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CIA vs Huawei: intelligence agencies gang up on red menace... like the Mate 10 Pro

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By Daniel Petrov

Updated: Feb 15, 2018, 7:42 AM

In the latest installment of the "everybody is spying on us and we have to protect ourselves" drama, the US intelligence agencies have taken a firm stance against... the Kirin 970 chipset paired with dual f/1.6 aperture Leica cameras, and a 4000mAh battery.

Yes, we are talking about the Mate 10 Pro, or other "products and services" made by Huawei or ZTE, lumped together in Tuesday's Senate testimony by heads of security agencies like CIA, FBI, NSA, and others from the three-letter security soup that, thankfully, keeps us safe from election or NSA hacks.

FBI Director Chris Wray went on record to reiterate the multi-year mantra that they are "deeply concerned about the risks of allowing any company or entity that is beholden to foreign governments that don’t share our values to gain positions of power inside our telecommunications networks... the capacity to maliciously modify or steal information. And it provides the capacity to conduct undetected espionage."

Well, that likely explains why US carriers were forced to scrap the deal to include excellent handsets like the Mate 10 Pro in their portfolios at the last minute, depriving subscribers of the chance to look beyond the Apple-Samsung duopoly there. While we can agree that carrier network equipment could potentially warrant a second opinion, crusading against consumer products by the third-largest cell phone maker on that ground sets an interesting precedent, to say the least.

Those celebrity photos circulating not long ago came from iCloud accounts, after all, not Huawei phones, plus a lot of handsets and components are made in China anyway, so if the government there needed to install backdoors in consumer cell phones, it probably could, and we would have heard about it by now. Huawei chimed in on the matter, saying that its phones and network equipment products are used throughout the globe without other staged witch hunts to speak of:

Huawei is aware of a range of U.S. government activities seemingly aimed at inhibiting Huawei’s business in the U.S. market. Huawei is trusted by governments and customers in 170 countries worldwide and poses no greater cybersecurity risk than any ICT vendor, sharing as we do common global supply chains and production capabilities.

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Daniel, a devoted tech writer at PhoneArena from 2010 to 2025, has been engrossed in mobile technology since the Windows Mobile era. His expertise spans mobile hardware, software, and carrier networks, and he's keenly interested in the future of digital health, car connectivity, and 5G. Beyond his professional pursuits, Daniel finds balance in travel, reading, and exploring new tech innovations, while contemplating the ethical and privacy implications of our digital future.