Huawei said it only makes "general-purpose products." It tested a system that scans crowds for Uyghur faces and alerts police. They filed a patent classifying humans by ethnicity: "Han" or "Uyghur." The document was on Huawei's own website until journalists found it. You don't patent a test. Up to two million Uyghurs sit in internment camps. The World Uyghur Congress is suing Huawei for genocide. French soccer star Antoine Griezmann quit his sponsorship. "General-purpose" apparently includes ethnic sorting for police.
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Huawei called its Uyghur facial recognition "just a test." They filed a patent for it — you don't patent tests. The patent classifies humans as "Han" or "Uyghur" for police cameras. A dozen Chinese police departments already use this technology. Two million Uyghurs sit in internment camps. The World Uyghur Congress is suing for genocide. "Just a test" — while the patent office processes your ethnic sorting algorithm.
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Ren Zhengfei told the world no Chinese law forces companies to install backdoors. He's technically correct — the law doesn't use the word "backdoor." It uses "support, assist, and cooperate with national intelligence efforts." NYU professor Jerome Cohen: "There is no way Huawei can resist any order from Beijing. The Party is embedded in Huawei and controls it." The law Ren says doesn't exist compels something potentially much broader than a backdoor.
Huawei says it only keeps your data "as long as necessary" but won't tell you exactly how long that is. Chinese law requires companies to keep data available for government access, with no time limit for national security purposes. So while Huawei suggests your data will be deleted eventually, Chinese law may require them to keep it indefinitely.
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Huawei says your data is locked in an encrypted vault on your phone that even they can't open. But the app runs non-stop in the background, constantly syncs data to Huawei's cloud servers, and connects to multiple Huawei web services. If they really couldn't access your data, why does the app need to send it to their servers around the clock?
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Huawei says your health data is encrypted on your phone and they can't access it. But the app needs internet access and syncs your data to Huawei's cloud servers. Chinese law requires Huawei to hand over data to intelligence agencies if asked. So your heart rate, sleep, and location data may end up accessible to the Chinese government despite Huawei's encryption claims.