12 ms·
Maybe it's tinfoil hat time; the more the government says to not use Huawei, offering no proof at all, the more I think they are unable to track and log informa
by devhead 9y ago
Maybe it's tinfoil hat time; the more the government says to not use Huawei, offering no proof at all, the more I think they are unable to track and log information like they can on US(ish) phones.
All US phones have components manufactured in China as well as all over the world. It is not a stretch to think the foreign governments couldn't get in the middle and create vulnerabilities or straight up drop attacks on different components they have access to. How is Huawei any different?
Are we supposed to take their complaints seriously when Snowden leaks revealed the NSA hacked Huawei servers to find vulnerabilities they themselves could use to spy on people around the world. /shrug operations Shotgiant doesn't matter? If the NSA hack revealed that Huawei was injecting spyware it's time to release the details of how they found out.
- byproxy 9y agoI suppose then the question becomes "Who would you rather have listening in?"
- eesmith 9y agoLet's see, if the US is listening in, then there's a small chance they will misinterpret my actions as suspicious, arrest me, and perhaps even lead to my imprisonment. This may include extraordinary rendition, should they make that decision while I am in another country. If China is listening in, then there's a chance I will be denied a visa to visit China or, should I be given a visa and visit, then they can arrest me, etc. Upsides in either case? None. So I would rather have China listening in than the US.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- Grazester 9y agoDont fool yourself. If you get a Huawei phone and use it with a U.S. carrier with any services by U.S. tech companies that can be back-doored or subpoenaed, then you could potentially have both the U.S. and China spying on you. It has already been proven in the past that these Chinese phones send considerable amounts of data to Chinese servers. If you are someone working with a military contractor or the government(with any kind of security clearance) I dont think the U.S. would want you using a Chinese phone for obvious reasons
- spicytunacone 9y ago>It has already been proven in the past that these Chinese phones send considerable amounts of data to Chinese servers. Not that I don't believe this, but can you provide a canonical source to support this claim? I don't keep up with this literature.
- emodendroket 9y agoAlso, what are they sending? My natural response to this would be "well of course they do" because presumably most phones come with some software/services from the manufacturer.
- jonyt 9y agoI think you're very much mistaken about the risks involved. For example[0]. I really have a hard time understanding people who think the US is worse than China. China is orders of magnitude worse. Sure, the NSA may spy on your electronic communications but the level of invasive, oppressive surveillance is not even comparable[1]. As far as I know no people are in jail in the US for protesting the government's policies. In China that's not the case[2]. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/08/daughter-gui-minhai-swedish-bookseller-china-fears-jail https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/08/daughter-gui-m... [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/twelve-days-in-xinjiang-how-chinas-surveillance-state-overwhelms-daily-life-1513700355 https://www.wsj.com/articles/twelve-days-in-xinjiang-how-chi... [2] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/political-prisoners-china-database_us_589a1d83e4b09bd304be3300 https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/political-prisoners-chi...
- thaumasiotes 9y agoYou may feel that from a human rights perspective China is morally inferior to the US. This has no bearing on whether you're better off being spied on by one or the other. If you're located in the US, the US government has an extreme amount of power over you and China has almost none; it's obviously better to be spied on by China. If you're in China, the logic reverses.
- pythonaut_16 9y agoNot to mention, with the NSA, the primary concern should be transparency and whether what they're doing is legal/allowed by the constitution. With China there are real national security concerns. We can have discussions and concerns about the NSA while also recognizing foreign nations pose an equal or worse threat. At least with the NSA there is some hope of reigning them in when they overstep.
- MertsA 9y ago> At least with the NSA there is some hope of reigning them in when they overstep. Honestly? The response to the Snowden leaks would seem to indicate the opposite.
- 9y ago
- ilkan 9y agoThe US gov't is unlikely to jack the results of $200M and 11 years of research and give it to state-controlled companies.
- y-c-o-m-b 9y agoWhat about blackmail? They can use your surfing data (porn, social media) to blackmail you. If you do your banking or shopping on your phone, they will have access to your credit card data, social security #, etc. that can be sold or used for cyber warfare. You're right, no upsides, but there are huge risks with having the Chinese steal your information.
- eesmith 9y agoAhh, you are right. I didn't think about that possibility because I don't have a smartphone.
- eesmith 9y agoAnd because I read "listening in" literally, as intercepting audio, rather than metaphorically as being able to intercept all traffic. Also, the US has blackmailed people, like the FBI attempt to blackmail Martin Luther King Jr. We know the US gathers the porn habits of people who it considers might be a threat, including of a US person (https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/26/nsa-porn-muslims_n_4346128.html https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/26/nsa-porn-muslims_n... ). So really it's a matter of balancing the odds. The odds are low that either government will care about me. It feels more likely that my life will be upended by a mistake, like what happened with Brandon Mayfield, and a mistake by the US government is far more likely to affect me than a mistake by the Chinese government.
- s73v3r_ 9y agoIf these are intelligence agencies, wouldn't they also consider assassinating you?
- eesmith 9y agoI'm honored that you think I'm that important. The hypothetical choice is, would I rather have the US or China listening to my phone, if I had to choose one, and "none of the above" was not an option. It is not easy to assassinate someone in another continent, and I don't live in China. There's also the chance that the assassination will fail, and even backfire, where the further investigation might reveal agent identities. I'm just not that worthwhile to possibly waste those resources.
- eridius 9y agoThis argument would hold more weight if the government was saying not to use any non-US phone. But they're specifically targeting Huawei and ZTE. Notice that there's no recommendation to avoid e.g. Samsung phones.
- user982 9y agoSamsung is South Korean, a US ally and SIGINT partner. Modify the argument to, "the government is saying not to use any phones that are not from the US or its puppet states."
- eridius 9y agoAre Huawei and ZTE the only phone manufacturers from a non-SIGINT partner state? That doesn't seem correct. Hell, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mobile_phone_makers_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mobile_phone_makers_by... lists 29 different mobile phone makers in China, 2 of which are Huawei and ZTE, one of which is a subsidiary, leaving 26 independent manufacturers. But the government isn't telling us not to buy e.g. a Xiaomi phone.
- michaelmrose 9y agoWhich of those other 27 are big enough in the US to be worthy of mention?
- eridius 9y agoHow about Xiaomi? Wikipedia says that as of 2017 they're the world's 5th largest smartphone company. I don't know how popular their products are in the US, but I have at least heard of them before (which is more than I can say for ZTE).
- prklmn 9y agoI’d venture to say 98% of the US population couldn’t tell you if Xiaomi was a tech company or a Chinese food dish.
- HankB99 9y ago> ... the more I think they are unable to track and log information like they can on US(ish) phones. My first thought was "Why? Can't they snoop on us with those phones?" Then I thought that they snoop at the network level so I don't think they need anything on the handset to listen in. Maybe I'm wrong about that.
- marnett 9y agoYou'd still want vulnerabilities on the device in order to have access to encrypted messaging. While this type of attack would not be used on all citizens, investigative journalist and activists would certainly be citizens of interest.
- HankB99 9y agoYes, I had forgotten about that case.
- mtgx 9y agoHuawei is not that good with phone updates. I don't think they need special access to hack or record Huawei phones, especially if they find the Chinese backdoor in there.
- mc32 9y agoPeople tend to believe narratives that mirror or support their beliefs. Blame North Korea for Sony hack? Nah, no way. Blame Russia for election hacking (even though at most they bought some ads on FB and ran some twitterbots) oh yeah, those manipulative Russians. You're free to ignore their advice, btw.
- redux13 9y agoThis comment is highly understating the power of social media micro-targeting by dubbing it as buying a few ads on FB and running twitterbots. I would request you to check out the Ted talk by Zeynep Tufekci (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFTWM7HV2UI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFTWM7HV2UI) to get a sense of how effective social media campaigns can be.
- mc32 9y agoWell that would explain why they were so effective in the Ukaine campaign, right? Or you're saying Americans are so much more deceived and gullible? The Kochs and the Soroses pump so much more money into manipulating elections what the Russians did was peanuts. People would hardly be complaining if they had instead been on Team Bernie. But since the candidate who could not possibly lose lost a Sure shot, people want and need a ready made answer, enter twitterbots and FB ads. Anyway, the agreeing narrative phenomenon is most clearly evident in the Assange issue. When he was exposing America's behavior in Europe and the middle east and it also aligned with left ideology, he was a hero, Swedish accusations be damned. Now that his leaks hurt the left, he's a tool of the Russians, of course.
- alsetmusic 9y ago> The Kochs and the Soroses pump so much more money into manipulating elections what the Russians did was peanuts. People would hardly be complaining if they had instead been on Team Bernie. But since the candidate who could not possibly lose lost a Sure shot, people want and need a ready made answer, enter twitterbots and FB ads. The Kochs (etc) are Americans manipulating the system with their wealth and probably within the law. I resent them for it, but that’s very different from a foreign government attempting to influence the results of a US election. I don’t pretend to know the actual pervasiveness of Russian influence; I’m only saying that your comparison falls flat. I have to wonder if you might realize this yourself, but choose to ignore it in order to justify your own agenda. Also, I would be angry with any outcome that was shown to be the result of election tampering. That goes for any candidate, even if I voted for them myself.
- wyuenho 9y ago// Are we supposed to take their complaints seriously when Snowden leaks revealed the NSA hacked Huawei servers to find vulnerabilities they themselves could use to spy on people around the world. Yes, you should. More than one entity has committed a sin does not make that sin a non-sin.
- emodendroket 9y agoWhat evidence do we have for the claim, though, beyond what the FBI, CIA, and NSA told us?
- qwerty456127 9y agoWho cares about what overseas intelligence agencies know of them? I would be much more concerned about the agencies that sit close enough to actually be interested in my person. I am exaggerating (McCarthyism is probably not this hard any more and people are much less prone to take communism seriously nowadays) but just for example: if an American gets involved in an anti-communist club in the USA China will hardly care about him in particular but if some of the people in one's phonebook happen to be communists the homeland agencies can actually go after him and ruin his life :-)
- refurb 9y agoIf your using a phone to access email that has trade secrets or IP in it, you'd care.
- cm2187 9y agoOr if the relationship between China and the US becomes more confrontational, China effectively controls a large part of the US infrastructure which becomes a strategic risk. Kind of a nuclear option (no country would ever import anything running on electricity ever again from china if they were to do that).
- emodendroket 9y agoI sometimes feel like the smartest move is to use a product coming from a country ruled by a hostile government. Like, if you're in the US, sign up for Chinese services, but if you're in China sign up for American ones. (yeah the relationship is more complicated than "hostile" but you get my drift)
- siidooloo 9y agoIf this is your perspective, maybe it would be better if everyone bought phones from Finland.
- carlmr 9y agoIs Finland hostile to anyone?
- indubitable 9y agoI believe his point with 'hostile' is to choose nations where they would be both likely and able to say 'no' should the host nation of an individual request sensitive information on the individual in question. For instance Switzerland had some of the most secure and private banking in the world. It was actually a criminal act in Switzerland to reveal the name of an account holder - to anybody, including governments. And so if the US were to request information on a possible US account holder, they would be likely to say no. But given the influence of the US on both Switzerland and on the nations it most heavily depends upon, they've proven themselves unable to say no, and ended up passing all sorts of special laws, just to bend over to US requests that infringed their nation laws and more generally their sovereignty. Another interesting example with Switzerland is Champagne. Champagne, Switzerland has been making a local wine known as Champagne since the 9th century. Many centuries before the champagne of France even existed. In 2004 the EU told them to stop using the name. And again even if they were likely to say no, they would be unable to do so. As another interesting aside Champagne, using the ubiquitous méthode champenoise, was not invented in France. It was created by an Englishman. What a sordid tale that little drink has! Would Finland be likely to say no? I don't know - I have very little knowledge of the security arrangements between Finland and the US. Would they be able to say no to the US? Not a chance.
- psergeant 9y ago> they are unable to track and log information like they can on US(ish) phones This seems remarkably unlikely. One would have thought the security industry would have noticed if Huawei had particularly robust security.