Huawei Chairman Says U.S. Is Attacking It, Because NSA Can’t Use Firm’s Equipment for Spying

May 22, 2019 (EIRNS)—Guo Ping, the Deputy Chairman of the Board and Rotating Chairman of Huawei, spoke at the World Mobile Conference in Barcelona on Feb. 26, said in his keynote: “PRISM, PRISM, on the wall, who’s the most trustworthy of them all? It’s an important question to ask. And if you don’t understand this question, go ask Edward Snowden.”

EIR’s Dave Christie reports in an analysis of the Huawei case:

“PRISM was a Patriot Act program that allowed the NSA to collect data from internet companies in the United States (and probably beyond with their relations with GCHQ, etc.), including Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc., when permitted by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.”

This is one of the systems which former NSA Technical Director William Binney, who designed many of the programs intended to be used to find terrorists, has exposed their use instead for mass surveillance of virtually the whole world.

Huawei’s website carries an op-ed Guo Ping first published in Financial Times on Feb. 27, which reads in part:

“The Snowden leaks shone a light on how the NSA’s leaders were seeking to ‘collect it all’—every electronic communication sent, or phone call made, by everyone in the world, every day. Those documents also showed that the NSA maintains ‘corporate partnerships’ with particular U.S. technology and telecom companies that allow the agency to gain access to high-capacity international fiber-optic cables, switches, and/or routers throughout the world.

“Huawei operates in more than 170 countries and earns half of its revenue abroad, but its headquarters are in China. This significantly reduces the odds of a ‘corporate partnership.’ If the NSA wants to modify routers or switches in order to eavesdrop, a Chinese company will be unlikely to co-operate. This is one reason why the NSA hacked into Huawei’s servers. ‘Many of our targets communicate over Huawei-produced products,’ a 2010 NSA document states. ‘We want to make sure that we know how to exploit these products.’

“Clearly, the more Huawei gear is installed in the world’s telecommunications networks, the harder it becomes for the NSA to ‘collect it all.’ Huawei, in other words, hampers U.S. efforts to spy on whomever it wants. This is the first reason for the campaign against us.”