Heads of US law & spy agencies say phones by Apple rival Huawei pose inherent national sec...
The heads of several U.S. law and spy agencies claim that smartphone buyers should avoid buying products from China's Huawei, since the company poses a risk of data theft and surveillance of users, but also are a danger to national security as well.
"We're deeply concerned about the risks of allowing any company or entity that is beholden to foreign governments that don't share our values to gain positions of power inside our telecommunications networks," FBI director Christopher Wray explained, according to CNBC. "That provides the capacity to exert pressure or control over our telecommunications infrastructure. It provides the capacity to maliciously modify or steal information. And it provides the capacity to conduct undetected espionage."
Also present during the hearing were five other agency heads, for organizations like the CIA and NSA.
Huawei is known to have close ties to the Chinese government. In theory allowing Huawei devices and infrastructure to spread in the U.S. could make it easier for the Communist Party to launch hacking attempts.
Huawei has denied that it poses a greater threat than other vendors.
The company has so far had trouble entering the U.S. market. A deal to sell phones through AT&T was broken off, and politicians have put pressure on the carrier to avoid collaborating with Huawei on 5G technology. Likewise, politicians have moved to prevent government purchases from Huawei or another Chinese firm, ZTE.
Some U.S. law and intelligence officials have called on domestic phone makers -- including Apple -- to permit backdoors in their software so data can be accessed at will with a warrant or other legal order. The NSA is known to collect metadata en masse, and has sometimes inserted its own backdoors into servers and routers.
"We're deeply concerned about the risks of allowing any company or entity that is beholden to foreign governments that don't share our values to gain positions of power inside our telecommunications networks," FBI director Christopher Wray explained, according to CNBC. "That provides the capacity to exert pressure or control over our telecommunications infrastructure. It provides the capacity to maliciously modify or steal information. And it provides the capacity to conduct undetected espionage."
Also present during the hearing were five other agency heads, for organizations like the CIA and NSA.
Huawei is known to have close ties to the Chinese government. In theory allowing Huawei devices and infrastructure to spread in the U.S. could make it easier for the Communist Party to launch hacking attempts.
Huawei has denied that it poses a greater threat than other vendors.
The company has so far had trouble entering the U.S. market. A deal to sell phones through AT&T was broken off, and politicians have put pressure on the carrier to avoid collaborating with Huawei on 5G technology. Likewise, politicians have moved to prevent government purchases from Huawei or another Chinese firm, ZTE.
Some U.S. law and intelligence officials have called on domestic phone makers -- including Apple -- to permit backdoors in their software so data can be accessed at will with a warrant or other legal order. The NSA is known to collect metadata en masse, and has sometimes inserted its own backdoors into servers and routers.
Comments
Short memories these days.
Also, I agree Chinese government tied companies are a security and spying risk.
Ridiculous post. "A bit of work"? Understatement of the century. Somehow installing "compromised chips" which Apple nor anyone else somehow wouldn't notice? iOS and iPhone silicon is 100% designed in the US. Every single stage of iPhone manufacturing is routinely triple checked by multiple parties. How vast would the conspiracy need to be? Foxconn executives would also need to be involved. And what about the software? This would also need to be modified. This would need to be such a massive, complex, and covert operation to the point of utter impossibility.
So yeah, pretty shitty equivalency you're trying to pull there, compared to Huawei, a 100% Chinese company that is in FULL control of their hardware and OS.
This is nothing more than political posturing disguised as security risks for the average American citizen.
It's also quite funny to see FBI in there who not so long ago were asking Apple to build a back door into their OS for "just one phone".
Source for your claim? I imagine between apple’s custom silicon work, procurement process, oversight, and OS-level control that Apple’s phones are indeed more secure.
There is no question there are cyber security threats coming out of China and Russia, but I’d like evidence before I malign specific company’s.
To be clear, I’m fine if the US government concluded the risk was to high for devices that contain “Top Secret” information. But for my personal phone... I’m not going to worry about it.