Verizon Kills Huawei Deal Despite No Evidence of Spying

Verizon has joined AT&T in refusing to sell Huawei phones after pressure from US lawmakers. The decision comes on the heels of a similar last minute decision by AT&T to scratch their own partnership with Huawei. The treatment of Huawei as toxic comes after renewed speculation that the company is used by the Chinese government to spy on American citizens, despite the fact that there's zero publicly-available evidence to support that claim.

But sources tell Bloomberg that Verizon has agreed to not sell any Huawei gear despite Huawei's development of a new 5G phone.

Hysteria over Huawei's spying came to a head in 2011, when the government launched multiple investigations into the allegations.

One of those investigations lasted nearly two years and resulted in absolutely no evidence of Huawei spying. What evidence is available suggests that companies like Cisco have intentionally hyped such fears before gullible lawmakers because they don't want to have to compete with Chinese hardware vendors.

There's technically more publicly-available evidence that AT&T and Verizon routinely help the United States government spy on American citizens. You'll recall that whistleblower reports have shown that AT&T in particular was found having tapped into every shred of data that so much as touches the company's network. At several points AT&T was even caught helping the government tap dance around privacy and surveillance laws.

Leaked documents by Edward Snowden have also revealed that the NSA hacked Huawei back in 2007 and stole firmware with the express goal of installing backdoors into Huawei gear, as a gambit to expand spy capabilities into countries wary of buying American gear for just this reason.

Huawei executives have repeatedly stated that claims the company embeds spy technology in its phones are baseless. The company has also argued that doing so would only sabotage the business relationships the company has in numerous countries.

"We serve 170 countries, and for 30 years we’ve proven our quality and we’ve proven our privacy and security protection," Huawei exec Richard Yu said at CES earlier this year.