Huawei said to offer Germany a "no spy" agreement

Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei offered Germany a "no-spy agreement" designed to address security concerns that Germany has over Huawei's involvement in building Germany's next generation 5G mobile infrastructure, a German magazine has reported.

Statement of Huawei CEO Ren Zhenfei

The German magazine Wirtschaftwoche quoted the Huawei CEO as saying: "Last month, we talked to the German Interior Ministry and said that we were ready to sign a no-spy agreement with the German government and to promise that Huawei will not install any backdoors in the networks." Zengfei urged the Chinese government to sign a similar no-spy agreement and also to adhere to the European Union data protection laws.

Germany sets out tougher rules for vendors

Last month Germany set tougher criteria for vendors supplying network equipment but it stopped short of singling out Huawei for special treatment. Instead, it said the same rules should apply to all vendors. That appears to be a wise fair policy avoiding the ban on Huawei that the US has been pressing European countries to carry out.

US warnings and Huawei response

The US has been using secret intelligence gathering methods to gain info on Huawei as described in a recent Digital Journal article: "US authorities gathered information on Huawei Technologies through secret surveillance obtained under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to use in a case that charges the company with violating US sanctions against Iran." Perhaps the surveillance was also used with respect to 5G network technology.

The UK has also raised security concerns as discussed in another Digital Journal article: ""Further significant technical issues have been identified in Huawei's engineering processes, leading to new risks in the UK telecommunications networks," read annual findings from the Huawei Cyber Security Evaluation Centre (HCSEC) oversight board."

Huawei's main response is to simply deny that there are any security problems and claim that the US has yet to show any hard evidence that there are problems. Huawei argued that even if there were a risk there are ways to mitigate such risks. Earlier in March Huawei even brought a lawsuit against the US government ban on its products, claiming the ban was unconstitutional.

Germany faces tough opposition from the US as it considers adopting Huawei technology, as discussed by Bloomberg.

Previously published in the Digital Journal