4 ms·

Because China is well know for keeping their censorship within their borders. Right?

iqanq 5y ago
They can't tell other governments to censor anything, so yes? If they have a product that censors things that you need to access then don't buy it.
- daxuak 5y ago
  imo the whole point of this article was that China silently exports tampered devices to Taiwan. Implication is that this might have happened to not only Taiwan, unless we have trustworthy audits.
- Baeocystin 5y ago
  >They can't tell other governments to censor anything, so yes? The CCP can and do actively control what the international community says as much as possible, and they have enough money to make the changes happen. If you don't think so, look what happens in public discussions (or even mentions!) on/of Taiwan.
  - tablespoon 5y ago
    Also: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/31/business/china-internet-police-twitter.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/31/business/china-internet-p... > A Digital Manhunt: How Chinese Police Track Critics on Twitter and Facebook > Authorities in China have turned to sophisticated investigative software to track and silence obscure critics on overseas social media. Their targets include college students and non-Chinese nationals. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/20/technology/china-facebook-twitter-influence-manipulation.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/20/technology/ch...: > Buying Influence: How China Manipulates Facebook and Twitter > ...The authorities used a phrase common among China’s internet police that refers to tracking down the actual person behind a social media account: “touching the ground.” > With growing frequency, the country’s internet police have hunted down and threatened internet users who voice their opinions. At first, its agents focused on local social media platforms. In 2018, they began a new campaign to detain users of Twitter inside China — account owners who had found ways around the government’s blocks — and force them to delete their accounts. > Now, the campaign has extended to Chinese citizens who live outside of China. The document spells out how the Shanghai police want to discover the identities of people behind certain accounts and to trace their users’ connections to the mainland. Its officers can then threaten family members in China or detain the account holders when they return to the country in order to compel online critics to delete posts or even entire accounts. It's worth calling out that later article analyzes a "request for bids" by the local Shanghai police, so I don't think it should be read to imply limits on what the Chinese government does, since the scope of a local police force would be limited to stuff that intersects with their jurisdiction.
- mlindner 5y ago
  They can tell Chinese companies to censor terms in their products overseas. This has already been done by several Chinese game companies. They can also use soft-power to control the products that companies make overseas such that censorship happens in the planning stage of the product such that some products just aren't made because they won't be marketable in China, a key money maker for many companies.
- dspillett 5y ago
  > They can't tell other governments to censor anything They don't need to tell governments anything. Just turn on a built-in filter in a small OS update. Or install a fresh one for now or later in a larger update. Maybe there are no other filters. There are none we know about. But we didn't know about this one until we did... And is anyone forensically checking what is in OS updates for their phones. You can check the release notes, but all you'll likely find there is the unhelpfully generic “security and performance changes”. I have a Xiaomi phone. Great battery life, even compared to other devices with the same sort of spec and battery size. But they achieve that by cheating: it does non-standard things WRT killing processes to save power that means things you might want to allow to keep active¹, that you can allow to remain active on other Android devices, don't work as expected. [1] Garmin Connect and integration services for other devices, background audio players, and so on.

They can't tell other governments to censor anything, so yes? If they have a product that censors things that you need to access then don't buy it.

daxuak 5y ago
imo the whole point of this article was that China silently exports tampered devices to Taiwan. Implication is that this might have happened to not only Taiwan, unless we have trustworthy audits.
Baeocystin 5y ago
>They can't tell other governments to censor anything, so yes? The CCP can and do actively control what the international community says as much as possible, and they have enough money to make the changes happen. If you don't think so, look what happens in public discussions (or even mentions!) on/of Taiwan.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  Also: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/31/business/china-internet-police-twitter.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/31/business/china-internet-p... > A Digital Manhunt: How Chinese Police Track Critics on Twitter and Facebook > Authorities in China have turned to sophisticated investigative software to track and silence obscure critics on overseas social media. Their targets include college students and non-Chinese nationals. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/20/technology/china-facebook-twitter-influence-manipulation.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/20/technology/ch...: > Buying Influence: How China Manipulates Facebook and Twitter > ...The authorities used a phrase common among China’s internet police that refers to tracking down the actual person behind a social media account: “touching the ground.” > With growing frequency, the country’s internet police have hunted down and threatened internet users who voice their opinions. At first, its agents focused on local social media platforms. In 2018, they began a new campaign to detain users of Twitter inside China — account owners who had found ways around the government’s blocks — and force them to delete their accounts. > Now, the campaign has extended to Chinese citizens who live outside of China. The document spells out how the Shanghai police want to discover the identities of people behind certain accounts and to trace their users’ connections to the mainland. Its officers can then threaten family members in China or detain the account holders when they return to the country in order to compel online critics to delete posts or even entire accounts. It's worth calling out that later article analyzes a "request for bids" by the local Shanghai police, so I don't think it should be read to imply limits on what the Chinese government does, since the scope of a local police force would be limited to stuff that intersects with their jurisdiction.
mlindner 5y ago
They can tell Chinese companies to censor terms in their products overseas. This has already been done by several Chinese game companies. They can also use soft-power to control the products that companies make overseas such that censorship happens in the planning stage of the product such that some products just aren't made because they won't be marketable in China, a key money maker for many companies.
dspillett 5y ago
> They can't tell other governments to censor anything They don't need to tell governments anything. Just turn on a built-in filter in a small OS update. Or install a fresh one for now or later in a larger update. Maybe there are no other filters. There are none we know about. But we didn't know about this one until we did... And is anyone forensically checking what is in OS updates for their phones. You can check the release notes, but all you'll likely find there is the unhelpfully generic “security and performance changes”. I have a Xiaomi phone. Great battery life, even compared to other devices with the same sort of spec and battery size. But they achieve that by cheating: it does non-standard things WRT killing processes to save power that means things you might want to allow to keep active¹, that you can allow to remain active on other Android devices, don't work as expected. [1] Garmin Connect and integration services for other devices, background audio players, and so on.