Chinese Media Calls For Boycott of Cisco 216
An anonymous reader writes "China's state-run media is calling on the country's wireless carriers to move away from Cisco products. According to reports, using Cisco products allows the U.S. to 'attack China almost at will,' and forms a 'terrible security threat.' Chinese officials are urging the companies' wireless carriers to switch to hardware made by Huawei and ZTE Corp. Citing cybersecurity concerns, the United States has banned the use of equipment from both Huawei and ZTE in its cellular networks. Cisco has not yet been named in documents describing the NSA's global wiretapping operations. Apple, a company named in leaked documents, has slashed iPhone production for the second half of this year on falling overseas sales."
Can anyone blame them? (Score:3)
Pot and Kettle? (Score:3)
Weren't some companies found to be using Chinese clones of Cisco hardware and things which contained compromised chips and such? I remember reading about seizures of this hardware some time ago.
Re:Pot and Kettle? (Score:5, Interesting)
Counterfeit Cisco equipment.
http://www.networkhardware.com/counterfeit-cisco-chat#.Ucmxi_m64zI
The idea really is that the counterfeits were finding their way into US Government via Authorized Cisco sellers buying up such devices from eBay.
The thing is, if it talks like a duck and walks like a duck, it's still a duck. If the hardware was working, just using cheaper chinese knockoff parts, the MTBF is likely a lot shorter.
But don't confuse counterfeit hardware, meant to look and act like the original, with aunthentic gear that's been refurbished and compromised in the process. Notice how malware gets onto storage devices (like digital picture frames) because somewhere along the production path, pirated software was used? This is the same principle in play.
The reason ZTE and Huawei aren't allowed to sell to US Government is because they (the US) can't wire-tap that gear. Likewise Cisco may have been complicit (or even forced at gunpoint for all we know) to allow wiretapping in their products. If those same products were sold to China, then it's equally likely the Chinese government can wiretap it as well if they figure out how the US does it.
But the point in all these Snowden related problems is that Cisco is going to suffer losses from this. Like the most "evil" companies in the US are the wireless carriers (Verizon, AT&T), Cisco (who provides them with hardware), Oracle (Databases), IBM and Microsoft. I wouldn't put it past any of these companies to be complicit with government requests to access or provide backdoors into their products.
More to the point, If you're fond of using cloud services (Gmail included) which the data is hosted in US data centers, guess what, the Patriot act says the US Government can access it all they damn well please.
It would be wonderful if some court found that the US can not spy on Americans or foreigners who's data is stored or transits in the US under the fourth amendment and to throw out the patriot act. But no, once the government takes rights away, it never gives them back.
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Saying that all Cisco gear has backdoors for the USG in it is a pretty bold claim, and one that Ive not heard before. Youre supposing that noone has noticed this "backdoor" traffic on their cisco gear (or thru any of the network devices that traffic traverses), AND that the USG is comfortable knowing that 90% of the infrastructure out there is already compromised?
Provide sources, please.
Wait (Score:2)
You mean there are electronic products that are NOT made in China? Where are Cisco products manufactured?
Great Development (Score:3)
As all countries are spying at each other and stop trusting each other, international trade of It goods collapse. As in most goods, electronics are involved, this will harm international trade. As present China did not ban European products, but as they encourage the use of Chinese products, this ban is not USA only. The Europeans should try to do something similar. They should avoid US, British and Chinese products all along and encourage its companies to use strong encryption and tor like systems.
The real reason... (Score:5, Insightful)
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The Chinese have successfully copied Cisco's HW so there's no reason to buy the genuine product.
I thought that Cisco's advantage over its competitors was in its SW, not HW...
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The Chinese have successfully copied Cisco's HW so there's no reason to buy the genuine product.
I thought that Cisco's advantage over its competitors was in its SW, not HW...
Actually, their business advantage is in figuring out how to make people pay enormous sums of money for things that should be, and otherwise are, nearly free.
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Cisco aren't really about hardware, they are about support. I worked at a place where they didn't even have access to their Cisco router, they had to call Cisco who managed it remotely for them.
Cisco but not Cisco (Score:2)
This just means that they will use locally produced copies of Cisco equipment. Which is dramatically different from what they do now ... Yeah...
Protectionism (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, China, I have no issue with a sovereign nation looking to its own industry to provide the technologies it needs to defend itself from threats, whether they are of an analog or digital nature. You shouldn't depend on foreign suppliers for your defense, not only because they may be somehow compromised with unknown backdoors, but also because you have no control of the supply. So sure, drop Cisco; it's probably for the best.
But if you are considering Huawei switches and routers to provide you any sort of security, you may wish to rethink that particular course of action [youtube.com]. The NSA doesn't /need/ to install backdoors when the software is vulnerable by default. [securityweek.com]
Cisco hardware may be compromised with backdoors, but at least they are /competently/ compromised...
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oh really? (Score:2)
Re:oh really? (Score:5, Insightful)
So then what's the story? The US government has been making noise about banning Chinese gear for a while. Reciprocation is entirely fair.
Is NSA snooping hurting the US software industry? (Score:5, Insightful)
Before facebook was seen as the fuel for the social revolutions, twitter the next media platform but now because of all the NSA snooping revelation, it has made all our software companies look like snitches.
Furthermore, it was a lone whistle blower rather than the powerhouse companies that fought against this, it has the made the software companies look placid and complaint to questionable data gathering.
XBox One unveiling response was that it looked like a perfect spying machine not a gaming machine, new cellphones or OSes will be thought to be full of back doors and websites to be perceived to be constantly monitoring data and handing them over to the authorities.
This might drive customers away from US software industry products.
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This might drive customers away from US software industry products.
But where will they be driven to?
Ironic (Score:2)
This coming from a country known for their counterfeit Cisco hardware.
Are there really backdoors in Cisco? (Score:2)
I just might have a few of these products at my workplace. Are there really backdoors or are the Chinese just paranoid?
Keep buying Cisco (Score:2)
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There are far more deployed of the small kind than the big ones, are more invisible to the IT people as they are what others goes thru for remote access. And i usually see small ones everywhere, while putting linux as firewalls/vpn/etc instead of cisco on other places.
And considering that cisco runs linux embedded in a lot of them, maybe could appear some open, auditable firmware replacement even for big routers.
I am boycotting Cisco (Score:2)
Re:Excellent initiative ! (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't you understand what just happened? We are now entering a trade war which could spiral into another cold war.
This is not going to be good for us citizens who will lose our jobs. It will not be good for the US economy, and Chinese spies will continue hacking into US corporations. You want to be ruled by China then that is fine but let's not pretend like it will be good news to most people in America.
Re:Excellent initiative ! (Score:4, Insightful)
There is a war. Huaewei is dragged through the mud by witless/gutless/dimwits in the US Congress. Turnabout is fair play.
The silly thing is, that all of the cell phones across the planets are like little location devices, revealing your location, your contacts, your texts, and your conversations.
Cisco is on the slide anyway, and this won't really have a dramatic effect on the US economy. The problem, you see, is that the warriors aren't making enough money right now, and with moderate Middle East peace, there's no good money to be made from that.
Trade war? Insignificant. Sorry. Just not gonna happen.
Re:Excellent initiative ! (Score:5, Interesting)
There is a war. Huaewei is dragged through the mud by witless/gutless/dimwits in the US Congress. Turnabout is fair play.
The silly thing is, that all of the cell phones across the planets are like little location devices, revealing your location, your contacts, your texts, and your conversations.
Cisco is on the slide anyway, and this won't really have a dramatic effect on the US economy. The problem, you see, is that the warriors aren't making enough money right now, and with moderate Middle East peace, there's no good money to be made from that.
Trade war? Insignificant. Sorry. Just not gonna happen.
If the boycott of Cisco takes place then a trade war has begun. Cisco is one of the most important tech companies in the USA. What if they boycott Apple, Microsoft, and several others? I expect there will be a trade war as well as a cold war among hackers.
Re:Excellent initiative ! (Score:5, Insightful)
So the boycott surrounding Huawei is ok then? Who fired the first shot?
Cisco either stands on its own, or doesn't. If Cisco can't prove that it's not sending backdoor info to the NSA, then is China justified in its concern? Let the Chinese boycott whomever they want. There is no right to sell something anywhere. There is value or there is not.
The war with hackers has been going on for a decade. We do stuff (from the USA) and they do stuff (from mainland China). You're surprised?
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And this will initiate a trade war. Now China will suspect every US IT product of having a backdoor. Even if this has always been true, it's now proven true by Snowden and the consequences to the economy will be negative. It means more protectionist policies are coming as distrust slows global trade.
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Not gonna happen. There is too much investment on both sides. And if it cleans up the misdeeds of both side's spooks-- so much the better.
Does the dark side of intelligence need a spanking? Oh.Yeah. Will this do it? No.
This was the Chinese press calling for the action, not the government. Our press did the same stupid thing regarding Huawei. Did it have an effect? Not really.
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Not gonna happen. There is too much investment on both sides. And if it cleans up the misdeeds of both side's spooks-- so much the better.
Does the dark side of intelligence need a spanking? Oh.Yeah. Will this do it? No.
This was the Chinese press calling for the action, not the government. Our press did the same stupid thing regarding Huawei. Did it have an effect? Not really.
It already is happening. Do you think the boycotts will stop here? The US will retaliate and then China will retaliate.
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Umm, I don't think so. Whose propaganda are you reading that cites this? Do you have any clue how much business is transacted between the US and China? This is nothing. Ignore the bruised egos and weaseling astroturfing corporate PR people trying to distract you. These are corporations that are scared to death to report a bad quarter to their Wall Street overlords. They live in a separate reality.
Re:Excellent initiative ! (Score:5, Informative)
Well, quite frankly, how could they not?
If all of these companies are helping with this, and allowing them to spy on global communications, how can we believe they aren't complicit?
The US government can force you to add in back doors and not tell anybody due to secrecy laws, and looking at the scope of this spying issue, you pretty much have to assume there's a good chance that those products do have a backdoor.
How could China (or any other country) trust that this gear hasn't been written in such a way as to enable this kind of spying any more than the US believed this Chinese made gear?
The US has more or less said "for our security it's our right to spy on everybody", which means we should also assume that every other country has decided they should be able to do the same damned thing.
Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Cisco ... if you've been named as part of this, the assumption simply has to be that, as an entity, you aren't safe to trust. It also means you should assume those same entities will be forced to help every other damned country carry out the same level of spying.
It's not like they could claim they aren't willing to help government spying, because they've already been doing it. At which point, saying 'yes' to the US government and 'no' to any other country is an untenable position.
When you get your corporations involved in spying, it's a natural conclusion that your corporations might be involved in spying.
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Right because is somehow Snowden's fault our government was conducting espionage against a nation we are not at war with cold or otherwise. No program on the scale of what the NSA has been doing was going to stay a secret forever. If you want blame someone blame the policy makers who have our government behaving deceitfully, and hypocritically.
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It will be bad for the Wall Street side of the economy, but it could be a boon for Main street. If China boycotts Cisco for security concerns, Cisco might have to bring production back to the U.S. perhaps not so good for Cisco's short term profits but it might be very good for employment.
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Yet Cisco hasn't litigated ANY of that, to my knowledge, at all! Huawei has offered source code, and time and again refutes that their product violates any of Cisco's IP. Your argument is a red herring. The crux of the US Congressional hearings focus on alleged backdoors, and spying.
See http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/07/29/cisco_huawei_case_ends/ [theregister.co.uk] for more information. Please check your facts before making assertions that aren't true. Cisco is a leaking ship, not that Huawei did the world any favors by em
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They like to think so but they dropped the ball some time ago. It turns out you can't be at the cutting edge of technology when you get rid of the people doing the development.
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Given what our Government has been doing to Universities in HK, conducting cyber attacks of they type our own military has publicly stated could be considered an act of war this response is COMPLETELY JUSTIFIED. I don't know why any reasonable person would expect China to do anything less.
After all what have done? Talked about potential trade disruption. Considering we have already done the same, with arguably less provocation, this had to be expected.
The fact is all the secrecy, creative interpretation
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I am not so sure. The fact is this little blue marble is only so big. There will probably necessarily come a day where its us them. Maybe that impasse is 50, 100, or 300 years from now but I think its coming. Starting an economic conflict /now/ when it really would still hurt them more than us might not be a terrible plan.
Re:Excellent initiative ! (Score:5, Insightful)
One day, hopefully before it's too late, you dimwits will realize there's this other option called WE. We are all humans. Once you get used to the fact that killing/supressing/enslaving/opressing others to support an unsustainable lifestyle is unsustainable, maybe we can make real inroads into sustainability and cooperation.
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Call me when the shuttle lands, Pollyanna. It's a nice sentiment, but until we all look the same feature and skin-wise, there will still be tribal us vs. them attitudes; we should try to rise above it, but it's hard-wired down to the lizard brain level of herd mentality.
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Physics pretty much says you are wrong. Call me whatever you like but there is some number of people this planet can't feed, or keep within an survivable thermal envelop. I don't know if its 9,10, or 100 billion for that matter. Who knows how efficient we can be. There is however some point where its going to come down to resources being available for your family or someone else.
I don't think anyone's ideals will be so important to them when their kid is hungry.
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Not happening either. They don't even want North Korea and wouldn't know what to
Already in a trade war ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't you understand what just happened? We are now entering a trade war ...
We have already been in a trade war with China for many years. Its merely been a one side trade war allowing China to do as they please ...
It starts with a 20-30% price discount on all goods and services due to currency manipulation. It continues with dumping products in targeted industries below "cost". Sometimes literally, sometimes indirectly by not enforcing Chinese wage and pollution laws. Yes such laws exists, they are merely selectively ignored for strategic industries and markets. It then continues with barriers to entry for US goods and services, entry may only be allowed with domestic partnerships and technology transfers (free R&D).
A very interesting read on this topic:
http://www.amazon.com/Death-China-Confronting-Dragon-Global/dp/0132180235/ref=sr_1_1 [amazon.com]
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We are now entering a trade war ...
No, we've been in a trade war for years. It's just that China was the only one fighting it.
Re:Excellent initiative ! (Score:4)
Only problem with your statement is that so far the start of every full blown war has helped the US economy. I'm not talking about peacekeeping or drawn out police actions...I mean war. WWI, WWII, Cold War. All boosted the US economy to some degree.
One of the main reasons is that these companies decide to bring jobs back to the US. Not sure if this will happen in this age of a global market. But the tension between US and China has been growing for a very long time.
The cold war and WW2 is why we have prism in the first place. Nothing good resulted from the red scare, the cold war, etc. It did not help our economy either, look at the fact that the US is not backed by gold, look at the fact that the US buying power in a family has decreased. We have to work more to get less than our parents did and our parents had to work more than theirs. So at this point, no it does not increase your salary or your buying power to have war unless you work for the war machine of China or the US.
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Re:Excellent initiative ! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not a capital offense to critique the government in china. Though sure, you might get locked away and all that stuff.
But at least they are openly authoritarian. Unlike the US where you are supposed to have all these right but in the end you can still be locked away and all that stuff for arbirary reasons. Or bombed by drones, or assassinated by the CIA.
When it comes to replicating that authentic 1984 feeling, the US is far in lead with the twisting of language and concepts and covertly doing the opposite of what is stated. Lets see.
Perpetual warfare: check
Removing your rights in the name of preserving them in doublespeak fashion: check
Doing its best to achive universal surveillance: check
Demonizing the enemies while presenting self as bastion of glorious freedom and prosperity, while false flagging, assassinating and shitting everything up: check
And so on.
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Or at the very least economically marginalized be being the denied the right travel, and black listed from any job that does a background check.
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Unlike the good guys in America, which spies on its citizens and charges them with espionage for speaking out against the government.
When it comes to curtalizing citizen activity, at least the Chinese are honest about it. The shameless hypocrisy coming from the US government is insulting.
China does the exact same thing. Don't you live in China?
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Is this why you vote Republican, because they're honest about their stance, unlike Democrats as they have demonstrated?
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or if you're not a US citizen, is this why you favor Republicans over Democrats?
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Every country should boost its defences if another country is snooping around anonymously in its businesses!!! No country has the right to do that! Thank Edward Snowden indeed!
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Every country should boost its defences if another country is snooping around anonymously in its businesses!!! No country has the right to do that! Thank Edward Snowden indeed!
That is the cause of the cold war. I guess we are going to go back to that again because governments never trust other governments and never have.
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That is the cause of the cold war. I guess we are going to go back to that again because governments never trust other governments and never have.
As my parents once said: if you want our trust then stop acting like a child and start acting responsibly.
Re:Thank Edward Snowden (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, this is just the pot calling one of the many kettles black. Huawei and ZTE allow this type of "access" as well, but it's just on behalf of the Chinese government rather than the US government.
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Huawei and ZTE allow this type of "access" as well
Do you have any evidence whatsoever that this is true?
Re:Thank Edward Snowden (Score:5, Insightful)
If that is a sincere thanks to Snowden, I agree.
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If you were an American you would understand why this is bad.
And if you were Chinese you would understand why this is good. Guess what? This is not a battle of good and evil.
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Listen, retard ...
Thank you for starting your post this way. It saved me the trouble of reading any further.
Re:Thank Edward Snowden (Score:4, Insightful)
Listen, retard, that's not how it works. It's not about who has the biggest dick. It's about who has the money. If China does well, the US does well too. Because now you have a giant market to export. If the chinese can afford to buy US products, you will have more jobs in the US, in the manufacturing sector.
No its really not about the money. Its about the wealth. Wealth is about being secure in the ability to produce the things you need, and having time left over to produce the things you want and to enjoy them. If you have no production in the end you have no wealth. Our current relationship with China is destructive the general wealth of the United States, even its making a certain group of people extremely wealthy.
God I just HATE how short sighted Americans are. How do you think the world works, really? Do you think you just print money and that's it?
No and I don't think the parent does either but it sure looks like you actually do.
It's not. It gets to a point where you can be the world's bestest USA #1 murica fuck yeah economy, and then no one buys from you. If no one buys from you, there's no trading, and you have an import deficit, and you lose the #1 spot. Quickly. Do you think you can keep printing dollars and buy everything from china? Sure you can. Then you lose all manufacturing jobs, and have people protesting, which you have to keep in welfare. Then, because the economy shrinks, you lose your shiny IT job. Then companies close down or are sold to the chinese. Suddenly the only people making money are the ones in "finance", which is a time bomb that just takes 1 bad day at NYSE to crap out the whole country's economy and drag the rest of NATO with it too.
Which is exactly why people like me argue if we are going to start a trade war or a new cold war the time to do it is NOW. Not later, we need to do it now why we still have some industry out side of fiance left, time is running out.
China doing well is the best you can do to reduce your deficit. You don't need to be the #1 all the time, you just need to know how to play your cards. Just remember, you just cannot nuke China. You can wave your big nuclear ICBM cock all you want but you can't afford to use them. The chinese will fuck you up, bad.
Learn the fucking rules of commerce, for once!
Wrong reducing the deficit is good and all but if we do it thru the Fed monetizing debt with endless QE to prop up financial markets so we buy stuff in China, with no real recourse against them just nationalizing it later it won't mean much. We need to create real wealth not just entries on a balance sheet.
The 90s taught us that service-based economies are nice, but you leave out all the untrained masses. There are people who do not want to go to college, and just want a job - and those people won't be able to find jobs if the US keeps the elitist "I import everything because I don't want to get my hands dirty" view. Unless you're a tiny country, it's not viable to live off just "service". Design, R&D is nice, but you need extremely high specialization for this nowadays. If defense is not there to pay for it, how long do you think that will hold?
Well I guess you got one right.
Re:Thank Edward Snowden (Score:5, Funny)
And Cisco saved DS9 countless times.
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He also made a pretty cool song about womens' underwear.
What, no links?
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Are we at war with China?
Are we even in a cold war with China?
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Are we at war with China?
Are we even in a cold war with China?
China and the US are friends but also at war in other areas depending on the area. In the technology space the US and China are at war. It's a cyber war between hackers at this point and Edward Snowden has made it harder for US hackers which gives the advantage to Chinese hackers. This impacts the global economy and the US economy.
Re:Thank Edward Snowden (Score:5, Interesting)
This has nothing to do with Snowden. This has everything to do with backlash against the US for blocking use of backdoored Chinese hardware in our networks. Since we blocked them from selling to us, they are trying to match the move by blocking us from selling networking gear to them, regardless of if there is a back door or not. It's Tit for Tat, nothing more.
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Snowden has made it harder for US hackers
How did he do that?
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We have always been at war with China
Re:Thank Edward Snowden (Score:5, Interesting)
I wish this were not the case. Maybe the US, Russia, and China need to do what European countries did in 1945 to 1945 and allow their students to travel freely among the nations. That way, the historic French/German hatred has waned to brawls at football matches and not trenches/tanks.
I probably sound crazy, but it might do good for an open border policy among the three superpowers. This doesn't mean that sovereignty has to be given up, just like Spain is still Spain, but at least the people in the country are not just seeing what is spoon fed to them in the press.
The 1946 decision to let Europeans wander among nations has done wonders for Europe... maybe we should consider the same thing here in the US?
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Correction, 1945 to 1946. This was a time that Western Europe was either going to figure out how to set member country differences aside or collapse completely.
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The 1946 decision to let Europeans wander among nations has done wonders for Europe... maybe we should consider the same thing here in the US?
I just want to share my agreement with this. If we promoted the idea of young people traveling around the United States then maybe we would not have these dumbass regional fights stalling our government. Although, the bigger issue seems to be generational, so maybe we should promote the idea of people transitioning between different generations?
Not sure (Score:2)
I'm not sure I want to drop the border with Oklahoma; they steal _everything_! Even dirt!
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I'm not sure I want to drop the border with Oklahoma; they steal _everything_! Even dirt!
Don't be too hard on them, it's only because of all the dirt they lost in the Dust Bowl.
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Also, it worked in Europe because the economic differences between thos
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Against what? The NSA spying on US citizens?
Re:Thank Edward Snowden (Score:5, Insightful)
Now one thing is certain for me: The US is slipping into a totalitarian state at a rate I wouldn't have believed a couple of weeks ago. Even the revelations and proof that the US government is stashing all the data it can get on its own citizens in spite of the constitution and the law only triggers anger over the dude that revealed it all.
People, this guy should be a national hero by now, not a fugitive.
So, totalitarian it will be and the US population is gently coming along apparently.
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And they're coming for your guns. You can't have a totalitarian police state if the citizens are armed.
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He has certainly helped China to boost it's defenses.
I think there is a strong case to be made that just the opposite would occur. By moving away from Cisco the NSA may very well find it easier to compromise more Chinese infrastructure.
It turns out you don't need backdoor conspiracies to have a little fun with Chinese telcom gear.
http://phenoelit.org/stuff/Huawei_DEFCON_XX.pdf [phenoelit.org]
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Why shouldn't a nation be able to take steps to maintain its own sovereignty? I'm not a fan of Chinese human rights violations, but they have an interest, no, a responsibility to secure their borders from US aggression. Including espionage.
They can, the problem is it brews an even more paranoid environment which means more prism like spying operations will be built. The more nations distrust each other the more they spy on each other. The cold war is an example of this kind of distrust.
The level of distrust China now has may lead China to crack down domestically and build more effective domestic spying capabilities.
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The level of distrust China now has may lead China to crack down domestically and build more effective domestic spying capabilities.
When it comes to the US snooping in one's affairs, strong distrust is not only healthy, it can only be called reasonable.
Remember, it's not paranoia if the NSA is actually checking out your internet history.
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Dude, were you born yesterday ?
Do you really thing that China was all trusty of made-in US before ? China is just having a bit of PR fun at the US right now but in practice nothing change: the US tries to spy China and China try to spy the US. That's the job of the NSA after all.
What you just learned is confirmation that the US was also lying to its own citizen. Also you learned that when it comes to spying a Chinese national, a Taliban general or a French plumber have exactly the same rights for the U
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China has now a justification to stop paying royalties to an US company for routers, and replace their infrastructure with their own homegrown devices. Also, hurt Cisco's profit margins so they can impose their Huawei/ZTE devices to the US market. It's a win-win for them.
Also: this has absolutely nothing to do with privacy, hacking or spying. Because china could just be doing the same on the other end. But to be fair: it wasn't long ago that ZTE or Huawei provided the source to their routers. At least they
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So you are suggesting that all our base is not belong to us? :)
Or are you suggesting that we are not in treble.
Seriously though - "global damage" then a complaint about exaggeration? The press may be foaming at the mouth but a guy flying from place to place bitching about how the NSA can't do it's job without farming it out to vunerable subcontractors isn't causing global damage. It's the ones that quietly took the money from foreign
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I really don't give a rat's ass if China is snooping on me. I do, however, care greatly that my own government is snooping on me.
That's why I use Kaspersky at home. I doubt the FSB gives a damn about me, but to the NSA I'm suspicious because I'm a US citizen.
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Maybe, just maybe, if we manufactured our own shit and purchased our own shit, we wouldn't have to worry about such shit.
Because the NSA doesn't have backdoor access to Microsoft?
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Because the NSA doesn't have backdoor access to Microsoft?
They do, but there are too many bugs in the code for them to get any information!
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Now we see the real reason for the banning of Huawei equipment. Because unlike Cisco, it's difficult to subject Huawei to secret court orders forcing them to compromise the security of their customers.
that's actually a rather good point.
with cisco backdoors the fucks can also pretend that the chinese don't know about them.
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Huawei is good enough at compromising their own security though. I feel like I'm the only one that remembers this. https://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9229785/Hackers_reveal_critical_vulnerabilities_in_Huawei_routers_at_Defcon [computerworld.com]
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Yeah, nothing says "stabbed in the back" quite like someone telling people what their own government is doing to them.
It's funny, not that long ago one of the main principles of America was that you shouldn't blindly trust the government. And now the government is saying "our secret stuff is fine, you can trust us" and people are buying it.
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More ISPs that care about privacy should look into deploying open-source networking equipment. We should practice peering with neighboring networks, use secure VoIP when possible & support open-sourc
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More ISPs that care about privacy should look into deploying open-source networking equipment.
That is LAUGHABLY funny. No open source router is even close to core-router speeds. Yes, a lot of "core routers" are build on open source technologies, but only so much as using Linux or *BSD as the OS...all have custom/proprietary interfaces to the hardware forwarding engines. Almost all of them have custom routing protocol stacks. Don't get me wrong, you want a small SOHO device, or even something that can handle a corporate LAN, sure....but try doing 100 ports of 10-gig-each in a chassis...just isn't
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No surprise here, who wants to have equipment that can be killed from the thousands miles away
When I was a lowly dial-up support tech in the 90s, we used to make fun of angry callers who exlaimed, "my business depends on the Internet!". They should have had more than one ISP, we chided. Today there are many businesses that depend on the Internet intrinsically. It seems more forgivable now; but perhaps the mockery is still apropos. Perhaps the idea of any business depending on the Internet is still jus
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As an american (and probably on the NSA watchlist for being 'suspicious' for not drinking the 'kill snowden, rah rah rah!' Koolaid) let me be quite open, honest, and frank here.
You should not trust my nation to do anything but fuck yours up. Our number one and number two exports are bad foriegn policy legislation, and military munitions (as in, shots fired, not sold.)
The time where you cannot trust the firmware in your equipment happened a long time ago. The need for fully auditable software has never been