Australian Gov't Bans Huawei From National Network Bids 168
An anonymous reader writes "It looks like paranoia regarding Chinese cyber-espionage is riding sky-high within the Australian Government. It was confirmed today that the country's Attorney-General's Department had banned Chinese networking vendor Huawei (the number two telco networking equipment vendor globally) from bidding for work supplying equipment to the government's $50 billion National Broadband Network universal fibre project. The unprecedented move comes despite Huawei offering to share its source code with security officials, and despite Huawei not being accused of breaking any laws in Australia. Questions over the legality of the Government's move are already being raised."
Re:national security (Score:4, Informative)
Except of course that the WTO agreements prevent exactly this kind of national/regional/local concerns and specifically prohibits tender discrimination on the basis of national origin of the tendering company. Welcome to the brave new world.
No you mean Cisco's (Score:5, Informative)
Cisco alleged Huawei stole their tech, but had to drop the suit after the chinese gov't made it uncomfortable for Cisco.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/01/24/cisco_sues_huawei_over_ip/ [theregister.co.uk]
Ban consumer electronics too? (Score:4, Informative)
Huawei already supplies 3G USB dongles, cheap android phones and tablets to the Aussie consumer. If that's the case, isn't the Chinese govt already harvesting data from our private citizens? Hmmm, paranoia much?
Conroy might partner with the Chinese on his great firewall of Australia - apparently they have expertise in such matters. ;-)
Re:Good (Score:2, Informative)
Re:national security (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.australiandefence.com.au/DB96D390-F806-11DD-8DFE0050568C22C9 [australiandefence.com.au]
Australia's Foreign Investment Review Board let SingTel purchase Optus i.e. Singapore's government-owned telco got the Optus C1/D joint civil/military communications satellite.
The dedicated military payload paid for by Australia is used for satellite communications in Australian and south-east Asia.
The payload came from the USA and Japan was the contractor
The main problem for the NBN would be the US/UK/NZ/Canadian/Australian telco choke points- who gets to mirror off every packet in and out of Australia.
An embassy or joint space project can be contained. Communists deep in your ducts long term is not a good idea.
Re:Is it paranoia if it's true? But what do you ha (Score:5, Informative)
Having a copy of the source provides only minimal protection. See for example the Underhanded C Code Contest [xcott.com].
It would be an almost trivial exercise to introduce a vulnerability into a code base that wouldn't be picked up easily by either human or mechanical inspection. Even if such a vulnerability was detected, the vendor could simply claim that it was a coding error, fix it, and get away with it unpunished. By adding a few dozen such vulnerabilities, the vendor could play this game for years without anyone ever being able to prove wrongdoing.
There's no hope of isolating the equipment or software from the Internet either, because the use-case here is a National Broadband Network, the whole point of which is to create a new public Internet backbone.
Re:Oh no! National interest trumping the Free Mark (Score:2, Informative)
G'day Clive, you fat bastard! How are your "Greens are a CIA plot" claims working out for you? Don't worry - we know what "China First" really means - but we won't tell anyone. *snort*