8 ms·
Let's not pretend the US and China are equally authoritarian please.
by eloff 7y ago
Let's not pretend the US and China are equally authoritarian please.
- bigmanwalter 7y agoSo it's okay if the US monitors and intercepts global communications. But it's bad if China does it?
- pilsetnieks 7y agoNo one said it's ok, so you're operating under false assumptions.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- eloff 7y agoThere are a lot more limitations and checks on what the US can do. So yes, it's way worse if China does it. Because there not beyond imprisoning or killing people over information gained. Secondly we have no reason to believe the US had implemented backdoors in major processors. The problem with the OP is it's whataboutism, it's a logical fallacy to say well A does something bad too, so B doing something bad is equivalent. That's a false equivalency.
- djsumdog 7y agoThe United States has been executing people overseas for decades without any oversight. Predator drones during the Bush/Obama/Trump eras have only increased in use with no sign of decreasing. If you read The Dictators Handbook, the author talks about how more democratic nations use foreign aid as a means to prop up autocratic nations in order to extract their resources (autocracy overseas to support the standard of living of those who are your selectorate). It's like we totally forgot about the 2013 NSA spying revelations, or the 1973 CIA backed coupe in Chile, or the US overthrowing a democratically elected government during the Iranian-Contra crisis... We should absolutely be concerned that the United States could (and does) inject backdoors to spy on other nations, because causing them to destabilize helps with resource extraction and to keep prices low, pleasing the domestic constituency.
- sschueller 7y ago"There are a lot more limitations and checks on what the US can do." Written into laws that obviously can be ignore with no repercussions.
- eloff 7y agoHardly.
- fnord123 7y agoHow many US officials were tried, let alone convicted, for their role in torturing people from 2001 to 2014? Hint: zero. (The 11 soldiers who were torturing detainees in Abu Ghraib were not tried for torture. Only watered down charges like dereliction of duty, assault, and battery.)
- dinkudunk 7y agowhat if instead of a fallacy it was phallusy?
- okmokmz 7y ago>There are a lot more limitations and checks on what the US can do If only those "limitations and checks" were actually followed by the US government and intelligence agencies. Here are some examples I collected during a previous discussion of US vs China surveillance states https://www.aclu.org/issues/national-security/privacy-and-surveillance/nsa-surveillance https://www.aclu.org/issues/national-security/privacy-and-su... https://theintercept.com/2018/06/25/att-internet-nsa-spy-hubs/ https://theintercept.com/2018/06/25/att-internet-nsa-spy-hub... http://thefreethoughtproject.com/national-id-hr4760-biometrics/ http://thefreethoughtproject.com/national-id-hr4760-biometri... https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/26/16932350/ice-immigration-customs-license-plate-recognition-contract-vigilant-solutions https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/26/16932350/ice-immigration-... https://theintercept.com/2018/01/19/voice-recognition-technology-nsa/ https://theintercept.com/2018/01/19/voice-recognition-techno... https://www.zdnet.com/article/us-cell-carriers-selling-access-to-real-time-location-data/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/us-cell-carriers-selling-acces... https://theintercept.com/2018/06/25/att-internet-nsa-spy-hubs/ https://theintercept.com/2018/06/25/att-internet-nsa-spy-hub... https://freedom.press/news/revealed-justice-depts-secret-rules-targeting-journalists-fisa-court-orders/ https://freedom.press/news/revealed-justice-depts-secret-rul... https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying https://www.eff.org/cases/first-unitarian-church-los-angeles-v-nsa https://www.eff.org/cases/first-unitarian-church-los-angeles... https://www.eff.org/cases/jewel https://www.eff.org/cases/jewel https://www.eff.org/cases/hepting https://www.eff.org/cases/hepting https://www.eff.org/cases/smith-v-obama https://www.eff.org/cases/smith-v-obama https://apnews.com/d69a8e6db867477795f4152d0511bbf9 https://apnews.com/d69a8e6db867477795f4152d0511bbf9 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-security-records-factbox/factbox-history-of-mass-surveillance-in-the-united-states-idUSBRE95617O20130607 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-security-records-fact... >Because there not beyond imprisoning or killing people over information gained The US government also certainly uses the information gained to kill and/or imprison people, although you could perhaps argue that the scale is not the same https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/inside-the-cias-kill-list/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/inside-the-cias-k... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/oct/09/cia-torture-black-site-enhanced-interrogation https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/oct/... https://www.washingtonpost.com/?utm_term=.dc5b7bd3682e https://www.washingtonpost.com/?utm_term=.dc5b7bd3682e >we have no reason to believe the US had implemented backdoors in major processors. There is evidence that US intelligence agencies have backdoored products in the past. Personally, that's reason enough to believe that they may have backdoored processors as well https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa-upgrade-factory-show-cisco-router-getting-implant/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa... https://www.infoworld.com/article/2608141/snowden--the-nsa-planted-backdoors-in-cisco-products.html https://www.infoworld.com/article/2608141/snowden--the-nsa-p... https://www.technologyreview.com/s/519661/nsas-own-hardware-backdoors-may-still-be-a-problem-from-hell/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/519661/nsas-own-hardware-...
- Barrin92 7y ago>There are a lot more limitations and checks on what the US can do. I am a German citizen living in the UK and I own a Huawei phone. A while ago the American president issued a domestic law and I still don't know whether my phone will be usable in the future or not. I am not aware of China having any ability or willingness to do the same. As a European citizen I am accustomed to feel the effects of US politics, I can't say the same thing about China. If anything the loss of US control in the future gives me modest hope for more alternatives and competition.
- fnord123 7y ago>Secondly we have no reason to believe the US had implemented backdoors in major processors. Intel Management Engine has the capability to be a backdoor[1]. Whether the US has keys to it is in question. But it is known that Intel has included features on chips for the NSA[2]. [1] https://www.techrepublic.com/article/is-the-intel-management-engine-a-backdoor/ https://www.techrepublic.com/article/is-the-intel-management... [2] https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-visa-undocumented-feature-chipsets-cpus,38954.html https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-visa-undocumented-fe...
- lone_haxx0r 7y ago> There are a lot more limitations and checks on what the US can do. I don't care about the US promising they won't be bad. The fact that their companies can be forced to install surveillance mechanisms is already the worst case scenario for a hardware buyer. Beyond that, I don't care if it's the Americans, the Chinese or the fucking aliens doing the spying.
- erklik 7y ago> There are a lot more limitations and checks on what the US can do. These limitations and checks are written into laws. These laws can be easily ignored. Remind me as to how many of the 11 soldiers actively torturing people in Abu Gharib and Bagram were actually tried for their crimes? Also, Bush doesn't seem to be in jail.
- coldtea 7y agoYeah, because the US is not "equally authoritarian", so the rest of the world shouldn't mind! E.g. Chile where they helped establish Pinochet to power should feel secure. Italy where they collaborated with far right groups and deep state against democracy should also feel OK. And so on...
- eloff 7y agoNobody said it's ok.
- ajross 7y agoIt's not OK. It's bad if either do it. So if your response to "China is bad" is not "That is bad" but "The US is bad too!", then it's a big red flag that the discussion isn't about security, but something else.
- elygre 7y agoThe entire discussion started not with whether "China is bad", but whether US is better: > Hopefully this will push RISC-V manufacturing efforts in the US before the market becomes flooded with cheap open source and most likely backdoored chips manufactured in China
- yjftsjthsd-h 7y agoWhataboutism is still a fallacy. Yes, it's bad if the US does bad things. It is in fact also bad if China does bad things.
- madez 7y agoIt's not necessary to be outright 'authoritarian'. The 'national security' excuse goes a loooong way in the USA when the government wants something from a company. Also, financial sanctions can be equally effective for competing companies, or even just the carrot for the company that plays ball, like the alleged payments for Skype, Google, Microsoft, and others in PRISM.
- coldtea 7y agoLet's not pretend how they are governed internally is what concerns the rest of the world. The US has been in constant wars, invasions, meddling with foreign politics, running protectorates, etc. for over a century, including having bases all around the world. Far more countries have battle and regime change scars by the US than by China. Including it being the only country that ever dropped atomic bombs (and to civilians, none the less). And it's not just the Orange Baboon in charge that's worrying (though of course there's that too) -- the "Nobel Peace Price" winner Obama had a worse track record. (Of course for Americans anything that happened over 20 or 40 years ago is ancient history and the world should have forgotten it and totally trust them now -- still there were like 4 wars and one regime change they assisted in the last 20 years, so there's that).
- codyb 7y agoSuch a shame to insult Americans lack of historical context while also seeming to insinuate the world was some sort of idyllic utopia prior to American engagement. How about we don’t forget that the entire world has pretty much been a gigantic warzone ever since civilization started and how about we remember that American hegemony has been the single most peaceful period of world history. I’m not even trying to insinuate America should be some great arbiter of what is good and holy, but the fact of the matter is, people have been slaughtering eachother since communities became a thing, and only recently has it become so infrequent that people can go “oh! Look how America fucked up by bombing someone here!”. As if, without America, there wouldn’t be regional conflicts pretty much everywhere, just like there literally always have been.
- raxxorrax 7y agoI think you are both correct. But that only highlights the question about whether we can trust chip manufacturers. I currently tend to say yes, but I would still prefer to buy the American one.
- orbifold 7y agoThe Europeans are just salty they can’t fuck around with as much of the world as they used to.
- odiroot 7y agoIt's not about being authoritarian or not (we all know who wins in here). Many people/companies don't have much to hide from China but they do from the US.
- bogwog 7y ago> Many people/companies don't have much to hide from China but they do from the US. Please explain
- kyruzic 7y agoYea true. America is worse.
- bArray 7y agoYou need to substantiate such a claim. Also HN has some rules about inflammatory comments.
- rowanG077 7y agoNot equally authoritarian maybe. I don't think the US would have any more qualms about backdooring CPUs then China would have.
- majia 7y agoChina oppresses its own people, while US oppresses people in Iraq, Yemen and elsewhere. US being perceived as a lesser evil doesn't make its chips more secure than Chinese chips. Security comes from rigorous research and evidence, not paranoia or prejudice.
- Allower 7y agoIndeed, the US is FAR more authoritarian from an international perspective..
- alxlaz 7y agoThis has very little to do with politics. I don't think there can be any serious debate about who is more authoritarian and who has a worse record in terms of human rights in our times. But: - There is no guarantee that a backdoor introduced by the US will only be used by the US, or by someone with whom the US has willingly and knowingly shared knowledge about the backdoor. For all we know the MSS might be spying on some citizens using US backdoors in US chips. - There is no guarantee that the US will always use a backdoor introduced by it for morally infallible reasons. That's a risk with any weapon, of course, and it's super easy to write it up under the cost of doing business -- right until the cost of doing business involves your own device and your own life. - Even if you trust the checks and balances of US government completely, there is no guarantee that all governments with whom the US would share the backdoor have the same checks and balances in place. It's not like the backdoor will ask an attacker for their US passport and a search warrant before allowing access.