Huawei CEO criticizes US and refers to Prism and Snowden in MWC keynote
Guo Ping, the current chairman of Huawei, made critical, suggestive remarks about the reliability of the US during his keynote address at Mobile World Congress, with references to the Prism bugging program.
During his keynote address at MWC in Barcelona, Ping addressed the US pressure on various countries not to use the company’s network equipment, making some direct comments and indirect references. For example, the chairman concluded his speech by remarking that the US accusation about the possibility of using backdoors for espionage contains no evidence whatsoever. “The irony is that the US Cloud Act gives its government agencies the authority to access data beyond national borders,” Ping said.
He is referring to the Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act, which gives American authorities the power to collect data stored abroad in criminal cases without the intervention of a court if it is stored in a data center of an American company, for example. The person whose data belongs to does not need to be informed. The EU has previously been critical of this law.
He opened Ping’s passage on internet security with the slogan ‘Prism, prism on the wall. Who’s the most trustworthy of them all?’. “That is an important question to ask,” said the CEO. “If you don’t understand this question, ask Edward Snowden.” Prism is the NSA and FBI’s large-scale surveillance program that gave them direct access to the systems of major tech companies to collect emails, videos, photos and documents during investigations. The existence of this program was revealed through the Snowden documents.
The Huawei chairman called for cooperation and “fact-based regulation.” He also backed calls for governments and mobile operators to work together to test and certify network equipment, something the GSMA calls a Network Equipment Security Assurance Scheme. Finally, the CEO claimed that Huawei has not placed any backdoors, will never do so and will not allow others to do so.