Digital Assassination

Live and Let Spy?

October 10, 2012

While China angrily denounces Tuesday’s Congressional report on telecom firms Huawei’s and ZTE’s potential for cyber-spying, analysts recently found that if one types in a code—ZTEX1609523—it creates a backdoor in Android phones, granting a complete ability to monitor text messages, listen to calls or install malicious programs.

China can’t have it both ways—pervasively deploy almost its entire private-sector to spy on the U.S. government and business, and expect Americans to welcome their high-tech firms into the heart of U.S. telecom.