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What concern do you have because the ethnicity and location of the company is in China? How does that compare to American or five eyes countries, given what we

by SCdF 6y ago

What concern do you have because the ethnicity and location of the company is in China? How does that compare to American or five eyes countries, given what we know about those situations? What makes, to you, one a higher threat than the other? Edit: to be clear I'm trying to work out, as someone who is clearly OK contributing and participating in the Chinese economy (gotta get dat new iphone), why is my concern for the morality of the Chinese government in this exact instance higher than, say, the government I actually live under (UK) or their allies (US and the rest of 5 eyes)

mey 6y ago
The amount of autonomy and legal recourse of a private corporate entity in China compared to the United States. While the US does not have a great track record (Room 641A, National Security Letters, v-chip, putting export controls on strong encryption, etc) entities like the EFF and ACLU, plus corporate entities have successfully and repeatedly pushed back. I am not an expert on Chinese corporate entities, but my anecdotal observations from working in companies with arms in China has been it's always a very careful process to not annoy the government, as it means losing everything with little recourse. Edit: The implication is that, if the government of China, was exceptionally interested placing a backdoor in the software of a Tencent system, they may not be able to reasonably object. Where if the FBI came to Apple, (and we know they have) they can say no. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93Apple_encryption_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93Apple_encryption_d...
- SCdF 6y ago
  > Where if the FBI came to Apple, (and we know they have) they can say no I thought the point was they couldn't say no? Hence the warrant canaries and things like that. And the NSA hooking directly into Google's internal fibre etc etc. To be clear I think your points are interesting from the perspective of "the chinese government is morally worse and I'm worried about those implications", I'm just trying to work out as someone who doesn't live there (but is clearly OK participating in their economy, I buy endless chinese goods) how that affects me concretely.
  - mey 6y ago
    I'm going to side step the morality of the respective governments. I am a US Citizen, I have opinions, bias and an incomplete picture. My point is, I think it is harder to de-tangle a Chinese corporation's objectives from China (the governments) objectives than say a corporation in the US or EU. There are stronger laws and separation of controls (on the books and in practice) in those regions. Do I trust the US government? Not terribly. Do I trust the US government more than China as a US Citizen? Yes. Should you? I don't know. Defending against nation state targeting as an individual may be an impossible task unless you follow in Richard Stallman's footsteps, in which case, the conversation about LoL installing a kernel driver in Windows is very much outside your concerns :)
- freeopinion 6y ago
  FBI? If the FBI came to Tencent, Tencent could say no just as well as Apple can say no. If the Chinese government came to Apple, could they say no any easier than Tencent?
  - mey 6y ago
    The crux of capitalism, what will you compromise for revenue. That's the point though, ownership and exposure to China's influence. Is Apple in a position where they can't say no to China? If not, should I trust their product?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
anonymousab 6y ago
Government mandated backdoors in retail software and usage of those backdoors is a more well known or suspected occurrence with the CPC government than, say, the Canadian government. But that could just be a matter of publicity goals; of it benefiting China's goals for their citizens to know they are watching, and it not benefiting Western governments the same way. I think it's natural (not necessarily rational) for people to be more skeptical of the goals of outside nations than of their own. Certainly, other nations with a very different and disliked form of government would engender more suspicion, however irrelevant that aspect may actually be.
- SCdF 6y ago
  > Government mandated backdoors in retail software and usage of those backdoors is a more well known or suspected occurrence with the CPC government than, say, the Canadian government. So we know (right?) that the US government put backdoors in lots of parts of the backbone of the US internet they had access to that wasn't public knowledge, and that they have data sharing agreements with 5 eyes countries so that, for example, they can use their backdoors to send information about canadian citizens to canadian spy authorities without triggering various laws that would otherwise make that information illegal to obtain, and get the reverse in return.
  - anonymousab 6y ago
    Yeah, we do know that. Or a reasonable amount of information as to approximate 'know'. This specific topic is about the possible use of a very real potential backdoor in software that a company wants people to download, though. Five-eyes exploiting infra and pressuring service providers to share info is not as germane to the discussion as the likelihood of the CPC interfering in software that can be argued to be well under their control. Distrusting Google for their cooperation with government spying in no way precludes avoiding or criticizing Riot's software choices due to the risk and known behaviors of China's government.
    - SCdF 6y ago
      > Five-eyes exploiting infra and pressuring service providers to share info is not as germane to the discussion as the likelihood of the CPC interfering in software that can be argued to be well under their control. > Distrusting Google for their cooperation with government spying in no way precludes avoiding or criticizing Riot's software choices due to the risk and known behaviors of China's government. Right, so you're saying here that Five Eyes' ability to hack infra isn't comparable to CPC's ability to put backdoors in software? I.e. that while you acknowledge that infra might be compromised, in terms of a collection of bits executing on your computer you trust that software generated by a US company isn't compromised (or is less likely or whatever) compared to software generated by a Chinese company?
verall 6y ago
It has nothing to do with ethnicity and everything to do with jurisdiction. There is obviously more transparency when companies must comply with American or British courts vs the Chinese government. At the same time, all three show very little regard for the privacy of their citizens, and seem to have no problem paying off or breaking into domestic industry to gain information or exert control. For your case in this exact instance, the Chinese government has no disincentives I can think of from pwning your computer through this kernel driver, besides that it is obviously way more effort than you are probably worth, so you probably don't have to worry about it. Alternatively, were your own government to pwn your computer through this kernel driver, it is possible you could seek legal recourse. Was legal recourse not possible, you could go to the press, who would (I think? I'm not from the UK) be free to print your story. So yeah, I think its pretty obvious installing a kernel driver from a company under Chinese jurisdiction is less safe than one from a company under American or UK jurisdiction. But noones targeting you anyways ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

by SCdF 6y ago

mey 6y ago

The amount of autonomy and legal recourse of a private corporate entity in China compared to the United States. While the US does not have a great track record (Room 641A, National Security Letters, v-chip, putting export controls on strong encryption, etc) entities like the EFF and ACLU, plus corporate entities have successfully and repeatedly pushed back. I am not an expert on Chinese corporate entities, but my anecdotal observations from working in companies with arms in China has been it's always a very careful process to not annoy the government, as it means losing everything with little recourse. Edit: The implication is that, if the government of China, was exceptionally interested placing a backdoor in the software of a Tencent system, they may not be able to reasonably object. Where if the FBI came to Apple, (and we know they have) they can say no. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93Apple_encryption_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93Apple_encryption_d...

SCdF 6y ago
> Where if the FBI came to Apple, (and we know they have) they can say no I thought the point was they couldn't say no? Hence the warrant canaries and things like that. And the NSA hooking directly into Google's internal fibre etc etc. To be clear I think your points are interesting from the perspective of "the chinese government is morally worse and I'm worried about those implications", I'm just trying to work out as someone who doesn't live there (but is clearly OK participating in their economy, I buy endless chinese goods) how that affects me concretely.
- mey 6y ago
  I'm going to side step the morality of the respective governments. I am a US Citizen, I have opinions, bias and an incomplete picture. My point is, I think it is harder to de-tangle a Chinese corporation's objectives from China (the governments) objectives than say a corporation in the US or EU. There are stronger laws and separation of controls (on the books and in practice) in those regions. Do I trust the US government? Not terribly. Do I trust the US government more than China as a US Citizen? Yes. Should you? I don't know. Defending against nation state targeting as an individual may be an impossible task unless you follow in Richard Stallman's footsteps, in which case, the conversation about LoL installing a kernel driver in Windows is very much outside your concerns :)
freeopinion 6y ago
FBI? If the FBI came to Tencent, Tencent could say no just as well as Apple can say no. If the Chinese government came to Apple, could they say no any easier than Tencent?
- mey 6y ago
  The crux of capitalism, what will you compromise for revenue. That's the point though, ownership and exposure to China's influence. Is Apple in a position where they can't say no to China? If not, should I trust their product?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

anonymousab 6y ago

Government mandated backdoors in retail software and usage of those backdoors is a more well known or suspected occurrence with the CPC government than, say, the Canadian government. But that could just be a matter of publicity goals; of it benefiting China's goals for their citizens to know they are watching, and it not benefiting Western governments the same way. I think it's natural (not necessarily rational) for people to be more skeptical of the goals of outside nations than of their own. Certainly, other nations with a very different and disliked form of government would engender more suspicion, however irrelevant that aspect may actually be.

SCdF 6y ago
> Government mandated backdoors in retail software and usage of those backdoors is a more well known or suspected occurrence with the CPC government than, say, the Canadian government. So we know (right?) that the US government put backdoors in lots of parts of the backbone of the US internet they had access to that wasn't public knowledge, and that they have data sharing agreements with 5 eyes countries so that, for example, they can use their backdoors to send information about canadian citizens to canadian spy authorities without triggering various laws that would otherwise make that information illegal to obtain, and get the reverse in return.
- anonymousab 6y ago
  Yeah, we do know that. Or a reasonable amount of information as to approximate 'know'. This specific topic is about the possible use of a very real potential backdoor in software that a company wants people to download, though. Five-eyes exploiting infra and pressuring service providers to share info is not as germane to the discussion as the likelihood of the CPC interfering in software that can be argued to be well under their control. Distrusting Google for their cooperation with government spying in no way precludes avoiding or criticizing Riot's software choices due to the risk and known behaviors of China's government.
  - SCdF 6y ago
    > Five-eyes exploiting infra and pressuring service providers to share info is not as germane to the discussion as the likelihood of the CPC interfering in software that can be argued to be well under their control. > Distrusting Google for their cooperation with government spying in no way precludes avoiding or criticizing Riot's software choices due to the risk and known behaviors of China's government. Right, so you're saying here that Five Eyes' ability to hack infra isn't comparable to CPC's ability to put backdoors in software? I.e. that while you acknowledge that infra might be compromised, in terms of a collection of bits executing on your computer you trust that software generated by a US company isn't compromised (or is less likely or whatever) compared to software generated by a Chinese company?

verall 6y ago

It has nothing to do with ethnicity and everything to do with jurisdiction. There is obviously more transparency when companies must comply with American or British courts vs the Chinese government. At the same time, all three show very little regard for the privacy of their citizens, and seem to have no problem paying off or breaking into domestic industry to gain information or exert control. For your case in this exact instance, the Chinese government has no disincentives I can think of from pwning your computer through this kernel driver, besides that it is obviously way more effort than you are probably worth, so you probably don't have to worry about it. Alternatively, were your own government to pwn your computer through this kernel driver, it is possible you could seek legal recourse. Was legal recourse not possible, you could go to the press, who would (I think? I'm not from the UK) be free to print your story. So yeah, I think its pretty obvious installing a kernel driver from a company under Chinese jurisdiction is less safe than one from a company under American or UK jurisdiction. But noones targeting you anyways ¯\_(ツ)_/¯