FROM EIR DAILY ALERT
Snowden Documents Expose NSA Spying on Huawei in 2014
Jan. 1, 2019 (EIRNS)—A 2014 article in the English Spiegel Online wrote that Edward Snowden’s exposure of NSA operations included a report on the successful hacking of Huawei, as well as other Chinese private and government companies. The March 22, 2014 article said that among the Chinese targets other than Huawei were
“Chinese President Hu Jintao, the Chinese Trade Ministry, banks, as well as telecommunications companies. But the NSA made a special effort to target Huawei.... At the beginning of 2009, the NSA began an extensive operation, referred to internally as ‘Shotgiant,’ against the company.”
Spiegel Online wrote:
“According to a top secret NSA presentation, NSA workers not only succeeded in accessing the email archive, but also the secret source code of individual Huawei products. Software source code is the holy grail of computer companies.”
One NSA document claims that “many of our targets communicate over Huawei produced products, we want to make sure that we know how to exploit these products.”
It continues: “The operation was conducted with the involvement of the White House intelligence coordinator and the FBI. One document states that the threat posed by Huawei is ‘unique.’ ”
Interestingly, the Huawei spokesman at the time, Bill Plummer, told Spiegel Online: “If it is true, the irony is that exactly what they are doing to us is what they have always charged that the Chinese are doing through us,” he said.
“If such espionage has been truly conducted, then it is known that the company is independent and has no unusual ties to any government and that knowledge should be relayed publicly to put an end to an era of mis- and disinformation.”
That was 2014!
