The Tribune

By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Senior Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

THE Chinese Embassy in The Bahamas said reports that China has spied on Americans via Caribbean phone networks are false and another attempt by the United States to sow discord between China and Caribbean countries.

The claims of China’s spying prompted a strong response from the US Embassy in Nassau yesterday.

The embassy’s Public Affairs Officer Daniel Durazo said in a statement to The Tribune: “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.

“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 (People’s Republic of China), that lacks an independent judiciary or rule of law that would effectively prohibit this misuse of data.”

For its part, the Chinese Embassy said: “Some western newspapers are really fans of such stories, even though they never reflect facts or show evidence.”

Both statements came after the Guardian newspaper in the UK reported that Chinese communications providers used BTC to conduct surveillance on Americans roaming on their mobile phones in this country.

The assertion that major security vulnerabilities exist in the Bahamian telecommunications system was based on a report by Gary Miller, a US former mobile network security executive, who was said by the UK Guardian to have “spent years analysing mobile threat intelligence reports, and observations of signalling traffic between foreign and US mobile operators”.

Mr Miller and his business, Exigent Media, a cyber threat research firm, published two reports that detail how BTC’s mobile phone system was purportedly used in a “coordinated attack” on US cellular phone numbers by Chinese state-owned mobile providers.

While The Bahamas and BTC accounted for just 0.34 percent and 0.35 percent of country and operator “attacks”, respectively, in 2019, both were singled out for special mention due to their unwitting alleged involvement in a series of “coordinated” raids on several US phone numbers in 2018 and 2019.

“Attacks are coordinated between foreign country networks,” the report alleged. “In 2018, China, Barbados and The Bahamas networks were observed attacking the same mobile users with similar techniques. Likewise, attacks from China, Palestine, The Bahamas and Panama networks were also observed, indicating network selling for conducting intelligence operations…

“A cluster of attacks was discovered targeting a group of US phones from networks including China Unicom, Cable & Wireless (Flow) Barbados and BTC. The attacks against these phones indicated co-ordination between the operators.

“This could be achieved by China acquiring network addresses from these two Caribbean operators, allowing China to originate attacks, both of which are partially owned by the same parent company, CWC.”

One US mobile was purportedly subject to 87 such “attacks” via BTC’s network, while two other users saw some 14 and 12 intrusion attempts, respectively.

In response to the claims, the Chinese Embassy said: “For a period of time, especially during President Trump taking the White House, the US has been lobbying other countries with carrot and stick to stop their normal cooperation with Chinese high-tech companies, including Huawei, under the pretext of national security. Now they are targeting other Chinese telecommunication companies.

“China is a staunch defender of cyber security and firmly opposes and cracks down on cyber-attacks of any form in accordance with law. Facts have proved that Chinese companies have been maintaining a very good record on network security. Take Huawei as an example. In the past 30 years, Huawei has built more than 1,500 networks in more than 170 countries and regions, partnering with 228 Fortune Global 500 companies and serving more than three billion people around the world.

“There have been no such network security incidents as the Snowden incident and WikiLeaks, no such cyber surveillance programs as ‘Prism Gate’, ‘Formula Organization’ and ‘Echelon System’, and no country has been able to come up with evidence to prove Huawei products have back doors.

“On the contrary, as AFP reported in October, the US and other Five Eye countries, the notorious intelligence alliance, have publicly requested that backdoors be set up in encryption applications such as Signal and Telegram to provide access to law enforcement agencies. So far, the United States has not given an explanation.”

The Chinese Embassy said the US “plays dirty and tends to mobilise state power to bully others” when it loses competitive edge.

“The real purpose is to crack down on non-American enterprises that have gained an edge over American ones, and to suppress the legitimate development rights of other countries, so as to safeguard the monopoly, self-interests, and scientific and technological hegemony of the US,” the embassy said.

“China and Caribbean countries have all along maintained friendly relations and mutual beneficial cooperation. We believe that after recognising the truth, most countries will take an objective and impartial stand and make independent judgments. We are confident that the cooperation of the two sides will stand the test of time.”

This is not the first time the Bahamas has been caught up in spying claims involving one of these two superpowers.

In 2013, the Intercept reported from documents obtained by Edward Snowden which showed that a US National Security Agency programme, SOMALGET, was secretly intercepting recording and archiving every cell phone conversation in the Bahamas and that those recordings were kept for a month.