
Huawei finds itself in the crosshairs of Western security agencies - NN88
https://spectator.us/huawei-chinese-intelligence-front/
======
Brain_Thief
I wasn't previously aware of this website, but after reading the article and
noticing its rather brash style I decided to take a look at the front page.
Several headlines stand out to me, including "Wrinkled, white, and wrong —
this is the face of the Democratic party", "Black lives matter, until they’re
ended by black people", and "Project Fact: how scared should we really be of a
no-deal Brexit?", as well as a few statements seemingly designed to emphasize
the racial and social undertones of various national debates. An admittedly
cursory skim of these articles leaves the impression that the site's theme is
low-key outrage generation and the propagation of divisive talking points that
tend in a somewhat novel rightward direction.

Although I agree with the premise of the featured article, I have to wonder if
this site's intent is actually aligned with the notion of a harmonic western
social order incorporating political cooperation and tolerance for diversity
of thought and belief, or if it is yet another low-key radicalization /
division vector designed to appeal to those who are too intelligent, educated,
naturally docile, or otherwise moderate to be swayed by the more extreme
purveyors of discord such as Brietbart, etc. In other words, the site seems to
be right on the edge of dog-whistling without actually going over that line,
and my instinct is to not upvote articles sourced from it.

~~~
cthalupa
I was curious of the same thing.

[https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/american-
spectator/](https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/american-spectator/)

It appears that it is a publication that leans heavily to the right, though
apparently their reporting is factual. I would take that to mean that while
anything that is explicitly stated as fact is likely true, the takeaways and
editorials on the course of action is going be quite biased.

Skimming some of the other articles, they don't seem to be particular fans of
Trump, with a couple of exceptions, so I'd guess they are probably of the
Neoconservative Bush/Reagan bent rather than Trumpian.

~~~
dpwm
> though apparently their reporting is factual.

One of the most effective forms of misleading reporting involves cherry-
picking facts that support your narrative.

You can also conveniently ignore stories where it is obvious that facts may
disrupt your desired meta-narrative.

Some organizations have even found ways of doing this whilst being revered for
taking a balanced stance and presenting the full picture.

~~~
smsm42
> One of the most effective forms of misleading reporting involves cherry-
> picking facts that support your narrative and not exploring stories where it
> is obvious that facts may disrupt your desired narrative.

Isn't that what about 100% of existing news media is doing? They key here is
to read more than one source, but having a source that would alone represent
more than one narrative by now is pretty close to hopeless.

------
peterkelly
Meanwhile in Australia, our government has recently passed a law [1] that very
openly and explicitly makes companies legally obligated to add backdoors for
the government to spy on whoever it likes, and imposes serious legal penalties
on anyone who discloses these activities to their customers or the general
public.

I don't know how much of the Huawei article is propaganda and how much of it
describes a genuine threat. But one thing is for certain, which is that
governments in the west are not much better. This was clear five years ago
from the Snowden revelations; our governments are just being a little more
open about it now and forcing private industry into their surveillance
regimes.

[1] [https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/7/18130806/australia-
access...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/7/18130806/australia-access-and-
assistance-encryption-bill-2018-facebook-google-apple-respond)

~~~
elefanten
This kind of argument always comes up in these threads, so I'm just going to
cut to the chase with the response:

"Alike in desire to surveil" is not "alike in values and behavior."

Looking for the next poster to jump in and say something about "But are the
values really that different?" or "But which are really the better values?"

~~~
manicdee
Values mean nothing when the behaviour is the same.

------
Barrin92
Calling it a front is somewhat uncalled for, given that it's actually one of
the largest tech companies on the planet.

Are they connected to the Chinese government and used to exercise geopolitical
power? Sure but everyone could have told you that already, because that's how
China openly operates. There is basically no distinction between government
and multinationals.

As far as the rest of the world cooperates with China's businesses I think
everyone sees that facet as a trade-off for access to the largest market in
the world.

So I don't agree with the take at the end of the article that finding a Huawei
spy in Poland would be surprising or catastrophic for China. Grave cuts to
commercial ties to China would probably send the economy spiralling, so
nobody's going to do it, it's just going to be a tug-of-war for a long time to
come.

~~~
DeonPenny
Yeh but I don't think western countries have really been paying attention.
It's obvious based on sentiment they thought wealth would change that.

~~~
IllogicalLogic
China has been a big focus for the western countries' ruling classes for
atleast 200 years.

I agree that the populace hasn't been paying attention though.

~~~
Latteland
there's been no plan for 200 years to deal with china. that's like saying
western countries have been paying attention to the catholic church for 1000+
years. There's no government plan towards china, everything has changed every
25 or 50 years.

Many western governments hoped they magically democratize as they became
wealthier, instead they went the other way.

------
jankeymeulen
Pick your poison. As Snowden revealed, Cisco was/is regularly backdoored by US
intelligence as well.

~~~
onetimemanytime
True, but unless USA ordered Cisco to do that, it's a bit different. NSA will
use whatever it can to spy on others, it's obvious

~~~
tracker1
I just with that the NSA had policies to disclose backdoors to appropriate
business entities 30 days after discovery/purchase. They could still use
0-days, but at least the window would be reduced so the stockpile isn't
unleashed on the world at large being a much bigger risk to security.

~~~
smsm42
30 days is useless. Intelligence operations take years to unfold. Banning NSA
from using zero-days doesn't mean everybody else is banned from using zero-
days, including PRC.

~~~
tracker1
I didn't say they couldn't use them.. only that they should have to disclose
them to the company(ies) responsible.

If they get a zero-day for windows, they can use it all they want... but they
should have to disclose it to MS after 30-60 days of knowledge. The NSA is as
responsible for technology security in the US as much as spying operations.
They need to find a balance to do both.

If they responsibly disclose and that happens before other nation states
discover and take advantage of zero-days it makes it much better for everyone.

------
altmind
if you leave all the colloquialisms, the article is based on two facts:

* Last February, the heads of the ‘big three’ US intelligence agencies warned Americans against buying Huawei phones, which they deemed a security risk.

* Poland ABW arrested the two on the spionage charges, huawei office is being searched

i'm a bit disappointed, because there is nothing new in the article. i was
expecting something intel about huawei devices being rigged with backdoors,
calling home or having kill switches.

*edit: grammar

~~~
IllogicalLogic
We need a smoking gun and less of the "Supermicro phantom chip" caliber
reporting.

------
xyzzy_plugh
Maybe? I accepted this nearly 10 years ago.

------
dang
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18884720](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18884720)
is about the latest story.

------
thinkling
Slight tangent: my perception as a tech person but not a networking
professional is that TP-Link became big in consumer network gear very
suddenly. It made me wonder at the time if they got a leg up from the Chinese
government, and now with these stories about Huawei I wonder if they're
similarly entangled.

How much of a white hat effort is there to check what servers these products
connect to? Are there (volunteer?/open source?) efforts to watch for suspect
behavior or do targeted disassembly of the firmware?

------
lazyjones
I‘ll happily let China spy on me if it means I‘m not vulnerable to „five
eyes“, the German BND and all the other illegal spying operations with larger
impact on my daily life.

~~~
save_ferris
Interesting. Why do you see European spying operations as more impactful to
your daily life than Chinese?

~~~
IllogicalLogic
China doesn't go around the world arresting people who haven't even visited
their country... in Assange's case on the other hand the US...

~~~
save_ferris
In his lifetime, Assange has hacked the Pentagon, US Navy telcom systems,
other DoD infrastructure, Lockheed Martin, Panasonic, and others through a
hacking group he founded[0]. That's not even including Wikileaks and his
suspected ties to the Russian government.

Combine that with the fact that most countries carry extradition treaties,
it's not all that surprising that the US wants him. He's committed a litany of
crimes in his lifetime against foreign countries, and often bragged about it.
Why is it crazy to you that a foreign country wants to detain someone that has
hacked said country's critical military infrastructure and participated in
information laundering that potentially impacted a US presidential election?

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange)

~~~
IllogicalLogic
He was initially pursued for exposing war crimes in Iraq involving the US army
and Reuter's journalists. Everything else was seemingly tacked on after the
fact.

------
partiallypro
I'll choose the US, which for all its faults has a much better human rights
record than China. Political opponents aren't jailed, there are no reeducation
camps for minority groups (like Muslims.) Business isn't done through constant
bribing of officials (which is very popular in China.) Etc, etc. Were it not
for trade empowering the Chinese political class, China would be a hermit
state like North Korea.

~~~
devoply
The human rights records is a p/r gambit which is mostly bullshit. The US
violates human rights of all sorts of people all over the world all of the
time. They just treat their own citizens with a certain amount of courtesy.

> there are no reeducation camps for minority groups (like Muslims.)

No there are just bombings and complete destruction of various Muslim
countries that don't go with the economic agenda of the US.

~~~
IllogicalLogic
Didn't the US just finish murdering about 2+ million Arabs over the last
decade or so, I bet the dead Iraqis, Syrians, Yemenis would rather be in
"history lesson camps" in China.

------
onetimemanytime
Who's not accepting it? If a country can use something to spy on others it
will. No doubt in my mind that China controls them 100%, one way or another,
so...

------
devoply
You can't trust American companies to not spy on you. You can't trust Chinese
companies not to spy on you. They are both arms of the government and conduct
continuous espionage. Maybe we should get Samsung in this game as a non-
superpower third party, though they probably already in the NSA's pocket as
you hear no complaints about them from the US.

It's like who would you rather your secrets be stolen by? Americans or the
Chinese?

~~~
tracker1
I'd rather neither... however, I've not been arrested for reading/spreading
articles about the Snowden documents or for making disparaging comments
against the U.S. (I'm a resident and citizen).

The difference being if you live in China and do these things you may never be
seen again.

I'm also against the whisle-blower persecutions that started under GWB and
escalated under Obama.

~~~
devoply
I live in neither country. It's obvious that it's better to be a US citizen
rather than a Chinese citizen. However, China has little ability to affect
lives of citizens of other countries... whereas the US has much more power to
do so potentially based on evidence gathered through surveillance they can for
instance extradite people to the US to face charges for crimes whereas China
is incapable of doing such a thing to non-Chinese citizens. This is no a
hypothetical thing, it has happened more than once.

------
ttctciyf
BoingBoing has the skinny on author John Schindler[1]

> John Schindler was a prof at the College; he slammed Snowden as a traitor
> and compared Greenwald to Hitler, and was generally dismissive about
> concerns about network surveillance; he also sent pictures of his dick to a
> woman who wasn't his wife. He also co-wrote the report that stated that
> Sadam Hussein had WMDs, and helped send America to war. That was a lot worse
> than dick pics.

I mean, while I have no issue with Schindler's evident animus for the current
US President, and while the Polish case may (or may not) establish Schindler's
intended point, his credibility is IMO way insufficient to be trusted on
stories like this. He's really best seen as part of a fringe movement of pro-
intelligence online cheerleaders and would-be vigilantes, whose most visible
participant is the infamous Louise Mensch[2]

1: [https://boingboing.net/2014/08/12/former-nsa-spook-
resigns-f...](https://boingboing.net/2014/08/12/former-nsa-spook-resigns-
from.html)

2: [https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/06/louise-mensch-
an...](https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/06/louise-mensch-and-the-rise-
of-the-liberal-conspiracy-theorist.html?via=gdpr-consent)

~~~
twblalock
You just posted a lot of ad hominems that have no bearing on whether the
author's statements in this article are true.

~~~
ttctciyf
>> He also co-wrote the report that stated that Sadam Hussein had WMDs, and
helped send America to war.

It's not an ad-hominem to suggest that an author's previous record on accuracy
can be a guide to his present credibility.

