If they had proof they would have showed it already. Nothing would help their rhetoric more than cold hard facts.

If they haven't done it, it means: a) there isn't any backdoor, or b) exposing their backdoors would expose their own backdoors.

I'm betting on b.

Alternatives:

- Revealing how the backdoor works would show methods the US agencies are also using.

- There are multiple backdoors, or there might be, and they don't want to tip their hand.

c. They have sources saying as such but have not discovered the backdoor itself.

d. Admitting how they found the backdoor would reveal other issues (a source in the pipeline, or their own backdoor in something Huawei made use of).

And probably e-z too.

Yeah exactly - providing proof publicly could in fact burn the sources/methods used to get that proof.

I wouldn't say your 'e' is at tin-foil hat level. But your assertion that since Trump is president any attempt to establish that Huawei is flawed from a security perspective is some 'corrupt' plot by Trump to benefit him financially is pure political imagination. Go ahead and take issues with Trump, his policies, his words, his actions, I don't care, but please do not pretend like just because Trump is president that magically the PRC and companies which are essentially controlled by its government are some kind of benign actors. Trump and has taken a hard-line against anything China since he ran in 2015, his anti-Huawei is very much in line with that stance. Also, Trump was pretty clear he wanted an American first economic policy, which makes it obvious he would be anti-expansion of any Chinese technological products.

TR;DL Trump being president has not a thing to do with whether or not Huawei and the PRC are attempting to infiltrate the network and data infrastructure of the world at large.

Considering their history of outright lies I'm betting on a).

"If they had proof they would have showed it already. "

A) They did show 'proof' ostensibly, to the specific agencies of interest i.e. UK/Germany.

B) Your 'a' and 'b' are missing the most important point, in that the revelation of their knowledge may compromise some ongoing intelligence program. The information may very well have been provided by spies who'd be put at risk.

Literally yesterday WaPo published a story on the most comprehensive US intelligence program ever and it quite nicely illustrated the challenges of how to reveal how much you know, and the consequences therein.

This is not 'open source land' where we like complete transparency, it's a different game.

C) There's also another issue, and that this may not be 'black and white'. For example, the ostensible 'back door' may not be clear cut: it may be that it doesn't yet exist, but there are elements in the design prepared for backdoors to be very easily added at a later date.

When was this? Just because in around Nov 2019 a GCHQ spokesman said Chinese backdoors went an issue with UK's dependency on Huawei for 5G (but other risks, network shutdown in times of conflict might be present).

Could you (or anyone) link a source where the NSA, or other USA agencies discuss this with technical detail?

" saying "we totally have proof!" without providing proof is effectively meaningless."

They've provided ostensible 'proof' to the authorities in Germany and the UK who are the entities they are trying to convince of the issue, which is reasonable.

We'll have to wait to see how the Europeans respond.

The British response has been to still go ahead with using Huawei for potentially over 30% of their non-core infrastructure.

In any case, my point is not that they aren't plausible reasons why they might not make any proof public. My point is that they aren't above using those plausible reasons to propagate disinformation. So their statements are meaningless to us (the public) because it's impossible to discern truth from lies without further information.

"that they aren't plausible reasons why they might not make any proof public."

This might be wrong in a couple of ways.

First - without knowing any details, there certainly are many good reasons why the information might not made public, most obviously because it would possibly compromise their methods of acquiring such information. There's a 100% chance that any information they divulged will be acrimoniously parsed by the Chinese to determine the means by which the US obtained the information. The information will likely betray how the Americans are thinking about the problem as well. (Reference yesterday's WaPo article on US/Germany surveillance program and how it was compromised).

Second - there's very limited upside in making the information public, are many downsides. The US, UK, and German agencies don't care about you, or I or any other privacy advocate, or really the knowledge that might arise from a number of public voices piping in. This isn't like open-source SSL software, where it makes sense from a security perspective to be open about it.

Also, I'm doubtful if the 'evidence' the US presented is purely technical in nature. My guess is that this is not a situation of "hey, look at this source code, on like 501, there you go, back door!", it's probably much more complicated. If you read the article, you'll indicate that the US has evidence that China is using its gear to surveil state actors, etc..

Revealing the 'evidence' almost surely involves sensitive information regarding state officials from other countries, insight into US spy programs etc..

If the US is legitimately trying to convince UK/Germany that Huawei gear is a legit threat, then providing them with the necessary information in confidence is obviously the rational thing to do.

As far as I know Germany also did not exclude Huawei from 5G projects in general. Maybe they have a really good understanding where and where not working with Huawei poses a serious risk, maybe the provided evidence was not convincing, maybe they just don't care.

> The British response has been to still go ahead with using Huawei for potentially over 30% of their non-core infrastructure.

The British badly need to negotiate pst-Brexit trade deals with all major powers. Pissing off the CCP before the negotiations won’t help the UK’s plans.

Nor will pissing off USA, which presumably is why they timed the issue carefully when any failure in trade will make the biggest mark on the public view of post-Brexit trade potential.

Like 'you know how your mobile phone system works quite well, let us help ruin that for you by messing with it politically', great.

UK has problem of ex-parliament being on board of UK division of Huawei. Doubt they'd shoot themselves in the foot and would probably do much in their power to prevent deals not going through.

Who in particular?