<html><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:HelveticaNeue, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, Lucida Grande, sans-serif;font-size:10pt"><div class="" style="margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px; text-align: justify; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);">Two days ago, coinciding with the release of his new book <u class="" style=""><a href="http://glenngreenwald.net/?utm_source=bingadwordssearch&utm_medium=bingsearch&utm_term=noplacetohideZZZZZ&utm_content=-na_newglenn2_learnmore&utm_campaign=9781627790734#BookMedia" style="color: rgb(0, 158, 184); text-decoration: none; -webkit-transition: color 0.3s; transition: color 0.3s; display: inline;" class="">No Place to Hide</a></u>, one-time <u class="" style="">The
Guardian</u> columnist Glenn Greenwald ran a swan song piece in his former employer’s publication titled “<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/may/12/glenn-greenwald-nsa-tampers-us-internet-routers-snowden" style="color: rgb(0, 158, 184); text-decoration: none; -webkit-transition: color 0.3s; transition: color 0.3s; display: inline;" class="">how the NSA tampers with US-made internet routers</a>,” heralding the far broader content featured in his book.<o:p class="" style=""></o:p></div><div class="" style="margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px; text-align: justify; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><br class="" style=""></div><div class="" style="margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue
Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px; text-align: justify; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);">In keeping with the trend of recent Snowden Revelations (e.g. drifting away from highlighting ongoing U.S. intelligence agency abuses against American citizens), Greenwald’s piece focused on exposing the NSA’s practice of covertly implanting interception tools in U.S. information and communications technology (ICT) equipment heading overseas.<o:p class="" style=""></o:p></div><div class="" style="margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px; text-align: justify; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><br class="" style=""></div><div class="" style="margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;
color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px; text-align: justify; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);">Surprise.<o:p class="" style=""></o:p></div><div class="" style="margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px; text-align: justify; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><br class="" style=""></div><div class="" style="margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px; text-align: justify; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);">Not.<o:p class="" style=""></o:p></div><div
class="" style="margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px; text-align: justify; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><br class="" style=""></div><div class="" style="margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px; text-align: justify; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);">The initial Snowden Revelations focused on U.S. intelligence agency compromise of unwilling but sadly witting American internet service and telecommunications providers. It was really only a matter of time until we were to learn that they went after gear-makers and hardware as well. <o:p class="" style=""></o:p></div><div
class="" style="margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px; text-align: justify; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><br class="" style=""></div><div class="" style="margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px; text-align: justify; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);">We got a sneak peak at this type of activity in March when <u class="" style="">Der Spiegel</u> and <u class="" style="">The New York Times</u> reported on the NSA’s <i class="" style="">Shotgiant</i> program. <i class="" style="">Shotgiant</i> not only penetrated the corporate
networks of global ICT industry leader Huawei in order to monitor its confidential communications, but also to steal proprietary product information with the intent to use such information to compromise networks into which the Huawei gear would be deployed.<o:p class="" style=""></o:p></div><div class="" style="margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px; text-align: justify; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><br class="" style=""></div><div class="" style="margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px; text-align: justify; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);">(Aside: Lest anyone forget, I work
for Huawei - <span style="font-weight: bold;">but</span> these are my personal, un-vetted observations)<br class="" style=""></div><div class="" style="margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px; text-align: justify; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><br class="" style=""></div><div class="" style="margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px; text-align: justify; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><aside: anyone="" for="" forget="" huawei="" i="" lest="" work="" class="" style=""><o:p class="" style=""></o:p></aside:></div><div class="" style="margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; color:
rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px; text-align: justify; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);">What Greenwald unveiled this week was that not only had American service providers been compromised, but, so too had the ICT hardware and related product of American-based companies. </div><div class="" style="margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px; text-align: justify; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><o:p class="" style=""></o:p></div><div class="" style="margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;
font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px; text-align: justify; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><br class="" style=""></div><div class="" style="margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px; text-align: justify; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);">Per Greenwald, as per NSA documentation leaked by Snowden: “<i class="" style="">The NSA routinely receives – or intercepts – routers, servers and other computer network devices being exported from the US before they are delivered to the international customers. The agency then implants backdoor surveillance tools, repackages the devices with a factory seal and sends them on. The NSA thus gains access to entire networks and all their users</i>.”<o:p class="" style=""></o:p></div><div class=""
style="margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px; text-align: justify; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><br class="" style=""></div><div class="" style="margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px; text-align: justify; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);">Interestingly, Greenwald reports on the NSA’s shenanigans in the context of highlighting that what the NSA has been doing is exactly what U.S. Government entities have consistently yet groundlessly scare-mongered might be done through Huawei equipment.<o:p class="" style=""></o:p></div><div class="" style="margin: 0px; outline: none;
padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px; text-align: justify; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><br class="" style=""></div><div class="" style="margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px; text-align: justify; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);">In the wake of Greenwald’s article, media reports, social media and other conversations feature some surmising that U.S. intelligence agencies were looking in the mirror, observing their own actions, and presuming that the Chinese Government was doing the same thing with China-based companies. Hence the blockade of Huawei, always accused of but never proven to be
potentially complicit. <o:p class="" style=""></o:p></div><div class="" style="margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px; text-align: justify; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><br class="" style=""></div><div class="" style="margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px; text-align: justify; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);">But wait. That assumption doesn’t make sense. <o:p class="" style=""></o:p></div><div class="" style="margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue',
Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px; text-align: justify; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><br class="" style=""></div><div class="" style="margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px; text-align: justify; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);">Greenwald’s account, and subsequent reporting (e.g. see <u class="" style=""><a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/05/12/greenwald-nsa-plants-backdoors-in-foreign-bound-routers/" style="color: rgb(0, 158, 184); text-decoration: none; -webkit-transition: color 0.3s; transition: color 0.3s; display: inline;" class="">Wall Street Journal article</a></u>), seem to indicate that the U.S. vendors whose product was violated were not in fact involved with or aware of the violation,
rather, that the NSA was covertly snagging outbound exports and then infecting them with whatnot to enable whatever before sending them off on their merry way.<o:p class="" style=""></o:p></div><div class="" style="margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px; text-align: justify; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><br class="" style=""></div><div class="" style="margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px; text-align: justify; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);">Who knows, we may one day come to learn that the U.S. vendors were indeed complicit, but I very highly doubt it. It is extremely
difficult to imagine the vast conspiracy that such complicity would entail. <o:p class="" style=""></o:p></div><div class="" style="margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px; text-align: justify; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><br class="" style=""></div><div class="" style="margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px; text-align: justify; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);">Consider: It was one thing for the NSA to compromise unwilling service providers - via tidy, manageable conspiracies of the C-suite and legal office - to enable the massive siphoning of data. It's another
thing altogether to compromise tens or hundreds of thousands of routers and servers. That conspiracy, which would require the complicity of countless employees across a vendor’s organization, would be neither manageable nor sustainable.<o:p class="" style=""></o:p></div><div class="" style="margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px; text-align: justify; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><br class="" style=""></div><div class="" style="margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px; text-align: justify; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);">The surreptitious interception and infection of
outbound product “at the border” which Greenwald and subsequent reporters describe would seem a much better way to get backdoors installed, and would certainly be a lot less prone to information leaks and opposition that would arise in terms of working with complicit vendors.<o:p class="" style=""></o:p></div><div class="" style="margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px; text-align: justify; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><br class="" style=""></div><div class="" style="margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px; text-align: justify; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);">Which brings
us back to the U.S. Government’s opposition to allowing Huawei to compete in the U.S. <o:p class="" style=""></o:p><br class="" style=""><br class="" style=""></div><div class="" style="margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px; text-align: justify; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);">If I am correct that the U.S. vendors were not knowingly compromised, and for the reasons I’ve laid out, then I think it’s pretty fair to assume that the U.S. Government knew full well that Huawei being <i class="" style="">wittingly</i> compromised by the Chinese Government was also highly unlikely and certainly unsustainable. Just as was the case with the unwittingly compromised American ICT exporters, it would require a conspiracy far too vast across a very
global and very diverse employee population.<o:p class="" style=""></o:p></div><div class="" style="margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px; text-align: justify; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><br class="" style=""></div><div class="" style="margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px; text-align: justify; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);">So why the Huawei blockade? <o:p class="" style=""></o:p></div><div class="" style="margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px; text-align: justify; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><br class="" style=""></div><div class="" style="margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px; text-align: justify; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);">Well, as some have already mused in the wake of Greenwald’s piece yesterday, perhaps because compromising Huawei gear being shipped to far-flung markets would have been a much more challenging endeavor than intercepting and infecting American-made gear.<o:p class="" style=""></o:p></div><div class="" style="margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;
line-height: 19.600000381469727px; text-align: justify; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><br class="" style=""></div><div class="" style="margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px; text-align: justify; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);">Greenwald said it better:<o:p class="" style=""></o:p></div><div class="" style="margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px; text-align: justify; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><br class="" style=""></div><div class="" style="margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light,
'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px; text-align: justify; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"> “<i class="" style="">Warning the world about Chinese surveillance could have been one of the motives behind the US government's claims that Chinese devices cannot be trusted. But an equally important motive seems to have been preventing Chinese devices from supplanting American-made ones, which would have limited the NSA's own reach. In other words, Chinese routers and servers represent not only economic competition but also surveillance competition</i>.”</div><div class="" style=""><br style=""></div></div></body></html>