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IEEE Is No Longer Banning Huawei Scientists From Peer-Reviewing Papers (ieee.org) 79

AmiMoJo writes: After initially banning Huawei scientists from reviewing papers submitted to the IEEE, the organization contacted the U.S. Department of Commerce seeking clarification. Based on new information, the IEEE has decided that it can still allow Huawei employees to participate in the review process. The IEEE statement reads in part: "IEEE has received the requested clarification from the U.S. Department of Commerce on the applicability of these export control restrictions to IEEE's publication activities. Based on this new information, employees of Huawei and its affiliates may participate as peer reviewers and editors in our publication process. All IEEE members, regardless of employer, can continue to participate in all of the activities of the IEEE.

Our initial, more restrictive approach was motivated solely by our desire to protect our volunteers and our members from legal risk. With the clarification received, this risk has been addressed. We appreciate the many questions and comments from our members and volunteers around the world and thank them for their patience as we worked through a legally complex situation."
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IEEE Is No Longer Banning Huawei Scientists From Peer-Reviewing Papers

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  • I credit this to them reading my previous comment about this issue. It's about time people started listening to me as I am a very stable genius. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
  • by Snotnose ( 212196 ) on Monday June 03, 2019 @05:19PM (#58703716)
    The NSA has been caught with their hands in Cisco firmware. Huawei firmware has yet to be proven hacked.

    So who should we trust, and why?
    • https://qz.com/1535995/the-full-list-of-crimes-huawei-is-accused-of-committing-by-the-us/

      13 counts brought in the Eastern District of New York state:

      (1) and (2) Conspiracy to commit bank fraud: Between around November 2007 to May 2015, Huawei, Skycom, and Meng Wanzhou allegedly conspired to defraud “US Subsidiary 1,” a subsidiary of a global financial institution identified only as “Financial Institution 1,” by misrepresenting Huawei’s relationship with Skycom to clear more tha

      • by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 03, 2019 @05:38PM (#58703814)

        So... no proven backdoors in Huawei hardware? By now it's plain to see that the "problem" with Huawei is that they won't spy for the five eyes.

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          The biggest "problem" with Huawei is that they won the race to 5G. They have a lot of the key patents and are a couple of years ahead of everyone else to market.

          This was inevitable really. Same thing happened with Japan - first accused of simply copying/stealing, and then suddenly their products were better than ours and everyone wanted a Japanese car and a Japanese TV.

      • by Anonymous Coward

        You realize that this list of allegations works mostly against your wish to discredit Huawei: The US has crazy, belligerent and probably-internationally-illegal laws of the "what we say goes" variety, like the IEEPA; and Huawei apparently worked around them or tried to. Fine by me. Huawei has had, or still has, business in and with Iran. Also fine. Theft of trade secrets: Intellectual Property is immoral and anti-social. Technology should be shared, not hidden away. Now, this is not a binary issue, and the

      • by Anonymous Coward

        The US rarely arrests senior businesspeople, US or foreign, for alleged crimes committed by their companies. Corporate managers are usually arrested for their alleged personal crimes (such as embezzlement, bribery, or violence) rather than their company’s alleged malfeasance. Yes, corporate managers should be held to account for their company’s malfeasance, up to and including criminal charges; but to start this practice with a leading Chinese businessperson is a stunning provocation to the Chin

      • none of that is evidence of backdoors or hacking.

        Sure, it's evdidence of *something* but the fact that you link off-topic evidence is proof that you wen to quite some effort looking for evidence, but found nothing relevant. Which proves the point.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by DRJlaw ( 946416 )

      The NSA has been caught with their hands in Cisco firmware. Huawei firmware has yet to be proven hacked.

      Why hack the firmware when you can have the company write backdoors in from the start [bloomberg.com] for you?

      After all, "any organization or citizen shall support, assist, and cooperate with state intelligence work according to law." Intelligence Law, Article 7. "State intelligence work organs, when legally carrying forth intelligence work, may demand that concerned organs, organizations, or citizens provide needed s

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Check the detail of that story. Huawei had some support accounts in their hardware (protected by decent passwords) that Vodafone asked them to disable, but they didn't completely get rid of them the first time.

        Which is exactly the same as Cisco did, multiple times. Except Cisco screwed up worse by hard coding in default passwords.

        The law in China is a concern, as is the law in the US and the UK where they can force companies to do the exact same thing. In the US you get a National Security Letter, in the UK

        • by DRJlaw ( 946416 )

          Check the detail of that story. Huawei had some support accounts in their hardware (protected by decent passwords) that Vodafone asked them to disable, but they didn't completely get rid of them the first time.

          Which is not in any way inconsistent with what I wrote.

          Which is exactly the same as Cisco did, multiple times. Except Cisco screwed up worse by hard coding in default passwords.

          Well, then, that makes it OK.

          Not.

          The law in China is a concern, as is the law in the US and the UK where they can force compa

    • The NSA has been caught with their hands in Cisco firmware. Huawei firmware has yet to be proven hacked. So who should we trust, and why?

      This is false. The NSA intercepted shipped cisco equipment and infected them before they arrived at their destination. You are attempting so spread mis-information but why?

    • by ron_ivi ( 607351 )

      So who should we trust, and why?

      We should trust Cisco to partner with the NSA, and trust Huawei to partner with China's equivalent.

      Safest to cascade a Huawei firewall in front of a Cisco firewall in series.

      The Cisco firewall will block Huawei's Chinese backdoor, and the Huawei firewall will block Cisco's NSA backdoor.

  • Non-US citizens will be required to supply the IEEE with all their Social Media and email ids.

    And the Social Media and email ids of their spouses or partners or whatever.

    And the Social Media and email ids of their children, etc., etc. . .

  • by AlanObject ( 3603453 ) on Monday June 03, 2019 @05:57PM (#58703926)

    My first experience with Huawei was when their people were banned from the exhibit floor after hours because their people were caught taking other exhibitor's systems apart to get private technical details. I think that was back in 2004. A lot of things their people have done since have enhanced their reputation for anything-goes IP appropriation. They are very well known for copying designs to leverage with the legendary any-margin-is-ok-margin Chinese manufacturing industry.

    These days they have made enough money that they are starting to do a lot of heavy lifting for community-based standards settings. They publish a lot of papers in other organizational groups I audit. They contribute a fair amount. Just how much I can't say.

    Just the other day I was mailed 3GPP TS 29.244 V15.0.0 (2017-12) Technical Specification because it is relevant to a project I am working on. For some reason it arrived as a Word document and not a PDF. Looking into the document properties it turns out that it as Huawei document. Pretty central to 5G.

    So if we do decide to crush Huawei under the boot-heel of world-wide community disapprobation, what are we going to lose if it is successful? Beyond that what would it take for Huawei to redeem itself?

    • Word documents are still a security issue, partly due to the extensive self-stored change history, partly due to the many historical security vulnerabilities propagated by Word documents, and partly due the frequent embedding of web links that are automatically loaded and notify remote servers of the use of the specific link. Some of those are occasionally useful features, but very rarely.

      To strip out most of these, I've found the old "catdoc" tool, which strips out all but the raw text content, to be a ver

    • by Anonymous Coward

      the US will loose its position in setting world wide communication protocols. The world isn't going to cry because people want better protocol regardless of who creates it. You think the US will crush huawei? No, history shows what they are doing is similar to what Japanese did w/ cars, what US did w/ Britain. There is nothing huawei needs to do except taking the high ground. Pretty sure even US allies are rethinking how they do business with a trump era US. It gives people a bad taste in their mouth

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      "Picasso had a saying -- 'good artists copy; great artists steal' -- and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas."

      - Steve Jobs, 1996

      Western companies are the same. Maybe better at hiding it, but of course they get hold of competitor's equipment and take it apart, stealing all the best ideas. I've done it myself for various companies. Worked around patents to implement similar features.

      • by hawkfish ( 8978 )

        "Picasso had a saying -- 'good artists copy; great artists steal' -- and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas."

        - Steve Jobs, 1996

        Western companies are the same. Maybe better at hiding it, but of course they get hold of competitor's equipment and take it apart, stealing all the best ideas. I've done it myself for various companies. Worked around patents to implement similar features.

        My father worked at IBM in the 1970s and he told me that the IBM copier was designed by a team of lawyers and engineers who worked around Xerox's patents.

    • So if we do decide to crush Huawei under the boot-heel of world-wide community disapprobation, what are we going to lose if it is successful?

      This is one of the fundamental reasons why the USA is trying to crush Huawei in the first place. Don't think this is about spying or trade deals as much as it is Huawei having a significant technical edge in the 5G development over the west (for whatever reason legitimate or otherwise that may be). The USA is quaking in its boots at missing the potential GDP boost associated with supplying next generation infrastructure.

      Also there's no doubt that Huawei engages in corporate espionage. I also have no doubt a

  • My company is a member of an industry organization that is also a bit concerned about the legal implication of also having Huawei as a member. No administrative changes yet, but the fear is there.

    Kind of sad that all this is happening.

  • Even if one were to consider all Huawei "scientists" as compromised puppets of the state, is the IEEEs position that their peer review process is too weak to weed out individual reviews that are not consistent with other reviewers? This says a lot more about the confidence they have in their own review processes than it does about the risk of state intervention in gaming publication selection for some sinister purpose (for which it would be much easier to just take out an ad).

"The vast majority of successful major crimes against property are perpetrated by individuals abusing positions of trust." -- Lawrence Dalzell

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