[LINK] What's Behind the Huawei Fracas

[TKoltai]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: link-bounces at mailman.anu.edu.au 
> [mailto:link-bounces at mailman.anu.edu.au] On Behalf Of Fernando Cassia
> Sent: Wednesday, 28 March 2012 6:52 PM
> To: Roger Clarke
> Cc: link at anu.edu.au
> Subject: Re: [LINK] What's Behind the Huawei Fracas
> 
> 
> On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 00:04, Roger Clarke 
> <Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au> wrote:
> >
> > It's a very good move to ban Huawei from NBNCo's infrastructure, 
> > because that reduces the risk of compromise of Australian 
> > infrastucture and traffic by either Huawei or some client of Huawei 
> > (e.g. the Chinese government). But, as a country, we remain 
> exposed to 
> > the US companies that we're likely to use instead, and to 
> the clients 
> > of those US companies (e.g. the NSA).<<<
> 

Hmmm. I don't actually see a lot of difference...

As there is an open information exchange between ANZCANUSUK signed by
the foregoing in 1947.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UKUSA_Agreement refers. (The juicy bit is
where 26 years passed before the Australian public servants told the
P.M. about the agreement. Which was only four years before the news hit
the Headlines Australia wide...)

Most of the every day tools we use today have little Easter eggs inside.
E.g.: Skype, Telstra T-Box and a number of devices that utilise XOR bit
bucket type transit methodologies to cut down on long haul bandwidth.

Added to which the existence of NSAKE  Y  and various other little bits
of code (e.g.: C-ios, A-ios, certain Android libraries, and all versions
of pgp after 2.1), leaves me at a loss to understand why any of this is
an issue or relevant to the country of destination of the manufacturer
of some transmission equipment. (Has anyone checked where satellite VLSI
based firmware is sourced from and has been for the last six years ? You
only need one flip/flop in the right place to insert a shoebox. [passwd
listening post].)

I'm terribly sorry to inform that the cat actually leapt out of the bag
around 1986 with the introduction of Digital telephone exchanges.

So to all those waving the privacy flag, good job but redundant - Except
for health records, electricity consumption records, and non-court
ordered tracking or eavesdropping.

Then again, one could always ask a Chinese consulting company to
eavesdrop on a target for a month or so, [just as a fishing expedition],
pay them $29.95 and  ask them to send the data files of the results in a
plain unmarked envelope to (insert relevant agency here...)

I believe Huawei equipment is effective, reasonably priced and has some
of the best service back-up support of any manufacturer in the world.

Anyone that is unable to refute the foregoing whilst continuing to
maintain the incredulous nonsense about spying, needs to start coming
clean about trade incentives from American corporations.

If the Chinese want to spy on us, they're undoubtedly already doing it
via TI, HP, Atheros and XX Chipsets from reputable non-Chinese
manufacturers, like Ericsson, Nokia, Lucent, Lucent and my all time
favourite Hughes.

Because of course as everyone knows, GSM is an insecure technology and
can be eavesdropped on by a 15 year old with SDR Radio.

In closing, at least the Chinese don't get caught putting bugs in the
walls of our embassy buildings. (Err, that probably means that they're
better at discretion than we are. They are certainly a lot more polite.)

TomK