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The Clean Network – United States Department of State

• ProAm 6y ago
  We now have our own "Great Firewall"
  • JumpCrisscross 6y ago
    > We now have our own "Great Firewall" I don’t see anything about content filtering. Just transport integrity. The closest we come to that is the prohibition on apps, but that’s still an ocean away from censoring text messages mentioning the Tiananmen massacre.
    • komali2 6y ago
      Or arresting a Hong Kong democratic leader for "uttering seditious words" (exact phrasing of the CCP today).
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      • tkel 6y ago
        fyi in the "land of the free", people being mean to government agents are cited for sedition https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/public-safety/sdpd-is-punishing-speech-using-a-102-year-old-city-law/ https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/public-safety/sdpd-is...
    • GaryNumanVevo 6y ago
      It's fairly simple. Did the app you download have anti-American sentiment posted on it? Banned. It could have been Chinese propaganda after all. Same goes for video hosting, web hosting, etc.
      • codemonkey-zeta 6y ago
        Isn't this why we have the legal system? Companies could sue the US government for that sort of thing? Or do you feel like the judicial arm of our government would not defend the rights of those companies? Or would the laws surrounding this plan be worded such that companies have no legal recourse? I still fail to understand this fear.
        • dane-pgp 6y ago
          Would you invest in a disruptive new startup that made an app which allows individuals to communicate with end-to-end encryption, and had no restrictions on "anti-American" sentiment (meaning "anti- some particular political party" sentiment)? The startup might win the court case, but you might lose your money before the government gives up its appeals and injunctions.
• consultutah 6y ago
  It looks like we are breaking the internet up along the lines of political boundaries. The US will have one internet, the EU another, China yet another... Hopefully the pendulum will swing back in the other direction soon...
  • cmckn 6y ago
    Hopefully, none of this will be implemented and we can all forget Mike Pompeo exists in 6 months.
    • slater 6y ago
      84 more days till election... fingers & toes crossed
      • loceng 6y ago
        The election may already be "decided" through fraudulent means with the USPS being captured. Trump's USPS' Postmaster General replacement, along with who recently fired 23 USPS executives: "Lawmakers Demand Removal of Postmaster General DeJoy Over 'Nefarious' Efforts to Destroy the Postal Service and 'Aid Trump Reelection'" - https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/i71z41/lawmakers_demand_removal_of_postmaster_general/ https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/i71z41/lawmakers_...
        • komali2 6y ago
          This shouldn't be downvoted - it's relevant to hackers here because the executive branch found an effective way to hack the electoral process. Socio-political engineering at its finest!
          • Shared404 6y ago
            I concur, I just wish we weren't living in it.
      • TehCorwiz 6y ago
• jamiek88 6y ago
  Oh jeez. No good can come from this Balkanization of the net. This is how Russia started its control. Same playbook.
  • wyuenho 6y ago
    China has already Balkanized their "Internet" for over 20 years now.
    • chillacy 6y ago
      That was their loss. If China does something, does the US have to follow? As it is, this just makes it seem like China was right this whole time and the US ideals of an open internet were a failure.
      • wyuenho 6y ago
        They view it as a success and have double down on it, while the rest of the world continued to feed them knowledge free minds across continents spent centuries to accumulate. In short, they only took the useful bits to strengthen the government's grip on the population while leaving out all those things that made the vast amount of knowledge possible. They are getting all human knowledge for free, while it it not the same for us. Strategically, this position is untenable. The free world is defenseless until we demand reciprocity. Balkanization, be that as it may, it's not the end, but a means to an end, the end should be all open for every one.
        • knolax 6y ago
          > leaving out all those things that made the vast amount of knowledge possible No. This is the conceit of the humanities to attribute the past few centuries of industrial and scientific progress to their work. The Soviets, the Nazis, and the Japanese Empire all managed to progress useful knowledge while believing in completely different ideologies. Your John Lockes and Thomas Paines made no real contribution to the discovery of Penicillin or the Transistor. The idea that censoring ideology will stunt technological growth is a fantasy believed in only by ideologues.
• entropea 6y ago
  >The Clean Network program is the Trump Administration’s comprehensive approach to safeguarding the nation’s assets including citizens’ privacy and companies’ most sensitive information from aggressive intrusions by malign actors, such as the Chinese Communist Party. Straight up consent manufacturing.
• bananabreakfast 6y ago
  The intention of cutting out bad actors seems to be in the right place, but using "Clean" for the terminology is really unnecessarily inflammatory.
  • 52-6F-62 6y ago
    I'd add that the collection of telecom companies at the bottom of the page is grossly misleading. It makes them appear as signatories or as if they're following America's lead.
    • bilbo0s 6y ago
      Probably true. At the same time, they may have no choice. This sort of thing is not elective. There are a lot of people around me taking that as a list of companies not to do business with. As if this will save them from the global surveillance dragnet. But here's the thing, you either submit to american surveillance and tracking, or you submit to some other nation's surveillance and tracking. You will not be able to choose companies that don't partner with their national governments for surveillance and tracking. So people taking this as a list of cooperating companies, and asking how to avoid this system, are being a little naive. Thinking that somehow, not being on our network will save them from surveillance. It won't. Best case, it saves them from surveillance by us. It is a sad future. I'll concede you that.
      • 52-6F-62 6y ago
        The point I was referring to is that is that companies are listed that have announced Ericcson as their network infrastructure hardware supplier for years, and the decision has nothing to do with Pompeo's "Clean Path". However, they are listed as if they are following the directive rather than having been long in front of it. It's gross political posturing, useful or not.
  • waihtis 6y ago
    All I can think of is the story about how toothpaste was made popular.
  • 6y ago
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• javier10e6 6y ago
  Behold! The Clean World Wide Web will be known as Patriot One Web or pow.
• the_one_nidnogg 6y ago
  that's cool. https://the-cyber-artnet.vercel.app/ https://the-cyber-artnet.vercel.app/ the clean network fights back! we good.
• 52-6F-62 6y ago
  All run on clean, clean coal Kidding aside, this is so blatant I can hardly believe I'm seeing it happen.
• Naac 6y ago
  What's up with the incredible low resolution jpeg at the top of the article? It really stands out from the other images ( which seem fine )
  • ipsin 6y ago
    I was curious about that too. The img tag has a "srcset" attribute with resolutions from 85x48 to 1920x1080, but the "sizes" attribute is "(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px".
• vlovich123 6y ago
  Isn't it ridiculously easy to set up attacks from within a "clean" network? It probably does increase costs marginally (you have to fly people to "clean" countries, set up ISP access with third parties, etc) but are there any public estimates how much it does that vs the increased costs to run this network? I would think it's marginal. Seeing the partner list this seems like more of a ploy by telecoms to attack tech companies than any legitimate attempt to secure networks. > To prevent U.S. citizens’ most sensitive personal information and our businesses’ most valuable intellectual property, including COVID-19 vaccine research, from being stored and processed on cloud-based systems accessible to our foreign adversaries through companies such as Alibaba, Baidu, China Mobile, China Telecom, and Tencent. Am I missing something?
  • gpm 6y ago
    There's a bunch of different measures discussed, but they all seem to remove some attack surface that we have seen exploited. Securing the routers and network cables removes the means for man in the middle attacks (or at least makes them preventable with router security). Not connecting to telecos does the same (because of bgp highjacking and the like). Removing chinese apps and not storing data on Chinese servers makes decreases the amount of data that can be extracted from large portions of the population by the CCP. E.g. preventing the "who knows who" graph from leaking wholesale (even if individual nodes can still be investigated via other means). This doesn't fix all security problems, but it removes some of China's current advantages in cyberwarfare. Not putting apps in Chinese app stores and devices looks to be an outlier in that it's a form of sanction (in response to human rights abuses) rather than a defensive measure.
    • matthewdgreen 6y ago
      Securing routers and network cables is basic stuff that we should be doing anyway (and probably are, at a classified level.) You don't need to balkanize the net in order to do those things. Removing "Chinese apps" just means that different Candy Crush clones will be collecting that data, either directly or through their advertising networks. Or it means the Chinese companies who need to collect data will collect it through data breaches. The best thing you can say is that this puts a speed bump in front of attackers, but since speed bumps aren't a security measure the reality is that it won't do anything.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• kayson 6y ago
  Has anyone published the evidence of Huawei being an "arm of the PRC surveillance state"? I've seen a lot of claims and a lot of out-of-court-settled lawsuits, but nothing really showing that they're using their devices or software infrastructure for surveillance.
  • hammock 6y ago
    Here is some https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/04/25/huawei-xinjiang-and-chinas-high-tech-surveillance-state-joining-the-dots/#535db3c2cd52 https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/04/25/huawei-xi...
    • xster 6y ago
      Is it referencing something specific? It's an editorial referencing other editorials. Is there something direct like PRISM type wikileaks? Considering the NSA hacked and had backdoors in Huawei servers for almost a decade, I imagine direct evidence shouldn't be difficult to produce. https://mashable.com/2014/03/22/nsa-huawei/ https://mashable.com/2014/03/22/nsa-huawei/
      • hammock 6y ago
        The NSA barely acknowledges its own existence. It's not exactly known for publishing direct intelligence for public consumption.. The Mashable report you link was only possible because of the most notorious leak in the history of the world (Edward Snowden), who is currently a fugitive of the US government. Have you tried searching in wikileaks though?
  • wyuenho 6y ago
    The connection is made from: 1. The Chinese National Intelligence Law requiring every citizen to "intelligence work". 2. Huawei had the potential to reach mass adoption outside of China. 3. Huawei is a company deeply connected to the PLA. 4. Therefore Huawei, not only is its HQ required to spy for China, but that it is very likely to work with the PLA to spy for China. [1]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Intelligence_Law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Intelligence_Law [2]. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/08/huawei-staff-and-chinese-military-have-deep-links-study-claims.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/08/huawei-staff-and-chinese-mil...
• cs702 6y ago
  In case it's not obvious after you read the text in that page, the word "Clean" in the context of that text actually means: * balkanized/siloed instead of globally standardized; * permissioned instead of permissionless; and * monitored via backdoors instead of optionally secure. I'm reminded of this passage from George Orwell's classic piece, "Politics and the English Language" (http://www.public-library.uk/ebooks/72/30.pdf http://www.public-library.uk/ebooks/72/30.pdf): "In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question−begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine−gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them." -- EDITS: Simplified language, and removed quotes from OP as well as several paragraphs from the Orwell quote to make my comment shorter and easier to digest.
  • A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago
    I am not sure why you got downvoted. This is absolutely the interpretation you can easily reach after reading it. Maybe readers perceive Orwell reference as too dramatic?
• DiabloD3 6y ago
  Vote.org Make sure you're registered, and make sure you vote in November.
  • ribble 6y ago
    Trump 2020!
  • tick_tock_tick 6y ago
    What would possible make you think Biden would change course on this? Neither party likes China and the whole idea that a new administration is going to roll back a hardline policy vs them is crazy.
• jahabrewer 6y ago
  > We know the risk of an adversary running comms because we did it for a while with Crypto AG
• hijinks 6y ago
  only the NSA is allowed to backdoor US networking hardware
  • codemonkey-zeta 6y ago
    I laughed, but also ... yes? As a lover of liberty I would much rather just my own government (by which I am ostensibly represented) have the ability to infringe on that liberty than 2 governments. I would want to support regulations that protect myself and neighbors from the influence of those other infringers, no?
    • mindslight 6y ago
      The actions required to shut out that second attacker are blunt tools that impinge upon your personal freedom far beyond their stated purpose. And since you still have that primary attacker, then you still have to defend against them anyway. The proper solutions to protect us from "China" are the same as the solutions to protect us from NSA - E2E encryption, P2P communication, decentralized namespaces, and making data transmission (ie trust) as non-interactive as possible.
      • codemonkey-zeta 6y ago
        Can we realistically implement these in the near future? Will this not function as a stop-gap in the meantime while we do work on your (better) solution?
        • mindslight 6y ago
          Yes they can be implemented, when there is necessity. The tech industry has been coasting on commercial surveillance to fund centralized solutions, relying on consumers not looking too hard behind the curtain. I'd say that overall fiction is what is really collapsing here. I don't see how it's possible to answer whether this will "function". None of the simplistic actions stated in the press release address any of the actual threats - hence everyone is filling in their own imagined technical specifics. This is basically another "series of tubes" moment, with politicians not understanding that while they can control the physical wires, they cannot control the emergent complexity of communications happening over the wires.
• motohagiography 6y ago
  The question I think this is an answer to is how you can have a reasonable expectation of freedom and privacy while sharing an internet with a CCP who has militarized their technology sector as a means to facilitate colonial expansion. I'm no fan of anyone involved, but we should accept that the Internet as we may have known it has been compromised by exogenous governance structures and their gatekeepers in service of non- and even anti-internet agendas, and it can no longer seriously be considered a free territory for divergence and innovation. The U.S. and their Clean network seems naive in a way, but in this case, I don't object because I think it is the devil we know.
  • lostmsu 6y ago
    Is it the devil we know though? Until the talks about TikTok started, I assumed nothing like this could ever happen in this country.
    • waihtis 6y ago
      That's just how politics works in general, is it not? Big issues can underlie for ages and a single mass media event may trigger a big change.
      • lostmsu 6y ago
        The point stands: you don't know what mass media events are coming up, hence you don't know what the devil will do next.
  • mindslight 6y ago
    Computer security does not operate around large sweeping claims of some party doing something bad, and so doing something bad in retaliation. And it's impossible for the "Internet" to be compromised - by definition it's an open network that gets packets from A to B while letting most anyone listen in. So then, what are the specific problems? If the problem is that China is copying designs, then the solution is to stop moving sensitive production there. If it is that Chinese manufacturers are putting remote backdoors in products, then the solution is to make trustable designs with open firmware, and domestic production of sensitive parts to avoid hardware backdoors. If the problem is apps with built in surveillance, then the solution is to secure mobile OSs to prevent data leakage. If the problem is that Chinese groups are shitposting to manufacture political consent, the solution is better social media filters, reputation systems, and fixing our domestic institutions (eg the press) thus hindering the ability for anyone to manufacture consent. None of these things are solved by top-down imposition of some blunt firewall, or whatever other misguided heavy handed ideas the politicians have in mind. From the perspective of network security, it's really no big deal if Internet addresses become 64 bits with the addition of a proxy.
• coldcode 6y ago
  If they weren't serious about this claptrap it would be downright hilarious. "Clean" means nothing, other than "Approved by us" which of course can mean anything they want, including shutting down anything they disagree with even internally, and changing day by day. In practicality there isn't much they can do legally to make any of this actually exist.
  • coliveira 6y ago
    > there isn't much they can do legally to make any of this actually exist. Please, let's stop the whole thing of "he doesn't have the power to do this". Maybe he cannot do everything, but the last four years have proved that he can do pretty much everything he wants with a few minor problems with justice that he will also disregard. Think about mass imprisonment of immigrants, travel bans, attacking protestors in major cities with unidentified military units, diverting money fro the military to build a wall against congress wishes, not allowing his co-conspirators to testify in Congress, affirm he will not accept the election results, etc. All of these things supposedly were not legal. But he doesn't care about the constitution, and the constitution only has any power if the government is willing to uphold it.
• yters 6y ago
  What is a better way to prevent mass IP theft the CCP is doing?
  • GaryNumanVevo 6y ago
    Simple, stop outsourcing manufacturing to China. Companies regularly get contracts which require an IP transfer in return for cheap mass labor. Of course there's IP which is stolen, but that's the cost of doing business when manufacturing at home has been shuttered.
    • codemonkey-zeta 6y ago
      But, wouldn't this need to be enforced by the government? How else are companies going to agree to stop outsourcing manufacturing to China? And if you agree that the correct solution involves government regulation, then what specifically about this plan doesn't accomplish your preferred outcome of "stop outsourcing manufacturing to China"? I may be naive but I also fail to see exactly how this plan is bad. Do you not feel the Chinese government is using technology to undermine the US, or that this isn't actually a legitimate and compelling issue of national defense?
      • GaryNumanVevo 6y ago
        My comment was intended to be descriptive, rather than prescriptive. IP theft isn't a new thing and American companies no doubt take it into account when manufacturing overseas. Enforcing IP internationally is actually quite difficult anyways. Tariffs effectively restrict manufacturing overseas, as there's some breaking point in cost to produce. I don't believe banning trade / manufacturing to China is a good idea, we depend on them for cheap consumer goods, and they depend on that revenue. We developed a dependency on Chinese manufacturing because it was cheap, and no with little to no manufacturing ability stateside, we're tied to their economy. As someone who worked for the D.O.E for years, I can care less where consumer goods / technology is manufactured. The US government already has VERY strict rules about manufacturing for military / transportation equipment. "National Defense" isn't going to be decided by who owns TikTok or app-de-jour.
• throwyawayy2020 6y ago
  The US is ran & staffed by the hyper-partisan “Z-team” right now. This is tragic & dangerous bc we need shrewd & wise people to make decisions + build coalitions in the opening decades of 21st century, not hyper-partisan kooks. Some of the worst actors in cyber space rn is the Russian gov’t & their intelligence + “security” services —- it sure is funny (funny as in strange, not humorous) how difficult it is to get any of these apparatchiks to publicly acknowledge that
  • ETHisso2017 6y ago
    What is the Z-team?
    • advaita 6y ago
      I am _guessing_ they wanted to mean pollar opposite of A-Team. (As non-native speaker) I always interpret A-Team as your most competent team for a given task.
      • ETHisso2017 6y ago
        Ah makes sense... thanks for the clarification!
• keenmaster 6y ago
  Are there any cybersecurity professionals on here who want to comment about the pros and cons of the network? I don't have the necessary expertise to ascertain the merits of it (actual threat vs. mitigated threat) but I don't like the "clean" verbiage. Nor do I like China's own longstanding protectionism and Great Firewall.
  • radium3d 6y ago
    I can think of a couple, 1) There are too many in/out points and encrypted paths in and out of the network to actually make this worth spending time on. Think of walling off the entire country, yet there is still air above the wall, movable earth below the wall. 2) It creates a false sense of security if you're on the "clean network" and may make some developers less considerate of securing apps, websites, etc, and some consumers of questioning the security and privacy of the apps they install. I.e. it weakens those within the "clean" firewall.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
• typon 6y ago
  This writing is so Orwellian it seems like a parody
• Kapura 6y ago
  This is disgusting. Anybody working at an American firm that's supporting this initiative should be ashamed. Anybody working on this project is actively contributing to the destruction of international trust and cooperation. I am beyond disgusted at my government. This Republican administration has been an unprecedented disaster on every front.
  • waihtis 6y ago
    Why do you think it's 'disgusting'? edit: in case someone was confused, talking about the initiative, not the government in general
  • alyoshaK 6y ago
    I would hardly evoke shame on a 9 to 5 worker at a telecommunications corporation for the political decisions made by a CEO or board of directors...
  • ajkjk 6y ago
    Could you explain why?
  • scohesc 6y ago
    How would you suggest we limit the surveillance and active attacks on American infrastructure by the Chinese government? They show no signs of letting up and/or respecting how America works in the slightest.
    • DethNinja 6y ago
      Easy, USA can invest in open hardware/software. It would destroy Intel/AMD but who cares, national security is more important, no?
      • tick_tock_tick 6y ago
        Ok that helps the issue in issue in 20-30+ years (develop the tech, start mass production, replace all old hardware with it) what can we do in this decade?
• nitrobeast 6y ago
  It will be interesting to see how many telecoms in EU would join this.
• tomc1985 6y ago
  Why the hell does any of this have to be China specific? Tomorrow the bugbear could be anyone else Like, we want clean networks free of foreign influence and sruveillance, full stop. Or are they implying that Five Eyes surveillance is good and OK?
  • waihtis 6y ago
    This is more about Huawei in general. Russia, for instance, doesn't have a technology provider of similar magnitude and influence.
    • chillacy 6y ago
      I think the parent commenter's point is that making laws based on objective rules would make it more future-proof. Laws once passed usually stay for a long time. Huawei wasn't a big deal 15 years ago. 15 years from now someone else their place.
  • SkyMarshal 6y ago
    As with most things the Trump admin does, this one too is sloppy. There was no need to call out the CCP in the document, it's obvious who this measure is primarily directed at. Also, characterizing it as an initiative of the "Trump Administration", instead of the United States Government or State Department, was unnecessarily political and also obvious. Also as mentioned above, China already has a Clean Network initiative. I wonder if the Trump admin copied that name, or chose it accidentally.
• A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago
  I am surprised it did not make bigger news. I am genuinely annoyed that US, of all places, is contributing to the splintering of the internet as we knew it. But what surprises me more people are not up in arms about it. I mean, who would not love only government approved code floating around and only child appropriate messages being visible before 10PM. If there is a real reason to dislike this administration, this is it.
• ISL 6y ago
  I have the same feeling about this as I did the announcement of the "Department of Homeland Security". The name sounded Soviet in origin, with only the exchange of "Homeland" in place of "Motherland". It reminded me of things my family had taught me didn't happen in the United States. "We call on all freedom-loving nations and companies to join the Clean Network." is a sentence straight out of an authoritarian playbook. Top-down imposition of standards is not what made America's melting pot great. Free and open discourse, with redundant structures designed to ensure that governance required the consent of the governed, did. Furthermore, State is a decade or more behind the game. It is my impression that modern companies that care about security assume that all networks are compromised and act accordingly. See https://cloud.google.com/beyondcorp https://cloud.google.com/beyondcorp as an example. Balkanizing the Internet will not make us free; we will instead tie our own hands. This is not the same as banning the import of presumed-compromised hardware. Vote.
  • waihtis 6y ago
    > Furthermore, State is a decade or more behind the game. It is my impression that modern companies that care about security assume that all networks are compromised and act accordingly. Unfortunately far from true. There's a small percentage who have the resource to run this kind of ops. Don't look at FAANG on how security is in companies, they're outliers by far.
    • ISL 6y ago
      State's 2020 budget is $52B. It has direct-collaboration access to DOD and NIST. We should expect our national-security infrastructure to be more resilient than commercial infrastructure, not less.
      • waihtis 6y ago
        Hmm, absolutely. However, the infrastructure and scenario may be wildly different from your average (modern) big tech company. There's always the notion that your national infrastructure needs the security applied as an afterthought, VS maybe more careful planning and less heavy "legacy" dragging them down in the tech companies.
• topkai22 6y ago
  I should find this more mortifying, but with the EU Court of Justice's decision on the privacy shield, India's ban on Chinese apps, and the great firewall + other nationalized internets, the US just seems like a late mover on nationalizing the internet.
• dustingetz 6y ago
  I support the unity of all nations. The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens.
• dillon 6y ago
  I guess I'm confused. I clicked the link and read through it really quick. I didn't really have a lot of strong opinions. This seems to be a response to how powerful China is becoming and that's scary for many reasons. This almost seems like a natural reaction of one government trying to abuse the internet and another government trying to protect it's citizens. It might even be irresponsible for the U.S. not to react. Obviously, there's no mention of Russia, but let's shelve that for now. I wasn't totally alarmed by what I read. Maybe I'm misunderstanding something, but I take this as a sort of stamp of approval that a cloud/network/platform isn't compromised by China. It doesn't seem to say, "Only use the U.S. internet" as other commenters have mentioned. The stamp of approval seems to be global (if you look at the list that was mentioned it's worldwide, not just the US). When I came back to look at the comments I was surprised to see a lot of noise. I feel like something must have flew over my head and maybe someone can explain it to me. I went ahead and read the link again but slower and I still don't understand the reaction I'm seeing on HN. Maybe it's some sort of state of idealism. People want the internet to be a place that's free from tyranny or government, but that's not what's happening. China/Russia/US/whoever is abusing the internet to gain an upper-hand. The best solution is to reinvent the internet, which I know there are a quite a few projects going on that are trying to accomplish that, but in the meantime what is a government supposed to do? Let other governments siphon their citizen's data without a cost? Again, I could use an explanation as I must have missed something that a lot of other people are finding very obvious. When a top level comment just says "Make sure you vote in November". I don't understand the context. Disclaimer: I am definitely not voting for Trump and dislike pretty much everything the administration has done. Yet, I do try to look at everything in silos.
  • ru552 6y ago
    I'm not really sure what's going on here either. Reading the article, it looks like there will be a list of approved providers of telco equipment and all services to US govt facilities will be required to use the approved list of gear. Same for 5g networks. I don't see how that splits up the internet. The app store thing could be fishy or maybe is just leads to a disclaimer in the app store that an app is "clean" or not.
• supernova87a 6y ago
  This really comes off as a hastily prepared political dig against China, when there are in addition so many other actors and countries trying to take advantage of poor security. The JPEGed giant logo at the top doesn't help... Other observations: -- "Remove untrusted applications from US mobile app stores": so, this would call for even tighter control by Apple, Google, over its app distribution and monopolies? -- Clean Apps: "Prevent untrusted PRC OEMs from installing trusted apps on their apps store... should remove apps to ensure they are not partnering with a human rights abuser." Umm, seriously, we're going to open this can of worms? Edit to add a last thought: I have yet to understand or read a coherent description about how we do not have the technical ability to protect against eavesdropping/etc regardless of who owns the physical hardware. Why is CCP-owned infrastructure uniquely susceptible to this? If we can't protect our transmissions with encryption, secure data storage techniques, what does it matter that the equipment is supplied by China? What unusual attack do they get access to by owning or manufacturing the equipment?
  • gpm 6y ago
    > so, this would call for even tighter control by Apple, Google, over its app distribution and monopolies? I think it does the opposite. It says "if you're going to vouch for software, really vouch for it". Not "only let users install software you can vouch for". It means that non-app store distribution becomes more of a thing, not less.
  • apazzolini 6y ago
    > The JPEGed giant logo It's almost like they ran it through jpegify.me on purpose as a joke, but really it's just another sign of the US's government technical incompetence.
    • 24gttghh 6y ago
      "CleanNetwork_NewCleans-300x169.jpg" 300x169, blown up to at least double that size.
    • sjs382 6y ago
      The site uses WordPress and the post author decided to include a thumbnail, scaled up to regular size, rather than using the original: https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/CleanNetwork_NewCleans.jpg https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/CleanNetwor...
• breck 6y ago
  > our businesses’ most valuable intellectual property, including COVID-19 vaccine research 1. If we have some valuable Covid-19 research, shouldn't we like, um, not keep that a secret? 2. Also, if we're going to take this farcical notion of "IP" seriously, it's only right that we give up all our guns, since gunpowder was invented in China, and we are infringing on their "intellectual property".
• mas3god 6y ago
  Is it really that big of a deal to try to cut china out of the internet?
• PaulAJ 6y ago
  Follow the link in "Digital Trust Standards" to the "Criteria for Security and Trust in Telecommunications Networks and Services" (https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/publication/200511_Lewis_5G_v3.pdf https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/publi...). Political & Governance Criteria numbers 8 and 9 would seem to present problems for companies in the UK and US, both of which require suppliers to cooperate with the government in secret and unchallengeable ways.
• kyberias 6y ago
  Robert C. Martin is thrilled.
• anm89 6y ago
  Well, that's terrifying. I wouldn't be surprised if they get away with it though.
• kyawzazaw 6y ago
  I wonder how this is feasible for US embassies in countries like Myanmar where basically all telecom and connections are ZTE/Huawei related.
  • mthoms 6y ago
    Satellites perhaps?
• legulere 6y ago
  > Huawei, an arm of the PRC surveillance state, is trading on the innovations and reputations of leading U.S. and foreign companies. These companies should remove their apps from Huawei’s app store to ensure they are not partnering with a human rights abuser. So should European Companies also pull apps from Google and Apple? I‘m all for standing up against the horrible human rights abuses of China, but it sounds unbelievably hollow from the US, which has a track record of putting their own interest before democracy and human rights abroad. The whole website is pitched for other countries to join in, but I really don’t see that happening except maybe the UK and Canada.
  • mabbo 6y ago
    > except maybe ... Canada Relations aren't great right now. Just last week Trump began yet another trade war with Canada. I don't really see Canada taking part in this.
• cardamomo 6y ago
  If you're not already familiar with the history of labeling immigrants (particularly non-European immigrants) as unclean or dirty, I'd urge you to read up. This article seems to be a good start: https://journals.openedition.org/transtexts/1011 https://journals.openedition.org/transtexts/1011 In short, calling this a "clean" network continues a long history of racist and xenophobic language in the U.S.
  • thaumasiotes 6y ago
    Step 1: immigrants who are viewed negatively are described in negative terms. Step 2: describing anything in negative terms is racist?
    • cardamomo 6y ago
      No. First of all, attitudes toward Chinese and other immigrants to the U.S. in the 20th century were formed, in part, by the language that was used by those in power. That Chinese immigrants were "dirty" was not fact, it was a racist stereotype. Second, I do not contend that describing anything in negative terms is racist. I am linking the specific history of describing Chinese immigrants as dirty with the Clean Network's choice of names. It behooves us not to think of it as a benign coincidence but rather an intentional act to signal the Trump administration's commitment to xenophobia.
      • sukilot 6y ago
        "dirty" isn't a racialized work like "chink". It's a word applied to anything we don't like and want to keep out. China already has a similar system also called (the Chinese word for) "Clean". Is the Chinese government racist against Chinese?
        • cardamomo 6y ago
          Please don't use that racial slur. The article I linked above shows ways in which "dirty" was used as a racialized term in the 20th century in the U.S.
• LatteLazy 6y ago
  We should cautiously support this on the 1% chance that it's not a publicity stunt and actually could lead to some action on China.
• annoyingnoob 6y ago
  Can we get a clean government? Free from hyper-partisan politics, where there can be more than two sides and folks on other sides are still on the same overall team and not the enemy? Together we stand, divided we fall.
  • coliveira 6y ago
    The whole goal of trumpism is to create slaves to the ideology of white and western supremacy. It has so clear racial undertones that it's not a surprise they want to attack China: they see it more as a racial target, poorly disguised with "homeland security" excuses.
    • 8note 6y ago
      I don't think it's racial, more geopolitical. The US wants to maintain dominance over Asia. Can't do that with China, the usual Asian power, getting stronger
    • k33n 6y ago
      Actually Trump is just fighting for the interests of Americans. Interesting fan-fiction though!
      • coliveira 6y ago
        Wrong, Trump only fights for himself. Americans will also suffer the consequences of a new irresponsible "Cold War". Trump, on the other hand, will continue lining his pockets.
        • k33n 6y ago
          Diagnosis: TDS
• coliveira 6y ago
  Welcome to the great firewall of the US. The trump regime seems to be adamant in copying the worst of digital surveillance and anti-competitive prohibitions from communist countries.
• AlleyTrotter 6y ago
  you would all be in love with the idea if it was proposed by the obama administration
• ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
  I'm a bit skeptical that this will go anywhere. Many reasons, which I won't go into, but...ya never know...
• pulse7 6y ago
  So the country whose national security and intelligence agencies have gathered the largest database of sensitive information in the world is proposing to "safeguard sensitive information from aggressive intrusions by malign actors"... If U.S. is some kind of role model / example for other countries to follow (in terms of freedoms, democracy, prosperity, etc) then other countries will also gather sensitive information to the largest extent possible... So this "we can, but you shouldn't" is just a shameless hypocrisy. What would the U.S. founding fathers say to all this? Is there any William Penn living in the U.S. today to give basic freedoms like privacy back to the people? Or will the "controlling party" take everything away - including the freedom to think and say?
  • zepto 6y ago
    We actually don’t know that the US has gathered the largest database of sensitive information. Only that it used to gather a lot before Snowden.
    • remus 6y ago
      I'd bet a lot of money that the NSA didn't just turn off their servers and sit their twiddling their thumbs after the Snowden leaks.
      • wahern 6y ago
        I think the intimation is that it's not only the NSA or the United States building such databases, and the assumption that the NSA would have the largest database may no longer be credible--not because they stopped gathering data but because they were surpassed.
      • glenstein 6y ago
        That's an unfair caricature. The steelman version of that argument is that China has likely amassed a more robust global surveillance database (to the extent that that's even the right word to use) than the U.S.
        • 6y ago
• beepboopbeep 6y ago
  This particular administration has gone out of its way to gaslight everyone and thing it possibly can. It is to the point that everything they do is consider suspicious and/or a lie at face value. That they have the gall to name this "The Clean Network" and encourage the allies they have been bludgeoning for the past 4 years to join it is both laughable and insulting.
• ahmedfromtunis 6y ago
  The general wording of the proposal is way more US-vs-China centered to be a call to "all freedom-loving nations and companies".
• bo1024 6y ago
  Amazing how end-to-end encryption would solve all the problems they claim to care about here.
  • MentallyRetired 6y ago
    How do we accelerate this process?
• Angostura 6y ago
  Saw the headline and I assumed it was an international iniative to promote clean, sustainable energy. I should have known.
• csense 6y ago
  Chinese government mandated pre-installed spyware on all phones made in China is certainly a huge problem. But on the other hand, isn't it a violation of First Amendment protections if the US government can dictate certain apps aren't allowed to be distributed in the US? Since software's subject to copyright, doesn't it logically follow that banning software is legally similar to banning a book?
  • AmericanChopper 6y ago
    Imported goods and services aren’t protected by 1A. Software is protected by 1A, so there’s nothing the government could do to prevent China from publishing software or source code, and allowing people in the US to download it. But it can certainly prevent a Chinese entity from providing services to US customers.
• sequoia 6y ago
  > The Clean Network program is the Trump Administration’s comprehensive approach to safeguarding the nation’s assets including citizens’ privacy and companies’ most sensitive information from aggressive intrusions by malign actors, such as the Chinese Communist Party. What bunkum. What about intrusion by parties such as Russian intelligence using legal methods, targeting ads using our "most sensitive information" on Facebook to benefit Trump? Trump wants to talk about the Chinese digging tunnels under the house while his cronies (domestic and Russian) walk right in the front door. This is such an obvious ploy to change the conversation away from the now >160,000 Covid-19 deaths in the USA resulting from his disastrous management of the crisis.
• theknocker 6y ago
  Have fun shitposting against their shills, our shills. It's your idea. You cultivated a public that only responds to marketing. You designed things to be this way.
• coliveira 6y ago
  Trump plans are the musings of a rambling idiot. He and his enablers don't know anything about technology and the impact this can have on American companies.
• bmitc 6y ago
  > We call on all freedom-loving nations and companies to join the Clean Network. This makes me physically sick. The only freedom you have in the U.S. is being poor, controlled, and oh yea, you can Tweet whatever you want. While the U.S., both citizens and the government, have pointed fingers at Russia, China, and <name a country>, we've been under the assault of propaganda and control for decades, at increasing rates, all under the guise of so-called freedom and democracy. Instead of propelling us into the future, our government has dragged its feet to pull us back all in the name of pure greed and control, giving itself and corporations near limitless power by sacrificing the common people.
  • dane-pgp 6y ago
    > oh yea, you can Tweet whatever you want. I don't want to be the bearer of bad news, but: https://www.cracked.com/article_25266_6-totally-stupid-things-twitter-will-ban-you-doing.html https://www.cracked.com/article_25266_6-totally-stupid-thing...
    • bmitc 6y ago
      Edge cases for an obvious hyperbole is not really bad news. Of course you can't Tweet whatever you want, and you can't even say whatever you want. That's obvious. The hyperbole was a jab at people, often commenters on this very site, justifying "freedom" in the U.S. as being able to Tweet the president whatever you want, within reason, as opposed to other authoritarian countries.
• devteambravo 6y ago
  Is there where we start piling up books and burning them? The Sanitized Network. Looks bleak.
• alexmingoia 6y ago
  1) This won’t stop or significantly mitigate hacking from China. China is perfectly capable of hacking US software on US networks. 2) China has the intellectual capacity to meet the US technologically without stealing IP. Putting pressure on them will just encourage faster technological development. 3) At this point, it seems China will continue to expand control of South China Sea, or US will go to war with China to stop them. Any middle ground is fast disappearing. Hawks in US seem to have won control of strategy.
• drivingmenuts 6y ago
  Almost the last people I would trust to keep my information safe. And I live here.
• xg15 6y ago
  Aside: > To prevent U.S. citizens’ most sensitive personal information and our businesses’ most valuable intellectual property, including COVID-19 vaccine research, from being stored and processed on cloud-based systems accessible to our foreign adversaries I find it an interesting choice to specifically use COVID-19 vaccine research as an example of intellectual property. What about all the talk that COVID-19 vaccines should be developed in global collaboration and that vaccines should become available to everyone worldwide?
  • rsa25519 6y ago
    Steelmanning the web page, maybe they meant protecting the research against tampering? Regardless, I think the site mentioning COVID-19 is needlessly inflammatory.
• cutler 6y ago
  I wonder how the recently announced 400 vulns in Qualcom mobile chips fits into all this?
• codethief 6y ago
  > Clean Cable: To ensure the undersea cables connecting our country to the global internet are not subverted for intelligence gathering by the PRC at hyper scale What is hyper scale? Did Trump write the copy for this site?
• badpenny 6y ago
  The Clean Network being the same network that Edward Snowden spoke out about?
• biolurker1 6y ago
  Election year. Instead of saying USA government's program its Trump program.
• creativeCak3 6y ago
  Fuck. This is really terrifying. The internet has connected all of us, which has been mostly for the better, and these idiots want to ruin it. I really hope none of this shit sees the light of day.
• bblough 6y ago
  The link is now returning 404. https://web.archive.org/web/20200808170849/https://www.state.gov/5g-clean-network/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200808170849/https://www.state...