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Chinese authorities install app on phones of people entering Xinjiang

307 points by el_duderino 7y ago

Tepix 7y ago
Looks like there are ways to block sideloading of apps: https://www.brianmadden.com/opinion/How-do-you-block-sideloaded-app-installation-on-iOS-or-Android https://www.brianmadden.com/opinion/How-do-you-block-sideloa... Basically you create an enterprise profile for your phone and block sideloading of apps as a policy ("Disallow_Install_Unknown_Sources). Same with iOS.
mdorazio 7y ago
This bit is important: "Foreigners crossing certain Chinese borders into the Xinjiang region"... I'm not aware of Chinese authorities getting quite that draconian (yet) at the normal border entry points in Beijing, Shanghai, etc. However, I think it's still worth following the general advice that if you have sensitive data on your devices, leave them at home and use a burner phone/laptop + restore from the cloud later.
- xenospn 7y ago
  There are million of people arriving in China every year - it would be impossible to do that at their major ports of entry.
- seanmcdirmid 7y ago
  I don’t think they would even do this if you flew into Urumqi. Just if you crossed a border from one of the stans into xinjiang, and fen these are mostly closed to westerners.
- TadaScientist 7y ago
  The same goes for a lot of EU to US travel I've been told...
- BurningFrog 7y ago
  OK, Xinjiang is basically a low level war zone/prison camp. Quite different from the rest of China.
  - dirtyid 7y ago
    Rest of China is captured by wechat anyways. This is only really useful for foreign reporters travelling in XinJiang. China could technically just ban foreigners from travelling there but somehow thinks the optics of this is better.
    - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
      It is weird because there are no travel restrictions for foreigners going to Xinjiang (mostly, some places are off limits), you just buy a plane or train ticket. Going to Tibet is a lot harder for foreigners.
      - dirtyid 7y ago
        I think Tibet still very much has Western imagination captured whereas Uyghar Muslims... do not. Even more cynical analysis, Xinjiang is fundamentally an exercise in reducing the real problem of Islamic radicalization and the non response from many countries (including Muslim ones) is that they are quietly observing to see if the experiment pays off. The danger of Xinjiang is that surveillance state + "vocational" reintegration camps might actually be a productive model that can be exported elsewhere.
        seanmcdirmid 7y ago
        Xinjiang is also much larger population (21 million+) wise than Tibet (3 million+), along with the former having a much larger Han population, making restrictions much harder (and less appealing) to implement logistically.
        QuercusMax 7y ago
- aussieguy1234 7y ago
  And don't bother restoring from the cloud, if any malware gets installed on your device at the border
- CodiePetersen 7y ago
  Agreed. I would say the same thing coming into America. Even if you are American. I always refuse to fill out the paper while reentering my own damn country, unless I'm travelling with others. But that means I get pushed to secondary every time. Usually only Hispanic and middle eastern people in there. But the border control agents can take and search anything they want. So I say probably do the same for coming into America on the chance they send you to secondary.
bovermyer 7y ago
The title is a little misleading, as it's a region of China and not the entirety. However, the implications are still ominous. I'm curious, how did China develop into such a police state? Anyone able to point me to some reading on the subject?
- iiuuhhggff 7y ago
  There were multiple terrorist attacks in that region. Once China started cracking down, there haven’t been any.
  - zwaps 7y ago
    We know that putting people in concentration camps by the millions is effective. It takes a particular kind of cruelty to see the world from the eye of effectiveness only, and that thinking propagates through society. No surprise that Chinese have been found to be the least honest and least trustworthy society in many experiments and studies, e.g. https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2019/06/19/science.aau8712?ijkey=a2666030641e04320a361f0a99f5ca3cf38f4817&keytype2=tf_ipsecsha https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2019/06/19/scie... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/article/1879850/chinese-most-dishonest-japanese-and-british-least-study-finds https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/article/1879850/chinese-most-... We are embedded in society, always. One should be careful thinking only about effectiveness and efficiency, and not individual dignity. There's a feedback.
    - dang 7y ago
      Please don't use HN for nationalistic flamewar. It's not what this site is for. Racial/ethnic/national slurs are particularly unwelome. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: we had to ask you this before (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19989263 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19989263). We ban accounts that repeatedly violate the site guidelines, so please don't do this.
- pjc50 7y ago
  China was never really not a police state of some sort. The ancient Imperial system broke down at the dawning of the modern era, and the Kuomintang "Republic of China" arose to replace it. It never managed to achieve either internal security or nationwide fair elections, and got into an extremely brutal fight with Communist insurgents. The communists were forced into retreat (Long March) during which most of them died - but the survivors, Mao among them, were inured to brutality. Eventually the Communists won on the mainland, leaving the Kuomintang in control of the island we now call Taiwan. The shooting stopped but the war is still officially in progress, hence all the weirdness around recognising Taiwan. The key to Communism in the Maoist approach was absolute central control and the sweeping away of all obstacles; if you stood in the way of, objected to, or even were insufficiently enthusiastic about its plans you would be murdered. Economic control was gradually loosened in the latter half of the 20th century, but political control remains tight.
x2f10 7y ago
I fear backlash from this comment, but is this a case against side-loading apps?
- Crinus 7y ago
  No, because if it is mandated by law then it will need to be available region locked in app stores for China. So with this stance (ie. against "side-loading" - what a crappy term) not only you make things worse for everyone (not being able to use their own devices as they see fit) even though they wouldn't be visiting China, you also validate region locking (another shitty practice that has no place in a global internet and only serves whoever wants to divide people) including any tech necessary for it (and thus monetary incentives for whoever implements it) and not solve the issue at hand (people being forced to install malware) since it can be done just as easily through normal routes. No, if you do not want such stuff then speak against it and do not put yourself in a position to be affected by it (do not visit China, use burner phones, whatever).
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    Note that the software does not currently appear on online marketplaces; it seems to be installable exclusively via sideloading. I don't think anyone has really tested what would happen when a government legally mandates for app stores to carry state-sponsored malware.
    - scohesc 7y ago
      We'll definitely see it once Huawei releases their own app-store and ecosystem for China.
- lucb1e 7y ago
  Introducing one evil to protect against another. To me, prohibiting apk installs would be similar to prohibiting mobile data and mobile calling/SMS altogether, since the technology can be used to track you. It would be workable and a huge improvement for privacy, even if there are major downsides. Perhaps it is more illustrative to compare it with physical stores. The Google Play Store is one store, F-Droid is another well-known one, and there are others. Allowing only Google to install apps on your device would be like allowing people to only buy products from a store controlled by the producer of the product, reasoning that other stores might modify the product. If cheese was solely a Dutch product, the Dutch producer would get to prohibit Americans from buying cheese at stores other than a single Dutch chain, with no oversight of the American government (such as the FDA) for fear of product manipulation. They might infect it! Bringing it back to Android, I (a Dutchman) would only be allowed to get my apps from the Google store which is within some foreign jurisdiction.
murbard2 7y ago
The US is forcing its tourists to give away a list of all their social media accounts and all their email accounts. If you're a foreign journalist writing pseudonymously for your safety, you must now share that information with the US government to enter the country. This isn't quite on the level of forcing people to install malware on their phone yet, but give it a couple years.
- avocado4 7y ago
  Source? My friend just came over from Germany and she walked in thru the border like she's a US citizen, no questions asked other than purpose of visit.
- beauzero 7y ago
  How is this enforcable? ...or is it just the accounts that you will be using while in the US? Technically this seems difficult to enforce.
  - greglindahl 7y ago
    You can potentially be permanently banned from entering the US if you lie or omit information.
    - jandrese 7y ago
      Remember what name you used on that obscure forum you signed up for just to read a single answer in a single thread? No? Well, sucks to be you. I'm guessing in 99% of cases this information is either ignored or dumped into a database where a surveillance dragnet will lightly touch every record regularly looking for specific matches. But in the remaining 1% it will be abused to skirt around someone's human rights. And maybe they're hoping to catch some really dumb terrorists that write down the "Death to America" forum on that list. I do find it interesting that the form is not compatible with anonymous posting like 4chan.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
tartuffe78 7y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_communism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_communism
- komali2 7y ago
  There's nothing inherent to the economic theory of Communism that requires a police state. This is entirely due to the totalitarian ruling government in the PRC. Even the capitalist ROC was a totalitarian government for decades.
  - erentz 7y ago
    The Crushing Of Eastern Europe by Anne Applebaum is one intro you might read to understand how communism necessarily begets totalitarianism.
  - johnzim 7y ago
    It is not a necessary precondition for its founding or instantiation. It is hard to conclude however, from the body of evidence we have, that it is anything less than necessary for its continued functioning. edit: spelling
  - mikeash 7y ago
    The link is to the history of communism, not the theory. The history of communism in the 20th century is inextricably tied to totalitarianism. Whether this is because of the nature of communism or just because this particular communist movement was also totalitarian, they’re deeply connected. You can draw a pretty straight line from the totalitarian nature of the USSR to the behavior of the modern Chinese government. They opened up economically but the themes of political control continue.
- bovermyer 7y ago
  While Communism plays a big role in China's current culture, it's far from the only factor. I'm looking for broader reading.
ce4 7y ago
Here's the original article from Süddeutsche Zeitung (in German): https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/china-app-ueberwachung-touristen-1.4508470 https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/china-app-ueberwachung-t...
rwmj 7y ago
Before I went to China I bought a burner phone, mainly to install WeChat (which is also a kind of malware and also "required" in China). Basic Android phones are not too expensive these days - I wonder if it will become commonplace to own several and physically separate your life across them? FWIW I got a Huawei phone (Honor 10 Lite) for under 200 EUR, but much cheaper phones than that are available. Edit: To be clear this is not to avoid Chinese surveillance. That's unavoidable whatever you do because China is a police state. It's to separate out that surveillance from my contacts and my regular life at home. (I also think it's at least arguable that the Chinese government has a duty to look closely at what foreigners are up to. It's not an argument that I agree with myself very much because it infringes freedom while also making the wrong trade-offs, but given we live in a world of nation states it follows logically from that.)
- eladrin201 7y ago
  I bought a dual sim Mi phone for this purpose as well. It worked out really well. At the border crossing from Hong Kong into mainland china, they didn't seem interested in my devices fortunately. Still will wipe my phone before I use it again, however.
  - kjaftaedi 7y ago
    even if you wipe your phone you can still have a compromised baseband.
    - manjana 7y ago
      Could you elaborate a bit on this please? I have never heard of such a phenomena which intrigues me quite a bit!
      - isostatic 7y ago
        I suspect OP is thinking where a phone may be taken out of your hands/sight and had paranoid things physically done to it - as in the article.
motohagiography 7y ago
Does Signal prevent this or not? If the malware roots the device, probably not, but if it takes read.sms permissions, it should only get ciphertext. if it replaces the main SMS messenger, then it breaks, but you'd know. I just did a rough threat model on this exact scenario and worked with the assumption that Signal's MasterSecret covered it in the sms DB - but haven't done a thorough code review yet.
mg794613 7y ago
If its just text stealing I guess it's better than having to give your login details?
cronix 7y ago
How else do you force people into compliance? Do you really not know how communism/socialism works? It's at the end of a gunpoint. More people have been killed at the hands of Mao, Stalin, Lenin, during "peacetime" (not in a war) than the entirety of WWII, including what the Germans did. The estimates are about 100 Million killed - only in the last century. Here's one such incident where the USSR killed the major wheat producing farmers in the Ukraine (they were too good at their jobs and produced more than other farmers), where approximately 6 million people starved to death as a result. That single event killed about as many Jews that were killed in WWII: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor How often do you hear about this history? They don't really teach it. They only really teach about the evils of Germany during WWII in US schools and gloss over the socialists and communists, which were, by far, much worse in terms of how many people were killed. All you have to do is read the last 100 years of world history to answer your question. True history.
- xenospn 7y ago
  Look up 'Kibbutz'. Communities in Israel that are completely socialist while being fully democratic, and have been there for over 100 years. No gunpoint involved.
  - cronix 7y ago
    That's a great, small, single example. How often does it work out like that?
- ta777 7y ago
  > The estimates are about 100 Million killed They don't teach it in schools because it's nonsense, like the idea that the US is soft on socialism/communism. The oft-repeated 100m number comes from exactly one source, a book whose own anti-communist authors don't even agree on the number, which contrary to your claim does include WWII deaths. Arguing the "estimated" (made up) 100m figure always goes hand in hand with saying it was worse than the Nazis, which you did twice, and is a red flag that a poster is a neo-Nazi. If you're not a neo-Nazi, or don't want to be immediately seen as such, you should be careful about repeating the standard lies of people who are.
baybal2 7y ago
Urumqi is a quite big transit hub, but I opt to never buy flights through it for the chance of winning a free cavity search. That's another reason to keep away from that place.
- xenospn 7y ago
  I visited Xinjiang and Urumqi back in 2005, before smartphones... Feeling nostalgic all of a sudden.
- seanmcdirmid 7y ago
  I don’t think you would have much problems in Urumqi these days, the problems only start when you leave the big city. Is Urumqi really an international hub? I can’t imagine anyone flying through that city for any trip that didn’t originate or terminate in China. Chengdu is much more of the hub these days.
  - baybal2 7y ago
    Well, it is. The airport is past gigantic for the city of its size, and landing fees are said to be quite low. I think nearly all companies flying narrowbodies from Europe to China do stopover here, except for Central Asian airlines who have a natural option of doing stopover in home countries. I flew through it once, and now I will never do it ever again... I do feel that bigger name European airlines opting to reroute flights to China through Chengdu had all of above in mind
    - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
      Who is flying narrow bodies between Europe and China? Moscow (via Aeroflot or whatever) works better for trips to Europe given earth curvature. The only nonstops I can find are Moscow, St Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Baku, Astana, Tbilisi, which all makes sense, most of those are Central Asia or almost so, and then Russia. What am I missing?
      - baybal2 7y ago
apeace 7y ago
> The Süddeutsche Zeitung reporter said they saw machines that appeared to be for searching iPhones at the border. Is this known to be possible? I would've thought it isn't (at least without the user entering their passcode and "trusting" the device).
- lucb1e 7y ago
  > without the user entering their passcode and "trusting" the device Right, do you want to enter the country or not? Click that button, sir.
phy6 7y ago
""What you’ve found goes beyond that: it suggests that even foreigners are subjected to such mass, and unlawful surveillance."" Pretty bold for them to call it unlawful in two places when it was not shown to be against that country's laws. Distasteful, yes. Unlawful? Hard to tell from just this article. Personally, I'm more worried about exported android devices.
- Tepix 7y ago
  China signed the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This action almost certainly violates some of these rights (articles 18-21 come to mind: Articles 18–21 sanctioned the so-called "constitutional liberties", and with spiritual, public, and political freedoms, such as freedom of thought, opinion, religion and conscience, word, and peaceful association of the individual.)
  - Leary 7y ago
    When did China (PRC) sign the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights? Are you talking about the Republic of China?
    - thecount122195 7y ago
      They must be because the Chinese civil war was still ongoing when the declaration of human rights was voted on in 1948, and the PRC wasn't even seated in the UN until 1971.
    - skissane 7y ago
      The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is not a treaty, it is a General Assembly resolution – as such, countries don't "sign it", and it isn't legally binding. As well as the UDHR, we also have international human rights treaties such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). As a treaty, it is binding on those countries which have ratified or acceded to it (signature alone does not legally bind one to a treaty, it merely expresses an intention to ratify it in the future.) On that point, it is worth noting that PRC signed the ICCPR in 1998, but as yet has not ratified it, so is not legally bound to it. (Previously, in 1967, ROC signed it, but never ratified it either; PRC's position is that ROC's 1967 signature was legally void, hence their own signature in 1998.) (Technically speaking, an unratified signatory, while not bound to the terms of the treaty itself, is obliged under Article 18 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT) to "refrain from acts which would defeat the object and purpose of a treaty" – but it is difficult to see how that article could be applicable to the case of China and the ICCPR.)
Circuits 7y ago
I find myself torn when it comes to how the Chinese are handling Muslims and the Islamic religion in general. One one hand, I realize the religion is dangerous and pervasive. On the other hand I want people to be able to believe what they want to believe and practice those beliefs; however, at what expense? If the practice of those beliefs leads to cultures where sharia law is the rule of law? Yes, very torn here. EDIT: Prior to commenting here please do some research on your own about Islam; specifically, Sharia law: what it is and how it works, the laws themselves. Also, please note that I am not promoting one religion over any other. In my perfect world religion would not exist and we would all learn to get along without it.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  Islam is not "dangerous and pervasive".
  - Circuits 7y ago
    It certainly seems to be dangerous and pervasive... based on it's history in our world.
    - pjc50 7y ago
      On the historical record, it's not especially more dangerous than Christianity.
      - jandrese 7y ago
        Over a long history yes. In recent history there are significant differences in aggressiveness.
    - saagarjha 7y ago
      I think the phrase you're looking for is "extremists have used $RELIGION to justify their actions throughout history, to the horror of most its practitioners". You can largely replace the specific religion with of an organized belief system of your choosing.
saagarjha 7y ago
> The Süddeutsche Zeitung reporter said they saw machines that appeared to be for searching iPhones at the border. I'm curious if anyone managed to grab a look at these as well.
la_barba 7y ago
This is bad PR for the Chinese government, but only in the West. They will probably stop doing this when they can get some NSA type organization to do this. Its much easier to vacuum up the data behind the scenes.
erdo 7y ago
Given China's expansive attitude to industrial espionage (all foreign companies are fair game), if I were in charge of security for a large multinational, what's my security policy going to be for my employees who travel to China for meetings? Does this change anything? or is behaviour like this from China or indeed anyone else, already priced in?
- braythwayt 7y ago
  Others can chime in, but I believe that most serious companies doing business with China have a burner-device policy for employees travelling to China. Your devices will all be hacked with industrial espionage malware, and just in case you don't have anything on those devices, you will be given devices as "gifts"—like flash drives and WiFi-equipped smart home devices--that will exploit any devices you didn't bring with you. INAE, but I believe the usual policy is to accept the gifts but discard them at the first opportunity.
  - schoen 7y ago
    I'm always confused when I hear this about why malware researchers don't obtain a huge trove of malware samples (and/or zero-day exploits) by obtaining some of these "gifts" and then connecting them to honeypot devices. If all you have to do to receive one is travel to China as an employee of a major U.S. company, they must be quite easy to get ahold of.
    - yazan94 7y ago
      I imagine the average Joe working at MSFT/AAPL/GOOG/etc. doesn't get such gifts unless they are worth hacking - in which case I imagine the gift-givers would have done their due diligence. Also corporate policies can be pretty specific and strict regarding gifts to eliminate potential conflicts of interests.
      - schoen 7y ago
        Due diligence about whether the gift recipient is likely to to use it personally rather than passing it along to a malware researcher?
Proven 7y ago
That is so funny - hey, what's the big deal, you can leave your mobile devices at home! This is what happens when you relativize private property, people...
xmly 7y ago
Why not do it at carrier level? much simpler. NSA could monitor all of us without installing any spyware. China should improve its surveillance techniques!
- acomjean 7y ago
  Probably encryption makes that harder
mLuby 7y ago
>"China is using technology for the perfection of dictatorship." -Pete Buttigieg, 2020 US presidential candidate PRC may be blazing the trail, but as the tech becomes proved and available, I won't be surprised to see creeping adoption in more "free" countries (especially following crises).
- Ididntdothis 7y ago
  Exactly. People are already used to much more surveillance than they used and this trend just keeps going. Sometimes it's China taking the lead, sometimes the US, sometimes other countries. But they all look at each other and slowly adopt what the other country is doing. I am pretty sure the next generation will never see anything other than complete surveillance by countries or corporations. And for them it will seem normal.
  - SubiculumCode 7y ago
    If your whole argument is based on fatalism, you might as well say so....because right now you assume the conclusion.
    - mLuby 7y ago
      It doesn't look like fatalism to me; the argument is based on the bandwagon effect and how dramatic outcomes can be arrived at through incremental changes.
      - Ididntdothis 7y ago
        It's the slow erosion of values. I remember a time when people would "never do online banking", now pretty much everybody does it. Some years ago nobody would have thought it possible that the border agent may ask for social media accounts or decrypt your phone. Now they do it. It's a very slow progression that may take decades but it's happening everywhere.
  - borvel 7y ago
    It's already "normal". People don't even realize there are cameras watching them everywhere, because they spend every moment trapped in their smartphone obsession while ignoring whatever goes on around them. It's tragic. Of course, the phone is the absolute worst offender in terms of state and corporate espionage (we don't even need microchips) but people choose to ignore the implications because they can play Flappy Bird and not have to make eye contact with people. There is already complete surveillance: 5G is its latest incarnation. Everything will be known and nothing will be safe. This is the "new age".
tedsuo 7y ago
The article only mentions Android. Does anyone know what the process is for iPhones at the border?
- xenospn 7y ago
  My guess is they force you to hand over your pin code/unlock your phone and extract it manually.
JumpCrisscross 7y ago
> This is yet another example of why the surveillance regime in Xinjiang is one of the most unlawful This is hyperbolic. It's potentially reprehensible and almost certainly oppressive. But it's not unlawful in a state without the rule of law.
z2 7y ago
Android needs an incognito mode or some way to set up a secondary user that looks as if it's the only user on the device. Maybe this mode/user can be triggered with a different passcode or finger.
olliej 7y ago
So it’s android only?
- xenospn 7y ago
  iOS is probably looked at as well, but has to be done manually since there's no way to just do it with a simple app.
  - z33k 7y ago
    I'd wager that they have a enterprise certificate to sign the iOS app with. Then it's a matter of sending the spy victims to a URL, installing the app and granting access to photos/ location/ whatever.
    - tomovo 7y ago
      Nope.. the user would also have to open Settings and explicitly mark the vendor certificate as trusted.
      - LocalH 7y ago
        It says the devices were unlocked then the device was connected. I would assume the device is in the custody of the Chinese authority at this point. Thus, they can just go into Settings and trust the cert.
        olliej 7y ago
        Changing trust settings on device requires the password. Better question is: what are they able to pull off the device while it's unlocked?
- dewiz 7y ago
  iOS too, they ask for the PIN so they can unlock and install etc
- aVx1uyD5pYWW 7y ago
neves 7y ago
How long till USA start doing the same? Ops, maybe it comes pre-installed :-)
- vokep 7y ago
  Yes there are two variants for US citizens, iOS and Android.
redwards510 7y ago
What I don't understand is why they leave the app installed on the person's phone after the scan if it does not do any further scanning in the background.
- plussed_reader 7y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if the app is a visa requirement while visiting.
- Florin_Andrei 7y ago
  Seems to me like carelessness / incompetence. One of the articles I've read on this topic suggested that in most cases they remove the app.
- helloindia 7y ago
  The app is to monitor foreigners and the natives, while they're in Xinjiang. Deleting the app on just one scan would be defeating the purpose.
mortivore 7y ago
Yet another reason not to visit China.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- archy_ 7y ago
  Or just bring a burner phone that you can throw out before leaving.
  - quickthrower2 7y ago
    Or no phone
redwards510 7y ago
If the US started doing this (scanning phones for islamic terrorism files) to foreigners at the border, would you care? If it was just a scan and no data was harvested? I believe strongly in the right to privacy, but I have to admit, I do not want anyone coming into my country who has beheading videos on their phone. Unless they are a journalist or something, obviously.
- bongobongo 7y ago
  You may not know this, but the Constitution guarantees the same rights to foreigners on US soil as it does to US citizens. (This is a pretty basic part of civic education, but civic education in the US these days is terrible.) So, no, I would not be OK with the government violating the Constitution.
  - vecplane 7y ago
    This is true, and an arbitrary stance like certain videos on your phone prevent entry into the US isn't appropriate. But at the same time, any country reserves the right to deny entry based on reasonable criteria. It's just a question of what those criteria are, and how much access the state should have to search someone upon entering.
  - thebooktocome 7y ago
    This isn't actually true. The majority of constitutional rights apply to foreigners, but some don't. https://www.learnliberty.org/blog/t-he-constitutional-rights-of-noncitizens/ https://www.learnliberty.org/blog/t-he-constitutional-rights...
  - cat199 7y ago
    > on US soil But not before they have technically entered.. (and no, this doesn't mean i'm anti immigration) edit: or pro searching, etc
  - inlined 7y ago
    But borders are held to have suspended rights. And a large majority of the population lives within 100 miles of the border. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_search_exception https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_search_exception https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/population.html https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/population.html It’s also been hypothesized that the “border” could be expanded to include many more. International airports are arguably ports of entry. Native American territories and embassies + consulates are considered foreign soil.
implying 7y ago
Is there any way to get a copy of the application? I'm sure there are some of us that would love to take it apart and look for URLs / file hashes it is looking for.
- vulkd 7y ago
  From the VICE article: https://github.com/motherboardgithub/bxaq https://github.com/motherboardgithub/bxaq
dangus 7y ago
The headline is really alarmist, implying China in general is applying this practice, while the reality is that this is a practice limited to sensitive regions. It's pretty much in line with the status quo in Western China. China has been very protective of the Xinjiang region for a long time, and very restrictive on travel in and out, especially for foreigners. But here we go, we've started an alarmist comment thread where we've extended this out way beyond the current implementation, extending it into some kind of dystopian future where this kind of thing is universal. Time to get a burner phone and lock ourselves at home with our tin foil hats tightly in place! All countries have always been paranoid when it comes to more contested and less stable regions. It's nothing new nor a surprise. Is this situation a good thing? No. It's been a human rights problem for decades. Still, we should stop freaking out, that would be great. This is not the customs and border process in China as a whole. It's not a reason to cancel a trip to Shanghai or Beijing or Xi'an.
- jjoonathan 7y ago
  Nobody can afford to care about all of the bad things in the world all of the time. Unfortunate but true. When people do find the attention budget to care about a bad thing, why is that a bad thing? Why is it appropriate to be dismissive?
- prepend 7y ago
  What is a sensitive region? Are there any similar regions in Western Europe?
  - Mediterraneo10 7y ago
    "Sensitive region" in this context means a region historically populated by a different ethnicity than which dominates the central government, and which would like to be free of that central government. In China these are specifically the Uighurs in Xinjiang versus the overwhelmingly Han Chinese central government. States of emergency have been called in the past for various regions in Western Europe where violent separatist movements were active, but those moments have mainly abated, and besides, Western European governments these days are not so fond of mass surveillance as China. Just across the strait of Gibraltar, however, one does encounter a similar situation in Morocco, namely in the region of Western Sahara which Morocco occupied back in the 1970s. Western Sahara is historically populated by a different ethnicity (the Saharawis) who chafed at Moroccan control of the region. Foreigners traveling on the roads through the region will encounter a long series of police roadblocks, and police do occasionally demand social-media accounts and passwords from travelers. The situation is vaguely like Xinjiang, although the Moroccan police are much more laidback, so a person can refuse to give them information and just bullshit about not having Facebook or Whatsapp. Compared to the very organized and rigorous Chinese police state, the Moroccan forces are pretty amateur.
dang 7y ago
Comments moved to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20336920 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20336920, since the guidelines call for original sources. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: a user emailed to point out that this article is itself one of the original sources, because vice.com aka Motherboard was one of the investigating parties. That was my mistake! Sorry.
chvid 7y ago
The journalists also asked researchers at ... Open Technology Fund, an initiative funded by the United States government under Radio Free Asia ... so the CIA basically?
aaron695 7y ago
Australia copies whole phones when entering, China at least just looks for hashes. https://www.reddit.com/r/australia/comments/97ozpl/so_australian_customs_just_copied_files_from_my/ https://www.reddit.com/r/australia/comments/97ozpl/so_austra...
hello 7y ago
Test.
whydoineedone 7y ago
these 'mysterious' linkages between Robert Greene's book and some British Syrian Civil war book and extremist content is probably the result of machine learning flagging. When you have financial loan making software that can predict the liability of a person by looking at data as seemingly unrelated as their phone's battery life, it seems fairly obvious that a deep learning model would be able to do/identify the same from some of these other connections. It's important to note that none of this means that the individual items are inherently terrorist or encourage terrorism but rather that, perhaps, terrorists or those the government has identified as subversives appreciate the content.
csyszf 7y ago
I'll never open HN again. I talked with some American/EU/Australian folks, in twitter and my company, and they're very nice. I just couldn't understand, why so many people in HN are so arrogant and self-righteous. I just can't stand those comments, they remind me of Trump- “No one knows China better than me” Although they basiclly know nothing, just as Trump.

307 points by el_duderino 7y ago

Looks like there are ways to block sideloading of apps: https://www.brianmadden.com/opinion/How-do-you-block-sideloaded-app-installation-on-iOS-or-Android https://www.brianmadden.com/opinion/How-do-you-block-sideloa... Basically you create an enterprise profile for your phone and block sideloading of apps as a policy ("Disallow_Install_Unknown_Sources). Same with iOS.

mdorazio 7y ago

This bit is important: "Foreigners crossing certain Chinese borders into the Xinjiang region"... I'm not aware of Chinese authorities getting quite that draconian (yet) at the normal border entry points in Beijing, Shanghai, etc. However, I think it's still worth following the general advice that if you have sensitive data on your devices, leave them at home and use a burner phone/laptop + restore from the cloud later.

xenospn 7y ago
There are million of people arriving in China every year - it would be impossible to do that at their major ports of entry.
seanmcdirmid 7y ago
I don’t think they would even do this if you flew into Urumqi. Just if you crossed a border from one of the stans into xinjiang, and fen these are mostly closed to westerners.
TadaScientist 7y ago
The same goes for a lot of EU to US travel I've been told...
BurningFrog 7y ago
OK, Xinjiang is basically a low level war zone/prison camp. Quite different from the rest of China.
- dirtyid 7y ago
  Rest of China is captured by wechat anyways. This is only really useful for foreign reporters travelling in XinJiang. China could technically just ban foreigners from travelling there but somehow thinks the optics of this is better.
  - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
    It is weird because there are no travel restrictions for foreigners going to Xinjiang (mostly, some places are off limits), you just buy a plane or train ticket. Going to Tibet is a lot harder for foreigners.
    - dirtyid 7y ago
      I think Tibet still very much has Western imagination captured whereas Uyghar Muslims... do not. Even more cynical analysis, Xinjiang is fundamentally an exercise in reducing the real problem of Islamic radicalization and the non response from many countries (including Muslim ones) is that they are quietly observing to see if the experiment pays off. The danger of Xinjiang is that surveillance state + "vocational" reintegration camps might actually be a productive model that can be exported elsewhere.
      - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
        Xinjiang is also much larger population (21 million+) wise than Tibet (3 million+), along with the former having a much larger Han population, making restrictions much harder (and less appealing) to implement logistically.
        QuercusMax 7y ago
aussieguy1234 7y ago
And don't bother restoring from the cloud, if any malware gets installed on your device at the border
CodiePetersen 7y ago
Agreed. I would say the same thing coming into America. Even if you are American. I always refuse to fill out the paper while reentering my own damn country, unless I'm travelling with others. But that means I get pushed to secondary every time. Usually only Hispanic and middle eastern people in there. But the border control agents can take and search anything they want. So I say probably do the same for coming into America on the chance they send you to secondary.

bovermyer 7y ago

The title is a little misleading, as it's a region of China and not the entirety. However, the implications are still ominous. I'm curious, how did China develop into such a police state? Anyone able to point me to some reading on the subject?

iiuuhhggff 7y ago
There were multiple terrorist attacks in that region. Once China started cracking down, there haven’t been any.
- zwaps 7y ago
  We know that putting people in concentration camps by the millions is effective. It takes a particular kind of cruelty to see the world from the eye of effectiveness only, and that thinking propagates through society. No surprise that Chinese have been found to be the least honest and least trustworthy society in many experiments and studies, e.g. https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2019/06/19/science.aau8712?ijkey=a2666030641e04320a361f0a99f5ca3cf38f4817&keytype2=tf_ipsecsha https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2019/06/19/scie... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/article/1879850/chinese-most-dishonest-japanese-and-british-least-study-finds https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/article/1879850/chinese-most-... We are embedded in society, always. One should be careful thinking only about effectiveness and efficiency, and not individual dignity. There's a feedback.
  - dang 7y ago
    Please don't use HN for nationalistic flamewar. It's not what this site is for. Racial/ethnic/national slurs are particularly unwelome. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: we had to ask you this before (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19989263 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19989263). We ban accounts that repeatedly violate the site guidelines, so please don't do this.
pjc50 7y ago
China was never really not a police state of some sort. The ancient Imperial system broke down at the dawning of the modern era, and the Kuomintang "Republic of China" arose to replace it. It never managed to achieve either internal security or nationwide fair elections, and got into an extremely brutal fight with Communist insurgents. The communists were forced into retreat (Long March) during which most of them died - but the survivors, Mao among them, were inured to brutality. Eventually the Communists won on the mainland, leaving the Kuomintang in control of the island we now call Taiwan. The shooting stopped but the war is still officially in progress, hence all the weirdness around recognising Taiwan. The key to Communism in the Maoist approach was absolute central control and the sweeping away of all obstacles; if you stood in the way of, objected to, or even were insufficiently enthusiastic about its plans you would be murdered. Economic control was gradually loosened in the latter half of the 20th century, but political control remains tight.

x2f10 7y ago

I fear backlash from this comment, but is this a case against side-loading apps?

Crinus 7y ago
No, because if it is mandated by law then it will need to be available region locked in app stores for China. So with this stance (ie. against "side-loading" - what a crappy term) not only you make things worse for everyone (not being able to use their own devices as they see fit) even though they wouldn't be visiting China, you also validate region locking (another shitty practice that has no place in a global internet and only serves whoever wants to divide people) including any tech necessary for it (and thus monetary incentives for whoever implements it) and not solve the issue at hand (people being forced to install malware) since it can be done just as easily through normal routes. No, if you do not want such stuff then speak against it and do not put yourself in a position to be affected by it (do not visit China, use burner phones, whatever).
- saagarjha 7y ago
  Note that the software does not currently appear on online marketplaces; it seems to be installable exclusively via sideloading. I don't think anyone has really tested what would happen when a government legally mandates for app stores to carry state-sponsored malware.
  - scohesc 7y ago
    We'll definitely see it once Huawei releases their own app-store and ecosystem for China.
lucb1e 7y ago
Introducing one evil to protect against another. To me, prohibiting apk installs would be similar to prohibiting mobile data and mobile calling/SMS altogether, since the technology can be used to track you. It would be workable and a huge improvement for privacy, even if there are major downsides. Perhaps it is more illustrative to compare it with physical stores. The Google Play Store is one store, F-Droid is another well-known one, and there are others. Allowing only Google to install apps on your device would be like allowing people to only buy products from a store controlled by the producer of the product, reasoning that other stores might modify the product. If cheese was solely a Dutch product, the Dutch producer would get to prohibit Americans from buying cheese at stores other than a single Dutch chain, with no oversight of the American government (such as the FDA) for fear of product manipulation. They might infect it! Bringing it back to Android, I (a Dutchman) would only be allowed to get my apps from the Google store which is within some foreign jurisdiction.

murbard2 7y ago

The US is forcing its tourists to give away a list of all their social media accounts and all their email accounts. If you're a foreign journalist writing pseudonymously for your safety, you must now share that information with the US government to enter the country. This isn't quite on the level of forcing people to install malware on their phone yet, but give it a couple years.

avocado4 7y ago
Source? My friend just came over from Germany and she walked in thru the border like she's a US citizen, no questions asked other than purpose of visit.
beauzero 7y ago
How is this enforcable? ...or is it just the accounts that you will be using while in the US? Technically this seems difficult to enforce.
- greglindahl 7y ago
  You can potentially be permanently banned from entering the US if you lie or omit information.
  - jandrese 7y ago
    Remember what name you used on that obscure forum you signed up for just to read a single answer in a single thread? No? Well, sucks to be you. I'm guessing in 99% of cases this information is either ignored or dumped into a database where a surveillance dragnet will lightly touch every record regularly looking for specific matches. But in the remaining 1% it will be abused to skirt around someone's human rights. And maybe they're hoping to catch some really dumb terrorists that write down the "Death to America" forum on that list. I do find it interesting that the form is not compatible with anonymous posting like 4chan.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]

tartuffe78 7y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_communism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_communism

komali2 7y ago
There's nothing inherent to the economic theory of Communism that requires a police state. This is entirely due to the totalitarian ruling government in the PRC. Even the capitalist ROC was a totalitarian government for decades.
- erentz 7y ago
  The Crushing Of Eastern Europe by Anne Applebaum is one intro you might read to understand how communism necessarily begets totalitarianism.
- johnzim 7y ago
  It is not a necessary precondition for its founding or instantiation. It is hard to conclude however, from the body of evidence we have, that it is anything less than necessary for its continued functioning. edit: spelling
- mikeash 7y ago
  The link is to the history of communism, not the theory. The history of communism in the 20th century is inextricably tied to totalitarianism. Whether this is because of the nature of communism or just because this particular communist movement was also totalitarian, they’re deeply connected. You can draw a pretty straight line from the totalitarian nature of the USSR to the behavior of the modern Chinese government. They opened up economically but the themes of political control continue.
bovermyer 7y ago
While Communism plays a big role in China's current culture, it's far from the only factor. I'm looking for broader reading.

ce4 7y ago

Here's the original article from Süddeutsche Zeitung (in German): https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/china-app-ueberwachung-touristen-1.4508470 https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/china-app-ueberwachung-t...

rwmj 7y ago

Before I went to China I bought a burner phone, mainly to install WeChat (which is also a kind of malware and also "required" in China). Basic Android phones are not too expensive these days - I wonder if it will become commonplace to own several and physically separate your life across them? FWIW I got a Huawei phone (Honor 10 Lite) for under 200 EUR, but much cheaper phones than that are available. Edit: To be clear this is not to avoid Chinese surveillance. That's unavoidable whatever you do because China is a police state. It's to separate out that surveillance from my contacts and my regular life at home. (I also think it's at least arguable that the Chinese government has a duty to look closely at what foreigners are up to. It's not an argument that I agree with myself very much because it infringes freedom while also making the wrong trade-offs, but given we live in a world of nation states it follows logically from that.)

eladrin201 7y ago
I bought a dual sim Mi phone for this purpose as well. It worked out really well. At the border crossing from Hong Kong into mainland china, they didn't seem interested in my devices fortunately. Still will wipe my phone before I use it again, however.
- kjaftaedi 7y ago
  even if you wipe your phone you can still have a compromised baseband.
  - manjana 7y ago
    Could you elaborate a bit on this please? I have never heard of such a phenomena which intrigues me quite a bit!
    - isostatic 7y ago
      I suspect OP is thinking where a phone may be taken out of your hands/sight and had paranoid things physically done to it - as in the article.

motohagiography 7y ago

Does Signal prevent this or not? If the malware roots the device, probably not, but if it takes read.sms permissions, it should only get ciphertext. if it replaces the main SMS messenger, then it breaks, but you'd know. I just did a rough threat model on this exact scenario and worked with the assumption that Signal's MasterSecret covered it in the sms DB - but haven't done a thorough code review yet.

mg794613 7y ago

If its just text stealing I guess it's better than having to give your login details?

cronix 7y ago

How else do you force people into compliance? Do you really not know how communism/socialism works? It's at the end of a gunpoint. More people have been killed at the hands of Mao, Stalin, Lenin, during "peacetime" (not in a war) than the entirety of WWII, including what the Germans did. The estimates are about 100 Million killed - only in the last century. Here's one such incident where the USSR killed the major wheat producing farmers in the Ukraine (they were too good at their jobs and produced more than other farmers), where approximately 6 million people starved to death as a result. That single event killed about as many Jews that were killed in WWII: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor How often do you hear about this history? They don't really teach it. They only really teach about the evils of Germany during WWII in US schools and gloss over the socialists and communists, which were, by far, much worse in terms of how many people were killed. All you have to do is read the last 100 years of world history to answer your question. True history.

xenospn 7y ago
Look up 'Kibbutz'. Communities in Israel that are completely socialist while being fully democratic, and have been there for over 100 years. No gunpoint involved.
- cronix 7y ago
  That's a great, small, single example. How often does it work out like that?
ta777 7y ago
> The estimates are about 100 Million killed They don't teach it in schools because it's nonsense, like the idea that the US is soft on socialism/communism. The oft-repeated 100m number comes from exactly one source, a book whose own anti-communist authors don't even agree on the number, which contrary to your claim does include WWII deaths. Arguing the "estimated" (made up) 100m figure always goes hand in hand with saying it was worse than the Nazis, which you did twice, and is a red flag that a poster is a neo-Nazi. If you're not a neo-Nazi, or don't want to be immediately seen as such, you should be careful about repeating the standard lies of people who are.

baybal2 7y ago

Urumqi is a quite big transit hub, but I opt to never buy flights through it for the chance of winning a free cavity search. That's another reason to keep away from that place.

xenospn 7y ago
I visited Xinjiang and Urumqi back in 2005, before smartphones... Feeling nostalgic all of a sudden.
seanmcdirmid 7y ago
I don’t think you would have much problems in Urumqi these days, the problems only start when you leave the big city. Is Urumqi really an international hub? I can’t imagine anyone flying through that city for any trip that didn’t originate or terminate in China. Chengdu is much more of the hub these days.
- baybal2 7y ago
  Well, it is. The airport is past gigantic for the city of its size, and landing fees are said to be quite low. I think nearly all companies flying narrowbodies from Europe to China do stopover here, except for Central Asian airlines who have a natural option of doing stopover in home countries. I flew through it once, and now I will never do it ever again... I do feel that bigger name European airlines opting to reroute flights to China through Chengdu had all of above in mind
  - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
    Who is flying narrow bodies between Europe and China? Moscow (via Aeroflot or whatever) works better for trips to Europe given earth curvature. The only nonstops I can find are Moscow, St Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Baku, Astana, Tbilisi, which all makes sense, most of those are Central Asia or almost so, and then Russia. What am I missing?
    - baybal2 7y ago

apeace 7y ago

> The Süddeutsche Zeitung reporter said they saw machines that appeared to be for searching iPhones at the border. Is this known to be possible? I would've thought it isn't (at least without the user entering their passcode and "trusting" the device).

lucb1e 7y ago
> without the user entering their passcode and "trusting" the device Right, do you want to enter the country or not? Click that button, sir.

phy6 7y ago

""What you’ve found goes beyond that: it suggests that even foreigners are subjected to such mass, and unlawful surveillance."" Pretty bold for them to call it unlawful in two places when it was not shown to be against that country's laws. Distasteful, yes. Unlawful? Hard to tell from just this article. Personally, I'm more worried about exported android devices.

Tepix 7y ago
China signed the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This action almost certainly violates some of these rights (articles 18-21 come to mind: Articles 18–21 sanctioned the so-called "constitutional liberties", and with spiritual, public, and political freedoms, such as freedom of thought, opinion, religion and conscience, word, and peaceful association of the individual.)
- Leary 7y ago
  When did China (PRC) sign the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights? Are you talking about the Republic of China?
  - thecount122195 7y ago
    They must be because the Chinese civil war was still ongoing when the declaration of human rights was voted on in 1948, and the PRC wasn't even seated in the UN until 1971.
  - skissane 7y ago
    The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is not a treaty, it is a General Assembly resolution – as such, countries don't "sign it", and it isn't legally binding. As well as the UDHR, we also have international human rights treaties such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). As a treaty, it is binding on those countries which have ratified or acceded to it (signature alone does not legally bind one to a treaty, it merely expresses an intention to ratify it in the future.) On that point, it is worth noting that PRC signed the ICCPR in 1998, but as yet has not ratified it, so is not legally bound to it. (Previously, in 1967, ROC signed it, but never ratified it either; PRC's position is that ROC's 1967 signature was legally void, hence their own signature in 1998.) (Technically speaking, an unratified signatory, while not bound to the terms of the treaty itself, is obliged under Article 18 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT) to "refrain from acts which would defeat the object and purpose of a treaty" – but it is difficult to see how that article could be applicable to the case of China and the ICCPR.)

Circuits 7y ago

I find myself torn when it comes to how the Chinese are handling Muslims and the Islamic religion in general. One one hand, I realize the religion is dangerous and pervasive. On the other hand I want people to be able to believe what they want to believe and practice those beliefs; however, at what expense? If the practice of those beliefs leads to cultures where sharia law is the rule of law? Yes, very torn here. EDIT: Prior to commenting here please do some research on your own about Islam; specifically, Sharia law: what it is and how it works, the laws themselves. Also, please note that I am not promoting one religion over any other. In my perfect world religion would not exist and we would all learn to get along without it.

saagarjha 7y ago
Islam is not "dangerous and pervasive".
- Circuits 7y ago
  It certainly seems to be dangerous and pervasive... based on it's history in our world.
  - pjc50 7y ago
    On the historical record, it's not especially more dangerous than Christianity.
    - jandrese 7y ago
      Over a long history yes. In recent history there are significant differences in aggressiveness.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    I think the phrase you're looking for is "extremists have used $RELIGION to justify their actions throughout history, to the horror of most its practitioners". You can largely replace the specific religion with of an organized belief system of your choosing.

saagarjha 7y ago

> The Süddeutsche Zeitung reporter said they saw machines that appeared to be for searching iPhones at the border. I'm curious if anyone managed to grab a look at these as well.

la_barba 7y ago

This is bad PR for the Chinese government, but only in the West. They will probably stop doing this when they can get some NSA type organization to do this. Its much easier to vacuum up the data behind the scenes.

erdo 7y ago

Given China's expansive attitude to industrial espionage (all foreign companies are fair game), if I were in charge of security for a large multinational, what's my security policy going to be for my employees who travel to China for meetings? Does this change anything? or is behaviour like this from China or indeed anyone else, already priced in?

braythwayt 7y ago
Others can chime in, but I believe that most serious companies doing business with China have a burner-device policy for employees travelling to China. Your devices will all be hacked with industrial espionage malware, and just in case you don't have anything on those devices, you will be given devices as "gifts"—like flash drives and WiFi-equipped smart home devices--that will exploit any devices you didn't bring with you. INAE, but I believe the usual policy is to accept the gifts but discard them at the first opportunity.
- schoen 7y ago
  I'm always confused when I hear this about why malware researchers don't obtain a huge trove of malware samples (and/or zero-day exploits) by obtaining some of these "gifts" and then connecting them to honeypot devices. If all you have to do to receive one is travel to China as an employee of a major U.S. company, they must be quite easy to get ahold of.
  - yazan94 7y ago
    I imagine the average Joe working at MSFT/AAPL/GOOG/etc. doesn't get such gifts unless they are worth hacking - in which case I imagine the gift-givers would have done their due diligence. Also corporate policies can be pretty specific and strict regarding gifts to eliminate potential conflicts of interests.
    - schoen 7y ago
      Due diligence about whether the gift recipient is likely to to use it personally rather than passing it along to a malware researcher?

Proven 7y ago

That is so funny - hey, what's the big deal, you can leave your mobile devices at home! This is what happens when you relativize private property, people...

xmly 7y ago

Why not do it at carrier level? much simpler. NSA could monitor all of us without installing any spyware. China should improve its surveillance techniques!

acomjean 7y ago
Probably encryption makes that harder

mLuby 7y ago

>"China is using technology for the perfection of dictatorship." -Pete Buttigieg, 2020 US presidential candidate PRC may be blazing the trail, but as the tech becomes proved and available, I won't be surprised to see creeping adoption in more "free" countries (especially following crises).

Ididntdothis 7y ago
Exactly. People are already used to much more surveillance than they used and this trend just keeps going. Sometimes it's China taking the lead, sometimes the US, sometimes other countries. But they all look at each other and slowly adopt what the other country is doing. I am pretty sure the next generation will never see anything other than complete surveillance by countries or corporations. And for them it will seem normal.
- SubiculumCode 7y ago
  If your whole argument is based on fatalism, you might as well say so....because right now you assume the conclusion.
  - mLuby 7y ago
    It doesn't look like fatalism to me; the argument is based on the bandwagon effect and how dramatic outcomes can be arrived at through incremental changes.
    - Ididntdothis 7y ago
      It's the slow erosion of values. I remember a time when people would "never do online banking", now pretty much everybody does it. Some years ago nobody would have thought it possible that the border agent may ask for social media accounts or decrypt your phone. Now they do it. It's a very slow progression that may take decades but it's happening everywhere.
- borvel 7y ago
  It's already "normal". People don't even realize there are cameras watching them everywhere, because they spend every moment trapped in their smartphone obsession while ignoring whatever goes on around them. It's tragic. Of course, the phone is the absolute worst offender in terms of state and corporate espionage (we don't even need microchips) but people choose to ignore the implications because they can play Flappy Bird and not have to make eye contact with people. There is already complete surveillance: 5G is its latest incarnation. Everything will be known and nothing will be safe. This is the "new age".

tedsuo 7y ago

The article only mentions Android. Does anyone know what the process is for iPhones at the border?

xenospn 7y ago
My guess is they force you to hand over your pin code/unlock your phone and extract it manually.

JumpCrisscross 7y ago

> This is yet another example of why the surveillance regime in Xinjiang is one of the most unlawful This is hyperbolic. It's potentially reprehensible and almost certainly oppressive. But it's not unlawful in a state without the rule of law.

z2 7y ago

Android needs an incognito mode or some way to set up a secondary user that looks as if it's the only user on the device. Maybe this mode/user can be triggered with a different passcode or finger.

olliej 7y ago

So it’s android only?

xenospn 7y ago
iOS is probably looked at as well, but has to be done manually since there's no way to just do it with a simple app.
- z33k 7y ago
  I'd wager that they have a enterprise certificate to sign the iOS app with. Then it's a matter of sending the spy victims to a URL, installing the app and granting access to photos/ location/ whatever.
  - tomovo 7y ago
    Nope.. the user would also have to open Settings and explicitly mark the vendor certificate as trusted.
    - LocalH 7y ago
      It says the devices were unlocked then the device was connected. I would assume the device is in the custody of the Chinese authority at this point. Thus, they can just go into Settings and trust the cert.
      - olliej 7y ago
        Changing trust settings on device requires the password. Better question is: what are they able to pull off the device while it's unlocked?
dewiz 7y ago
iOS too, they ask for the PIN so they can unlock and install etc
aVx1uyD5pYWW 7y ago

neves 7y ago

How long till USA start doing the same? Ops, maybe it comes pre-installed :-)

vokep 7y ago
Yes there are two variants for US citizens, iOS and Android.

redwards510 7y ago

What I don't understand is why they leave the app installed on the person's phone after the scan if it does not do any further scanning in the background.

plussed_reader 7y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if the app is a visa requirement while visiting.
Florin_Andrei 7y ago
Seems to me like carelessness / incompetence. One of the articles I've read on this topic suggested that in most cases they remove the app.
helloindia 7y ago
The app is to monitor foreigners and the natives, while they're in Xinjiang. Deleting the app on just one scan would be defeating the purpose.

mortivore 7y ago

Yet another reason not to visit China.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
archy_ 7y ago
Or just bring a burner phone that you can throw out before leaving.
- quickthrower2 7y ago
  Or no phone

redwards510 7y ago

If the US started doing this (scanning phones for islamic terrorism files) to foreigners at the border, would you care? If it was just a scan and no data was harvested? I believe strongly in the right to privacy, but I have to admit, I do not want anyone coming into my country who has beheading videos on their phone. Unless they are a journalist or something, obviously.

bongobongo 7y ago
You may not know this, but the Constitution guarantees the same rights to foreigners on US soil as it does to US citizens. (This is a pretty basic part of civic education, but civic education in the US these days is terrible.) So, no, I would not be OK with the government violating the Constitution.
- vecplane 7y ago
  This is true, and an arbitrary stance like certain videos on your phone prevent entry into the US isn't appropriate. But at the same time, any country reserves the right to deny entry based on reasonable criteria. It's just a question of what those criteria are, and how much access the state should have to search someone upon entering.
- thebooktocome 7y ago
  This isn't actually true. The majority of constitutional rights apply to foreigners, but some don't. https://www.learnliberty.org/blog/t-he-constitutional-rights-of-noncitizens/ https://www.learnliberty.org/blog/t-he-constitutional-rights...
- cat199 7y ago
  > on US soil But not before they have technically entered.. (and no, this doesn't mean i'm anti immigration) edit: or pro searching, etc
- inlined 7y ago
  But borders are held to have suspended rights. And a large majority of the population lives within 100 miles of the border. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_search_exception https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_search_exception https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/population.html https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/population.html It’s also been hypothesized that the “border” could be expanded to include many more. International airports are arguably ports of entry. Native American territories and embassies + consulates are considered foreign soil.

implying 7y ago

Is there any way to get a copy of the application? I'm sure there are some of us that would love to take it apart and look for URLs / file hashes it is looking for.

vulkd 7y ago
From the VICE article: https://github.com/motherboardgithub/bxaq https://github.com/motherboardgithub/bxaq

dangus 7y ago

The headline is really alarmist, implying China in general is applying this practice, while the reality is that this is a practice limited to sensitive regions. It's pretty much in line with the status quo in Western China. China has been very protective of the Xinjiang region for a long time, and very restrictive on travel in and out, especially for foreigners. But here we go, we've started an alarmist comment thread where we've extended this out way beyond the current implementation, extending it into some kind of dystopian future where this kind of thing is universal. Time to get a burner phone and lock ourselves at home with our tin foil hats tightly in place! All countries have always been paranoid when it comes to more contested and less stable regions. It's nothing new nor a surprise. Is this situation a good thing? No. It's been a human rights problem for decades. Still, we should stop freaking out, that would be great. This is not the customs and border process in China as a whole. It's not a reason to cancel a trip to Shanghai or Beijing or Xi'an.

jjoonathan 7y ago
Nobody can afford to care about all of the bad things in the world all of the time. Unfortunate but true. When people do find the attention budget to care about a bad thing, why is that a bad thing? Why is it appropriate to be dismissive?
prepend 7y ago
What is a sensitive region? Are there any similar regions in Western Europe?
- Mediterraneo10 7y ago
  "Sensitive region" in this context means a region historically populated by a different ethnicity than which dominates the central government, and which would like to be free of that central government. In China these are specifically the Uighurs in Xinjiang versus the overwhelmingly Han Chinese central government. States of emergency have been called in the past for various regions in Western Europe where violent separatist movements were active, but those moments have mainly abated, and besides, Western European governments these days are not so fond of mass surveillance as China. Just across the strait of Gibraltar, however, one does encounter a similar situation in Morocco, namely in the region of Western Sahara which Morocco occupied back in the 1970s. Western Sahara is historically populated by a different ethnicity (the Saharawis) who chafed at Moroccan control of the region. Foreigners traveling on the roads through the region will encounter a long series of police roadblocks, and police do occasionally demand social-media accounts and passwords from travelers. The situation is vaguely like Xinjiang, although the Moroccan police are much more laidback, so a person can refuse to give them information and just bullshit about not having Facebook or Whatsapp. Compared to the very organized and rigorous Chinese police state, the Moroccan forces are pretty amateur.

dang 7y ago

Comments moved to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20336920 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20336920, since the guidelines call for original sources. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: a user emailed to point out that this article is itself one of the original sources, because vice.com aka Motherboard was one of the investigating parties. That was my mistake! Sorry.

chvid 7y ago

The journalists also asked researchers at ... Open Technology Fund, an initiative funded by the United States government under Radio Free Asia ... so the CIA basically?

aaron695 7y ago

Australia copies whole phones when entering, China at least just looks for hashes. https://www.reddit.com/r/australia/comments/97ozpl/so_australian_customs_just_copied_files_from_my/ https://www.reddit.com/r/australia/comments/97ozpl/so_austra...

hello 7y ago

Test.

whydoineedone 7y ago

these 'mysterious' linkages between Robert Greene's book and some British Syrian Civil war book and extremist content is probably the result of machine learning flagging. When you have financial loan making software that can predict the liability of a person by looking at data as seemingly unrelated as their phone's battery life, it seems fairly obvious that a deep learning model would be able to do/identify the same from some of these other connections. It's important to note that none of this means that the individual items are inherently terrorist or encourage terrorism but rather that, perhaps, terrorists or those the government has identified as subversives appreciate the content.

csyszf 7y ago

I'll never open HN again. I talked with some American/EU/Australian folks, in twitter and my company, and they're very nice. I just couldn't understand, why so many people in HN are so arrogant and self-righteous. I just can't stand those comments, they remind me of Trump- “No one knows China better than me” Although they basiclly know nothing, just as Trump.