South Korea bans 1700 tech products for using forged test reports

South Korea’s Ministry of Science and ICT has revoked safety certification for 1696 communications products after discovering that test results attesting to their safety were misrepresented. A Ministry annnouncement explains that it received a tip-off that numerous test reports for telecoms and broadcast tech had not been …

[PTW]

Re: "...appear to be bureaucracy at its finest"

No, if the article is to be believed, it's a large scale fraud by Bay Area Compliance Laboratories! Quote "... and paperwork said the work was done in San Francisco." when the testing was done in China.

Did Cisco, Huawei, et al have any idea what was going on?

[Mishak]

Re: "...appear to be bureaucracy at its finest"

Quite. Based on the article, it would look as if a legal investigation is required to determine exactly who knew what was going on.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "...appear to be bureaucracy at its finest"

I think the companies were innocent victims of BACL's fraud. Huawei and Cisco are sexy headlines but it involved about 400 companies and HIKVISION and DJI topped the list.

BACL has a Chinese subsidiary and I assume they decided to do the testing there because it's cheaper.

[Pascal Monett]

How is that possible ?

Someone please explain how the testing is supposed to be done in California when "the work" was done in China ?

Bottom line is : the testing was done in China, and covered by the BACL.

Brilliant demonstration of compliance there, guys. But don't worry, your reputation will not suffer much, and this will have no impact on your yearly turnover.

Won't it, TSB ?

[tip pc]

What other compliance checks will be found misrepresented?

This is likely the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

I bet many other companies have solicited for compliance auditing work in 1 jurisdiction and then actually completed that work in another.

There could be nothing wrong with that if they let their customers know.

Designed in California, compliance tested & manufactured in China.

most consumers won't care, but if that was my product and the compliance company made noises that it was being tested in the US but was done elsewhere i'd be really unhappy.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: What other compliance checks will be found misrepresented?

"Designed in California, compliance tested & manufactured in China."

Seeing as how this stuff is made in China in the first place, was it shipped to the US, then shipped to China for testing the shipped back? Or did BACL "intercept" them at the manufacturers, re-direct them to their Chinese tests facility and only then ship them to the US, saving a lot of money and time which they still billed for? (fraud??) I assume they only tested the first few of a production runs and then regular randomised samples and not every individual item produced.

[Electronics'R'Us]

The paperwork really matters

There are a number of compliance tests and the issue is that the place doing the testing can be audited.

In the UK, audits and accreditation are performed by UKAS.

If a company did this with goods for sale in the EU (which require a CE marking) they would be in very big trouble. Although CE is a self certification system you are required to provide compliance evidence if it is demanded by the relevant authorities.

Non compliance can get products removed from the market although manufacturers are usually given a chance to prove compliance; a lot of them might not because the process is expensive.

The facilities in China are not necessarily audited to the satisfaction of other countries which is possibly one of the reasons China is not a signatory to the agreement.

Not being a signatory means that the paperwork cannot be accepted because the quality of the actual work done cannot be shown to be adequate,

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: The paperwork really matters

Not my problem, I used this big fancy testing firm in SF (who coincidentally were also cheapest)

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: The paperwork really matters

(which require a CE marking)

Does CE mean China Export?

[Anonymous Coward]

Security?

I cannot see an english document to explain the details, but even the simple devices mentioned above seem to imply a network connection of some sort.

As our defence colleagues will tell us, uncontrolled emissions are a security issue, so there seems to be scope for incorrectly certified devices to be abused, and in the limit, even possibly cause illegal radio interference, whether networked or not.

[David Pearce]

The tests should include RF immunity too. This is the part that gets cheated on as it costs a lot more to do and many people think that the CE tests are just emissions

[Anonymous Coward]

What is the possibility that a subsidiary was acting under the table, basically open loop, completely unmanaged by the corp?

either several hundred companies got the same idea at the same time with the same company to put the US address on test reports (this is basically impossible)

subsidiary is not being managed at all and falsifying the location of the facility (not sure, but have we considered?)

US office issued it ignoring the location restriction (seems like a lot of you believe this one)