Saturday, February 8, 2020

ON SPYING IN 5G AND OTHER STUFF

I get a real kick out of all the panic about China's new 5G networks rolling out across the civilized world. It's a hoot to hear and read about all the alarmists predicting that any Chinese made technology like that will of course be filled with back doors and trojans and tigers and bears and dragons and thus far too dangerous since it risks compromising stuff, even encrypted stuff.

Well as we know from Mr. Snowden, the enormous leaker now cowering in Russia and wishing he could come home and explain how he leaked 17,000 Top Secret NSA files to wikileaks who promptly published them, the NSA spent decades working with all the America manufacturers of servers and computers and all shipments being sent to certain countries were first routed to NSA facilities where they could be outfitted with back doors, trojans and spy software of the first order. Somehow grasping at our pearls at the thought that the Chinese might do the same is a little over the top for me.

On that topic, the idiocy of all the pundits now punditing about the insult of Russians interfering in US elections is a hoot. That's what USAID does, thats what the CIA does, that's what idiots in things like Radio Free Europe did. It's what 17 Americans organizing the Egyptian populace to resist (at least I hope that was their intent) the election of the Muslim Brotherhood were doing only to be arrested and sentenced to jail forever for interfering in Egypt's elections. One of them was an American Sr politician's kid so we moved heaven and earth to get him out. I wonder if the other 16 are still languishing in Egyption prisons. At least the damned Taliban sent back the morons they caught preaching the gospel hoping to get muslims to accept Christ where apostacy is certain death by stoning. Sure they made a big deal out of it but then they sent them back unharmed shortly before we invaded Afghanistan.

3 comments:

capt fast said...

I found it hilarious when the FBI went hat in had to apple for their own back door codes to break into a phone or two. it was interesting that NSA did not break it out from the noise floor. iPhones have their own individual coding for security? I didn't know that

Tsquared said...

5G is occurring because the FCC took half of the "C" band satellite away from the satcom companies and gave it to telecom. I am still trying to understand how the "line of sight" frequency is going to work as a high data cell phone frequency. I missed this class in college. This will also make satellite time more expensive across all of the bands. Also why would you stick a 5G microwave transmitter next to your head?

Sorry, I was a satcom engineer before I retired and this 5G makes no since to me.

HMS Defiant said...

I'm with you. I just bought satellite nodes and tried to expand the bandwidth for military purposes and yet I can't see why people need any more bandwidth than they have now. What are they going to do with it? OTOH, I'm happy with my iphone 4 and have no plans to replace it after I replaced the battery and am back up to almost real worthwhile time on the battery before it goes dead. But then, I don't stream video or play games on the phone. That's why I carry two ipods. They have an infinite number of books on them and I prefer to read when I'm trapped with ought else to do. Oh, and the older one has music, lots of music on it.