
Google reportedly arguing cutting Huawei off from Android threatens US security - cpeterso
https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/7/18656163/google-huawei-android-security-ban-claims
======
baoha
I think it's too late, they already have planned to fork from Android for
years, this (potentially permanent) ban just motivated them to speed up the
process.

I second this is not about US security but about Google losing their mobile
market share.

~~~
sandworm101
>> but about Google losing their mobile market share.

Under current policy, threats to US industry are threats to national security.
That is why Canadian steel was listed as a national security threat. They
aren't quiet about these things any more. Cutting into US market share is now
openly described as a security threat.

~~~
lambdasquirrel
So then, any country that wants to become more economically competitive
against the US (even Canada) is a national security threat?

~~~
adventured
The parent is drastically exaggerating.

The US dropped its steel tariffs against Canada and imports ~$325 billion in
goods from Canada (equal to ~19% of their economy). Canadian steel represents
<2% of that.

Meanwhile the US is going to allow Infineon to buy Cypress, an important US
semiconductor company.

The US will have roughly a $21.x trillion economy at the end of 2019. The
scale of non-China tariffs is entirely trivial, meaningless. So far there has
been very little in the way of actual hits and targeting from tariffs - on the
grounds of national security or otherwise - outside of the trade conflict with
China.

~~~
oyebenny
ELI5 please?

~~~
lambdasquirrel
By the numbers, the only country that has actually taken a hit with tariffs is
China (in case you missed the news, Mexico bent over pretty quickly).

The response misses the point that the US is saber-rattling to keep other
countries in line. China is the only country to actually challenge the US, so
now the US has to show everyone who’s boss.

------
codedokode
If a Chinese vendor is a threat to US national security, does it mean that
American vendors are threats to all other countries' security? It is easy to
imagine how American company gives out important data from a phone of Chinese
or Iranian government employee for example.

~~~
ninth_ant
You don’t have to imagine, The Cloud Act directly passed this into law.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act)

It’s extremely hypocritical of the US to panic when other countries act the
same, and sets up a direct and prominent precedent for all counties to ban
American tech.

~~~
xvector
> It’s extremely hypocritical of the US to panic when other countries act the
> same,

This is pretty disingenuous. You are ignoring a ton of history behind China,
its authoritarian nature, and how Chinese companies are far more an extension
of the PRC than US companies are of the US Government.

All companies are a threat to the national security of other countries so long
as they are beholden to the government they are in. But as others have said,
the severity of the threat changes drastically. You can be almost certain that
Huawei, via the PRC, would compromise US 5G infrastructure given the chance.
You might be reasonably more skeptical of a US company doing the same to
another country.

Finally, your Wikipedia link contradicts your own post:

> [The CLOUD Act] provides mechanisms for the companies or the courts to
> reject or challenge these if they believe the request violates the privacy
> rights of the foreign country the data is stored in.

In fact, there is _nothing_ here that would lead one to believe that the
companies can be forced to hand over data on citizens from other countries.
The legislation here pertains to the data of US citizens.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
If Chinese companies are an extension of the PRC government, then the USA
government is an extension of American companies.

~~~
xvector
I mentioned that in my second sentence.

~~~
h8liu
his point is in the reverse for US..

In China, the companies are the puppies; in US, the government is the puppy.
This is probably a very fundamental difference.

------
rolph
This looks like a case in point for providing greater control of the OS by the
user. If users were allowed to block or kill processes and lockdown data away
from apps, a lot of the threat [and google business model] would be mitigated.
Im wondering when we will move from ad block software to APP block software.
In other threads- the "linux phone" seems to be coming along nicely, isnt that
an android fork already, or a distro?

[https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/linux-smartphone-operating-
sys...](https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/linux-smartphone-operating-systems/)

[https://itsfoss.com/librem-linux-phone/](https://itsfoss.com/librem-linux-
phone/)

[https://www.zdnet.com/article/linus-torvalds-on-android-
the-...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/linus-torvalds-on-android-the-linux-
fork/) [2011]

~~~
onlyrealcuzzo
Phones are substantially more complicated than desktops. Linux doesn't even
work decently enough on Laptops for a lot of developers. It's not going to be
a pleasant experience on a phone for a normal user in the foreseeable future.

~~~
djsumdog
That's not the real issue though. A PC is standard. Back in the 90s, you could
always put in a Linux boot disk or CD and it would always boot. You may not
have any driver support and your display might be stuck in VESA mode, but it
would at least boot.

ARM is not an architecture. Images have to be customized for every single
device. Google has the power with the OHA to force all phones to use standard
drivers, devicetree or UEFI (like Microsoft did), but they don't. Now we have
100s of forked kernels and no way to boot a mainline kernel on ARM devices
(although PostmarketOS is trying to work on fixing this).

I wrote about this a while back:

[https://penguindreams.org/blog/android-
fragmentation/](https://penguindreams.org/blog/android-fragmentation/)

~~~
rolph
THX 4 the URL, and the insightfullness re mobile handset.

------
cs702
The probability that Google will argue for preventing major fragmentation of
the Android ecosystem is exactly 100%.

------
nullwasamistake
Google is terrified of anyone forking Android. Some malicious actor might
remove all their tracking code. Maybe even disable background location
permission and app ads.

A true national security risk of the highest caliber

~~~
tech_tuna
What are you talking about? I don't find it all creepy when Google Maps
Timeline sends me my month in review without me asking for it. They just like
to keep track of all the wonderful places I visit.

Google can probably tell me how many bowel movements I had last week although
I haven't gotten any such emails from Google Toilet Timeline.

Yet.

------
behringer
Nice story, but in reality google is afraid of a company making competing
services using the Android OS.

~~~
AimForTheBushes
That was my first thought when all these shenanigans went down. I think there
is still an argument for security- we're currently well versed in android but
that isn't the case for whatever closed source Huawei OS that comes out.

~~~
behringer
Huawei can still use Android. Android is open source software. What Huawei
will need to design is their own app store and replacement for google
services. Of course this would be very damaging to google.

------
dgregd
Why is nobody talking about Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo? They have majority of Indian
market. Together with Huawei they might create an alliance and create a
Chinese fork of Android.

If they give access to intel data to other countries then it can be a
competitive offer compared to Google Android.

------
BryantD
That seems like it’s also an argument for blocking competition. If you think
that Google is more able to secure phones than any other entity, and you think
that any compromise to phone security is a national security threat, that
implies that nobody but Google should be allowed to make phone operating
systems.

I’m a bit dubious that Google is actually making that argument, given how
obvious the consequences are.

~~~
la_barba
I think their claim might be a bit more nuanced. They are the original vendor
of the Software, and have a special status that allows them to have an
expertise on the OS that other third parties do not.

~~~
nostrademons
They're also a U.S. company and subject to U.S. laws.

A large portion of Google's implicit argument (that they'll never make to the
public, but are probably making to the Trump administration) is that it's
better for the dominant mobile phone operating system to be written by an
American company with American values, subject to U.S. laws, than have Huawei
fork it and potentially end up with the dominant mobile operating system
controlled by a Chinese company with Chinese values and subject to Chinese
laws.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
The Google I use, for search at least says:

"the Services are provided by Google Ireland Limited (“Google”), a company
incorporated and operating under the laws of Ireland"

to quote the terms of service. Providing any of my data to USA secret service
would appear to be espionage, probably treason, and against EU law. I'll bet
NSA have access to everything Google know (internally) about me.

The Chinese government probably have all details of my interactions with baidu
or Ali Express too.

They look the same to me in this respect, only the Chinese aren't telling my
government who they're allowed to do business with.

~~~
threeseed
This false equivalence is so ridiculous.

China is a dictatorship, has no independent judiciary/media, routinely kidnaps
Chinese people (not even citizens) in foreign countries, is running the
world's 're-education' centre where millions of journalists, Muslims etc are
all being detained and is a police state unless anything in history.

US maybe stealing your data. But at least you can go to a court or deal with
the media to advance your cause without fear of retribution.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
That's why I didn't say what you're claiming, I said the effect on me -
neither in the USA nor in China - is equivalent AFAICT.

China and USA are both doubtless spying on my country's population and
accessing my PII/data as part of that.

I'm pretty sure my legal recourse against NSA is identical to that against the
Chinese secret services, zilch.

Let's be realistic. Trump wants us to stop using Huawei _and_ use USA company
produced comms equipment. A consideration of that is then USA can do what
they're claiming China is doing. AFAICT you have a legal framework in place to
enable just that.

What's most incredible to me is that GCHQ haven't endorsed the apparent false
claims, which actually gives me some hope about UK (but equally could be meta-
games on post-Brexit trade deals; or false flags; or whatever).

~~~
kalleboo
> Trump wants us to stop using Huawei _and_ use USA company produced comms
> equipment

No US company is producing wireless comms equipment though - it's all European
and Chinese

------
sschueller
It threatens Google's domination.

Huawei will bring their own OS and Android will loose market share because of
it.

~~~
calyth2018
Also, data on Google's server is subject to US laws. When you Balkanize
android, so that part of the market uses Huawei's AOSP fork, you've got less
data that's could be compelled on the grounds of US national security.

That would be a more convincing national security argument.

~~~
orwin
And this is probably their real argument to Trump administration.

------
simplecomplex
Huawei isn’t a threat to national security. Consumer computer software is not
a threat to national security. This is a justification for a trade war the
president and his advisors want to engage in.

~~~
threeseed
It is a threat to national security if the device is constantly recording
surroundings and sending data back to Huawei who in turn hands it over to
Chinese intelligence. That's obviously far fetched but it's technically
possible.

And other countries have security concerns with Huawei besides US so this
isn't just about the trade war.

~~~
sangnoir
Do you think there's a phone (model) that's immune to Chinese intelligence
once they set they are interested in recording your surroundings? I'll accepts
the 5G security arguments, but the handset angle is a absurd as all phones
have porous security. NSA hasn't suddenly shifted it's offensive/defensive
posture to my knowledge.

------
dustinmoris
I am currently in China on holiday and saw a Windows 7 screen on one of the
monitors in a train station which reminded me that the world's entire IT
infrastructure is mostly powered by Windows, Apple or Linux, which is all
entirely in the hands of the US. Android and iOS are the most wide spread
mobile operating systems, so basically the US being in control of the world's
entire software in an ever growing digital world. This plus the revelations of
the NSA spying on everyone in the world, trying to introduce secret backdoors
in US vendors software and having a huge impact on which cryptographic
algorithms are being NIST approved and therefore distributed and implemented
across most programming languages makes the US a MUCH MUCH larger threat to
any other country's national security. Particularly when the US is also known
to fabricate news like countries having secret mass destruction weapons which
somehow can never be found after a complete destruction of a country through
unprovoked war. Yet the news headlines are somehow worried about Huawei?

I'm not saying it's unjustified, but I like to put things into perspective
when observing geopolitical developments, their impact and what really is
going on..

The truth is that China will inevitably overtake the US as the largest economy
in the world soon and that pisses the Americas off.. so now they want to stall
the Chinese economy as much as possible, but being in China right now and
seeing how they are literally not dependent on anyone but themselves I can
promise that all efforts are wasted. I'm not a huge fan of the totalitarian
communist government in China, but so far I have not felt threatened by them,
whereas I feel my personal freedom and privacy has been violated constantly by
the US and US companies.

~~~
elamje
China is dependent on exports to keep the economy moving along.

------
clopez
> Step two: those Huawei phones with a forked version of Android are sold
> globally. They are less secure and get hacked.

Why those phones will be less secure and therefore easily hacked? Which kind
of argument is that?

How a huawei phone with a forked android is any less secure than any 2-year
old android phone from $randomanufacturer (not longer receiving any OS update
at all)?

~~~
ddebernardy
Might this answer your question?

> Huawei must raise 'shoddy' standards, says senior UK cybersecurity official

> GCHQ technical director says he hasn’t seen anything that reassures him
> company is taking necessary security steps

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jun/07/huawei-
mu...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jun/07/huawei-must-raise-
shoddy-standards-gchq-senior-uk-cybersecurity-official)

~~~
ebg13
Android isn't exactly known for being a paragon of security. The number of
unpatched critical CVEs in the wild at any given moment is staggering. At
worst this is a step sideways.

~~~
ddebernardy
Sure thing, but at least Android is open source.

Huawei's drivers, which is what led GCHQ to probe into Huawei's code and write
a rather uncharitable report on what their coding practices look like [1], are
not. Admittedly, as members of the public we can only take their word for it
that they found shoddy code by any reasonable standard. But if the latter is
true and any indicator of how they'll maintain their own fork of Android, it's
doesn't inspire much confidence.

[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/03/28/hcsec_huawei_oversi...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/03/28/hcsec_huawei_oversight_board_savaging_annual_report/)

~~~
ebg13
> _Sure thing, but at least Android is open source._

Some of it. Certainly not many of the hardware drivers. There's a reason that
updates are dependent on hardware vendors and mobile network operators and
that most phones don't have fully functional Lineage builds.

~~~
ddebernardy
Yeah, well... I think we can agree that it's more open source than other Phone
Operating Systems. And that's besides the more important point here, which is
that Huawei's developers reportedly write insecure looking spaghetti code.

~~~
ebg13
My point is that any security argument is a red herring when the baseline for
comparison is a wet paper bag.

The thing about exploits is that it only takes one. It doesn't matter if
Huawei adds another one when there are already thousands to choose from.

~~~
ddebernardy
And mine is that Google has large swaths of OSS code to show that they're
competent at writing secure code, whereas there's a report out that Huawei is
writing spaghetti code that is so poorly written that even security experts
can't make up their mind to say whether it's secure or not except to say that
they need to get their act together.

------
duxup
If Huawei forks Android and gets a "hybrid" of bad security phones.... don't
let them sell phones there then.

This seems like a weird argument, I get the gist but it kinda focuses on an
after effect that i'm not sure should wag the dog.

~~~
tabs_masterrace
This argument is stupid, self-centered, and entirely made up the author...
"Without Google, Huawei's are more likely to have malware, and therefore
important things might get leaked, and leaks are the most essential threat to
national security as we all know."

No, common.. the reason Google thinks its a bad idea to block Android it's
because the Chinese don't care. They just fork Android yes, and that's it.
Congratulations, you brexited yourself out of the Smartphone-OS market in
China. Where you once had integration and some influence, you are now removing
yourself as a dependency.

~~~
duxup
It feels like such a tenuous argument you could argue the government should
hand Google over to Apple to improve security ...

~~~
mtgx
Besides, Huawei's phones were already banned in federal agencies and Pentagon
since last year. So I'm really not sure what Google is trying to say with this
"national security threat" at all.

~~~
DiogenesKynikos
The entire "national security" argument that the administration is making
fails on this observation. Trump is effectively banning Huawei from selling
Chinese people phones that contain American parts ... in order to protect
American national security? The whole argument doesn't add up. It's obviously
a tactic to force the Chinese government to yield in the trade talks, as Trump
himself has openly stated.

------
fyoving
_" Although the Financial Times’ sources don’t explicitly lay out Google’s
argument, it’s not difficult to imagine how it would go."_

That's hilarious, a fourth party in speculating about what might have been
said in private as reported by a paywalled publication, you know: journalism!

~~~
awakeasleep
FT doesn't generally play as loose with the rules as media for general
consumption tends to. They've got a lot of credibility.

------
hello_1234
Is there anything that US gains from cutting off Huawei?

~~~
rchaud
Looking "tough on China" ahead of what will be another very bitter election.

~~~
threeseed
It has nothing to do with this. There is a lot of pressure on Huawei also
coming from Australia and New Zealand as well which given our proximity to
China are not trying to be tough on them at all.

I work in telco and can assure you that Huawei is a security concern
especially given the changing landscape of technology (more complex, more
containerised architectures) which allows for more attack vectors.

People keep forgetting that China is a dictatorship, has no independent
judiciary/media and a long pattern of IP theft, hacking etc.

~~~
jimclegg
Entities in the US/Europe have been trying to take down China for a long time,
the excuses to do it will be manufactured if required.

------
cat199
many problems here:

a) why exactly is google qualified to comment on national security?

this either means they are verbally overstepping their bounds, know more than
they should about secret+ programs, or are processing their vast data in a
security-relevant way on the scope of a nation state

b) phones being hacked != compromised telecom infrastructure

c) if android fragmentation leads to less security on a national level, then
by extension, google has monopoly or at least cartel level influence

probably more..

------
la_barba
The argument on the face of it appears to be rather flimsy. If Google is doing
this on Huawei's behalf, I wonder if we're seeing a new Google emerge, one who
is willing to go to bat for their partners.

------
Ill_ban_myself
In terms of legal precedent this is pretty shaky ground. In any other context
this would sound pretty far fetched.

Would we allow a US company to circumvent sanctions on selling technology to
refine nuclear material to Iran on the grounds that they might blow themselves
up and poison US allies or Americans abroad?

That's the legal context I'd view this argument in.

~~~
resoluteteeth
This is a little bit different than Iran. The US government specifically does
not want Iran to have access to nuclear technology, so preventing US companies
from providing technology to Iran is in itself the goal.

In the case of Huawei, the US government's concerns mostly seem to be about
Huawei possibly spying on the devices they sell. On the other hand, there
doesn't seem to be any particular basis for concern about allowing them to use
US software such as android. Therefore, from the perspective of the security
threat that is the putative basis for blacklisting Huawei, the fact that
Huawei is now blocked from using Android is merely an incidental side effect.

(Of course, if the real goal is to hold Huawei hostage as a means to negotiate
a trade deal, then threatening to destroy their smartphone business by
blocking them from using Android may be precisely what is really intended.)

~~~
Ill_ban_myself
I know its not a great comparison but that's part of my point. The context and
legal precedent in this arena mostly applies to arms and aid, not consumer
products.

