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 thi
Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro has finally issued a statement congratulating Joe Biden on winning the United States presidential election, after that country’s Electoral College officially confirmed his victory on Monday. Brazil’s government has told the country’s Federal Supreme Court that a country-wide vaccination program will begin five days after the National Health Surveillance Agency approves any vaccine against the novel coronavirus. Meanwhile, a study conducted by Brazil’s National Restaurant Association has indicated that four out of every ten restaurants and bars in the country have been forced to close their activities due to the COVID-19 pandemic. A report published by British newspaper The Guardian is accusing China of actively using cell phone companies in the Caribbean to spy on American citizens, in a scheme that has been going on for several years. Finally, a man who claimed to be the leader of Nigeria’s main Islamist terrorist group, Boko Haram, h
China may have found a backdoor to track the phones of Americans traveling abroad, exploiting signals from phone networks in the Caribbean to potentially track U.S. phones and intercept their messages.
Gary Miller, a Washington state-based former mobile network security executive, described China’s surveillance behavior in an interview with The Guardian, it reported Tuesday.
Miller said he believes China has routed mobile signaling messages through Cable & Wireless Communications (Flow) in Barbados and Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC) to primarily target U.S. mobile users traveling abroad.
Phone users are not aware of the the signaling messages being sent to their mobile devices, but telecoms operators across the global network use these messages to locate mobile phones, link mobile phone users to one another and assess roaming charges. Miller told the Guardian that these signaling messages can also be used for more nefarious purposes, including allowing China to trac
Embassy denies claims that China used BTC to spy on Americans The headquarters of Bahamas Telecommunications Company on John F. Kennedy Drive. FILE
The Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in The Bahamas yesterday denied that China used mobile phone networks in the Caribbean, including the Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC), to surveil US mobile phone subscribers.
The claims were contained in an article published in the UK’s Guardian newspaper.
In the story, Gary Miller, a Washington state-based former mobile network security executive, claimed that the attacks, which emanated from China between 2018 and 2020, affected “tens of thousands of US mobile users”.
Mobile network used to eavesdrop on Americans National security and economic fears if true
By NEIL HARTNELL
nhartnell@tribunemedia.net
A serious investigation was demanded yesterday into allegations that China has exploited the Bahamas Telecommunications Company s (BTC) mobile phone network to spy on US citizens.
BTC, which is 49 percent owned by the Government, told Tribune Business in a statement it was carefully reviewing claims - first published in the Guardian newspaper in the UK - that state-owned Chinese communications providers had used its systems to conduct surveillance on Americans roaming on their mobile phones in The Bahamas. Across all the markets where Cable & Wireless Communications (CWC) operates, including The Bahamas, we continuously monitor our networks and have robust security policies and protocols in place to protect the data of our customers. We take our commitment to data protection seriously, and are carefully reviewing the information in