

Targeting Huawei: NSA Spied on Chinese Government and Networking Firm - wrongc0ntinent
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/nsa-spied-on-chinese-government-and-networking-firm-huawei-a-960199.html

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eliteraspberrie
So they got a taste of their own medicine. Huawei has spied on and stolen from
US companies. For example, Huawei copied Cisco's iOS -- including source code
comments and bugs -- and even copied their user manuals verbatim. [1, pp.
8-10,12; 2]

Besides, the facts that non-Chinese employees cannot own shares in Huawei; [3,
p. 23] that the Communist Party appoints an anonymous "Party Committee" within
Huawei; [3, p. 30] and that Huawei was involved in selling US network-
monitoring equipment to Iran [4] -- makes them a legitimate target for NSA, in
my opinion.

[1] Cisco's motion for preliminary injunction
[http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/Cisco_Mot_for_PI.pdf](http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/Cisco_Mot_for_PI.pdf)

[2] [http://blogs.cisco.com/news/huawei-and-ciscos-source-code-
co...](http://blogs.cisco.com/news/huawei-and-ciscos-source-code-correcting-
the-record/)

[3] Investigative Report on the U.S. National Security Issues Posed by Chinese
Telecommunications Companies Huawei and ZTE
[http://intelligence.house.gov/sites/intelligence.house.gov/f...](http://intelligence.house.gov/sites/intelligence.house.gov/files/Huawei-
ZTE%20Investigative%20Report%20\(FINAL\).pdf)

[4] [http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/08/us-cisco-zte-
iran-...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/08/us-cisco-zte-iran-
idUSBRE89709N20121008)

~~~
olalonde
Basically, tu quoque? I personally believe both NSA and Huawei's actions are
morally reprehensible.

~~~
mikeash
Not really.

The first paragraph is essentially gloating. Not necessarily commendable, but
understandable.

However, he's not using the "they did it too" as _justification_ , which is
what tu quoque is all about. He outlines reasons beyond "taste of their own
medicine" for why this would be justified.

------
DerpDerpDerp
Isn't spying on the Chinese government and Huawei exactly what we pay them to
do?

~~~
mpyne
Yes.

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ianhawes
Could someone please explain to me why it is justifiable for Edward Snowden
(and by extension, Glenn Greenwald) to leak this information?

~~~
intslack
Could you explain to us why the US government is partaking in exact same
tactics that they tried to drag the Chinese through the mud with?

Hypocrisy seems to be the name of the game here: spying on attorney-client
communications, pwning sysadmins to get access to infrastructure and rifling
through trade secrets of companies. The last two of which the U.S. has put on
their outrage face and publically shamed the Chinese for doing.

Regardless, the Snowden cache was bulk, and was given to Greenwald, Poitras,
and Gellman. Snowden isn't giving marching orders in the background, he left
it up to journalists to decide what gets published. While they probably still
collaborate, Poitras is in Berlin and is most likely one of the primary
journalists behind this story and not Greenwald.

~~~
austinz
It's realpolitik: doing and saying anything and everything to get an advantage
over a perceived opponent or rival. This includes intentionally making
misleading statements and convincing people you care about moral standards
when you don't.

Before Snowden changed things, it was readily apparent that everyone was ready
to believe the US and nobody was ready to believe China. So the accusations
were a rational thing to do.

The US isn't the only country that does this, obviously, and people are
divided over whether or not it is the 'right' way to conduct international
relations.

~~~
EthanHeilman
> This includes intentionally making misleading statements and convincing
> people you care about moral standards when you don't.

Another possible is that several groups within the US government aren't on the
same page. Elements of the State Dept might work to end torture in S. America,
while the CIA secretly trains S. American governments in torture.

This sort of, hack everyone/steal everything isn't in the long term interests
of the US government because the US has the most to lose in terms of
IP/infrastructure, but engaging in this damaging behavior may allow some
agencies to "get the job done" in the short term. Makes sense that groups
tasked with grand-strategy would oppose this behavior, whereas groups tasked
with short-term results would ignore the long game. A predictable result of a
failure of oversight (left hand plays against the strategy of the right hand).

------
RainforestCx
It makes me sad that Huawei may now be driven to an even greater distance from
the US market—particularly the consumer market. The phones that Huawei makes
are quality enough, and cheap enough for me to consider them a staple of the
Maker movement (at least that involving android smartphones). If I'm gonna
tear apart a phone or at least put it in harsh conditions (like we do at
[http://rfcx.org](http://rfcx.org)), I at least want it to be reliable and
expendable, financially. It's now hard enough to get Huawei phones in the US,
and I fear it's now only going to get harder. I know that's not really the
point—this article is really about spying, and US is not alone in doing so, by
any means, but this news affected me on another level.

------
dan_bk
> NSA workers not only succeeded in accessing the email archive, but also the
> secret source code of individual Huwaei products. Software source code is
> the holy grail of computer companies.

We need to open-source everything (soft/hard/firmware) and modify these
business models.

