Hacker News Reader

Comment by mainecoder | Hacker News Reader

Why does this have to be a political issue the TP-Links hardware and software can be examined, this is not a difficult process that would need the greatest experts on earth a simple examination should show whether data is being sent to China or if there is any security issue that can be spoken of so far nothing. Might as well say sanction then because we need to make a distinction between a technical security flaw or economic and political reasons, if the security flaw is not articulated then it's safe to assume it is political.

View on HN

If you look at the article there isn't any one claiming that tplink is in bed with the prc. Unlike say huawei or zte. It's not even that they're saying tplink could be compelled to give up data like alibaba or tencent.

Rather, it's that tplink has security vulnerabilities and those along with all other factors make it a national security threat. Other factors include, how pervasive it is in the market and how actively the Chinese are exploiting these flaws.

And to your point- soho devices are notoriously insecure, tplink especially. If youre not familiar then you simply must take your expert's advice on it.

This is more about preventing the next vpnfilter

In that case they should ban asus routers too.

> Rather, it's that tplink has security vulnerabilities and those along with all other factors make it a national security threat.

They shall start with Cisco then. Or backdoors do not count as "other factors" ?

If you think identifying a hypothetical back door in something as complex as a router is not a difficult process you are simply uninformed.

> Why does this have to be a political issue the TP-Links hardware and software can be examined

Because while people are really frustrated with these issues in general, effective reforms require principled regulation (eg anti-trust unbundling of software/hardware, personal data protection) and are directly opposed by the US surveillance industry. So instead people channeled their built-up frustrations into the siren song a fascist demagogue promising to simply make it all better with the snap of his fingers, while he was actually backed by the surveillance industry eager to consolidate its power. So now the battle lines we've gotten are the US surveillance industry pitted against the Chinese surveillance industry, with US citizens losing either way.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com