Tell me Huawei: Chinese giant wants to know what made EU label it high security risk
- Reference: 1697474713
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2023/10/16/huawei_ec_security_risk/
- Source link:
The company was hit hard over the past few years by countries such as the UK and several European Union member states effectively putting a ban on Huawei equipment in their telecoms networks.
The situation for Huawei operations in the region wasn't helped by comments from [1]European commissioner Thierry Breton earlier this year in a speech on the cybersecurity of 5G networks in the EU.
[2]
In a [3]speech in June , Breton said that only 10 member states had so far used the EU's "5G cybersecurity toolbox" recommendations to restrict or exclude high-risk vendors such as Huawei and Chinese telecoms provider, ZTE, from their national infrastructure, and criticized the process as "too slow."
[4]
[5]
He then said the Commission would itself apply the 5G toolbox principles to its own procurement of telecoms services to avoid "exposure to Huawei and ZTE" and would emphasize to member states "the importance of speeding up decisions to replace high-risk suppliers from their 5G networks."
It has now emerged that Huawei filed a complaint about the comments, and claims that it did not get an answer from the European Commission. As such, it has [6]raised the matter with the European Ombudsman, which investigates complaints about EU institutions.
[7]
"We confirm that the European Ombudsman, in response to our legal claims about the denigrating comments by the European Commission representatives on 15 June 2023 and their failure to reply, has requested the European Commission to respond to our claims," a spokesperson for Huawei said in a statement sent to The Register .
"Huawei strongly opposes and disagrees with the comments made by the European Commission representatives, publicly naming and shaming an individual company without legal basis, while lacking any justification or due process. We expect the European Commission to address our claims and rectify their comments," Huawei's spokesperson said.
A spokesperson for the European Ombudsman sent us a statement: "We received a complaint from a telecoms operator concerning comments made by the European Commission about it on 15 June. We asked the Commission to reply to the telecom operator’s letter concerning these comments. We have not however opened an inquiry on the substance of what was said.
[8]
"It is not our policy to give out the name of complainants but I can say that this complaint has appeared in the media and been confirmed by the telecom operator itself," it told us.
Huawei has always denied being a threat to security, previously informing us that: "Huawei equipment is routinely and closely scrutinized by governments and relevant security agencies according to stringent cybersecurity standards. No evidence has ever been provided to show Huawei's equipment has backdoors."
But as we have [9]pointed out before , Article 7 of China's National Intelligence Law requires its citizens and organizations to function as covert operatives of the state if ordered to, which means that as far as many nations are concerned, the potential threat is there.
As a consequence, Huawei has already suffered financial losses due to various sanctions against the company. Earlier in the year, it was revealed that its global profits [10]dropped by 46 percent in the first quarter of 2023, while in the UK, the company's [11]revenues were less than a third of their peak in 2018, for example.
[12]EU boss Breton: There's no Huawei that Chinese comms kit is safe to use in Europe
[13]Germany clocks that ripping out Huawei, ZTE network kit won't be cheap or easy
[14]Huawei masters the great vanishing act as UK sales evaporate
[15]China labels USA 'Empire of hacking' based on old Wikileaks dumps
Yet Huawei is doing well in its sizable home market, and recently caused a stir with the launch of a new premium smartphone – the [16]Mate 60 Pro – indicating that it has managed to circumvent US efforts to stymie production.
According to [17]Bloomberg , the combined value of 32 of Huawei's component and equipment suppliers has been boosted by about $34 billion since the launch of the phone, while [18]Nikkei reports that some have seen their share prices jump by more than 400 percent. ®
Get our [19]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/16/breton_calls_for_eu_huawei_bans/
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZS2yiJMpJ@zuOGKjLAIRsAAAAwA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/speech_23_3314
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZS2yiJMpJ@zuOGKjLAIRsAAAAwA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZS2yiJMpJ@zuOGKjLAIRsAAAAwA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://www.ombudsman.europa.eu/fr/opening-summary/en/176147
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZS2yiJMpJ@zuOGKjLAIRsAAAAwA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZS2yiJMpJ@zuOGKjLAIRsAAAAwA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/27/china_crisis_is_a_tiktoking/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/28/us_sanctions_cut_huawei_profits/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/19/huawei_uk_2022_financial_declines/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/16/breton_calls_for_eu_huawei_bans/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/18/germany_huawei_mobile/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/19/huawei_uk_2022_financial_declines/
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/05/china_labels_us_hacking_empire/
[16] https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/01/india_china_hardware_celebrations/
[17] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-10-14/huawei-drives-34-billion-china-stock-boom-in-rare-hot-trades
[18] https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Supply-Chain/Huawei-supplier-shares-jump-amid-China-chip-self-sufficiency-push
[19] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Just today...
Why not at least name the convention?
I doubt a photo taken from a booth is likely to provide any information of use and, by definition, any device on public display would be fair game for photos unless otherwise prohibited with appropriate signage.
Ethics are irrelevant here but if ethical issues were the order of the day you would end up with everybody in the same bucket for one reason or another.
What counts are facts, evidence and laws.
Guidelines are not laws and Huawei's complaint is reasonable.
Is it reasonable for Spain, for example, to say EU subsidies will only go to trusted ICT suppliers, accept applications for the grants, but hold back on actually publishing the list of trusted vendors?
Of course not. That's why Huawei and Vodafone have legally challenged the way Spain has acted and Orange fully supports the challenge.
The UK used similar tactics. Only later was it revealed that someone from the US administration had flown in and literally shouted US demands to Boris Johnson until he conceded.
The same administration that managed to speak of, cough, 'clean' networks and keep a straight face!
As for legislation, the Chinese law angle has been debunked by experts. The upshot is that the same goals are achievable, through law, basically everywhere. Often, in the case of the US especially, laws are simply ignored anyway. We know this thanks to Snowden.
It is also worthwhile remembering that a lot of Huawei businesses are not legally 'Chinese' anyway. All its consumer cloud business is run by Aspiegel Ltd in Ireland.
This is oversimplistic.
This has never been about "fairness". This has always been about balance sheet: the reason why some telcos complain about the EU "trusted" gear preference is because Huawei and ZTE are usually significantly cheaper (sometimes FREE!!!!) and the goal is to have Europe follow the US with a Huawei swap fund that would allow them to modernise their network on the back of EU taxpayers. Let's not fool ourselves here: this is nothing but a horse-trading game. This is not about siding with "bullied" Huawei.
Orange are notorious for their anti EU-vendor policies: supporting O-RAN "disaggregation", heavily influencing TM-Forum standardisation efforts, and leveraging cheap overseas vendors like HW and ZTE.
Vodafone are cash-strapped, constantly "restructuring" and losing market share.
What the US know about Huawei and have subsequently disclosed to UK, Germany, and others is about national security. It is NOT about protecting some hypothetical US equipment vendors: THERE ARE NONE. Therefore, the "protectionist" theory does not hold water.
It is NOT about "protecting Apple" either: the first accusations of Huawei malpractice were made public in the UK and in the USA as early as 2009 when Huawei had not sold a single smartphone and were just starting to become relevant in the 4G equipment market.
OTOH, not a single day passes, without finding a new cybersecurity event involving China.
So, who wants us to believe that Huawei is the only innocent Chinese company, in spite of all its ties to the PLA and the CCP?
A hard sell, if you want my opinion.
They keep thundering about the lack of backdoors
When, in reality, that is not the threat the restrictions are intended to counter.
Chinese companies that are state controlled and are required to participate in state espionage are unreliable partners and an unreliable foundation, not because they have already been caught tampering with the world telecommunications system, but because of the leverage and control that position could leverage. Because with a couple of phone calls, any firmware update could go from clean to poison overnight, and the details on subtle flaws can be handed over without losing deniability as quickly as getting caught with an obvious backdoor.
While it's also fair that they don't trust Cisco for the same reasons, and can happily cite the many cases where the us gov intercepted outbound shipments and loaded them up with spyware before sending it along overseas, that isn't a reason for us to trust them. It just is the unfortunate reality of modern day China. They can doublethink as hard as they want and try to play the part of the victim, the rest of the world knows they are a totalitarian state on the wrong side of a genocide, and are chomping at the bit to start invading their neighbors. And that they are extensively using the tech from these companies as a tool to extend and enforce that control both internally and externally.
Much like we saw in Hong Kong, even if the people in charge had no plans to participate in Xi's expansionist and totalitarian agenda, new people can be put in charge at Huawei or ZTE as soon as it suits the Chinese leadership. You either tow the line or get sent to a reeducation camp. So the only choice is to not put those companies in a position where their inevitable compromise can be used as leverage or a weapon against the rest of the world.
Re: They keep thundering about the lack of backdoors
Its not the backdoors that are in the code today, it is the state power that could force them to install backdoors in a future update even if none exist today. That's obviously not limited to just China, but the more power a state has the more they are able to force something like that and keep those in the know quiet. So China is clearly a much bigger risk than they were 10-15 years ago as Xi has consolidated state power over corporations that had been on a long term trend of loosening before he arrived.
I guess they can't just say the real reason...
Which is that Huawei is (by Chinese law) an arm of the Chinese government, and has large cells of the CCP embedded in it. It /is/ the CCP.
Of course you can point to similar situations elsewhere, like how AT&T is the US govt's eager bitch - but in the EU's case (and elsewhere), an aggressive and hostile China is an actual threat. If Xi tells Huawei to take down all their comms, today, they will. And even without something so obvious, there's still China's 50+ years of large scale military and industrial espionage - their moon lander, done with the best ESA and NASA tech, demonstrates it's still working very well. You can't trust your communications to Huawei.
Cuddly Mascot
Huawei could do with a bit of positive PR - how about adopting a well known character as a company mascot/brand ambassador - perhaps they could come to a licencing arrangement with the Disney corporation for the use of Winnie the Pooh
Just today...
In a global technology convention, Huawei employee, with sloppily concealed Huawei badge, comes on European equipment vendor booth and takes pictures of all demos.
People in the industry know that these accusations of unethical behaviour have been common practice for years.