In a not very surprising move, the Democratic National Committee has told US Democratic candidates to not use Huawei or ZTE devices.
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We’ve already covered the subject multiple times, but it just keeps coming back. Huawei was first attacked and accused of spying under Obama’s era, in 2012, and essentially banned from bidding on large network contracts. ZTE nearly went bankrupt recently due to US penalties on the company, and Huawei has been under attack since the beginning of the year, starting with the failed launch of their Mate 10 series in the US (with the carrier AT&T not signing a distribution deal with the company). All of this is due to both ZTE and Huawei being Chinese companies with close ties to the Chinese government, the usual distrust of US authorities towards the rest of the world, accusing everybody and everything of spying (because only the US is allowed to spy on everybody else, obviously) and the threat they pose to local companies such as Cisco and other telecom suppliers, as well as other, American, smartphone makers.
The US Congress went as far as trying to ban ZTE and Huawei, and partially managed to do so, by, for example, not allowing selling Huawei and ZTE smartphones and modems inside military bases.
This time, the Democratic National Committee has warned candidates running in the November elections to avoid using devices from ZTE or Huawei, because they supposedly pose a security risk. This warning not only concerns candidates, but also their staff. Candidates and staff should not use ZTE or Huawei devices at work or in their personal lives at all.
Authorities warn of hidden “back doors”, which allow foreign governments to access the data. Obviously, Americans would know a lot about back doors, having virtually back doors on any US-branded software or hardware, such as Cisco’s routers.
Meanwhile, over the past few months, Cisco has announced they found five backdoors in their products (hardware and software), which does raise a few questions, such as if they are there on purpose or not. When a country like the US has the need for at least 6 security agencies, it wouldn’t be hard to see the need for more than one backdoor, that way each agency has its own and doesn’t need to share it with the other agencies.
As Europeans, it is really difficult to take these warnings seriously, knowing that our supposed American “allies” (together with the Brits) are constantly spying and abusing us (US companies not paying taxes in Europe and then thanks to some obscure US regulation, bring back all their earnings and not pay taxes in the US either, then proceed to blame Europe saying we “take advantage of them [of US companies]”). To us, these warnings are more a joke than anything else.
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