[ISN] ASIO officers met whistleblowers in pancake parlour

as posted here

From: InfoSec News

Date: Tue, 8 Sep 2009 02:19:30 -0500 (CDT)

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,26029093-5001561,00.html

By Cameron Stewart

The Australian

September 05, 2009

A PANCAKE Parlour restaurant and a cafe in the Block Arcade in central

Melbourne are unlikely places to discuss claims of Chinese espionage.


But these were among the venues chosen for meetings between ASIO

officers and employees of the Australian arm of the Chinese telecom

giant Huawei.


ASIO officers have travelled to Melbourne and Sydney this year to meet

Huawei whistleblowers, after the domestic spy agency received

information alleging that some Huawei technicians and executives had

direct links with the Chinese People's Liberation Army and to the

Chinese government.


The allegations made by current and former Huawei employees to ASIO were

that the Chinese telecommunications company, which has operations across

the globe, was not the purely commercial enterprise it claimed to be.


Rather than being a privately owned company that exists only to make

profits on the sales of telecom equipment, Huawei's operations in

Australia were controlled by the Chinese government, the employees

claimed, and several other employees had close links with the PLA.


These employees told ASIO they believed the hi-tech Huawei was involved

in cyber espionage against Australian interests, but when grilled by

ASIO, were unable to produce firm evidence of espionage activities.

[...]

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Received on Tue Sep 08 2009 - 00:19:30 PDT

as posted here