Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei wants to contractually guarantee that his company's technology does not contain any entry points for espionage. "We are offering Germany to sign a no-backdoor agreement," the entrepreneur said Wednesday at the network equipment headquarters in Shenzhen, southern China.
With this, Ren intervenes in the German debate about 5G mobile networks. In mid-October, the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) presented revised requirements for these networks, which explicitly exclude any provider. Federal Foreign Minister Heiko Maas (SPD) on Monday questioned whether Huawei should be involved in the construction of the German 5G networks. This line also represents the US government that has banned Huawei from their market and calls for the same from their allies.
Backdoors are intentionally built-in technological vulnerabilities that allow attackers to penetrate a communications network. Critics of the group have expressed the concern that the Chinese state could interfere with communication in Germany in case of a crisis, if Huawei technology is incorporated into German 5G networks. Huawei has always rejected that such back doors exist.
He could rule out that data from Germany could flow on such routes to China, says Ren on Wednesday. Huawei will be measured by the evaluation criteria of the BSI. "We believe that Germany's parliament and government will find a policy that is in the best interest of their own people," he said.