US Embassy: China telecoms vendors cannot be trusted
The headquarters of the Bahamas Telecommunications Company on John F. Kennedy Drive. FILE
In a statement issued yesterday, Daniel Durazo, the public affairs officer at the United States Embassy in The Bahamas, said telecom vendors subject to the governance of the People’s Republic of China cannot be trusted.
“As Secretary of State Pompeo has said, allowing untrusted, high-risk vendors into telecommunications networks makes critical systems vulnerable to disruption, manipulation, and espionage, and puts sensitive government, commercial, and personal information at risk,” he said.
“Countries need to be able to trust that equipment and software companies will not threaten national security, privacy, intellectual property, or human rights. Trust cannot exist where telecom vendors are subject to an authoritarian government, like the PRC, that lacks an independent judiciary or rule of law that would effectively prohibit this misuse of data.”