Peng Liyuan's iPhone could be security risk for China
Staff Reporter 2013-06-09 17:16
China's First Lady Peng Liyuan takes a picture with her Apple iPhone in Mexico on June 6. (Photo/CFP)
Chinese First Lady Peng Liyuan's Apple iPhone could be a national security risk, reports Duowei News, an outlet run by overseas Chinese.
Photographs taken during Peng's current tour of the Carribean, Latin America and the United States with her husband and Chinese president Xi Jinping show that she uses an Apple iPhone. This means that any information she sends or receives using the phone could be read by the US National Security Agency, a cryptologic intelligence agency of the US Department of Defense responsible for the collection and analysis of foreign communications and foreign signals intelligence. Leaked documents have revealed that the NSA frequently taps data from US internet and telecommunications giants such as Google, Yahoo and Apple.
China currently blocks American social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter and encourages local phone companies such as Xiaomi to take on Apple, even though the majority of the latter's products are manufactured in China.
On the other hand, the US government remains suspicious of Chinese phone company Huawei, as evidenced by a report issued last October by the US House Intelligence Committee accusing Huawei and fellow Chinese telco ZTE of posing a nation security threat. Huawei's founder and chairman, Ren Zhengfei once served as a civil engineer for the People's Liberation Army.
Despite allegations of hacker activities against the United States carried out by China, it is in fact the United States that should be most feared, Duowei said, adding that the 2010 Stuxnet computer worm is believed to have been created by the US and Israel to attack Iran's nuclear facilities.
"The focus has been on what they are doing to us — there has been almost none on what we are doing to them," says NSA specialist James Bamford. "No one else has the capabilities of the NSA. I don't know what China can do, but I know the US doesn't take second place to anyone."
The NSA has actually been doing what US politicians have accused Huawei of doing, which is to exploit domestic companies such as Apple to monitor foreign citizens, Duowei said.
