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Police forcing me to install Jingwang spyware app, how to minimize impact?

452 points by sebazzz 8y ago

crunchlibrarian 8y ago
It seems like a pretty safe assumption that google will just play along with the Chinese government and force spyware into phones via play or some update mechanism, if they aren't already working on this. Stopping people at random on the street to make sure an app is installed seems quite inefficient.
- coralreef 8y ago
  Could be a pilot project
- mooman219 8y ago
  There's very little "playing along" between Google and China, far less than Apple. Search is the only product that has a chance of working there right now, Play Store is just dead weight there, and most companies that ship Android in China will bundle their own app store. Apple iOS bundles a spyware system module on the other hand (for China only).
  - stirlo 8y ago
    “Apple iOS bundles a spyware system module on the other hand (for China only).“ You can’t just state this as fact without any sourcing. While they may be forced to do so in the future do you have proof this is happening now?
    - mooman219 8y ago
      It's more hidden after iOS 7. If you want to start looking, check old GSCapabilities and go from there.
      - tobltobs 8y ago
        I started looking but the only thing related to china was this green tea thing, but > "Green-Tea" is a code name for devices sold in China. Green-Tea devices have restricted access to various applications e.g. Maps. isn't exactly a smoking colt for a spyware. Could you be more specific?
      - willstrafach 8y ago
        This is incorrect.
- nil_pointer 8y ago
  Stopping people on the street is also very bad PR and leads to submissions like this. They would be better off doing what you suggested.
  - mikeash 8y ago
    This shows why it’s actually quite efficient. The bad PR is part of the whole effect. They don’t want to silently monitor these people, they want to control them, and making it known that they can be stopped at any time and forced to submit is part of the deal.
Someone1234 8y ago
What are the benefits & liabilities to both installing and to circumvention? What I mean is that China is known to jail political dissidents (and or lower their social score which has negative implications, like limiting travel), so you have to weigh the risks of being viewed negatively via the spyware's information leakage with the risk of getting caught circumventing. For example one could only be a lower social score, while the other could literally be jail or "disappearing." I might sound like a immoral question, but you really have to weigh the potential risks of doing what that thread asks. I won't give people advice on circumvention not because I agree with the Chinese government (I don't!) but because I don't want to be partly responsible for a Chinese dissident getting caught and "punished" for the attempted circumvention.
- mikekchar 8y ago
  In my view, there is a case for civil disobedience. However, if you are going that route, then you should be prepared (and possibly even welcome) the consequences. Your goal should be to draw attention to the problem and put pressure on the government to change its laws. This tactic is very good if the government is likely to respond to that kind of pressure. Gandhi and his followers risked death for their actions. Gandhi referred to them as "soldiers" because, even though their battlefield was political, the consequences were the same. Through the horrific deaths of the disobedient, the British government was forced out of India. Before you engage in an act of civil disobedience, you need to understand the playing field. For India, Gandhi surmised (and was correct) that the result would be as inevitable as the losses, and people willingly sacrificed themselves for the cause. This will not always be the case (and I would be very much surprised if it is the case in China because there is very little pressure that can be effectively applied to the Chinese government, whether inside or outside of the country). So if civil disobedience is not the goal, what is the point of trying to work around the spyware? Obviously to avoid being spied upon. But it's important to understand that it is breaking the law. It makes you a criminal -- with all the downsides that can bring. It doesn't matter whether it is moral or not. Being punished for breaking the law is an incredibly wasteful thing to do from the perspective of trying to make the country a better place, if you are not going the civil disobedience route (and hence using your punishment as a strategic weapon against the government). So what can you do? Possibly nothing except wait. Fighting and losing may be valiant and courageous, but it's also ineffective. Wait until you can make a difference. Prepare, and plan and store all your energy for the one time where you can succeed. If it doesn't come in your lifetime, then prepare the next generation to wait. Nothing is forever. And if you want to know how to communicate: never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway. As the top reply on SE currently points out, make your cellphone squeaky clean and ensure that there is a lot of normal data on it (i.e. use it like a normal person). Communicate secret things in a different manner.
clircle 8y ago
I'd sell the smart phone. Then buy a dumb phone.
- Cthulhu_ 8y ago
  It's likely that all dumb phone traffic is already monitored in China (so be careful in phone conversations / text messages), but yeah, if you want your personal files kept personal don't carry them on a mobile or otherwise internet connected device.
ilamont 8y ago
Is this only being done in Xinjiang (https://thenextweb.com/asia/2017/07/25/chinas-forcing-its-citizens-to-install-a-terrifying-big-brother-app-on-their-phones-or-go-to-jail/ https://thenextweb.com/asia/2017/07/25/chinas-forcing-its-ci...), or have the police expanded it to other parts of the People's Republic of China? ETA: Apparently some tourists are being forced to install it as well: https://www.reddit.com/r/security/comments/8ofiiw/chinese_border_police_installed_software_on_my/ https://www.reddit.com/r/security/comments/8ofiiw/chinese_bo... Also worth checking out the excellent ABC (Australia) multimedia feature on China's "social credit" system: Social credit is like a personal scorecard for each of China’s 1.4 billion citizens. In one pilot program already in place, each citizen has been assigned a score out of 800. In other programs it’s 900. Those, like Dandan, with top “citizen scores” get VIP treatment at hotels and airports, cheap loans and a fast track to the best universities and jobs. “It will allow the trustworthy to roam freely under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step.” Those at the bottom can be locked out of society and banned from travel, or barred from getting credit or government jobs. The system will be enforced by the latest in high-tech surveillance systems as China pushes to become the world leader in artificial intelligence. Surveillance cameras will be equipped with facial recognition, body scanning and geo-tracking to cast a constant gaze over every citizen. http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-18/china-social-credit-a-model-citizen-in-a-digital-dictatorship/10200278?pfmredir=sm http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-18/china-social-credit...
- AckSyn 8y ago
  I can't imagine this being abused at all.
- Gaelan 8y ago
  Looks like a tourist to Xinjiang (https://www.reddit.com/r/security/comments/8ofiiw/chinese_border_police_installed_software_on_my/e03ae1a/ https://www.reddit.com/r/security/comments/8ofiiw/chinese_bo...)
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- 8y ago
zwaps 8y ago
Reminds me to never go to China. What a nightmare.
- seanmcdirmid 8y ago
  It usually isn’t bad unless you live there. As a tourist, you’ll hardly feel like you are in a police state (quite the opposite, it can be quite chaotic and free wheeling as long as you don’t go near politics). Ya, the internet will suck while you are there, but the food is great and there is a lot to see. IMHO, you would feel more repressed in a place like Singapore than the PRC. If you are going to Xinjiang or Tibet, things start to get weird. Both are really nice places to go, but the logistics are complicated and you’ll feel much more repressed. I went to northern XJ in 2006 before the 2008 riots, it was absolutely stunning and a great place to tour. I also visited the Tibetan part of Sichuan and Yunnan, equally awesome, you are really missing out if you never see it! The Tibetan areas outside of Tibet are easier to get into for foreigners, well at least they were back in 2004. China is getting more closed than it used to be before the olympics, that’s for sure.
  - mikeash 8y ago
    Not sure why you’re being downvoted, but that’s exactly what I’d say too. In terms of day to day life, it feels more free in many ways. Alcohol is sold freely, small merchants set up on the sidewalk, traffic laws might as well not exist, and nobody will hassle you for spitting on the ground. Of course, you have to spend hours screwing around with VPN software just to read the New York Times, and some of this freedom for other people ends up curtailing your own, like when people burn a shitload of dirty coal with no filters and make it hard to breathe outside. But you certainly don’t feel oppressed as a visitor when you’re not online.
  - ardy42 8y ago
    > As a tourist, you’ll hardly feel like you are in a police state Especially if you can't read the propaganda posters. > Ya, the internet will suck while you are there Protip: bring a phone with a foreign international data plan. The packets will be routed over the phone network to your home country and bypass the Great Firewall.
walrus01 8y ago
I like to remind people of shit like this when they claim that the United States government is an "oppressive" presence on the Internet. Yes, the five eyes nations are actively trying to backdoor crypto, and there is a lot of bullshit going on, but you don't need a license in North America to operate an http daemon. In China you do. The GFW is no joke, and they are seriously trying to bifurcate the Internet.
- schoen 8y ago
  > In China you do. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICP_license https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICP_license It's always sad on the Let's Encrypt forum when someone fails to get a cert and the reason turns out to be that the hosting provider has blocked all inbound HTTP connections because the user's web site wasn't licensed. This is a regular event, most recently reported this past weekend.
- princetontiger 8y ago
  I will fight and die for the Five Eyes... The best, most sophisticated nations on earth. The Five British Countries: New Zealand, Australia, Canada, UK, US. Everywhere else? Protohuman. The Five Eyes combined with all other European nations are the best places to live on earth. We respect private property and human rights. Anglo Saxons for the win! People don't realize only 15% of the world is free.
- arcticbull 8y ago
  This really is whataboutism. Two things can be differently oppressive at once, and if you don't push back actively the line moves on you.
  - walrus01 8y ago
    And I equally support bringing the US/Five Eyes SIGINT activities to the attention of as many people as possible, and calling out bullshit like the australian government trying to backdoor crypto: https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=australia+backdoor+crypto&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8 https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=aus... The counterpoint to your claim of whataboutism is that it is possible to simultaneously denounce both the Chinese government's activities and the US, while at the same time critically and rationally examining their differences in methodology. And documenting where they are the same (NSA/CIA hoards zero-days, Chinese intelligence does the same, etc).
markdown 8y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism China is irrelevant to the average western internet user, to whom the US govt is indeed an oppressive presence.
- walrus01 8y ago
  The internet is a globally interconnected system, one nation-state messing with a part of it is not whataboutism. Civil rights violations and abuses in other parts of the world are also an issue that nobody should ignore. China publishes a report every year on human rights abuses in the USA that has a number of valid criticisms (incarceration rate of black males, police shootings, etc), but that doesn't make the US Department of State's report on Chinese human rights abuses any less valid.
  - markdown 8y ago
    Everything you've said may be true, and yet your comment is still a perfect example of whataboutism. I mean, just read it: > I like to remind people of shit like this when they claim that the United States government is an "oppressive" presence on the Internet. Why do you feel the need to bring up China when someone talks about the US govt spying on their online activities?
    - walrus01 8y ago
      I think the distinction is that the United States treats "spying on online activities" as a signals intelligence/passive gathering system and methodology. The US government doesn't arbitrarily regulate BGP4 tables and IX points, run a GFW like system on all international submarine cables (though traffic may be passively tapped by the NSA), require licenses for http daemons, or forcibly install spyware on citizens' phones. The active measures taken by the Chinese government are pretty much the opposite of the US/Five Eyes' SIGINT approach to things. I do not agree with either, and think that both should be highly publicized, and awareness raised. However I think that the Chinese method of police state social control is on a whole other magnitude of "fucking with the Internet" than what is possible in the US with constitutionally/bill of rights protected freedoms.
wtracy 8y ago
I'm curious what happens if you use a phone that's incompatible with the app. Do you get a free pass, or is China going to only allow the use of compatible devices?
- lozaning 8y ago
  I thank my lucky stars everyday that Samsung has still yet to figure out how to port their security rootkit to OSX. Getting into and out of Digital City is already horrendous enough as it as, I dont need software spying on me forever until I format my machine.
  - slig 8y ago
    Since there are (were?) virus that can survive a HD format, I wouldn't trust a simple format against a state agency spyware.
    - lozaning 8y ago
      I should have been more clear. If you want to get into most any Samsung building in the world and especially their global HQ in Suwoon they make you install their security shit on any Windows laptops you've got. It blocks USB ports, prevents you from connecting to anything but corporate wifi, and disables any cameras amongst other things. Once your business with samsung is done you can email someone (And I think it's literally only 1 guy for all of global samsung) and in a couple weeks they'll email you a one time code tied to some kinda hardware ID that you can use to uninstall the software from your machine. I've got no reason to believe that Samsung is in kahoots with a nation state for any nefarious spying, I just resent being treated as a would be criminal. That being said if you visit a Samsung office in China, just bring burner tech and throw it away before coming back.
      - gruez 8y ago
        >Once your business with samsung is done you can email someone (And I think it's literally only 1 guy for all of global samsung) and in a couple weeks they'll email you a one time code tied to some kinda hardware ID that you can use to uninstall the software from your machine ...or restore a full disk backup? actually, come to think of it, what's preventing you from playing along and installing their security rootkit, then reimage/reinstall os/swap hdd/switch boot partition once you get in? unless they can overwrite your computer's firmware and prevent it fro. being modified, its trivial to remove the rootkit.
superkuh 8y ago
This just makes it obvious what smart phones are in a world where people pretend otherwise because they're so damn useful. They are tracking and spying devices. It's implicit in the idea of a 'cell'. When you carry a cell phone you are being tracked. No matter what is going on in the software side of the phone you have ostensible control over you don't control the baseband modem and certainly not the basestations doing multilateration with their super precise clocks. And it's going to get worse with the proliferation of micro and nano cell basestations as well as massive MIMO beamforming at regular ones.
rasengan 8y ago
1. Install multiple ROMs on your device. 2. One of the ROMs would, essentially, be a dummy device which would have the Jingwang spyware as enforced by gun. 3. The other ROMs would not.
- Splines 8y ago
  And then what do you do when you have the wrong ROM running and you get grabbed by the police with no opportunity to reboot your phone? There are mitigations but getting this right requires a high amount of vigilance.
hnaccy 8y ago
I hope Chinese party collapses. If a large illiberal and totalitarian state can succeed and thrive then I fear our own nations will soon follow that path.
- movedx 8y ago
  This is my worry too.
- bsder 8y ago
  A dinosaur can do a lot of damage as it falls, unfortunately. The more that China enforces the social credit system, the less worried I am about competition from China. Stagnation is the end result. The damage it can do in the meantime is incalculable.
- mikeash 8y ago
  I tend to agree, but I’m not optimistic. Historically, the sort of liberal, open society we see in “the west” is an aberration. If there is a causal factor between liberal, open societies and prosperity, it doesn’t seem to be particularly critical. People like to point to the fall of the USSR and the endurance of its former enemies as evidence that these societies are inherently more likely to succeed, but looking farther back in history, I’m inclined to think that was an anomaly. I’d very much like to be wrong, of course.
- api 8y ago
  I really blame China for the shift away from libertarian thinking and toward both right and left authoritarianism. The old argument from libertarians was that freedom and modern prosperity are a package deal. Take away freedom and you get poverty, corruption, and stagnation. That seemed mostly true until the Chinese "miracle." China seems to be proving that you can have prosperity without freedom or human rights. You can allow some amount of freedom in certain select areas, and that's all it takes. That has in turn opened the door for a whole host of fundamental challenges to freedom and human rights in the West.
- dang 8y ago
  Please do not take HN threads into generic national flamewar. This is off topic and never ends well.
sydd 8y ago
1. Dont try to circumvent with software, they have more experts than you. If you get caught its likely jail. If you really need some app that they monitor install an Android emulator on your PC. Or get a phone where their app wont work, like one with Ubuntu or Sailfish OS.
- mtgx 8y ago
  If that works, then it should work to have a different Android profile or use an environment isolation app such as Island or Google's Test DPC. I think there's another new one in the F-Droid store, too, now.
- angry_octet 8y ago
  Emulators can be detected. I'd suggest extracting their binary and seeing how it works. It quite possibly is badly written, with no code update. May be fixed functionality, unable to detect rootkits etc.
Mefis 8y ago
Can we stop with argumentative and ultimately pointless comparison between the US and China. For me what's astounding is: "Lastly, nothing is transmitted from the individuals device to the receiving server over HTTPS — all in plaintext via HTTP — and updates are unsigned. This means all the data the app collects is transmitted to the unknown entity on the receiving end in a way that allows someone with a trivial amount of technical knowledge to intercept and potentially manipulate" [0] Is there any reason besides incompetence why the apps developers would do this? [0] https://www.opentech.fund/news/app-targeting-uyghur-population-censors-content-lacks-basic-security/ https://www.opentech.fund/news/app-targeting-uyghur-populati... Edited: formatting
- gruez 8y ago
  plausible deniability? that way if you get hacked by the govt, they can blame it on cybercriminals or western intelligence agencies
  - cryptonector 8y ago
    Also cost.
    - movedx 8y ago
      Cost of what, exactly? An (free) TLS certificate from Let's Encrypt?
      - stickfigure 8y ago
        I'm guessing that when you start snooping on the everyday mobile activity of 1.3 billion citizens you hit the kind of scaling problems that usually only Facebook and Google see.
        movedx 8y ago
        There's probably (simple/cheap) ways to overcome that, but I see your point.
mjevans 8y ago
Don't consider a mobile phone to be a secure device. Only if you completely "own", manage, and trust all suppliers can you say that you even know the scope of trust to associate with your phone. This is not possible on even a "rooted" phone without the software due to the baseband being non-free and non-audited.
graeme 8y ago
How is China handling iphones: is there any equivalent to this app? Will they ban iphones in some sensitive locations if the phones can't be breached? AFAIK iphones don't allow spyware apps to gather most of the data the android app does.
- nil_pointer 8y ago
  I would guess Apple works closely with China and provides special software releases for Chinese devices, probably with spyware embedded.
  - 1stranger 8y ago
    Source?
- angry_octet 8y ago
  Iphones are very expensive, so most people are not buying them. They can still read everything you post, every SMS, youe location, and everything you send to an informant or someone using an older Android. Most comms are blocked -- no signal or whatsapp, just Weibo. It's nbd.
kimburgess 8y ago
s/China/Australia/g https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/about/consultations/assistance-and-access-bill-2018 https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/about/consultations/assistanc...
07d046 8y ago
This doesn't seem like a problem with a technical solution. If he slips up and gets caught, that alone might be enough to send him into a Xinjiang concentration camp. Some of my libertarian tech friends like the idea of more encryption and decentralisation to resist what they perceive as increasingly oppressive governments, but I'm confident that this tech-first approach can never work. A truly oppressive government can easily outlaw these things and identify the users, and they'll be the first to disappear.
- acct1771 8y ago
  This has already begun.
- Cthulhu_ 8y ago
  There's already laws popping up left and right that you get x years in jail (or are just detained indefinitely) if you don't unlock your digital devices or hard drives. The logic being if you have nothing to hide, etc. It's a direct violation of the self-incriminating constitution thing, but there's lots of attempts to talk around that one.
yters 8y ago
How true are the reports about treatment of Falun Gong?
- 07d046 8y ago
  It appears that they are treated horrifically by the Chinese Communist Party. Falun Gong was founded in the 1990s as a Buddhist sect, and it grew rapidly. The CCP doesn't tolerate ideological rivals or power structures it doesn't control, so it banned them and propagandised them as an evil and dangerous cult, which is how they're widely seen in China today. Hundreds of thousands have been detained, and thousands have died in custody. There are reports of widespread organ harvesting: Lavee describes how his attitude changed dramatically when a patient told him he was travelling to China for a scheduled heart transplant. This idea was shocking to Lavee, because the circumstances of death that allow heart donation cannot be predicted. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4919373/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4919373/ The CCP claimed that they stopped using organs forcibly taken from prisoners in 2015, but not everybody is convinced by that claim. Overall, they are treated as inhuman. There's also the photo on the Wikipedia page for cattle prods: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle_prod https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle_prod
  - throwaway92411 8y ago
    Here is a Time Magazine interview with the founder of Falun Gong. > TIME: In your book [Zhuan Falun] you talk about people levitating off the ground but you say that they should not show other people. Why is that? > Li: It is the same principle that Western gods in paradise should not be seen by ordinary mortals because they cannot understand its meaning. > TIME: Have you seen human beings levitate off the ground? > Li: I have known too many. > TIME: Would you use qigong to cure an illness? > Li: I can do all of this, but I won't do it. > TIME: Why not? > Li: Because I only teach people how to learn this dafa [great law] and to practice cultivation. I only teach the principles of fa to mankind. I won't do anything else. He also talks about how aliens have come to Earth, > TIME: Where do they come from? > Li: The aliens come from other planets. The names that I use for these planets are different . Some are from dimensions that human beings have not yet discovered. The key is how they have corrupted mankind. Everyone knows that from the beginning until now, there has never been a development of culture like today. Although it has been several thousand years, it has never been like now. > The aliens have introduced modern machinery like computers and airplanes. They started by teaching mankind about modern science, so people believe more and more science, and spiritually, they are controlled. Everyone thinks that scientists invent on their own when in fact their inspiration is manipulated by the aliens. In terms of culture and spirit, they already control man. Mankind cannot live without science. > The ultimate purpose is to replace humans. If cloning human beings succeeds, the aliens can officially replace humans. Why does a corpse lie dead, even though it is the same as a living body? The difference is the soul, which is the life of the body. If people reproduce a human person, the gods in heaven will not give its body a human soul. The aliens will take that opportunity to replace the human soul and by doing so they will enter earth and become earthlings. > When such people grow up, they will help replace humans with aliens. They will produce more and more clones. There will no longer be humans reproduced by humans. They will act like humans, but they will introduce legislation to stop human reproduction. You can read more here: https://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2053761,00.html https://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2053761,0...
jackhack 8y ago
How to minimize impact? Not possible. Once the device is compromised, there is no going back, it is time to stop using the phone for any "questionable" behavior you do not wish Big Brother to record. The only real solution is to live in a place where police do not force you to install spyware. And do not name your phone "tiananmen square massacre 1989"
- cheeko1234 8y ago
  https://www.businessinsider.com/words-china-banned-from-search-engines-after-tiananmen-square-2014-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/words-china-banned-from-sear... Fire Torch Oil lamp Candle flame Blood Democracy Autonomous Twitter Six four Eight nine Eight eight Tank May 35 35 Six Four 64 June Jun+4 Thirty-five Twenty-four Six+four Six 4 6 four
paultopia 8y ago
Oh dear oh dear oh dear. I can't imagine the Chinese government is going to be terribly happy when they find out about that post. I do hope the poster ends up ok.
aaron695 8y ago
If you want a copy of the app (Jingwang) from the Chinese servers it's here http://47.93.5.238:8081/APP/GA_AJ_JK/GA_AJ_JK_GXH.apk?AJLY=650102000000 http://47.93.5.238:8081/APP/GA_AJ_JK/GA_AJ_JK_GXH.apk?AJLY=6... Which was the version/server the chinese used last year, it might be updated. Inside is all(?) the MD5 they are searching for. What would be interesting is what these documents actually are. You'd have to find some overseas hosted disident sites, mass download all documents, md5, and compare.
JAdamMoore 8y ago
I love how easy it is to get your enemies to do all of your strategic thinking for you: Pretend to be one of them, then innocently ask for advice. Everyone is an idiot, I swear.
throwaway92411 8y ago
This makes me wonder, if there was a question about how to break US law, whether that post would be allowed to stand? I suppose if it was informational, then it might be OK. But seeing how the government has gone after Backpage and other similar sites, I think anything that aids and abets it would be shut down.
- Cthulhu_ 8y ago
  I think there's questions about how to deal with US border security, given how they have special laws that apply to them allowing them to hold you into custody until you give up e.g. encryption keys to your hard drive. They don't advise on how to break the law, they advise to not bring personal data across the border and use a VPN to retrieve it from wherever you're coming from.
- isostatic 8y ago
  There are about 200 countries in the world, and laws vary even inside those jurisdictions.
Tree1993 8y ago
It is china's fault, not android because if you travel there, your iphone will be checked too.
- Cthulhu_ 8y ago
  Same in the US, they have laws that allow them to detain you if you don't let them search your digital devices.
huxflux 8y ago
Fake news!
sandov 8y ago
Reading stuff like these always makes me so sad about Chinese people. Guys just like me, who like fiddling with computers and just want to be happy have to live in this totalitarian nightmare. I know it sounds silly to care about this stuff when probably there are much worse things happening in China, executions and stuff. But from my ignorant POV, tech is the one thing I can relate to. At the same time it makes me feel lonely. I would love to be able to help them in some way, but I can't.
- runn1ng 8y ago
  This is in Xinjiang region. Muslim minority (but majority in Xinjiang, more or less resisting forced assimilation). Regular Han people don't really have much sympathy for them, and since China is nowadays an ethnostate, the state won't care either. They would not currently attempt to do this in Han cities.
1023bytes 8y ago
It would be interesting if someone posted the APK, it's Android so it wouldn't be a big issue to crack it and make it only seem like it works.
jayalpha 8y ago
I mean, I see so many solutions to this posted there. Dual Boot Rom, Sandbox etc. How about carrying two phones?
- icebraining 8y ago
  The question says they can't afford two phones.
  - jayalpha 8y ago
    "I can't afford two phones nor two contracts, so using a second phone is not a viable option for me." Sounds strange. A 100 Dollar phone plus a prepaid SIM? I actually never heard that the Chinese police forces spyware on your phone, except if you are a Muslim.
    - bettegg 8y ago
      If you have barely enough money for one 100 dollar phone, you won't afford two of them.
    - dfcowell 8y ago
      Welcome to the developing world, where the average monthly salary in major cities is lower than $1,500/mo and in minor cities is often sub-$400/mo and a $100 phone is an incredible luxury out of reach of many.
      - jayalpha 8y ago
        Yeah. Sure. Explain this to me, as a person living in China.
- e_proxus 8y ago
  Can easily be found by a search, so it carries the same, if not greater risks, as the other "dual" solutions.
yhavr 8y ago
Has anybody made a custom android that sandboxes this app and feeds it wrong information?
est 8y ago
People are over simplifying this. China is a authoritarian surveillance state? Yes. But that only scratches the surface of a deeper problem within. I think China is just a case of policies easily influenced by lobbyists, and gets executed very efficiently This contributes much to China's economical success, as well as its (possible) demise.
olemartinorg 8y ago
My phone is made in China, from a Chinese manufacturer. How can we know this software isn't either pre-installed or installed via OTA updates?
- Cthulhu_ 8y ago
  You can't really, which is what got HTC into major trouble (iirc).
  - robjan 8y ago
    HTC are not a Chinese manufacturer
- angry_octet 8y ago
  You can't. Hence the problem with using ZTE or Huawei etc.
arountheworld 8y ago
This is the future. Any socialist government needs to control the society one way or another. Free speech is not compatible with this system regardless if defendants of socialism say otherwise.
BrandoElFollito 8y ago
When I read the question (and almost answered, but the answer would have been too similar to another one), I was so surprised that anyone can suggest anything beyond "Do. Not. Do. It". Having as the adversary a state is a game changer and there are a few purple who have the knowledge to imagine a strategy. Suggesting anything to someone who has no idea about security is simply unethical, given what is at stake.
Bryan00 8y ago
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452 points by sebazzz 8y ago

It seems like a pretty safe assumption that google will just play along with the Chinese government and force spyware into phones via play or some update mechanism, if they aren't already working on this. Stopping people at random on the street to make sure an app is installed seems quite inefficient.

coralreef 8y ago
Could be a pilot project
mooman219 8y ago
There's very little "playing along" between Google and China, far less than Apple. Search is the only product that has a chance of working there right now, Play Store is just dead weight there, and most companies that ship Android in China will bundle their own app store. Apple iOS bundles a spyware system module on the other hand (for China only).
- stirlo 8y ago
  “Apple iOS bundles a spyware system module on the other hand (for China only).“ You can’t just state this as fact without any sourcing. While they may be forced to do so in the future do you have proof this is happening now?
  - mooman219 8y ago
    It's more hidden after iOS 7. If you want to start looking, check old GSCapabilities and go from there.
    - tobltobs 8y ago
      I started looking but the only thing related to china was this green tea thing, but > "Green-Tea" is a code name for devices sold in China. Green-Tea devices have restricted access to various applications e.g. Maps. isn't exactly a smoking colt for a spyware. Could you be more specific?
    - willstrafach 8y ago
      This is incorrect.
nil_pointer 8y ago
Stopping people on the street is also very bad PR and leads to submissions like this. They would be better off doing what you suggested.
- mikeash 8y ago
  This shows why it’s actually quite efficient. The bad PR is part of the whole effect. They don’t want to silently monitor these people, they want to control them, and making it known that they can be stopped at any time and forced to submit is part of the deal.

Someone1234 8y ago

What are the benefits & liabilities to both installing and to circumvention? What I mean is that China is known to jail political dissidents (and or lower their social score which has negative implications, like limiting travel), so you have to weigh the risks of being viewed negatively via the spyware's information leakage with the risk of getting caught circumventing. For example one could only be a lower social score, while the other could literally be jail or "disappearing." I might sound like a immoral question, but you really have to weigh the potential risks of doing what that thread asks. I won't give people advice on circumvention not because I agree with the Chinese government (I don't!) but because I don't want to be partly responsible for a Chinese dissident getting caught and "punished" for the attempted circumvention.

mikekchar 8y ago
In my view, there is a case for civil disobedience. However, if you are going that route, then you should be prepared (and possibly even welcome) the consequences. Your goal should be to draw attention to the problem and put pressure on the government to change its laws. This tactic is very good if the government is likely to respond to that kind of pressure. Gandhi and his followers risked death for their actions. Gandhi referred to them as "soldiers" because, even though their battlefield was political, the consequences were the same. Through the horrific deaths of the disobedient, the British government was forced out of India. Before you engage in an act of civil disobedience, you need to understand the playing field. For India, Gandhi surmised (and was correct) that the result would be as inevitable as the losses, and people willingly sacrificed themselves for the cause. This will not always be the case (and I would be very much surprised if it is the case in China because there is very little pressure that can be effectively applied to the Chinese government, whether inside or outside of the country). So if civil disobedience is not the goal, what is the point of trying to work around the spyware? Obviously to avoid being spied upon. But it's important to understand that it is breaking the law. It makes you a criminal -- with all the downsides that can bring. It doesn't matter whether it is moral or not. Being punished for breaking the law is an incredibly wasteful thing to do from the perspective of trying to make the country a better place, if you are not going the civil disobedience route (and hence using your punishment as a strategic weapon against the government). So what can you do? Possibly nothing except wait. Fighting and losing may be valiant and courageous, but it's also ineffective. Wait until you can make a difference. Prepare, and plan and store all your energy for the one time where you can succeed. If it doesn't come in your lifetime, then prepare the next generation to wait. Nothing is forever. And if you want to know how to communicate: never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway. As the top reply on SE currently points out, make your cellphone squeaky clean and ensure that there is a lot of normal data on it (i.e. use it like a normal person). Communicate secret things in a different manner.

clircle 8y ago

I'd sell the smart phone. Then buy a dumb phone.

Cthulhu_ 8y ago
It's likely that all dumb phone traffic is already monitored in China (so be careful in phone conversations / text messages), but yeah, if you want your personal files kept personal don't carry them on a mobile or otherwise internet connected device.

ilamont 8y ago

Is this only being done in Xinjiang (https://thenextweb.com/asia/2017/07/25/chinas-forcing-its-citizens-to-install-a-terrifying-big-brother-app-on-their-phones-or-go-to-jail/ https://thenextweb.com/asia/2017/07/25/chinas-forcing-its-ci...), or have the police expanded it to other parts of the People's Republic of China? ETA: Apparently some tourists are being forced to install it as well: https://www.reddit.com/r/security/comments/8ofiiw/chinese_border_police_installed_software_on_my/ https://www.reddit.com/r/security/comments/8ofiiw/chinese_bo... Also worth checking out the excellent ABC (Australia) multimedia feature on China's "social credit" system: Social credit is like a personal scorecard for each of China’s 1.4 billion citizens. In one pilot program already in place, each citizen has been assigned a score out of 800. In other programs it’s 900. Those, like Dandan, with top “citizen scores” get VIP treatment at hotels and airports, cheap loans and a fast track to the best universities and jobs. “It will allow the trustworthy to roam freely under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step.” Those at the bottom can be locked out of society and banned from travel, or barred from getting credit or government jobs. The system will be enforced by the latest in high-tech surveillance systems as China pushes to become the world leader in artificial intelligence. Surveillance cameras will be equipped with facial recognition, body scanning and geo-tracking to cast a constant gaze over every citizen. http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-18/china-social-credit-a-model-citizen-in-a-digital-dictatorship/10200278?pfmredir=sm http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-18/china-social-credit...

AckSyn 8y ago
I can't imagine this being abused at all.
Gaelan 8y ago
Looks like a tourist to Xinjiang (https://www.reddit.com/r/security/comments/8ofiiw/chinese_border_police_installed_software_on_my/e03ae1a/ https://www.reddit.com/r/security/comments/8ofiiw/chinese_bo...)
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
8y ago

zwaps 8y ago

Reminds me to never go to China. What a nightmare.

seanmcdirmid 8y ago
It usually isn’t bad unless you live there. As a tourist, you’ll hardly feel like you are in a police state (quite the opposite, it can be quite chaotic and free wheeling as long as you don’t go near politics). Ya, the internet will suck while you are there, but the food is great and there is a lot to see. IMHO, you would feel more repressed in a place like Singapore than the PRC. If you are going to Xinjiang or Tibet, things start to get weird. Both are really nice places to go, but the logistics are complicated and you’ll feel much more repressed. I went to northern XJ in 2006 before the 2008 riots, it was absolutely stunning and a great place to tour. I also visited the Tibetan part of Sichuan and Yunnan, equally awesome, you are really missing out if you never see it! The Tibetan areas outside of Tibet are easier to get into for foreigners, well at least they were back in 2004. China is getting more closed than it used to be before the olympics, that’s for sure.
- mikeash 8y ago
  Not sure why you’re being downvoted, but that’s exactly what I’d say too. In terms of day to day life, it feels more free in many ways. Alcohol is sold freely, small merchants set up on the sidewalk, traffic laws might as well not exist, and nobody will hassle you for spitting on the ground. Of course, you have to spend hours screwing around with VPN software just to read the New York Times, and some of this freedom for other people ends up curtailing your own, like when people burn a shitload of dirty coal with no filters and make it hard to breathe outside. But you certainly don’t feel oppressed as a visitor when you’re not online.
- ardy42 8y ago
  > As a tourist, you’ll hardly feel like you are in a police state Especially if you can't read the propaganda posters. > Ya, the internet will suck while you are there Protip: bring a phone with a foreign international data plan. The packets will be routed over the phone network to your home country and bypass the Great Firewall.

walrus01 8y ago

I like to remind people of shit like this when they claim that the United States government is an "oppressive" presence on the Internet. Yes, the five eyes nations are actively trying to backdoor crypto, and there is a lot of bullshit going on, but you don't need a license in North America to operate an http daemon. In China you do. The GFW is no joke, and they are seriously trying to bifurcate the Internet.

schoen 8y ago
> In China you do. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICP_license https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICP_license It's always sad on the Let's Encrypt forum when someone fails to get a cert and the reason turns out to be that the hosting provider has blocked all inbound HTTP connections because the user's web site wasn't licensed. This is a regular event, most recently reported this past weekend.
princetontiger 8y ago
I will fight and die for the Five Eyes... The best, most sophisticated nations on earth. The Five British Countries: New Zealand, Australia, Canada, UK, US. Everywhere else? Protohuman. The Five Eyes combined with all other European nations are the best places to live on earth. We respect private property and human rights. Anglo Saxons for the win! People don't realize only 15% of the world is free.
arcticbull 8y ago
This really is whataboutism. Two things can be differently oppressive at once, and if you don't push back actively the line moves on you.
- walrus01 8y ago
  And I equally support bringing the US/Five Eyes SIGINT activities to the attention of as many people as possible, and calling out bullshit like the australian government trying to backdoor crypto: https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=australia+backdoor+crypto&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8 https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=aus... The counterpoint to your claim of whataboutism is that it is possible to simultaneously denounce both the Chinese government's activities and the US, while at the same time critically and rationally examining their differences in methodology. And documenting where they are the same (NSA/CIA hoards zero-days, Chinese intelligence does the same, etc).

markdown 8y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism China is irrelevant to the average western internet user, to whom the US govt is indeed an oppressive presence.

walrus01 8y ago
The internet is a globally interconnected system, one nation-state messing with a part of it is not whataboutism. Civil rights violations and abuses in other parts of the world are also an issue that nobody should ignore. China publishes a report every year on human rights abuses in the USA that has a number of valid criticisms (incarceration rate of black males, police shootings, etc), but that doesn't make the US Department of State's report on Chinese human rights abuses any less valid.
- markdown 8y ago
  Everything you've said may be true, and yet your comment is still a perfect example of whataboutism. I mean, just read it: > I like to remind people of shit like this when they claim that the United States government is an "oppressive" presence on the Internet. Why do you feel the need to bring up China when someone talks about the US govt spying on their online activities?
  - walrus01 8y ago
    I think the distinction is that the United States treats "spying on online activities" as a signals intelligence/passive gathering system and methodology. The US government doesn't arbitrarily regulate BGP4 tables and IX points, run a GFW like system on all international submarine cables (though traffic may be passively tapped by the NSA), require licenses for http daemons, or forcibly install spyware on citizens' phones. The active measures taken by the Chinese government are pretty much the opposite of the US/Five Eyes' SIGINT approach to things. I do not agree with either, and think that both should be highly publicized, and awareness raised. However I think that the Chinese method of police state social control is on a whole other magnitude of "fucking with the Internet" than what is possible in the US with constitutionally/bill of rights protected freedoms.

wtracy 8y ago

I'm curious what happens if you use a phone that's incompatible with the app. Do you get a free pass, or is China going to only allow the use of compatible devices?

lozaning 8y ago
I thank my lucky stars everyday that Samsung has still yet to figure out how to port their security rootkit to OSX. Getting into and out of Digital City is already horrendous enough as it as, I dont need software spying on me forever until I format my machine.
- slig 8y ago
  Since there are (were?) virus that can survive a HD format, I wouldn't trust a simple format against a state agency spyware.
  - lozaning 8y ago
    I should have been more clear. If you want to get into most any Samsung building in the world and especially their global HQ in Suwoon they make you install their security shit on any Windows laptops you've got. It blocks USB ports, prevents you from connecting to anything but corporate wifi, and disables any cameras amongst other things. Once your business with samsung is done you can email someone (And I think it's literally only 1 guy for all of global samsung) and in a couple weeks they'll email you a one time code tied to some kinda hardware ID that you can use to uninstall the software from your machine. I've got no reason to believe that Samsung is in kahoots with a nation state for any nefarious spying, I just resent being treated as a would be criminal. That being said if you visit a Samsung office in China, just bring burner tech and throw it away before coming back.
    - gruez 8y ago
      >Once your business with samsung is done you can email someone (And I think it's literally only 1 guy for all of global samsung) and in a couple weeks they'll email you a one time code tied to some kinda hardware ID that you can use to uninstall the software from your machine ...or restore a full disk backup? actually, come to think of it, what's preventing you from playing along and installing their security rootkit, then reimage/reinstall os/swap hdd/switch boot partition once you get in? unless they can overwrite your computer's firmware and prevent it fro. being modified, its trivial to remove the rootkit.

superkuh 8y ago

This just makes it obvious what smart phones are in a world where people pretend otherwise because they're so damn useful. They are tracking and spying devices. It's implicit in the idea of a 'cell'. When you carry a cell phone you are being tracked. No matter what is going on in the software side of the phone you have ostensible control over you don't control the baseband modem and certainly not the basestations doing multilateration with their super precise clocks. And it's going to get worse with the proliferation of micro and nano cell basestations as well as massive MIMO beamforming at regular ones.

rasengan 8y ago

1. Install multiple ROMs on your device. 2. One of the ROMs would, essentially, be a dummy device which would have the Jingwang spyware as enforced by gun. 3. The other ROMs would not.

Splines 8y ago
And then what do you do when you have the wrong ROM running and you get grabbed by the police with no opportunity to reboot your phone? There are mitigations but getting this right requires a high amount of vigilance.

hnaccy 8y ago

I hope Chinese party collapses. If a large illiberal and totalitarian state can succeed and thrive then I fear our own nations will soon follow that path.

movedx 8y ago
This is my worry too.
bsder 8y ago
A dinosaur can do a lot of damage as it falls, unfortunately. The more that China enforces the social credit system, the less worried I am about competition from China. Stagnation is the end result. The damage it can do in the meantime is incalculable.
mikeash 8y ago
I tend to agree, but I’m not optimistic. Historically, the sort of liberal, open society we see in “the west” is an aberration. If there is a causal factor between liberal, open societies and prosperity, it doesn’t seem to be particularly critical. People like to point to the fall of the USSR and the endurance of its former enemies as evidence that these societies are inherently more likely to succeed, but looking farther back in history, I’m inclined to think that was an anomaly. I’d very much like to be wrong, of course.
api 8y ago
I really blame China for the shift away from libertarian thinking and toward both right and left authoritarianism. The old argument from libertarians was that freedom and modern prosperity are a package deal. Take away freedom and you get poverty, corruption, and stagnation. That seemed mostly true until the Chinese "miracle." China seems to be proving that you can have prosperity without freedom or human rights. You can allow some amount of freedom in certain select areas, and that's all it takes. That has in turn opened the door for a whole host of fundamental challenges to freedom and human rights in the West.
dang 8y ago
Please do not take HN threads into generic national flamewar. This is off topic and never ends well.

sydd 8y ago

1. Dont try to circumvent with software, they have more experts than you. If you get caught its likely jail. If you really need some app that they monitor install an Android emulator on your PC. Or get a phone where their app wont work, like one with Ubuntu or Sailfish OS.

mtgx 8y ago
If that works, then it should work to have a different Android profile or use an environment isolation app such as Island or Google's Test DPC. I think there's another new one in the F-Droid store, too, now.
angry_octet 8y ago
Emulators can be detected. I'd suggest extracting their binary and seeing how it works. It quite possibly is badly written, with no code update. May be fixed functionality, unable to detect rootkits etc.

Mefis 8y ago

Can we stop with argumentative and ultimately pointless comparison between the US and China. For me what's astounding is: "Lastly, nothing is transmitted from the individuals device to the receiving server over HTTPS — all in plaintext via HTTP — and updates are unsigned. This means all the data the app collects is transmitted to the unknown entity on the receiving end in a way that allows someone with a trivial amount of technical knowledge to intercept and potentially manipulate" [0] Is there any reason besides incompetence why the apps developers would do this? [0] https://www.opentech.fund/news/app-targeting-uyghur-population-censors-content-lacks-basic-security/ https://www.opentech.fund/news/app-targeting-uyghur-populati... Edited: formatting

gruez 8y ago
plausible deniability? that way if you get hacked by the govt, they can blame it on cybercriminals or western intelligence agencies
- cryptonector 8y ago
  Also cost.
  - movedx 8y ago
    Cost of what, exactly? An (free) TLS certificate from Let's Encrypt?
    - stickfigure 8y ago
      I'm guessing that when you start snooping on the everyday mobile activity of 1.3 billion citizens you hit the kind of scaling problems that usually only Facebook and Google see.
      - movedx 8y ago
        There's probably (simple/cheap) ways to overcome that, but I see your point.

mjevans 8y ago

Don't consider a mobile phone to be a secure device. Only if you completely "own", manage, and trust all suppliers can you say that you even know the scope of trust to associate with your phone. This is not possible on even a "rooted" phone without the software due to the baseband being non-free and non-audited.

graeme 8y ago

How is China handling iphones: is there any equivalent to this app? Will they ban iphones in some sensitive locations if the phones can't be breached? AFAIK iphones don't allow spyware apps to gather most of the data the android app does.

nil_pointer 8y ago
I would guess Apple works closely with China and provides special software releases for Chinese devices, probably with spyware embedded.
- 1stranger 8y ago
  Source?
angry_octet 8y ago
Iphones are very expensive, so most people are not buying them. They can still read everything you post, every SMS, youe location, and everything you send to an informant or someone using an older Android. Most comms are blocked -- no signal or whatsapp, just Weibo. It's nbd.

kimburgess 8y ago

s/China/Australia/g https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/about/consultations/assistance-and-access-bill-2018 https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/about/consultations/assistanc...

07d046 8y ago

This doesn't seem like a problem with a technical solution. If he slips up and gets caught, that alone might be enough to send him into a Xinjiang concentration camp. Some of my libertarian tech friends like the idea of more encryption and decentralisation to resist what they perceive as increasingly oppressive governments, but I'm confident that this tech-first approach can never work. A truly oppressive government can easily outlaw these things and identify the users, and they'll be the first to disappear.

acct1771 8y ago
This has already begun.
Cthulhu_ 8y ago
There's already laws popping up left and right that you get x years in jail (or are just detained indefinitely) if you don't unlock your digital devices or hard drives. The logic being if you have nothing to hide, etc. It's a direct violation of the self-incriminating constitution thing, but there's lots of attempts to talk around that one.

yters 8y ago

How true are the reports about treatment of Falun Gong?

07d046 8y ago
It appears that they are treated horrifically by the Chinese Communist Party. Falun Gong was founded in the 1990s as a Buddhist sect, and it grew rapidly. The CCP doesn't tolerate ideological rivals or power structures it doesn't control, so it banned them and propagandised them as an evil and dangerous cult, which is how they're widely seen in China today. Hundreds of thousands have been detained, and thousands have died in custody. There are reports of widespread organ harvesting: Lavee describes how his attitude changed dramatically when a patient told him he was travelling to China for a scheduled heart transplant. This idea was shocking to Lavee, because the circumstances of death that allow heart donation cannot be predicted. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4919373/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4919373/ The CCP claimed that they stopped using organs forcibly taken from prisoners in 2015, but not everybody is convinced by that claim. Overall, they are treated as inhuman. There's also the photo on the Wikipedia page for cattle prods: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle_prod https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle_prod
- throwaway92411 8y ago
  Here is a Time Magazine interview with the founder of Falun Gong. > TIME: In your book [Zhuan Falun] you talk about people levitating off the ground but you say that they should not show other people. Why is that? > Li: It is the same principle that Western gods in paradise should not be seen by ordinary mortals because they cannot understand its meaning. > TIME: Have you seen human beings levitate off the ground? > Li: I have known too many. > TIME: Would you use qigong to cure an illness? > Li: I can do all of this, but I won't do it. > TIME: Why not? > Li: Because I only teach people how to learn this dafa [great law] and to practice cultivation. I only teach the principles of fa to mankind. I won't do anything else. He also talks about how aliens have come to Earth, > TIME: Where do they come from? > Li: The aliens come from other planets. The names that I use for these planets are different . Some are from dimensions that human beings have not yet discovered. The key is how they have corrupted mankind. Everyone knows that from the beginning until now, there has never been a development of culture like today. Although it has been several thousand years, it has never been like now. > The aliens have introduced modern machinery like computers and airplanes. They started by teaching mankind about modern science, so people believe more and more science, and spiritually, they are controlled. Everyone thinks that scientists invent on their own when in fact their inspiration is manipulated by the aliens. In terms of culture and spirit, they already control man. Mankind cannot live without science. > The ultimate purpose is to replace humans. If cloning human beings succeeds, the aliens can officially replace humans. Why does a corpse lie dead, even though it is the same as a living body? The difference is the soul, which is the life of the body. If people reproduce a human person, the gods in heaven will not give its body a human soul. The aliens will take that opportunity to replace the human soul and by doing so they will enter earth and become earthlings. > When such people grow up, they will help replace humans with aliens. They will produce more and more clones. There will no longer be humans reproduced by humans. They will act like humans, but they will introduce legislation to stop human reproduction. You can read more here: https://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2053761,00.html https://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2053761,0...

jackhack 8y ago

How to minimize impact? Not possible. Once the device is compromised, there is no going back, it is time to stop using the phone for any "questionable" behavior you do not wish Big Brother to record. The only real solution is to live in a place where police do not force you to install spyware. And do not name your phone "tiananmen square massacre 1989"

cheeko1234 8y ago
https://www.businessinsider.com/words-china-banned-from-search-engines-after-tiananmen-square-2014-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/words-china-banned-from-sear... Fire Torch Oil lamp Candle flame Blood Democracy Autonomous Twitter Six four Eight nine Eight eight Tank May 35 35 Six Four 64 June Jun+4 Thirty-five Twenty-four Six+four Six 4 6 four

paultopia 8y ago

Oh dear oh dear oh dear. I can't imagine the Chinese government is going to be terribly happy when they find out about that post. I do hope the poster ends up ok.

aaron695 8y ago

If you want a copy of the app (Jingwang) from the Chinese servers it's here http://47.93.5.238:8081/APP/GA_AJ_JK/GA_AJ_JK_GXH.apk?AJLY=650102000000 http://47.93.5.238:8081/APP/GA_AJ_JK/GA_AJ_JK_GXH.apk?AJLY=6... Which was the version/server the chinese used last year, it might be updated. Inside is all(?) the MD5 they are searching for. What would be interesting is what these documents actually are. You'd have to find some overseas hosted disident sites, mass download all documents, md5, and compare.

JAdamMoore 8y ago

I love how easy it is to get your enemies to do all of your strategic thinking for you: Pretend to be one of them, then innocently ask for advice. Everyone is an idiot, I swear.

throwaway92411 8y ago

This makes me wonder, if there was a question about how to break US law, whether that post would be allowed to stand? I suppose if it was informational, then it might be OK. But seeing how the government has gone after Backpage and other similar sites, I think anything that aids and abets it would be shut down.

Cthulhu_ 8y ago
I think there's questions about how to deal with US border security, given how they have special laws that apply to them allowing them to hold you into custody until you give up e.g. encryption keys to your hard drive. They don't advise on how to break the law, they advise to not bring personal data across the border and use a VPN to retrieve it from wherever you're coming from.
isostatic 8y ago
There are about 200 countries in the world, and laws vary even inside those jurisdictions.

Tree1993 8y ago

It is china's fault, not android because if you travel there, your iphone will be checked too.

Cthulhu_ 8y ago
Same in the US, they have laws that allow them to detain you if you don't let them search your digital devices.

huxflux 8y ago

Fake news!

sandov 8y ago

Reading stuff like these always makes me so sad about Chinese people. Guys just like me, who like fiddling with computers and just want to be happy have to live in this totalitarian nightmare. I know it sounds silly to care about this stuff when probably there are much worse things happening in China, executions and stuff. But from my ignorant POV, tech is the one thing I can relate to. At the same time it makes me feel lonely. I would love to be able to help them in some way, but I can't.

runn1ng 8y ago
This is in Xinjiang region. Muslim minority (but majority in Xinjiang, more or less resisting forced assimilation). Regular Han people don't really have much sympathy for them, and since China is nowadays an ethnostate, the state won't care either. They would not currently attempt to do this in Han cities.

1023bytes 8y ago

It would be interesting if someone posted the APK, it's Android so it wouldn't be a big issue to crack it and make it only seem like it works.

jayalpha 8y ago

I mean, I see so many solutions to this posted there. Dual Boot Rom, Sandbox etc. How about carrying two phones?

icebraining 8y ago
The question says they can't afford two phones.
- jayalpha 8y ago
  "I can't afford two phones nor two contracts, so using a second phone is not a viable option for me." Sounds strange. A 100 Dollar phone plus a prepaid SIM? I actually never heard that the Chinese police forces spyware on your phone, except if you are a Muslim.
  - bettegg 8y ago
    If you have barely enough money for one 100 dollar phone, you won't afford two of them.
  - dfcowell 8y ago
    Welcome to the developing world, where the average monthly salary in major cities is lower than $1,500/mo and in minor cities is often sub-$400/mo and a $100 phone is an incredible luxury out of reach of many.
    - jayalpha 8y ago
      Yeah. Sure. Explain this to me, as a person living in China.
e_proxus 8y ago
Can easily be found by a search, so it carries the same, if not greater risks, as the other "dual" solutions.

yhavr 8y ago

Has anybody made a custom android that sandboxes this app and feeds it wrong information?

est 8y ago

People are over simplifying this. China is a authoritarian surveillance state? Yes. But that only scratches the surface of a deeper problem within. I think China is just a case of policies easily influenced by lobbyists, and gets executed very efficiently This contributes much to China's economical success, as well as its (possible) demise.

olemartinorg 8y ago

My phone is made in China, from a Chinese manufacturer. How can we know this software isn't either pre-installed or installed via OTA updates?

Cthulhu_ 8y ago
You can't really, which is what got HTC into major trouble (iirc).
- robjan 8y ago
  HTC are not a Chinese manufacturer
angry_octet 8y ago
You can't. Hence the problem with using ZTE or Huawei etc.

arountheworld 8y ago

This is the future. Any socialist government needs to control the society one way or another. Free speech is not compatible with this system regardless if defendants of socialism say otherwise.

BrandoElFollito 8y ago

When I read the question (and almost answered, but the answer would have been too similar to another one), I was so surprised that anyone can suggest anything beyond "Do. Not. Do. It". Having as the adversary a state is a game changer and there are a few purple who have the knowledge to imagine a strategy. Suggesting anything to someone who has no idea about security is simply unethical, given what is at stake.

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