Huawei’s phones seem great. But are they worth the trouble?
Huawei makes the top phone on DxO Mark’s rankings, despite strange blurring on people’s faces. It might be tempting. It’s triple camera setup combines a monochrome camera for sharpness, a 40MP sensor for color, and a telephoto sensor as well. It’s quite a setup. I rarely mention it because, not long ago, the U.S. intelligence community warned that the Chinese government may have compromised the security of these devices. Every Huawei user may be an unwitting spy for the Chinese government, and their private information may be more public than they realize.
As it turns out, the U.S. government wasn’t the only nation in the “Five Eyes,” an international intelligence sharing community made up of Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States, who had a similar warning. The Australian Financial Review, an Australian newspaper, has reported on a Five Eyes agreement to slow and monitor the growth of Huawei.
Turns out things do leak out of secret government organizations.
In This Article:
Five Eyes Agreement
The Five Eyes member considered a full ban on Huawei products, but not all members of the organization agree. Huawei is incredibly popular in the U.K., for example, and carriers are less willing to sacrifice sales of their most popular products for national security. Meanwhile, the U.S. government has banned use of Huawei products by government officials. All five governments, however, have warned that Huawei may be a Chinese government spying tool. In the U.S., officials have warned against using Huawei to build out 5G networks, as the company could then spy on all U.S. cellular users, regardless of what smartphone they’re using.
Proof?
Five Eyes has warned other nations of Huawei’s potential as a tool for China. They’ve warned German authorities to stop using the company’s products, but Germans responded by asking for proof. As of now, no one has brought forth proof against Huawei publicly, though a former Chinese military engineer founded the company. However, whatever proof has been offered confidentially, it has convinced the U.S., New Zealand, Australia, Taiwan, and Japan to not use Huawei technologies to build out their 5G networks. Something must have convinced these nations to err on the side of caution.
Huawei’s Response
Huawei hasn’t taken the criticism lying down. They point to Donald Trump’s push for a trade war with China in the U.S., as well as fear of competition in the smartphone market from a Chinese firm.
The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 6, 2012
Huawei’s criticism isn’t unwarranted. China has been a boogeyman of Donald Trump, who famously claimed that climate change was a hoax created by the Chinese. Politically speaking, companies in China manufacture many U.S. products. Donald Trump is an isolationist politician, believing that America would be best served by cutting it off from the rest of the world. He therefore attacked China, one of our largest external dependencies. Suspicion of Trump and his government is warranted.
However, this warning isn’t from Trump. It’s from U.S. and world intelligence agencies. These are the same agencies that have stated that Trump received foreign aid from Russia to win the presidency, a fact Trump has denied. They are not Trump stooges. Their goal is only to improve the security of our nation.
It’s true that businesses and politicians could see Chinese products like those from Huawei and ZTE as a threat. Any competition is a “threat.” HTC, a Taiwanese company, has not faced the same criticisms, despite being an East Asian company and other controversies. Huawei’s using the “they’re scared of us because we’re better” defense, which isn’t a strong one.
Huawei does have one item on their side though: none of the Five Eyes governments have published proof of Huawei’s misdeeds publicly. They also claim that, because Huawei is “employee owned,” the Chinese government cannot influence them. But that’s now how government influence works. They get small players and large players to install backdoors. They only need to compromise a few people.
Huawei’s Other Controversies
Canadian officials recently arrested Meng Wanzhou, Huawei’s CFO and daughter of the company’s founder. Her arrest was at the behest of the United States. The U.S. has accused her of portraying a Huawei subsidiary as an independent company to slip embargoed HP gear to Iran. It’s a sneaky international crime that shines poorly on the company and their potential government connections. As far as proof that Huawei is working on the behalf of the Chinese government, breaking through through an embargo for a Chinese subsidiary is not definitive, but validates the reasoning behind suspicions. Clearly, Huawei is not a trustworthy company following international law.
What Should You Do?
It’s up to you. Huawei says it’s not a spy. Intelligence communities in seven countries say otherwise, but have not provided proof publicly. If you’re a government official in any of the nations that have banned Huawei products, obviously you shouldn’t use them. If you’re okay with trusting a company that a number of governments believe that may be spying on you, that’s your prerogative. It’s possible that this is a Western, Taiwanese, and Japanese conspiracy to get you to avoid Huawei’s products.
On the other hand, it’s believable that the Chinese have used one of their most popular spying techniques: get a few people inside a popular Chinese company and have them secretly plant backdoors and other spying equipment. It’s why the same governments also warn against trusting ZTE products.
The real question is, do you really need Huawei’s P20 Pro that badly? The camera blurs faces anyway. Maybe wait for a more reputable brand to catch up. Despite the extra camera, it’s only 4 points ahead of the iPhone XS. Is privacy and national security worth a slightly better camera?
Sources:
- Joe McDonald, AP
- Tom McKay, Gizmodo
- Rob Taylor, The Wall Street Journal