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And people wonder why the US has blocked Huawei infrastructure in the US. They have no qualms silencing their own population and invest heavily in surveillance

And people wonder why the US has blocked Huawei infrastructure in the US. They have no qualms silencing their own population and invest heavily in surveillance technology. Why would anyone want their equipment? What worries me is that the US itself will go in the same direction. The surveillance is already there, but it is not acted on for the most part in everyday life. But there may be a clock on how long that will last.

amelius 4y ago
Huawei just follows the law in China, just like Apple follows the same law but perhaps with some more delay.
- unsui 4y ago
  maybe the law is wrong? yeah, rhetorical question, but the issue here isn't necessarily adherence to local laws, but rather having some principled stance. yeah, I'm hearing it, "principled stance"... one can dream
  - fauntle 4y ago
    Apple has shareholders. It is eternally bound by the idiotic rules of capitalism, which demand higher returns every year. Principles will not matter until we force the system itself to change.
    - Firmwarrior 4y ago
      I recently read an interesting book that's picking up traction among managerial types, called "The Infinite Game" by Sinek One of the main points is about this view that "companies must always make more short-term profit at any cost". Sinek says this is just a mind-virus that took hold after Milton Friedman started pushing it, and not only is it not actually true in any legal sense, it's a toxic philosophy that eats away at companies and slowly destroys them. He outlines how it's a big part of why Microsoft keeps losing out to Apple again and again. (Another point it goes on about is how much more productive your workers are if you treat them like human beings) So hopefully this book will keep getting more and more traction, and eventually we might not live in a toxic corporate dystopian hellscape
- Vt71fcAqt7 4y ago
  Correct, but Apple follows US law first and Chinese law second. And Huawei follows Chinese law first and US law second. For example the US could block Apple from selling iPhones in china. If they didn't listen the US government could (theoretically) have the board arrested. Same story with China and Huawei. What this means is that China could tell Huawei to shut down their infrastructure in the US. Wether they would actualy be able to do so is unknown, but that that isn't a risk that makes sense to take. But to your point, China has more control over Apple than the US does over Huawei as iPhones are assembled there (with most components beinf made in Korea and Taiwan).
  - dirheist 4y ago
    I also read that iPhones are quickly growing in market share in China as Chinese people see them as more luxurious than their domestic brands. Which raises the question, how does iMessage, the App Store, data collection and western app policy stuff work on Chinese iPhones? There has to be some collusion/government pressure on Apple to regulate their Chinese App Store the same way Huawei is forced to regulate its domestic app store.
    - tooltalk 4y ago
      It's no longer just about luxury. Apple has won over the CCP with their China/Taiwan-first outsourcing practices -- not to mention $270+B invested to train young, unskilled laborers from rural China and prop up China's domestic chip business -- and now some Chinese even consider Apple as their own.
    - vorpalhex 4y ago
      iCloud has a China region operated by a Chinese company. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208351 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208351
  - chinabot 4y ago
    There is no first or second tier with law the local law prevails however bad it may be.
always2slow 4y ago
>The surveillance is already there, but it is not acted on for the most part in everyday life. But there may be a clock on how long that will last. Yes it is. Think advertising, marketing, and product placement. It's so pervasive you can't even see it.
- alsetmusic 4y ago
  >> The surveillance is already there, but it is not acted on for the most part in everyday life. But there may be a clock on how long that will last. > Yes it is. Think advertising, marketing, and product placement. It's so pervasive you can't even see it. But that's not the state. That'd be much more frightening.
  - TreeRingCounter 4y ago
    The majority of large institutions are effectively captured by the state, and to a large extent the converse is true as well. Despotic actions (censorship, surveillance, etc) performed on behalf of the state by megacorps cannot be meaningfully distinguished by despotic actions performed by the state itself under the current legal regime.
  - soco 4y ago
    A state has at least some illusion of citizen control, while a private company much less. Yes the state _could_ regulate it, but that's already working over chinese whispers (no pun intended)
  - always2slow 4y ago
    Yes it is? I mean, I consider the military part of "the state" and the various branches participate in advertising, marketing, and product placement. Just look at this: https://www.businessinsider.com/us-army-marketing-esports-comiccon-momfluencers-2019-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/us-army-marketing-esports-co... "After Congress withheld half of its ad budget due to an audit that revealed millions in spending that didn't deliver results, the Army dissolved its marketing division, relocated to Chicago, and revamped its approaches to data and events. Officials told Business Insider they planned to emphasize conferences like Comic-Con and esports festival Pax, saying gamers and programmers "make good soldiers."" Whoops, got a little too exposed during the audit time to reset the paper trail.
throwaway23597 4y ago
The thing I'm starting to get increasingly scared about is what these US companies will do with the data that's already there. A significant proportion of our society has become totally OK with censorship, cancellation, and ostracizing of those who they politically disagree with. One could easily imagine a situation where this intensifies and suddenly political ideologues are analyzing all the voice recordings Alexa ever made in order to out political enemies. Keeping all this data around, in my view, means it will inevitably get misused over a long time scale.
- fortuna86 4y ago
  What does any of that have to do with this story about Huawei and China?
  - throwaway23597 4y ago
    I was responding to the parent comment? > What worries me is that the US itself will go in the same direction. The surveillance is already there, but it is not acted on for the most part in everyday life. But there may be a clock on how long that will last.
    - fortuna86 4y ago
      Unless laws are changes, the US Government cannot demand anything from private industry.
- TylerE 4y ago
  Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences of said speech when the majority of the public thinks you’re a raging asshole.
  - mensetmanusman 4y ago
    Freedom of speech in private should mean free from consequences.
pessimizer 4y ago
> And people wonder why the US has blocked Huawei infrastructure in the US. I agree. I don't know how the US can allow Apple products if they're willing to shut down Airdrop to suppress Chinese protests. > They have no qualms silencing their own population and invest heavily in surveillance technology. Why would anyone want their equipment? Yes, but enough about the US, we're talking about China.
- giarc 4y ago
  I read some of the threads about the Airdrop changes, and some people argue it actually increases security (for reasons that are above my technical understanding). The fast track to release in China was odd, but I don't think it's super cut and dry that it was at request of Chinese authorities.
pydry 4y ago
If this really were the reason Huawei would never have been allowed to operate in the US to begin with and Apple would be banned too - for breaking airdrop on behalf of the CCP. The anti huawei thing only really kicked off when huawei started dominating key telecoms markets. When they started kicking out huawei tech they also didn't discriminate between smart (where bugs could easily hide) and dumb tech like aerials (where they couldn't), suggesting that protectionism is at least as much a motive as national security.
ren_engineer 4y ago
at least the US has woken up to some degree. Humans are funny in how imagery impacts response to things. China has done trillions in damage to the US economy the past few decades but it wasn't tangible so we did nothing. They've killed far more people then 9/11 via shipping synthetic opioid precursors to Mexico but the response is non-existent. IP theft allowed them to undercut US businesses and destroy them but it's so abstract people don't get worked up into a frenzy over it compared to if they'd literally dropped a bomb on the same business Russia should have paid attention to how much more effective economic and asymmetric warfare is compared to kinetic warfare
- TaylorAlexander 4y ago
  I mean, US businesses willingly shipped their operations to China so it’s not really correct to lay all the blame on them. We could have kept our operations here but US business people wanted increased profits so they dismantled our industrial base and paid China to build up theirs.
  - nerpderp82 4y ago
    The 80s and 90s had businesses gushing at the opportunities to * liquidate unions * avoid environmental laws * take advantage of cheap labor Both parties fell over themselves in paving the way for US businesses to move the bulk of their manufacturing outside the country. The Chinese millionaire kids who are buying houses for cash are a product of the distillation of thousands of once blue collar jobs that burned to move production overseas. Any derision in the quality of Chinese made goods should be directed at the companies themselves. Those factories are built what they are told to build. That brand that was once a mark of quality that is now making a shoddy product is just extracting value. Your Macbook Pro and that power tool in name only are made in the same place.
  - onepointsixC 4y ago
    Many businesses had little choice. Their competition went to China and now could out price them while making a profit.
  - 4y ago
briffle 4y ago
> What worries me is that the US itself will go in the same direction. Like how a year ago, Apple was going to enable 'client side' CSAM scanning of your devices photos, etc, until enough people got really mad that they put it on a hold? Wonder what pretext that one is going to slip back in again as.
- LorenPechtel 4y ago
  I figure that was just cover for complying with some government mandate about deleting unacceptable material--I suspect China. They knew they couldn't hide it forever so they came up with a cover story instead.
hellfish 4y ago
> What worries me is that the US itself will go in the same direction. The surveillance is already there, but it is not acted on for the most part in everyday life. But there may be a clock on how long that will last. The stage is already set. Just make sure your suitcase is packed. The craziness won't come from the government, it'll come from this culture's own inherently fascist tendencies
FooBarWidget 4y ago
I have a Huawei phone. I live in the Netherlands and the phone was bought here. The videos are not deleted from my device. If they do delete, then at least they only do that in China, and they treat other jurisdictions differently.
- reaperducer 4y ago
  If they do delete, then at least they only do that in China, and they treat other jurisdictions differently. "If they do have slave labor, then at least they only do that in China, and they treat other jurisdictions differently." Good to know if that if something is bad, but doesn't affect you personally, it is suddenly no longer bad.
  - FooBarWidget 4y ago
    There's a huge difference between "I condemn this practice because I consider it bad anywhere" vs "they are a threat to our country".
- ashwagary 4y ago
  >The videos are not deleted from my device. Correct, that twitter thread is only about Chinese people living in China.
- chinabot 4y ago
  The fact they can should be the worry.
  - em500 4y ago
    I think technically all the cloud sync picture/file platforms (Onedrive, iCloud, gDrive, Dropbox, etc) can do that, can't they? How I understand it, if I (or the platform owner) delete something from one of the synced devices, it should be deleted from all the synced devices.
willis936 4y ago
>there may be a clock on how long that will last Why is that? Culture, mores, and politics shape how power is used. What makes authoritarianism inevitable? On one hand power begets power, on the other hand people are easily scared and readily convince themselves of the worst possible explanation.
scyzoryk_xyz 4y ago
They have surveillance communism, we have surveillance capitalism.

amelius 4y ago

Huawei just follows the law in China, just like Apple follows the same law but perhaps with some more delay.

unsui 4y ago
maybe the law is wrong? yeah, rhetorical question, but the issue here isn't necessarily adherence to local laws, but rather having some principled stance. yeah, I'm hearing it, "principled stance"... one can dream
- fauntle 4y ago
  Apple has shareholders. It is eternally bound by the idiotic rules of capitalism, which demand higher returns every year. Principles will not matter until we force the system itself to change.
  - Firmwarrior 4y ago
    I recently read an interesting book that's picking up traction among managerial types, called "The Infinite Game" by Sinek One of the main points is about this view that "companies must always make more short-term profit at any cost". Sinek says this is just a mind-virus that took hold after Milton Friedman started pushing it, and not only is it not actually true in any legal sense, it's a toxic philosophy that eats away at companies and slowly destroys them. He outlines how it's a big part of why Microsoft keeps losing out to Apple again and again. (Another point it goes on about is how much more productive your workers are if you treat them like human beings) So hopefully this book will keep getting more and more traction, and eventually we might not live in a toxic corporate dystopian hellscape
Vt71fcAqt7 4y ago
Correct, but Apple follows US law first and Chinese law second. And Huawei follows Chinese law first and US law second. For example the US could block Apple from selling iPhones in china. If they didn't listen the US government could (theoretically) have the board arrested. Same story with China and Huawei. What this means is that China could tell Huawei to shut down their infrastructure in the US. Wether they would actualy be able to do so is unknown, but that that isn't a risk that makes sense to take. But to your point, China has more control over Apple than the US does over Huawei as iPhones are assembled there (with most components beinf made in Korea and Taiwan).
- dirheist 4y ago
  I also read that iPhones are quickly growing in market share in China as Chinese people see them as more luxurious than their domestic brands. Which raises the question, how does iMessage, the App Store, data collection and western app policy stuff work on Chinese iPhones? There has to be some collusion/government pressure on Apple to regulate their Chinese App Store the same way Huawei is forced to regulate its domestic app store.
  - tooltalk 4y ago
    It's no longer just about luxury. Apple has won over the CCP with their China/Taiwan-first outsourcing practices -- not to mention $270+B invested to train young, unskilled laborers from rural China and prop up China's domestic chip business -- and now some Chinese even consider Apple as their own.
  - vorpalhex 4y ago
    iCloud has a China region operated by a Chinese company. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208351 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208351
- chinabot 4y ago
  There is no first or second tier with law the local law prevails however bad it may be.

always2slow 4y ago

>The surveillance is already there, but it is not acted on for the most part in everyday life. But there may be a clock on how long that will last. Yes it is. Think advertising, marketing, and product placement. It's so pervasive you can't even see it.

alsetmusic 4y ago
>> The surveillance is already there, but it is not acted on for the most part in everyday life. But there may be a clock on how long that will last. > Yes it is. Think advertising, marketing, and product placement. It's so pervasive you can't even see it. But that's not the state. That'd be much more frightening.
- TreeRingCounter 4y ago
  The majority of large institutions are effectively captured by the state, and to a large extent the converse is true as well. Despotic actions (censorship, surveillance, etc) performed on behalf of the state by megacorps cannot be meaningfully distinguished by despotic actions performed by the state itself under the current legal regime.
- soco 4y ago
  A state has at least some illusion of citizen control, while a private company much less. Yes the state _could_ regulate it, but that's already working over chinese whispers (no pun intended)
- always2slow 4y ago
  Yes it is? I mean, I consider the military part of "the state" and the various branches participate in advertising, marketing, and product placement. Just look at this: https://www.businessinsider.com/us-army-marketing-esports-comiccon-momfluencers-2019-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/us-army-marketing-esports-co... "After Congress withheld half of its ad budget due to an audit that revealed millions in spending that didn't deliver results, the Army dissolved its marketing division, relocated to Chicago, and revamped its approaches to data and events. Officials told Business Insider they planned to emphasize conferences like Comic-Con and esports festival Pax, saying gamers and programmers "make good soldiers."" Whoops, got a little too exposed during the audit time to reset the paper trail.

throwaway23597 4y ago

The thing I'm starting to get increasingly scared about is what these US companies will do with the data that's already there. A significant proportion of our society has become totally OK with censorship, cancellation, and ostracizing of those who they politically disagree with. One could easily imagine a situation where this intensifies and suddenly political ideologues are analyzing all the voice recordings Alexa ever made in order to out political enemies. Keeping all this data around, in my view, means it will inevitably get misused over a long time scale.

fortuna86 4y ago
What does any of that have to do with this story about Huawei and China?
- throwaway23597 4y ago
  I was responding to the parent comment? > What worries me is that the US itself will go in the same direction. The surveillance is already there, but it is not acted on for the most part in everyday life. But there may be a clock on how long that will last.
  - fortuna86 4y ago
    Unless laws are changes, the US Government cannot demand anything from private industry.
TylerE 4y ago
Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences of said speech when the majority of the public thinks you’re a raging asshole.
- mensetmanusman 4y ago
  Freedom of speech in private should mean free from consequences.

pessimizer 4y ago

> And people wonder why the US has blocked Huawei infrastructure in the US. I agree. I don't know how the US can allow Apple products if they're willing to shut down Airdrop to suppress Chinese protests. > They have no qualms silencing their own population and invest heavily in surveillance technology. Why would anyone want their equipment? Yes, but enough about the US, we're talking about China.

giarc 4y ago
I read some of the threads about the Airdrop changes, and some people argue it actually increases security (for reasons that are above my technical understanding). The fast track to release in China was odd, but I don't think it's super cut and dry that it was at request of Chinese authorities.

pydry 4y ago

If this really were the reason Huawei would never have been allowed to operate in the US to begin with and Apple would be banned too - for breaking airdrop on behalf of the CCP. The anti huawei thing only really kicked off when huawei started dominating key telecoms markets. When they started kicking out huawei tech they also didn't discriminate between smart (where bugs could easily hide) and dumb tech like aerials (where they couldn't), suggesting that protectionism is at least as much a motive as national security.

ren_engineer 4y ago

at least the US has woken up to some degree. Humans are funny in how imagery impacts response to things. China has done trillions in damage to the US economy the past few decades but it wasn't tangible so we did nothing. They've killed far more people then 9/11 via shipping synthetic opioid precursors to Mexico but the response is non-existent. IP theft allowed them to undercut US businesses and destroy them but it's so abstract people don't get worked up into a frenzy over it compared to if they'd literally dropped a bomb on the same business Russia should have paid attention to how much more effective economic and asymmetric warfare is compared to kinetic warfare

TaylorAlexander 4y ago
I mean, US businesses willingly shipped their operations to China so it’s not really correct to lay all the blame on them. We could have kept our operations here but US business people wanted increased profits so they dismantled our industrial base and paid China to build up theirs.
- nerpderp82 4y ago
  The 80s and 90s had businesses gushing at the opportunities to * liquidate unions * avoid environmental laws * take advantage of cheap labor Both parties fell over themselves in paving the way for US businesses to move the bulk of their manufacturing outside the country. The Chinese millionaire kids who are buying houses for cash are a product of the distillation of thousands of once blue collar jobs that burned to move production overseas. Any derision in the quality of Chinese made goods should be directed at the companies themselves. Those factories are built what they are told to build. That brand that was once a mark of quality that is now making a shoddy product is just extracting value. Your Macbook Pro and that power tool in name only are made in the same place.
- onepointsixC 4y ago
  Many businesses had little choice. Their competition went to China and now could out price them while making a profit.
- 4y ago

briffle 4y ago

> What worries me is that the US itself will go in the same direction. Like how a year ago, Apple was going to enable 'client side' CSAM scanning of your devices photos, etc, until enough people got really mad that they put it on a hold? Wonder what pretext that one is going to slip back in again as.

LorenPechtel 4y ago
I figure that was just cover for complying with some government mandate about deleting unacceptable material--I suspect China. They knew they couldn't hide it forever so they came up with a cover story instead.

hellfish 4y ago

> What worries me is that the US itself will go in the same direction. The surveillance is already there, but it is not acted on for the most part in everyday life. But there may be a clock on how long that will last. The stage is already set. Just make sure your suitcase is packed. The craziness won't come from the government, it'll come from this culture's own inherently fascist tendencies

FooBarWidget 4y ago

I have a Huawei phone. I live in the Netherlands and the phone was bought here. The videos are not deleted from my device. If they do delete, then at least they only do that in China, and they treat other jurisdictions differently.

reaperducer 4y ago
If they do delete, then at least they only do that in China, and they treat other jurisdictions differently. "If they do have slave labor, then at least they only do that in China, and they treat other jurisdictions differently." Good to know if that if something is bad, but doesn't affect you personally, it is suddenly no longer bad.
- FooBarWidget 4y ago
  There's a huge difference between "I condemn this practice because I consider it bad anywhere" vs "they are a threat to our country".
ashwagary 4y ago
>The videos are not deleted from my device. Correct, that twitter thread is only about Chinese people living in China.
chinabot 4y ago
The fact they can should be the worry.
- em500 4y ago
  I think technically all the cloud sync picture/file platforms (Onedrive, iCloud, gDrive, Dropbox, etc) can do that, can't they? How I understand it, if I (or the platform owner) delete something from one of the synced devices, it should be deleted from all the synced devices.

willis936 4y ago

>there may be a clock on how long that will last Why is that? Culture, mores, and politics shape how power is used. What makes authoritarianism inevitable? On one hand power begets power, on the other hand people are easily scared and readily convince themselves of the worst possible explanation.

scyzoryk_xyz 4y ago

They have surveillance communism, we have surveillance capitalism.