Opinion: Should We Use Huawei WiFi Routers With Their History of Privacy Breaches?

By Maximilian Livshin, Year 12

The school has been working on fixing its connectivity issues throughout the campus, and rightly so, as there were times when working was not possible due to the poor connection. However, as some people might have noticed, there are many new routers all over the campus, each sporting the recently created Chinese technology company, Huawei. 

As some of you might know, the Chinese government, often referred to as the CCP, isn’t particularly transparent with its actions and objectives, and naturally, private companies are not exempt from the CCP’s influence. Worries have been growing over the Chinese tech giant’s rapid growth in recent years, leading to multiple investigations by governments around the world. 

But should we, at the International School of Geneva, really be worried about this? The answer is yes. While some people may simply dismiss the security claims as simply anti-Chinese bias, or Cold War era fear of the east, the security issues are real, and could affect you. 

So what evidence do we have to support such claims about Huawei? Well to start, in 2018, the heads of six major U.S. Intelligence agencies issued a warning to the Senate Intelligence Committee, cautioning U.S. citizens to stay away from tech made by Huawei, as well as ZTE, another major Chinese tech company. Naturally some people claimed this was simply protectionism and anti-Chinese rhetoric due to the new rivalry between the two economic powerhouses, however, the same sorts of issues started appearing from all over the globe, namely Australia and Europe, giving the security claims about Huawei much more credibility.

In 2012, Australia’s telecommunications network was attacked during a software update, with malicious code being installed onto their Huawei devices. This issue was only made public in 2021, and was confirmed by two dozen former national security and intelligence officials in Australia, as well as the United States. In Europe, Sweden and the United Kingdom have both banned telecommunications companies from using Huawei devices on their 5G networks, and have been looking to replace Huawei technology altogether by 2027, in an effort to protect the national security of their respective countries, with many other European countries following in their efforts to cut ties with Huawei.

So how deeply linked is Huawei to the CCP? Well to begin, the founder of Huawei, Ren Zhengfei, joined the Chinese Communist Party in 1978 and was a high ranking engineer in the PLA (People’s Liberation Army). In addition, Huawei devices are also suspected in taking part in the Chinese government’s massive surveillance-network on the civilian populations of China, meaning they have the necessary technology to do it elsewhere, and in fact they have been doing it outside of China. Here are the known breaches of privacy so far:

• In 2012, the Langley Intelligence Group Network (LIGNET) published a report claiming Huawei had used an “undisclosed electronic backdoor that allowed it to remote access the company’s equipment without permission.”
• In 2014, a Huawei engineer was found hacking a mobile tower in India, which then compromised the Indian government-owned BSNL Network.
• In 2015 the FBI released a report claiming Huawei had been subsidized by the Chinese government somewhere near the $100 Billion mark, creating a clear and obvious link between the two.
• In 2016, many Chinese phones were infected with a firmware by Shanghai Adups Technology which then transmitted the data back to Chinese government servers.

So now the question begs to be asked, whether we, at the International School of Geneva, are safe when using the Huawei wifi routers. The answer is that nothing we are doing at school (presumably) is of national importance to the point where the Communist Chinese government would want nothing more than to get its hands on it. However, as with all data, it has to go somewhere, and when Huawei is in charge of it, it is very likely going to a Chinese server which we know nothing about, and what they do with it also will remain a mystery. So what can you do to protect yourself and your data? Nothing much. Other than trying to use your VPN, there’s nothing much that can be done until the complete phasing out of Huawei devices in the school.