Forwarded from: William Knowles <wk@c4i.org>
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/24/ibm_lenovo_spooks/
By Andrew Orlowski
24th February 2005
For years the Chinese government fretted that the US was using its
technology lead to spy on the country - but now the tables are turned.
The US government has much deeper concerns about what China can glean
from the historic Lenovo-IBM PC deal than recent reports have
indicated.
Concessions offered by IBM to the US Treasury's Committee on Foreign
Investment in the United States were rejected yesterday, Bloomberg
reports. The Committee is worried that IBM's North Carolina facility
presents opportunities for industrial espionage. Even the IBM customer
list - and the US government is a very big customer indeed - could
divulge information the US doesn't want China to see.
And keeping this list private is one of the concessions apparently
made by IBM. (Although it isn't clear how Lenovo can support IBM
government staff if it doesn't know who or where they are.) Another
concession includes prohibiting Lenovo employees from certain
buildings. IBM had been asked not to transfer R&D staff to the
facility, but rejected the suggestion. The Committee has until March
14 to file its report to the President.
In the late 1990s the PRC was worried that domestic CDMA networks were
vulnerable to US political interference, as they use the DoD's GPS
satellites to synchronize their base stations. However, a source told
your reporter that Chinese government officials didn't object to
monitoring of traffic on the ill-fated Iridium network.
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"Communications without intelligence is noise; Intelligence
without communications is irrelevant." Gen Alfred. M. Gray, USMC
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