship spectrum - outside
interference will always be worse than what you get from insiders. Insiders at
least depend on the country welfare - outsiders just don't give a fuck.

~~~
close04
And the US is an insider for AU... how? Because if the NSA brought any
revelation it's that the US backdoored even their allies without them knowing.

I get choosing the least evil but this is a defense only as much as burning
dows a building and saying "at least this little piece survived" is a defense.

~~~
vermilingua
Nope, FVEY was conducted very much _with_ cooperation between the involved
parties. We (Aus) have very close structural and cultural ties to the US, but
China is approximately _as_ foreign as it gets. The US may not be an insider
per se, but in theory we share at least some core values.

(Not to say that I personally am ok with any of it, but from a societal
perspective it makes a little sense.)

~~~
BLKNSLVR
But Australia's economic health relies far more on trade with China than it
does with the US.

------
wemdyjreichert
Many people seem to dislike the anti-china move. However, let's not forget
that china has put over 1 million Muslims in literal concentration or
reeducation camps. That's wrong. China needs to stop, and if not buying their
cell gear helps, we should consider it too.

~~~
BLKNSLVR
And what are the US kill stats up to recently?

There are no good guys.

~~~
lightbyte
That is not relevant to the discussion

~~~
dnomad
What's really funny about this whole affair is that everything that people
accuse China of doing _has actually been done by the US_. There's some
powerful projection at here. We _know for a fact_ that the NSA does intercept
telecom devices on their way out of the country and so the US actually does
export compromised devices [1]. We _know for a fact_ that US telecom
manufacturers export equipment that has been pre-broken by the NSA [2]. We
_know for a fact_ that the NSA aggressively penetrates foreign networks at the
deepest levels, even for so called allies. [3] All of this is a matter of
record, it's been documented and verified by several agencies.

But somehow despite all this we're supposed to be very, very afraid of Huawei
and ZTE? The total lack of integrity at work here is a bit breathtaking but
it's come to be expected.

[1] [https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-
nsa...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa-upgrade-
factory-show-cisco-router-getting-implant/)

[2] [https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2016/08/cisco...](https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2016/08/cisco-confirms-nsa-linked-zeroday-targeted-its-firewalls-
for-years/)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Parliamentary_Committee...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Parliamentary_Committee_investigation_of_the_NSA_spying_scandal)

~~~
wemdyjreichert
I hate PRISM as much as the next guy. However, the US doesn't block pages
about things with which it politically disagrees and doesn't throw people in
to prison (unless they find cp)

------
kentosi
I don't understand the concern. Huawei isn't providing the 5G network, just
the phones that latch on to it. It would presumably be Telstra (the primary
Australian telecommunications provider) that would provide the network itself.

How is providing a 5G compatible phone any more a security risk than providing
a 4G one?

Edit: I should have read this more thoroughly since it's not just about phone,
but rather that "Australia has blocked Huawei and ZTE from providing equipment
for its 5G network". Key word: equipment, which I'm guessing spans to the
installation of infrastructure in Australia.

~~~
ksec
Huawei is not just a phone company.

In Modern Telco ( Telstra) , they are mostly setting up, dealing with land /
cell site lease, backbone, customer support and Retails. Along with some
Network Engineers working along side with Telecom Network Equipment
manufacturers for their Services.

That Telecom Network Equipment manufacturers could be Huawei, ZTE, Samsung,
Nokia, or Ericsson. Samsung is an new entry and has very little market shares.
Huawei is bigger than both Nokia and Ericsson combined.

