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As an American, I'd rather be spied on by the Chinese than by my own government. The Chinese government has fewer ways they can use my data against me. Add in t

As an American, I'd rather be spied on by the Chinese than by my own government. The Chinese government has fewer ways they can use my data against me. Add in the fact that Huawei products are cheaper, and I'll be buying Huawei products for the forseeable future. Privacy IS something I'd be willing to pay for, but that's not an option. If the US government and corporations wanted me to trust them, they shouldn't have spied on our communications at every turn and then attempted to silence every whistleblower. The US calling out Huawei on security concerns is obviously the pot calling the kettle black, and I don't think many people internationally will be persuaded. Any government could make a serious play for privacy by making some privacy laws with civil and criminal penalties for violation, and protections and rewards for whistleblowers. But as things are currently, lack of privacy comes standard with communication devices from any country, and Americans calling Huawei out for it is just inane posturing.

nabla9 8y ago
China is unable to use Huawei in western countries for mass surveillance without getting instantly caught. That's not the worry here. What they theoretically could do is to use them to assist in targeted surveillance of small number people, or cause major mobile infrastructure collapse during major conflict.
- kingosticks 8y ago
  How would they be instantly caught?
  - nabla9 8y ago
    Massive network traffic, extra power use, etc.
  - gruez 8y ago
    because exfiltrating data is hard, and if all of your devices are doing it, it's only a matter of time someone notices. it's not going to be "instant", but the risk/reward ratio isn't good.
    - kingosticks 8y ago
      I do agree getting that data out unnoticed is tricky. But something remotely activated/deactivated (magic packet) would be trivial. So it's not necessarily all your devices doing it all the time and that could make it very difficult to detect. If that limitation still makes it worth doing depends on what you need to achieve. The reward could be huge.
      - iforgotpassword 8y ago
        Yes, but remote activation pretty much means targeted. I am absolutely convinced that there are backdoors in huawei devices, be it intentionally or through carelessness. There's news about backdoors in Cisco products at least once a year - completely accidentally obviously, since we are the good guys. However, the Chinese would be very careful about using them. Every time you do, you risk getting caught, because just in that moment someone on the target network could be running wireshark to debug some unrelated problem. And once you're caught you're done. You won't risk that to fetch some random HN user's browsing history to blackmail them.
ksec 8y ago
I often hear this for argument. But in US, when you don't like what the government is doing, you gets to vote ( OK, might not be working so well but you do have the power ) Which ever nations spying on another nations which you don't have a choice. And that is not just social security, but also national security and business security. The implication is much wider.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 8y ago
  > I often hear this for argument. But in US, when you don't like what the government is doing, you gets to vote No, I don't, and those who do are obviously incompetent at it.
  - tiredyam 8y ago
    That’s true. Americans need to be more informed about what they are voting on, but that is something we can change. Also, given the Chinese government’s love for internet censorship, it is not without basis to believe that non-Chinese governments will have more censored internet if their internet is relying on Chinese telecom. At least in the current world you can speak freely to spread awareness and enact change even if it is opposing the US government.
    - chrischen 8y ago
      Americans, British, well everyone really.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
- kerkeslager 8y ago
  I don't like the government spying on me, I've voted in every election since I was able to vote, worked on some campaigns, and it's done shit all for me. I'm not saying don't vote, but you'll excuse me taking other measures to protect myself from bad actors (which includes the US government). The fact is, most US citizens are more likely to be shot by a cop than affect in any way negatively by the Chinese government.
owens99 8y ago
Don’t take this the wrong way, but you are probably not important enough to be their target. Unless they could exploit you in order to exploit someone more powerful they care about, like a corporate or political leader. This is more to protect our leaders, which in turn keeps you more protected.
- thefounder 8y ago
  Elections are important and every vote counts.
- romanovcode 8y ago
  You are completely missing the point of government surveillance. Yes, indeed, as an individual nobody cares about you. However you are a part of general census and by spying on you and everyone around you they can predict what you are thinking, what you are craving, what political stance you hold, what are the risks of you being involved in some future problems for them etc. You can go wider and wider to a city, to a state and finally to a country. Then, for example China can really see what american citizens are thinking in general and this is valuable information. Also, second reason why you are completely missing the point. Let's say you are one of those "I don't care if they spy on me, let them record me on my toilet." - Now your kids are involved in some political activity and you did not pay your taxes for one month 7 years ago. Government wants to suppress your kids political activity and just tell them either they stop or their father (you) go to jail. At least this is how it works in totalitarian countries.
  - dmurray 8y ago
    So the government shouldn't be able to record if you paid your taxes or not? That's a very extreme position on privacy.
    - tomasdore 8y ago
      Or maybe he/she means that the government shouldn't be able to record your kids' political activity? And connect this in a big database to you.
amelius 8y ago
> As an American, I'd rather be spied on by the Chinese than by my own government. A foreign country can release sensitive information strategically, for example, as a kind of psychological warfare, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoralization_(warfare) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoralization_(warfare)
- noir_lord 8y ago
  That or just straight up blackmail you. Our politicians are grim enough without some dude rocking from the Chinese Ministry of State Security and extorting them into doing something worse than the thing they'd already do anyway* * if that is possible sometimes.
  - huffmsa 8y ago
    Or make that data available to your insurance company on a grey market. The phones might be cheap, but the bill will come due eventually.
mtgx 8y ago
> As an American, I'd rather be spied on by the Chinese than by my own government. Considering the low-quality of security in Chinese products, you are much more susceptible to be spied upon by the Chinese...and the American spy agencies, and Russia spy agencies, and criminal groups, and so on.
- DyslexicAtheist 8y ago
  > ... you are much more susceptible to be spied upon ... or indeed by your own employer: https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-moderators-complain-big-brother-rules-accenture-austin-2019-2 https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-moderators-complain... if we would really be worried about security (and not politics / foreign policy war mongering) we'd be speaking about threat models.. And here the China Supply Chain Threat doesn't hold up. Backdoor hardware implants are only tangentially interesting since the vulnerabilities that stem from shoddy engineering (hello crappy ASN.1 parsers and a thousand other flaws: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1093301841205456896.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1093301841205456896.html) are much cheaper to harness than some hypothetical purpose-made backdoor that costs millions to implement and keep covered-up. (Occam's razor)
masonic 8y ago
The Chinese government has fewer ways they can use my data against me ... but are perfectly willing to provide it to everywhere else, maximizing your exposure.
lostapathy 8y ago
The issue isn’t China having “your” information or mine, its them having the aggregate of everyone’s information. Or being able to turn off all the pipes.
s_y_n_t_a_x 8y ago
So you'd be fine with being blackmailed with whatever your browsing history is like? The Chinese government can do MORE because they can do things that would be illegal in America. That's not to say our government doesn't skirt the law, but it definitely is harder and there can be consequences.
- iforgotpassword 8y ago
  Chinas ultimate business plan: spy on all the Americans and then blackmail them. :-D
- kerkeslager 8y ago
  > So you'd be fine with being blackmailed with whatever your browsing history is like? No. But it's much more likely that US bad actors will blackmail me than that Chinese ones will.

nabla9 8y ago

China is unable to use Huawei in western countries for mass surveillance without getting instantly caught. That's not the worry here. What they theoretically could do is to use them to assist in targeted surveillance of small number people, or cause major mobile infrastructure collapse during major conflict.

kingosticks 8y ago
How would they be instantly caught?
- nabla9 8y ago
  Massive network traffic, extra power use, etc.
- gruez 8y ago
  because exfiltrating data is hard, and if all of your devices are doing it, it's only a matter of time someone notices. it's not going to be "instant", but the risk/reward ratio isn't good.
  - kingosticks 8y ago
    I do agree getting that data out unnoticed is tricky. But something remotely activated/deactivated (magic packet) would be trivial. So it's not necessarily all your devices doing it all the time and that could make it very difficult to detect. If that limitation still makes it worth doing depends on what you need to achieve. The reward could be huge.
    - iforgotpassword 8y ago
      Yes, but remote activation pretty much means targeted. I am absolutely convinced that there are backdoors in huawei devices, be it intentionally or through carelessness. There's news about backdoors in Cisco products at least once a year - completely accidentally obviously, since we are the good guys. However, the Chinese would be very careful about using them. Every time you do, you risk getting caught, because just in that moment someone on the target network could be running wireshark to debug some unrelated problem. And once you're caught you're done. You won't risk that to fetch some random HN user's browsing history to blackmail them.

ksec 8y ago

I often hear this for argument. But in US, when you don't like what the government is doing, you gets to vote ( OK, might not be working so well but you do have the power ) Which ever nations spying on another nations which you don't have a choice. And that is not just social security, but also national security and business security. The implication is much wider.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 8y ago
> I often hear this for argument. But in US, when you don't like what the government is doing, you gets to vote No, I don't, and those who do are obviously incompetent at it.
- tiredyam 8y ago
  That’s true. Americans need to be more informed about what they are voting on, but that is something we can change. Also, given the Chinese government’s love for internet censorship, it is not without basis to believe that non-Chinese governments will have more censored internet if their internet is relying on Chinese telecom. At least in the current world you can speak freely to spread awareness and enact change even if it is opposing the US government.
  - chrischen 8y ago
    Americans, British, well everyone really.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
kerkeslager 8y ago
I don't like the government spying on me, I've voted in every election since I was able to vote, worked on some campaigns, and it's done shit all for me. I'm not saying don't vote, but you'll excuse me taking other measures to protect myself from bad actors (which includes the US government). The fact is, most US citizens are more likely to be shot by a cop than affect in any way negatively by the Chinese government.

owens99 8y ago

Don’t take this the wrong way, but you are probably not important enough to be their target. Unless they could exploit you in order to exploit someone more powerful they care about, like a corporate or political leader. This is more to protect our leaders, which in turn keeps you more protected.

thefounder 8y ago
Elections are important and every vote counts.
romanovcode 8y ago
You are completely missing the point of government surveillance. Yes, indeed, as an individual nobody cares about you. However you are a part of general census and by spying on you and everyone around you they can predict what you are thinking, what you are craving, what political stance you hold, what are the risks of you being involved in some future problems for them etc. You can go wider and wider to a city, to a state and finally to a country. Then, for example China can really see what american citizens are thinking in general and this is valuable information. Also, second reason why you are completely missing the point. Let's say you are one of those "I don't care if they spy on me, let them record me on my toilet." - Now your kids are involved in some political activity and you did not pay your taxes for one month 7 years ago. Government wants to suppress your kids political activity and just tell them either they stop or their father (you) go to jail. At least this is how it works in totalitarian countries.
- dmurray 8y ago
  So the government shouldn't be able to record if you paid your taxes or not? That's a very extreme position on privacy.
  - tomasdore 8y ago
    Or maybe he/she means that the government shouldn't be able to record your kids' political activity? And connect this in a big database to you.

amelius 8y ago

> As an American, I'd rather be spied on by the Chinese than by my own government. A foreign country can release sensitive information strategically, for example, as a kind of psychological warfare, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoralization_(warfare) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoralization_(warfare)

noir_lord 8y ago
That or just straight up blackmail you. Our politicians are grim enough without some dude rocking from the Chinese Ministry of State Security and extorting them into doing something worse than the thing they'd already do anyway* * if that is possible sometimes.
- huffmsa 8y ago
  Or make that data available to your insurance company on a grey market. The phones might be cheap, but the bill will come due eventually.

mtgx 8y ago

> As an American, I'd rather be spied on by the Chinese than by my own government. Considering the low-quality of security in Chinese products, you are much more susceptible to be spied upon by the Chinese...and the American spy agencies, and Russia spy agencies, and criminal groups, and so on.

DyslexicAtheist 8y ago
> ... you are much more susceptible to be spied upon ... or indeed by your own employer: https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-moderators-complain-big-brother-rules-accenture-austin-2019-2 https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-moderators-complain... if we would really be worried about security (and not politics / foreign policy war mongering) we'd be speaking about threat models.. And here the China Supply Chain Threat doesn't hold up. Backdoor hardware implants are only tangentially interesting since the vulnerabilities that stem from shoddy engineering (hello crappy ASN.1 parsers and a thousand other flaws: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1093301841205456896.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1093301841205456896.html) are much cheaper to harness than some hypothetical purpose-made backdoor that costs millions to implement and keep covered-up. (Occam's razor)

masonic 8y ago

The Chinese government has fewer ways they can use my data against me ... but are perfectly willing to provide it to everywhere else, maximizing your exposure.

lostapathy 8y ago

The issue isn’t China having “your” information or mine, its them having the aggregate of everyone’s information. Or being able to turn off all the pipes.

s_y_n_t_a_x 8y ago

So you'd be fine with being blackmailed with whatever your browsing history is like? The Chinese government can do MORE because they can do things that would be illegal in America. That's not to say our government doesn't skirt the law, but it definitely is harder and there can be consequences.

iforgotpassword 8y ago
Chinas ultimate business plan: spy on all the Americans and then blackmail them. :-D
kerkeslager 8y ago
> So you'd be fine with being blackmailed with whatever your browsing history is like? No. But it's much more likely that US bad actors will blackmail me than that Chinese ones will.