Want China Times, Staff Reporter 2013-06-18
 |
| Cisco's booth at a trade show in Washington DC. (Photo/CFP) |
At a time
when nine internet companies are believed to be involved in the US National
Security Agency's Prism surveillance, Cisco Systems, one of the nine and the
world's biggest IT equipment provider in cloud computing, has been involved in
almost all China's major network construction projects, the Shenzhen-based
Securities Times reports.
Edward
Snowden, a former technical worker at the CIA and NSA last week sensationally
revealed himself as the whistleblower behind leaks that uncovered secret US
government surveillance programs. Snowden, an IT administrator for the defense
contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, said that the UK intelligence-gathering agency
GCHQ may have connections to the Prism program, which is said to give American
agencies easy access to nine of the world's top internet companies, as well as
the phone records of millions of people.
According
to Snowden, nine companies, including Cisco, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft and
Google, are involved in spying activities by giving access to their databanks
to the US agencies — an accusation all nine companies swiftly denied, the
report said.
However, on
June 14, Facebook and Microsoft admitted that the US government had asked them
to provide information on their users, and they unveiled the partial details in
a bid to distance themselves from the Prism revelations as early as possible.
Meanwhile,
Chinese media has turned the focus to the potential threats to China's internet
security by these US internet companies, as Snowden revealed that the NSA
monitored China's internet and computer operations via Cisco.
Cisco has
reportedly been involved in almost all the construction of major network
projects in China related to the government, customs, post offices, finance,
railway, aviation, medical, military and police, as well as telecommunication
networks. Cisco controls more than 70% of China's two biggest internet
operators, China Telecom and China Unicom, which together account for more than
80% of the country's internet traffic.
Furthermore,
Cisco is the key technology and equipment supplier to the US government and its
military. Security experts are therefore worried that in the even of war, the
US government could use Cisco's products around the world to create an internet
war to deal a major blow to adversary countries.
Cisco has
overtaken Hewlett-Packard and IBM to become the world's biggest IT equipment
provider in terms of cloud computing, according to market researcher Synergy
Research Group.
Cisco raked
in income of more than US$1.6 billion last year in China, representing 30% of
its total profits. It is expected that the Prism incident will seriously affect
its business in China, while other companies such as Microsoft and Apple will
also see their business in mainland China affected, the report said.
Since last
year, security experts already called for the Chinese government to emphasize
internet security problems. The Prism incident is a major warning and may well
prompt Beijing to enact an internet security act to set clear rules to regulate
purchases by the government, military and state-run enterprises.
Such
legislation would inevitably benefit domestic suppliers such as Huawei and ZTE
in cloud computing, data processing, IT consulting and information security,
the report said. Perhaps a touch ironically, the two Chinese companies have
seen their attempts to expand their business in the United States hampered by
national security concerns from the US government in precisely the same manner
as Cisco may be expected to experience.
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