An American company accuses Huawei of pressuring it to obtain confidential data on Pakistan

The Chinese company “Huawei” is facing new charges, after reports revealed that an American company had sued it.

The American contracting company BES accused Huawei of pressuring it to make it back-door access to data on the Safer Cities project in the Pakistani city of Lahore, according to the American newspaper, “The Wall Street Journal”.
The newspaper reported that the system supposedly gave Huawei access to a database that helped it collect sensitive citizen and government data “important to Pakistan’s national security”.

BES also alleged in its lawsuit that Huawei insisted on creating a duplicate of the Lahore network but in the city of Suzhou in China, that would provide direct access to Pakistani data, but when BES wanted to obtain permission from Pakistani officials Before proceeding with Huawei’s request, the Chinese company’s response was that it did not need permission, and initially threatened to cancel the deal if BES did not move forward with the process.

China’s Huawei later said it had obtained permission, but apparently refused to provide evidence when asked, according to the Wall Street Journal.

In response to these accusations, Huawei confirmed to the Wall Street Journal that there was “no evidence” that it had tried to access Pakistani data through backdoors.

In a statement issued by Huawei earlier in the dispute, the company acknowledged the redundant system in China, but emphasized that it was a beta version “physically isolated” from the real network in Pakistan, making it impossible to extract data.

For his part, Muhammad Kamran Khan of Pakistan, who is overseeing the Lahore effort, said the case is under investigation, but there is no evidence of data theft “so far”.

The lawsuit highlights persistent concerns that Huawei may help Chinese surveillance targets, but there is no evidence so far that it used backdoors to hack and spy on other countries.

America had put the Chinese company Huawei on a 2019 blacklist that prevented it from acquiring American-made technology critical to its operations, particularly chips.

The use of the 5G technology developed by the company has also been removed or delayed in a series of Western countries due to national security concerns, which has drawn sharp criticism from Beijing.