Free Republic

American whistle-blower Edward Snowden said Beijing’s use of technology to control its citizens and electronically track US targets prompted him to investigate and then expose Washington’s mass surveillance programme. In his book "Permanent Record," published on Wednesday, the former US spy agency contractor who now lives in exile in Russia, detailed how he fled to Hong Kong and then Moscow after creating one of the most serious security breaches in American history. Snowden, who was a technician subcontracted to the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency for seven years, said he began to have suspicions about secret post-September...

A U.S. intelligence report for the first time links China’s largest telecommunications company to Beijing’s KGB-like intelligence service and says the company recently received nearly a quarter-billion dollars from the Chinese government. The disclosures are a setback for Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd.’s efforts to break into the U.S. telecommunications market. The company has been blocked from doing so three times by the U.S. government because of concerns about its links to the Chinese government. The report by the CIA-based Open Source Center states that Huawei’s chairwoman, Sun Yafang, worked for the Ministry of State Security (MSS) Communications Department before joining...

The first to call the presidential election for Joe Biden was AT&T. AT&T, through its subsidiary CNN, one of the largest conglomerates in the world with a market cap of over $200 billion, billions of which come from lucrative federal contracts, was the first to claim that Biden was the winner. Beyond government contracts, AT&T has a major stake in the 5G wars and has spent a lot of money investing in the Biden campaign. AT&T employees were the tenth largest source of contributions to the Biden campaign. Biden had attended fundraisers at the homes of two AT&T lobbyists, but...

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is opening a new China-related counterintelligence case about once every 10 hours as it pushes back against Beijing’s expansive campaign to steal American intellectual property (IP) and influence policymakers, FBI director Christopher Wray said in a speech on July 7. Wray warned that Beijing’s counterintelligence and economic espionage operations are the “greatest long-term threat” to the United States’ economic and national security. Its stealing of U.S. technology and trade secrets is on a scale “so massive that it represents one of the largest transfers of wealth in human history,” he said in a speech...

US President Trump signed an executive order Wednesday declaring a national emergency, barring the use of telecommunications equipment made by companies deemed a threat to national security… The Executive Order did not name China or Chinese companies specifically. However, separately, and soon after the order was signed, the US Commerce Department did just that. The Commerce Department added Huawei and 70 affiliates to its “Entity List” after it concluded that the Chinese company was engaged in activities “contrary to US national security or foreign policy interests”.

The grand battle of the Trade Avengers in Washington really isn't that important in the grand scheme of things. What matters is the implosion of America's technological predominance, exemplified by the Trump administration's strategic humiliation over Fifth Generation (5G) mobile broadband. In 1258 the Mongols appeared before the gates of Baghdad, the capital of the Abbasid Dynasty. Caliph Al-Musta'sim assumed that the capital's 12-foot-thick walls would protect the city against lightly-armed Mongol horsemen, but the Mongols brought with them a thousand Chinese siege engineers. The Chinese mercenaries breached the walls within three weeks and the Mongols killed most of the...

The U.S. case against the chief financial officer of China’s Huawei Technologies, who was arrested in Canada last month, centers on the company’s suspected ties to two obscure companies. One is a telecom equipment seller that operated in Tehran; the other is that firm’s owner, a holding company registered in Mauritius. U.S. authorities allege CFO Meng Wanzhou deceived international banks into clearing transactions with Iran by claiming the two companies were independent of Huawei, when in fact Huawei controlled them. Huawei has maintained the two are independent: equipment seller Skycom Tech Co Ltd and shell company Canicula Holdings Ltd. But...

MOSCOW -- Two have fled the country. Another is in jail, his oil empire in ruins. Russian President Vladimir Putin has largely succeeded in his campaign pledge to make oligarchs -- the powerful tycoons who emerged in the chaos of post-Soviet Russia -- disappear "as a class." Now, most of the country's super-rich are either packing up or hunkering down and trying to stay on the government's good side. Except Mikhail Fridman. Using bare-knuckles business tactics, the 41-year-old built an $8 billion empire spanning oil, telecoms, banking and retail. Now, he's picking a fight with Leonid Reiman, Russia's telecommunications minister...

EXCLUSIVE: Tech company which maintained Hillary's secret server was sued for 'illegally accessing' database and 'stealing White House military advisers' phone numbers' The Internet company used by Hillary Clinton to maintain her private server was sued for stealing dozens of phone lines including some which were used by the White House. Platte River Networks is said to have illegally accessed the master database for all US phone numbers. It also seized 390 lines in a move that created chaos across the US government. Among the phone numbers which the company took - which all suddenly stopped working - were lines...

Walking alongside rice paddies and water buffalo on the outskirts of Dhaka with Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus was like walking down the red carpet with a Hollywood movie star. Women in saris grabbed at the handsome man with thick gray hair, flirting and addressing him with ease. I was surprised, given we were in a conservative Muslim country where rural women typically take a backseat to men. But this man, who won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, had taught them to stand up to their husbands by giving them small loans that now put them in the driver's seat....

On March 12, 2004, acting attorney general James B. Comey and the Justice Department’s top leadership reached the brink of resignation over electronic surveillance orders that they believed to be illegal. President George W. Bush backed down, halting secret foreign-intelligence-gathering operations that had crossed into domestic terrain. That morning marked the beginning of the end of STELLARWIND, the cover name for a set of four surveillance programs that brought Americans and American territory within the domain of the National Security Agency for the first time in decades. It was also a prelude to new legal structures that allowed Bush and...

Internet old-timers - those of us over age 25 - remember a time when the web was called the Information Superhighway. The debate over net neutrality has us thinking about another sort of highway: the Trans-Texas Corridor. The TTC, a proposed 4,000-mile toll road, rail and utility project, died a death of a thousand cuts in 2010. First proposed as a much-needed infrastructure investment, the well-intentioned project grew into a monstrosity of politically connected contractors, private property concerns and conspiracy theories. The biggest blow to TTC was statewide opposition to granting Spanish-owned developer Cintra a 50-year, multibillion-dollar deal to control...

Inside Iraqi Corruption Charles R. Smith Tuesday, March 29, 2005 John A. Shaw is a curious example of Washington politics gone mad. Shaw is a veteran government employee who served inside the White House under Presidents Ford, Nixon and Reagan and was an associate deputy secretary in the Department of Commerce. In 2001, Shaw was appointed by Bush Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld to head the newly formed Office of International Technology Security. In this post, Shaw began the difficult task of reforming government controls over the export of sensitive technology to foreign countries. In 2003, Shaw began investigating allegations of...

<p>One of the largest Chinese telecommunications equipment suppliers, Huawei Technologies Company, recently unveiled plans to establish Future Wei, a wholly-owned U.S. subsidiary with headquarters in Plano, Texas.</p> <p>Ordinarily, such a foreign investment in the United States would be welcomed by the local Chamber of Commerce and others anticipating associated employment and revenue opportunities. As Americans learn more about the parent company and what Chinese enterprises like it are up to, however, patriots in Texas and elsewhere in this country are likely to say "No way, Huawei!"</p>

Already considered a potential threat to U.S. national security, Huawei is again finding itself under scrutiny, linked to an offer to sell embargoed computer equipment to Iran. A major partner of the Chinese telecommunications gear maker offered to provide €1.3 million ($1.7 million) of Hewlett-Packard computer equipment to Iran in 2010, according to documents reviewed by Reuters. However, Huawei says neither it nor Hong Kong-based Skycom, its privately owned partner, provided the equipment to Mobile Telecommunication Co of Iran, known as MCI. …

The parents of a U.S. engineer found dead in Singapore last year said on Wednesday they will not take part in the rest of a coroner’s inquiry into his death, which they say was linked to a project involving the transfer of sensitive technology to China. In a statement issued through their lawyers, Rick and Mary Todd said they had lost confidence in the system investigating the death of their 31-year-old son, Shane, who was found hanging in his Singapore apartment last June. The Todds did not appear in court on Wednesday, the day after a U.S. medical examiner they...

David Plouffe, a senior White House adviser who was President Obama’s 2008 campaign manager, accepted a $100,000 speaking fee in 2010 from an affiliate of a company doing business with Iran’s government. A subsidiary of MTN Group, a South Africa-based telecommunications company, paid Plouffe for two speeches he made in Nigeria in December 2010, about a month before he joined the White House staff. Since Plouffe’s speeches, MTN Group has come under intensified scrutiny from U.S. authorities because of its activities in Iran and Syria, which are under international sanctions intended to limit the countries’ access to sensitive technology. At...

U.S. lawmakers are pressing two top Chinese technology companies to disclose their inner workings in a probe into security threats to U.S. telecommunications. Closely held Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. and ZTE Corp. were asked Tuesday by letter to document, among other things, their interactions with the Chinese Communist Party and advice given to them by five consultancies, including International Business Machines Corp, Accenture and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). ZTE also was asked about its business in Iran. The investigation by the U.S. House of Representatives' Intelligence Committee reflects fears that booby-trapped technology could be supplied knowingly or unknowingly by the companies, which...

How many have heard of Nadhmi Auchi? Why are we not hearing more about him? Nadhmi Auchi was born in 1937. He is an Iraqi born British-resident and Britain's 22nd wealthiest individual. Nadhmi Auchi co-conspired with fellow Baathist Saddam Hussein in 1959 to assassinate then Prime Minister Abd al-Karim Qasim. Rezko and Obama are both financially connected to him. MSNBC reports that Nadhmi Auchi had helped Orascom (which owns Djezzy GSM), owned by Onsi Sawiris, gain a contract to set-up mobile phone networks in post-Saddam's Iraq. As per Orascom's annual report, page 65, Huawei Technologies is listed as a subsidiary...

Nothing pisses off progressives more, than a perceived infringement on people's rights especially if it has the potential of saving thousands of lives. To those progressive the FISA bill (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) was the definition of evil. The bill prescribed prescribes for the physical and electronic surveillance and collection of "foreign intelligence information" between "foreign powers" and "agents of foreign powers." This is the bill that was made famous because it allowed for "warrantless wiretaps" under certain conditions. Last summer, after much debate. FISA was renewed. The debate centered around a provision which granted immunity from prosecution for the...