[LINK] Huawei [Was Re: Connecting Communities With Broadband

Stilgherrian stil at stilgherrian.com
Fri Feb 4 07:07:32 AEDT 2011


On 03/02/2011, at 3:38 PM, Roger Clarke wrote:
> Huawei is a Chinese company that supplies backbone routers to the 
> Chinese government, which have censorship (and probably a 
> kill-switch) designed-in.
> 
> No government or company should even *dream* of considering Huawei as 
> a possible provider of elements of the Australian NBN infrastructure.
> 
> This isn't just a matter of abstract principle.
> 
> If Huawei can get its products even considered in 'free nations', 
> then its competitors (Cisco, Juniper, ... ?) would see no advantage 
> in keeping censorship-friendly features out of their mainstream 
> product-line.

I friend who works with high-end routers at a major telco has told me that Cisco's recent models, for one, include certain functions that appear to have no other purpose than to implement censorship. And I don't see why they wouldn't, since China is a rapidly-growing market and the same kind of functionality -- monitor, block, report -- is being pushed by the copyright industries.

Indeed, I am increasingly coming around to the idea that the waving of the protect-the-children stick is their stalking horse.

Stil


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