White House review ‘found no evidence’ of Huawei spying for China

October 18, 2012 by 2 Comments

Huawei TechnologiesBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A review commissioned by the government of the United States has reportedly found no evidence that Chinese telecommunications hardware manufacturer Huawei Technologies spied for the Chinese government. The 18-month-long review, which was ordered directly by the White House, examined the question of security vulnerabilities posed by telecommunications hardware suppliers, which could theoretically harm US service providers and pose a danger to US national security. The report, which was allegedly aided by several US intelligence agencies and other federal government departments, was based on detailed interviews with nearly 1,000 telecommunications equipment consumers across the United States. It was concluded at the start of 2012, but remains largely classified. However, Reuters news agency cites “two people familiar with the probe”, who claim that the probe contains “no clear evidence” that Huawei spied for the government of China. At the same time, however, the probe concluded that Huawei telecommunications hardware contains numerous structural vulnerabilities which could help hackers exploit telecommunications networks supported by the Chinese company. According to one source quoted by Reuters, the White House report found that the telecommunications hardware sold by Huawei was “riddled with holes”. Read more of this post

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Situation Report: China’s Huawei Going Mobile? (Exclusive)

September 21, 2012 by 5 Comments

Huawei TechnologiesBy TIMOTHY W. COLEMAN | intelNews.org |
The Chinese firm, Huawei Technologies, a provider of information and communications technology, has been constantly under fire in the United States and around for the world for its supposed deep ties to China’s military and intelligence establishment. It is not without some justifiable concern either. Prior to starting Huawei Technologies, the company’s founder and CEO, Ren Zhengfei, served for more than 10-years in China’s People’s Liberation Army’s engineering corps. This reality, rightly or wrongly, has added fodder for concerns that Chinese government interests are intertwined with those of Huawei. On September 13, Huawei Technologies and another Chinese firm, ZTE, were the subject of a Congressional hearing titled “Investigation of the Security Threat Posed by Chinese Telecommunications Companies Huawei and ZTE”. The purpose of the hearing, as explained by the US House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, was to assess the potential danger of “telecommunications equipment manufactured by companies with believed ties to the Chinese government”. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #790

September 10, 2012 by 5 Comments

Abdullah al-SenussiBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
►►New report reopens CIA torture allegations. A report from Human Rights Watch, which was released last week, said that Libyan fighters opposed to Muammar Gaddafi’s regime were subjected to harsh interrogation techniques while in US custody overseas, during the administration of George W. Bush. The accusations, if substantiated, would suggest wider use of waterboarding than US officials have previously acknowledged. The report, which is based on documents and interviews in Libya after the fall of Gaddafi, includes a detailed description of what appears to be a previously unknown instance of waterboarding by the CIA in Afghanistan nine years ago.
►►Analysis: What does Gaddafi’s ex-spy chief know about Lockerbie? Abdullah al-Senussi became a hate-figure in his home country as head of an intelligence machinery responsible for the mistreatment of thousands of opponents of the regime of Muammar Gaddafi, his brother-in-law. He is nicknamed the “butcher” and known as Gaddafi’s “black box” because of the secrets he supposedly holds. The new Libyan regime had been negotiating for months with Mauritania where al-Senussi had fled following the fall of the Gaddafi regime last September. But now that al-Senussi has been flown back to Libya by private jet, he may at last be able to face questions by British police about Lockerbie.
►►Chinese hardware manufacturer denies spying allegations. The Chinese hardware-manufacturing firm Huawei has released a 24-page report, written by John Suffolk, a former British government chief information officer who has now turned Huawei’s global security officer, which states that protecting the network security of its worldwide customers is one of company’s “fundamental interests”. The report follows allegations in the United States, Australia, India, and elsewhere, that the company maintains close operational ties to China’s intelligence establishment.

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News you may have missed #748 (US edition)

June 20, 2012 by Leave a comment

Michael HaydenBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
►►US lawmakers probe China companies over spy concerns. In letters sent last week to Chinese communications hardware firms Huawei Technologies and ZTE Corporation, a group of senior members of the US House of Representatives Intelligence Committee have outlined concerns about the companies’ ties with the Chinese government, including the role of a “party committee” at Huawei. The lawmakers have also asked about Huawei’s relationships with five US consulting firms and requested an expansive collection of documents, including the contracts between the firms and Huawei.
►►Lone Senator resists Bush/Obama NSA wiretapping plan. The Obama administration wanted a quick, no-questions-asked-or-answered renewal of broad electronic eavesdropping powers that largely legalized the Bush administration’s illegal warrantless wiretapping program. That’s despite President Barack Obama’s campaign promise to revisit and revise the rules to protect Americans’ rights. Everything seemed to be going to plan after a Senate committee approved the re-authorization in secret last month. But Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) has stepped in to stop the bill because the government refuses to say how often the spy powers are being used.
►►What did Hayden tell Obama in January 2009? In December of 2008, a meeting took place between the incoming US Presiden Barack Obama and the departing CIA Director Michael Hayden. Several days later, on January 15, Hayden told journalists that Obama had privately assured him that “no plans to launch a legal inquiry” into the CIA’s use of controversial interrogation methods during the Bush administration. Now, several years later, Salon has published an insider’s account of what was said in that meeting between Obama and Hayden, as well as during the days that followed.

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US report links telecoms company to Chinese spy services

October 14, 2011 by 1 Comment

Sun Yafang

Sun Yafang

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
For the first time a United States government agency has openly linked one of China’s main telecommunications companies with the country’s intelligence services. The alleged link is provided in a new report by the US Open Source Center, which acts as the open-source intelligence (OSINT) arm of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The report concludes that the company, Huawei Technologies, relies on a series of formal and informal contacts with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army and the Ministry of State Security (MSS), which oversee and administer China’s military and civilian intelligence apparatus. Founded in 1987 to import Western office telephone systems to China, the company has become one of the country’s leading exporters of all kinds of communications hardware equipment, ranging from routers to cell towers and undersea cables. But Huawei’s export growth has been hampered in recent years by widely circulated suspicions that the company maintains close ties to the Chinese military and intelligence establishments. The Open Source Center report adds to these suspicions, by pointing out that Huawei’s current chairperson, Sun Yafang (pictured), was an employee of the MSS Communications Department prior to joining Huawei in 1989. It also says that, prior to joining the company, Sun utilized her personal contacts at MSS to “help Huawei through financial difficulties at critical moments when the company was founded in 1987”. The close contacts between the —ostensibly private— company and the Chinese government have persisted ever since, says the report, and points out that the Chinese state has funded Huawei with nearly a quarter-billion dollars for “research and development” projects in the past three years alone. This is not the first time that Huawei has been accused of maintaining close contacts with Chinese intelligence agencies. In 2009, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) investigated one of Huawei’s Australian-based subsidiaries for links to Chinese intelligence operations. In the following year, the Indian government barred the company from operating in India, citing its allegedly “strong links with the Chinese military”. Read more of this post

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Chinese telecoms manufacturer denies spying claims (again)

June 24, 2011 by Leave a comment

Huawei HQ

Huawei HQ

By IAN ALLEN| intelNews.org |
Huawei Technologies is one of China’s fastest-rising corporations. Founded in 1988 to import Western office telephone systems to China, the company today has become one of the country’s leading exporters, producing all kinds of hi-tech communications hardware equipment, ranging from routers to cell towers and undersea cables. But, as intelNews has indicated on several instances, Huawei’s export growth has been hampered in recent years by widely circulated suspicions that the company maintains close ties to the Chinese military and intelligence establishments. In 2009, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) investigated one of Huawei’s Australian-based subsidiaries for links to Chinese intelligence operations. In the following year, the Indian government barred the company from operating in India, citing its allegedly “strong links with the Chinese military”. In August of 2010, several American senators called for an investigation into a proposed collaboration between Huawei and US-based Sprint-Nextel, arguing that the Chinese hardware manufacturer is “effectively controlled by China’s civilian and military intelligence establishment”. Further controversy erupted in the United States in February of this year, when another group of American Congress members accused Huawei of having supplied telecommunications equipment to Iran and the Afghan Taliban. The controversy around Huawei, which currently employs over 110,000 people in China and beyond, centers partly on its founder and chief executive owner, Ren Zhengfei. A former Director of the People’s Liberation Army’s Engineering Corps, Zhengfei founded Huawei a few years after retiring from his government job. His critics claim that he never truly retired from the PLA, and that he maintains routine links with the Communist Party of China, of which he is a member, as well as Chinese military intelligence. Read more of this post

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Proposed US-Chinese telecom deal worries US legislators

October 28, 2010 by 1 Comment

Huawei HQ

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Three US Congress members have raised security concerns about a proposed deal between American and Chinese telecommunications companies, claiming that it could facilitate Chinese espionage in the United States. The proposed collaboration is between US-based Sprint-Nextel and Cricket Wireless, and Chinese hardware manufacturers ZTE Corporation and Huawei Technologies. But three US Senators, Jon Kyl (R-AR), Susan Collins (R-ME), Joe Lieberman (I-CT), have written to US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Julius Genachowski, claiming that the ZTE and Huawei are effectively controlled by China’s civilian and military intelligence establishment. According to the legislators, if the proposed deal goes through the Chinese government may be able to use ZTE and Huawei to “manipulate switches, routers, or software embedded in American telecommunications networks so that communications can be disrupted, intercepted, tampered with, or purposely misrouted”. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #417

August 24, 2010 by 1 Comment

  • US Senators question Chinese telecom hardware bid. Senior Republican senators have called for an investigation on whether US national security will be compromised by the Chinese telecommunications company Huawei seeking to sell equipment to Sprint Nextel, which provides services to the US military and law enforcement agencies.
  • Pakistan environmental chaos causes security concerns. The catastrophic floods in Pakistan, which have displaced millions of persons over the last several weeks, when combined with the other socioeconomic and political stresses on Pakistan, have the potential to further weaken an already weak Pakistani state, according to a new US Congressional Research Service report.
  • Russian base in Armenia to stay through 2044. Russia has secured a long-term foothold in the energy-rich and unstable Caucasus region by signing a deal with Armenia that allows a Russian military base to operate until 2044 in exchange for a promise of new weaponry and fresh security guarantees.

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India blacklists Chinese phone companies over spying concerns

May 11, 2010 by 1 Comment

Huawei HQ

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The government of India has officially barred a number of Chinese telephone equipment providers from operating in India, citing their strong links with the Chinese military. At the center of the move is Huawei Technologies, one of China’s largest telephone equipment manufacturers. Several intelligence insiders see the company, based in Shenzen, China, as a covert arm of the intelligence wing of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. The company, which has business concerns in several countries around the world, has attracted the attention of American, British and Australian counterintelligence agencies, among others. In early 2008, the US government prohibited Huawei’s purchase of a significant amount of shares in US network security equipment maker 3Com, which supplies telecommunications hardware to the US Department of Defense. Read more of this post

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Indian government tells telecoms to avoid buying Chinese hardware

October 11, 2009 by 3 Comments

Huawei logo

Huawei logo

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The Indian government has asked the country’s telecommunications companies to “refrain from buying Chinese telecommunications equipment”, because they may be used by Beijing to spy on India. The request was reportedly delivered to Indian telecommunications industry representatives by officials from India’s Department of Telecommunications, in a closed-door meeting earlier this week. Indian media report that the Department’s request has no legal backing, but is simply a call for Indian telecommunications providers to “self-regulate”. But the government is said to be working on official guidelines to restrict the domestic use of telecommunications hardware and software originating from countries considered “unfriendly” to India, including Pakistan, China and Egypt. Some industry observers have expressed fears that the pending restrictions will severely hinder the growth of India’s rapidly rising telecommunications sector. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0116

September 26, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • Australia blocks Chinese mining investment on security grounds. The Australian government has for the second time this year vetoed a multi-billion dollar mining project involving a Chinese company, on national security grounds (did someone say Rio Tinto?). The veto follows news earlier this month that the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) investigated the Australian subsidiary of Chinese telecommunications company Huawei Technologies because of its rumored links with China’s intelligence establishment.
  • Declassified files reveal massive FBI data-mining project. An immense FBI data-mining system billed as a tool for hunting terrorists is being used in hacker and domestic criminal investigations, and now contains tens of thousands of records from private corporate databases, including car-rental companies, large hotel chains and at least one national department store, according to declassified documents.
  • Book by Danish special forces soldier reveals dirty tricks. A Danish court has turned down an appeal by the country’s military to ban the publication of a book by Thomas Rathsack, former member of Jaegerkorps, an elite army unit. Among other things, the book reveals systematic breach of Geneva Convention directives by members of the unit deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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Australians investigate Chinese telecom over suspected spy links

September 7, 2009 by 2 Comments

Huawei HQ

Huawei HQ

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), has admitted it is investigating an Australian-based subsidiary of a Chinese telecommunications firm because of its rumored links to China’s intelligence establishment. Several intelligence insiders see Huawei Technologies, based in Shenzen, China, as a covert arm of Chinese military intelligence. The company, which has business concerns in several countries around the world, has attracted the attention of American, Indian and British counterintelligence agencies, among others. As intelNews reported last December, in 2005 the government of India cancelled an initial investment of $60 million on its telecommunications superhighway by the Chinese company. Read more of this post

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Australians suspect Chinese networking firm of intelligence ties

December 18, 2008 by Leave a comment

Several months ago, Chinese networking investor Singtel Optus placed a very competitive bid on the Australian government’s $15 billion project to build the country’s first unified national broadband network. Now the Australians say they are suspicious of the company, because of its ties to China’s Huawei Technologies. Huawei is described as a “shadowy company based in Shenzen and founded by former People’s Liberation Army officer and Communist Party member Ren Zhengfei”. Read more of this post

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