BioShield Distribution

After tearing down the device, Pen Test Partners, a company that takes apart consumer electronics to test them for security vulnerabilities, found there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary about the USB key. It comes with a modest 128MB capacity, an inexpensive sticker and a 25-page PDF that repeats much of the material found on the company’s website. 

Sales of the 5GBioShield USB key started to pick up when one of the external members of Glastonbury’s 5G Advisory Committee mentioned the device. “We use this device and find it helpful,” they wrote and included a link to BioShield’s website. The report’s credibility came into question after the BBC published a story detailing its creation. It appears many of the people who worked on the report went into it with a biased opinion of 5G. What’s more, the committee admitted testimony from a variety of psuedo-scientific sources, including a professor who claims wireless signals will make human beings sterile.  

“I joined the working group in good faith, expecting to take part in a sensible discussion about 5G,” said Mark Swann, one of the people who volunteered to help compile the report. “Sadly the whole thing turned out to be a clueless pantomime driven by conspiracy theorists and skeptics.”

Despite the best efforts of carriers like EE, 02 and Vodafone, as well as local authorities, anti-5G sentiment in the UK has grown recently. In April, arsonists torched cellular towers in several parts of the country in attacks authorities believe may be linked to conspiracy theories linking the proliferation of 5G masts to the spread of COVID-19. With this latest development in the story, you have a classic example of a company trying to profit from fear. 

The arson attacks against 5G masts in the UK have become serious enough that carriers are joining together to put a stop to the incidents. EE, O2, Three and Vodafone have issued a joint statement both urging people not to set fire to cellular masts, threaten engineers or spread conspiracy theories falsely linking 5G to COVID-19. The networks also encouraged people to report abuse of engineers and call out people spreading misinformation.

As the companies reiterated, cell networks are critical in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. They provide “essential connectivity” to emergency services and the National Health Service, help connect families and enable remote education. The arson has disrupted “critical infrastructure,” the carriers said, and threats to engineers have “prevented essential network maintenance.”

The companies are all believed to be using Huawei technology in the “non-core” elements of their networks. That would be in line with the UK government’s rumored strategy, but they’re still gambling that officials won’t take a stricter attitude and issue an outright ban on Huawei networking gear.

There might be reasons to take a chance on Huawei, apart from the lack of publicly available evidence of surveillance. Assembly’s Matthew Howett noted that reliance on a single supplier for a cellular network is dangerous. A major failure in Ericsson equipment left O2 users without 3G and LTE service for a full day — if everyone had been using similar hardware, the UK as a whole might have suffered the same problem. It might also delay launches by as much as two years, Howett said. Like it or not, Huawei could be useful in helping some countries offer 5G in a timely and reliable fashion.