The FCC Joins a Growing, Proof-Optional Blacklist of Huawei
"The FCC is the latest to join what appears to be an evidence-optional blacklisting of Chinese networking gear vendor Huawei. Back in 2011 there was a wave of hyperventilation and accusations that Huawei was just a Chinese government front company that spied on American consumers, despite absolutely no evidence supporting that allegation. When investigations were conducted in response (one eighteen months in lenghth), they found nothing to prove the claim that Huawei spies on American consumers.
What inquiries repeatedly do find is that American gearmakers like Cisco enjoy ginning up many of these fears to avoid having to compete with overseas gear makers. Tech-challenged lawmakers are often quick to believe them. From a Washington Post story in 2012:
From the Washington Post article:
“What happens is you get competitors who are able to gin up lawmakers who are already wound up about China,” said one Hill staffer who was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter. “What they do is pull the string and see where the top spins.”
Fast forward to this year, and Huawei horror stories are again all the rage. And again, nobody has provided a shred of hard evidence to justify the hysteria.
AT&T was quietly forced to scuttle a major smartphone deal with Huawei after a December 20 letter by the Senate and House intelligence Committees to the FCC expressed concerns about Huawei's ties to the Chinese government and the Communist party, again despite no public evidence of Huawei's spying. Verizon was then forced to follow suit. Both companies were likely eager to protect their own lucrative contracts helping the U.S. government do exactly what we accuse China of.
Huawei hystrionics evolved even further this week, when Best Buy announced it too would be banning Huawei gear from its stores in response to ambiguous national security concerns. And now the FCC (led by supposed "free market" fan Ajit Pai) says it's considering a plan that would ban US telecom operators from doing business with Huawei if they receive government subsidies.
While it's perfectly possible that Huawei helps spy on Americans, you'd think that somebody during the half-decade of face-fanning on this subject could provide some type of supporting evidence given the proliferation of Huawei gear in the wild. In reality, China doesn't likely need Huawei to spy on the the US, given the fact that Chinese gear is already in pretty much every piece of hardware we own, including gear made by US companies. And if China wants to spy, it could just utilize the millions of Chinese-made Internet of Things with paper-grade level security we connect to our business and home networks on a daily basis.
The other major problem with this attack on Huawei: the blatant hypocrisy in criticizing China when we've done the same thing (or worse), except with publicly-available evidence to support it.
Snowden docs revealed that starting in 2007, the NSA decided it would be a good idea to hack into Huawei and steal encryption keys with the goal of embedding backdoors in the company's products (the exact thing you'll note we're accusing Huawei of). The NSA was also caught intercepting Cisco networking gear in transit to install eavesdropping implants.
In other words, violating the law to spy on citizens and protectionism are bad when China does it, but perfectly ok when we do it. And because the tech press tends to be oblivious to the fact that its own nationalism often skew its coverage, few can be bothered to point out that no evidence supports this seemingly endless wave of hysteria.
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/The-FCC-Joins-a-Growing-ProofOptional-Blacklist-of-Huawei-141494
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