Global communication shall not be subject to US ‘digital hegemony’
By Shi Wangsheng
from People’s Daily
Chinese communication
equipment recently came under fire of the US who slandered that Chinese tech
firms had implanted backdoors into their products in an attempt to help the
Chinese government spy on the world.
Chinese tech
giant Huawei, supplier of video surveillance products Hikvision, as well as
drone maker DJI were all attacked by Washington. They were accused of posing
the so-called “security risk”.
However, no
concrete evidence has been provided so far to support US allegation.
As a matter of
fact, the US is haunted by its suspicious mind, as it was the Uncle Sam itself that
has long been spying on global communication by its superiority in information
and communication technology
The US practice
can be well explained by a Chinese proverb – to measure the heart of the great
with a heart of the mean. From this perspective, it makes sense for Washington
to doubt that another country is monitoring the world like it does in an
attempt to challenge its hegemony.
According to
western media, the US is spying on 90 percent of global communication, which is
also indicated in the documents of the top-confidential PRISM program revealed
by Edward Snowden.
It’s reported
that US intelligence department has already acquired monitoring technology that
can be applied to products of each communication company in the first few years
of the 21st century.
Glenn Greenwald,
a journalist from Guardian,disclosed
that the National Security Agency (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, he added.
A report by
Reuters in 2013 pointed out that the NSA arranged a $10 million contract with
RSA, a computer and network security company in the US, to put backdoors to the
company’s encryption in mobile terminals.
The RSA is a
basic firm in the information security industry, and its scandal placed a huge
impact on the sector and even shocked the world.
For years, the
US has been lobbying organizations in the west to resist Chinese communication
equipment, fanning that Huawei and other Chinese firms have a security threat
with hidden backdoors, said Greenwald.
However, the US
government has done what it accuses the Chinese of doing: implanting back-door
surveillance tools in devices exported from the US, he added.
After
the PRISM program was exposed, the US didn’t slacken its efforts to monitor the
world.
In 2015, the US
Congress passed legislation to end the surveillance within the US. Three years
later, US President Donald Trump signed a bill, extending the controversial Section
702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) for another six years.
This allows the US intelligence to continue its warrantless surveillance
program on foreigners’ emails and text messages.
Last year, Trump
officially signed into law the Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act or CLOUD Act, which
further lowered the barriers for law enforcement’s access to the data held by
technology companies worldwide and stored on servers in any country.
Targeting Chinese
firms on trumped-up charges, the US was just afraid of yielding control of
telecoms infrastructure, security experts told the US media outlet Business
Insider, regarding the reason why the US keeps agitating security risks of Chinese
telecoms equipment.
Regrettably, the
US “digital hegemony” is not followed by other countries.
France will
preserve its national security but not block any telecom provider to build 5G
network infrastructure, French President Emmanuel Macron said
on May 16. At the same time, German
Chancellor Angela Merkel reiterated the
stand of her country, saying that any company can participate in the 5G construction
in Germany as long as it conforms to the standard of security.
In addition to France and Germany, some other US allies stated clearly
their position of not banning Huawei from their 5G networks, which gave a heavy
blow to the US.
Global communication shall not be subject to US ‘digital hegemony’
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