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It's pretty absurd to both sides something like this. Do you have evidence that the US government is doing this on computers it sells overseas, or is this just

It's pretty absurd to both sides something like this. Do you have evidence that the US government is doing this on computers it sells overseas, or is this just magical speculation?

BiteCode_dev 5y ago
I heard your type of argument about the US mass spying before Snowden, and surprise, we were not conspirationists after all. So call that educated magical speculation.
- space_fountain 5y ago
  Well, but correct me if I'm wrong, the Snowden leak included nothing like this. Instead it included a lot of things that would be a lot easier to do if Google/Microsoft ect just gave them access. The very fact they had to do everything else is at least evidence that don't have direct access
  - BiteCode_dev 5y ago
    It's just different use cases. Backdoors are more useful for targetted operations or specific data exfiltration, while plugging yourself to back bones is more useful for mass surveillance. I don't even see why it's controversial to hold this opinion. Reading some comments, people seems to feel offended we could think that from the USA. If anything, the USA are, with Russia and China, among the countries anybody in Europe like me would suspect the most about pulling things like this. The CIA and NSA have a terrible reputation, and the track record to support it. We are talking about a country that went to war while lying about WMD against the UN vote, made money with south american cocaine while organizing coup after coup, elected Bush and Trump yet punished Chelsea Manning. A country that is still under the temporary 9/11 Patriot act, it used to mass spy on its entire population. Of course I'm assuming the worse from them. And yes, it's fair. Actually, even if I were proven to be completely wrong in 10 years, it still would have been fair. But I'm not even assuming that only from the US, but basically from any gov, including mine. Because history taught us that's what power does. It's sane to be suspicious of people in power. Necessary for democracy, even.
    - space_fountain 5y ago
      But, and this is where the equivalency annoys me. You could literally end up in jail for saying some of these things about China in China. You could just as well talked about abuses of women and the me to movement, but the reason that hasn't happened in China may well be not that there men are somehow better behaved, but that they appear to have put a women who did come out with an accusation under house arrest until she agreed to stop talking about it. Yes the US has done and doubtless continues to do bad things, part of that comes just from having power which the US has had for a long time, part of that comes from truly bad people ect. But the Snowden leak happened in the US. US newspapers reported on it. College professors talked to their class about it. You can talk about it on this US hosted and owned website. None of that is true in China, right? So yes I am more skeptical of the US doing shady business when a large percentage of US citizens object to shady business and can talk about it than I am of China doing shady stuff when they've built their internet to insulate their government from as much criticism as possible
      - BiteCode_dev 5y ago
        Yes, cancer is worse than diabetes. Not the point. The point of my comment is: I assume any gov to have such backdoor if they can.
        space_fountain 5y ago
        Well, but we can assume with different probabilities. For sure there are people in every government who would if they could, but the fact that the US has mechanisms to expose this sort of thing and lots of people in individual companies who feel like you and there are still no stories of this, that is evidence that it isn't happening at least not at any sort of scale
    - throw10920 5y ago
      > It's just different use cases. That's a hand-wavy redirection that isn't relevant to the issue at hand, which is that: There is no evidence of the US (and, in fact, many other large countries, with exceptions for e.g. Israel) installing backdoors and breaking into computers in order to steal intellectual property. There is ample evidence of China doing exactly that, against a variety of targets (not just the US - they've taken things from Japan and the EU, among many others). I wouldn't be surprised if every nation with a functioning Internet connection tries to put the hac on whatever they can. But that's not the topic under discussions - the topic is stealing and commercializing IP, for which there is tons of evidence for China doing, and accusations of e.g. the Five-Eyes doing it are rampant speculation with absolutely no evidence included. Yes, that includes your comment.
- ashwagary 5y ago
  People have a hard time admitting that what Snowden/Assange revealed about the US is much more damning, from infected servers to keyloggers built into USB cables. I find China is useful as a mirror to the US. If they are doing something problematic, it's highly likely the US gov is too but just hasn't disclosed it to the public.
  - seneca 5y ago
    > I find China is useful as a mirror to the US. If they are doing something problematic, it's highly likely the US gov is too but just hasn't disclosed it to the public. You think the US is engaging in systematic genocide? I'm guessing not. If so, you should consider why you would say something so ridiculously out of step with reality.
    - ashwagary 5y ago
    - BiteCode_dev 5y ago
      Well, let's count how many people the USA killed with 2 wars in Irak, one in Afghanistan, one in Vietnam and countless operations in South America. Or how they mostly put non white people in a privatized prison system that then exploit them. Or how their police is so peaceful and close to the population the entire country had a debate about de-funding it. Sure, China is worse, but it does make a useful mirror. Like Russia was a useful one during the cold war.
    - ashwagary 5y ago
      Seems my reply was possibly too on the nose of got flagged. Hopefully, you read it before it was removed.
      - ashwagary 5y ago
        *and
marcosdumay 5y ago
The first DDG result, there are many. 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... I'm a Brazilian, the NSA has been caught breaking Microsoft products on our largest companies for industrial spying too.
supergeek 5y ago
Around the time of the snowden leaks we learned that the NSA was installing backdoors on Cisco firewalls bound for foreign countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisco_Systems#Firewall_backdoor_developed_by_NSA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisco_Systems#Firewall_backdoo... "A document included in the trove of National Security Agency files released with Glenn Greenwald's book No Place to Hide details how the agency's Tailored Access Operations (TAO) unit and other NSA employees intercept servers, routers and other network gear being shipped to organizations targeted for surveillance and install covert firmware onto them before they are delivered. These Trojan horse systems were described by an NSA manager as being "some of the most productive operations in TAO because they pre-position access points into hard target networks around the world."
- throw10920 5y ago
  Where's the part where the US steals and then commercializes Chinese IP?
  - BiteCode_dev 5y ago
    My original comment doesn't focus on the stealing IP part, only on the backdooring part.
carapace 5y ago
Not precisely the same thing, but even more insidious (or brilliant, depending on who you ask): > Operation Rubicon (German: Operation Rubikon), until the late 1980s called Operation Thesaurus, was a secret operation by the West German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), lasting from 1970 to 1993 and 2018, respectively, to gather communication intelligence of encrypted government communications of other countries.[1][2] This was accomplished through the sale of manipulated encryption technology (CX-52) from Swiss-based Crypto AG, which was secretly owned and influenced by the two services from 1970 onwards.[1] In a comprehensive CIA historical account of the operation leaked in early 2020, it was referred to as the "intelligence coup of the century" in a Washington Post article. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Rubicon_(Crypto_AG) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Rubicon_(Crypto_AG)

It's pretty absurd to both sides something like this. Do you have evidence that the US government is doing this on computers it sells overseas, or is this just magical speculation?

BiteCode_dev 5y ago

I heard your type of argument about the US mass spying before Snowden, and surprise, we were not conspirationists after all. So call that educated magical speculation.

space_fountain 5y ago
Well, but correct me if I'm wrong, the Snowden leak included nothing like this. Instead it included a lot of things that would be a lot easier to do if Google/Microsoft ect just gave them access. The very fact they had to do everything else is at least evidence that don't have direct access
- BiteCode_dev 5y ago
  It's just different use cases. Backdoors are more useful for targetted operations or specific data exfiltration, while plugging yourself to back bones is more useful for mass surveillance. I don't even see why it's controversial to hold this opinion. Reading some comments, people seems to feel offended we could think that from the USA. If anything, the USA are, with Russia and China, among the countries anybody in Europe like me would suspect the most about pulling things like this. The CIA and NSA have a terrible reputation, and the track record to support it. We are talking about a country that went to war while lying about WMD against the UN vote, made money with south american cocaine while organizing coup after coup, elected Bush and Trump yet punished Chelsea Manning. A country that is still under the temporary 9/11 Patriot act, it used to mass spy on its entire population. Of course I'm assuming the worse from them. And yes, it's fair. Actually, even if I were proven to be completely wrong in 10 years, it still would have been fair. But I'm not even assuming that only from the US, but basically from any gov, including mine. Because history taught us that's what power does. It's sane to be suspicious of people in power. Necessary for democracy, even.
  - space_fountain 5y ago
    But, and this is where the equivalency annoys me. You could literally end up in jail for saying some of these things about China in China. You could just as well talked about abuses of women and the me to movement, but the reason that hasn't happened in China may well be not that there men are somehow better behaved, but that they appear to have put a women who did come out with an accusation under house arrest until she agreed to stop talking about it. Yes the US has done and doubtless continues to do bad things, part of that comes just from having power which the US has had for a long time, part of that comes from truly bad people ect. But the Snowden leak happened in the US. US newspapers reported on it. College professors talked to their class about it. You can talk about it on this US hosted and owned website. None of that is true in China, right? So yes I am more skeptical of the US doing shady business when a large percentage of US citizens object to shady business and can talk about it than I am of China doing shady stuff when they've built their internet to insulate their government from as much criticism as possible
    - BiteCode_dev 5y ago
      Yes, cancer is worse than diabetes. Not the point. The point of my comment is: I assume any gov to have such backdoor if they can.
      - space_fountain 5y ago
        Well, but we can assume with different probabilities. For sure there are people in every government who would if they could, but the fact that the US has mechanisms to expose this sort of thing and lots of people in individual companies who feel like you and there are still no stories of this, that is evidence that it isn't happening at least not at any sort of scale
  - throw10920 5y ago
    > It's just different use cases. That's a hand-wavy redirection that isn't relevant to the issue at hand, which is that: There is no evidence of the US (and, in fact, many other large countries, with exceptions for e.g. Israel) installing backdoors and breaking into computers in order to steal intellectual property. There is ample evidence of China doing exactly that, against a variety of targets (not just the US - they've taken things from Japan and the EU, among many others). I wouldn't be surprised if every nation with a functioning Internet connection tries to put the hac on whatever they can. But that's not the topic under discussions - the topic is stealing and commercializing IP, for which there is tons of evidence for China doing, and accusations of e.g. the Five-Eyes doing it are rampant speculation with absolutely no evidence included. Yes, that includes your comment.
ashwagary 5y ago
People have a hard time admitting that what Snowden/Assange revealed about the US is much more damning, from infected servers to keyloggers built into USB cables. I find China is useful as a mirror to the US. If they are doing something problematic, it's highly likely the US gov is too but just hasn't disclosed it to the public.
- seneca 5y ago
  > I find China is useful as a mirror to the US. If they are doing something problematic, it's highly likely the US gov is too but just hasn't disclosed it to the public. You think the US is engaging in systematic genocide? I'm guessing not. If so, you should consider why you would say something so ridiculously out of step with reality.
  - ashwagary 5y ago
  - BiteCode_dev 5y ago
    Well, let's count how many people the USA killed with 2 wars in Irak, one in Afghanistan, one in Vietnam and countless operations in South America. Or how they mostly put non white people in a privatized prison system that then exploit them. Or how their police is so peaceful and close to the population the entire country had a debate about de-funding it. Sure, China is worse, but it does make a useful mirror. Like Russia was a useful one during the cold war.
  - ashwagary 5y ago
    Seems my reply was possibly too on the nose of got flagged. Hopefully, you read it before it was removed.
    - ashwagary 5y ago
      *and

marcosdumay 5y ago

The first DDG result, there are many. 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... I'm a Brazilian, the NSA has been caught breaking Microsoft products on our largest companies for industrial spying too.

supergeek 5y ago

Around the time of the snowden leaks we learned that the NSA was installing backdoors on Cisco firewalls bound for foreign countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisco_Systems#Firewall_backdoor_developed_by_NSA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisco_Systems#Firewall_backdoo... "A document included in the trove of National Security Agency files released with Glenn Greenwald's book No Place to Hide details how the agency's Tailored Access Operations (TAO) unit and other NSA employees intercept servers, routers and other network gear being shipped to organizations targeted for surveillance and install covert firmware onto them before they are delivered. These Trojan horse systems were described by an NSA manager as being "some of the most productive operations in TAO because they pre-position access points into hard target networks around the world."

throw10920 5y ago
Where's the part where the US steals and then commercializes Chinese IP?
- BiteCode_dev 5y ago
  My original comment doesn't focus on the stealing IP part, only on the backdooring part.

carapace 5y ago

Not precisely the same thing, but even more insidious (or brilliant, depending on who you ask): > Operation Rubicon (German: Operation Rubikon), until the late 1980s called Operation Thesaurus, was a secret operation by the West German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), lasting from 1970 to 1993 and 2018, respectively, to gather communication intelligence of encrypted government communications of other countries.[1][2] This was accomplished through the sale of manipulated encryption technology (CX-52) from Swiss-based Crypto AG, which was secretly owned and influenced by the two services from 1970 onwards.[1] In a comprehensive CIA historical account of the operation leaked in early 2020, it was referred to as the "intelligence coup of the century" in a Washington Post article. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Rubicon_(Crypto_AG) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Rubicon_(Crypto_AG)