HUAWEI

Employees Helped African Governments Spy On Opponents, Bypass Encryption

According to a recent Wall Street Journal report, Huawei has been selling surveillance tools to the African country of Uganda, and its employees have been helping the government officials spy on their political opponents.
The Huawei employees allegedly helped the Ugandan government spy agencies bypass encrypted chats and spy on the whereabouts of the government officials’ opponents via the cellular network. The U.S. government has warned for some time that Huawei’s technology could be used to spy on its employees and networks.
The WSJ investigation didn’t find whether or not the Chinese government was aware of the Huawei employees’ actions. However, the report did mention that members of the Ugandan spies went to training in China. The Ugandan intelligence officials had previously received training on how to use spying tools made by the Israeli firm NSO Group that can supposedly penetrate encrypted chats.
However, when the officials attempted to use those tools to break the private WhatsApp and Skype conversations of Bobi Wine, a rapper-turned-activist, they failed. The report mentions that the Israeli didn’t provide the Ugandan spies nearly as good of training as the Chinese did.
The NSO Group strongly disputed the allegations that it has been helping the Uganda government spy on activists in a statement to CNBC:
"The WSJ article is wrong. And we told them that very clearly when they asked us. We don't work with Huawei at all. We don't do business with Uganda at all. And only NSO sells Pegasus — no one else does."
However, the NSO Group has been caught before selling spyware to governments that target activists. As recently as this May, Amnesty International argued in front of the Israeli government that NSO Group’s license to sell surveillance software to other countries be rejected.
Similarly, Huawei has also strongly denied the allegations that it has been helping African governments spy on activists in a statement to CNBC:
“After a thorough and detailed internal investigation on the points raised by the WSJ's reporting team, Huawei rejects completely these unfounded and inaccurate allegations against our business operations in Algeria, Uganda, and Zambia. Our internal investigation shows clearly that Huawei and its employees have not been engaged in any of the activities alleged. We have neither the contracts nor the capabilities, to do so."
According to an earlier investigation by the French paper Le Monde, China has been spying on African country leaders for at least the past five years (starting in 2012) through hardware equipment the Chinese government has “gifted” the African leaders.

Lucian Armasu