They all have some kind of backdoors that governments exploit. If I could buy a phone and use it knowing that only the Chinese government could spy on me with it, I would absolutely get that. I live in the US though. If I lived in China I would prefer the US-only spy phone.
If you work in a field with sensitive data (financial, healthcare, technology, politics) you don’t get a phone designed by a China-government owned company.
It doesn’t matter if it’s a Huawei or some American phone, China, USA and others will spy on you no matter what phone you choose only the means differ. If you buy a Huawei china will have backdoors in your phone and the USA will buy all your info and if you get an American phone the USA will have backdoors and china will buy the data.
Also I find the focus on china kinda weird. I ultimately don’t want anyone stealing my data, not even the USA. Just like china the USA has been involved in mass surveillance and a lot of war crimes. For example American soldiers have been found guilty of rapping and killing children. From Wikipedia (United States war crimes > war on terror > Iraq war):
On 12 March 2006, a 14-year-old Iraqi girl named Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi was raped and subsequently murdered along with her 34-year-old mother Fakhriyah Taha Muhasen, 45-year-old father Qassim Hamza Raheem, and 6-year-old sister Hadeel Qassim Hamza al-Janabi.
After all of that I want to ask you one question, do you really want the USA sterling your data? Also what you answer that question with doesn’t matter since both china and the USA will be stealing your data no matter if you want it or which phone you buy.
As a final note I should maybe mention that I’m not American if you haven’t figured that out yet. Also please don’t accuse me of spreading Chinese propaganda. I’m advocating against the USA and the CIA, not for china.
Also sorry for being so political in a kind of not that political thread.
You’re missing the point entirely. In the US, companies can take the federal government to court to stop them. When agencies installed backdoors on Cisco equipment it was done through intercepting hardware through carriers, and individually installing them on targeted hardware. Not forcing Cisco to hand over access to every router they sold. You can argue about whether they should do that at all, but it’s not the same.
Thank you. This is an important correction but does hover not mean that the US government isn’t spying on you through your phone, just that they, if they do it, have other means to do so. 2017 wikileaks revealed that the CIA had an immense collection of tools to hack personal phones and computers. But this probably means that they don’t hack everyone just people of special interest, which is good news 😀
Here is the wikileaks article and here is an yahoo article.
EDIT: of course they can also buy the data from Google.
But it sounds like you are advocating for china. Look how much you wrote about another country when someone asked specifically about china and a Chinese phone manufactured in china.
My point is just that I don’t want anyone spying on me and it doesn’t matter if the one spying is the US, china, french or russia. They have nothing to do with my personal data.
I’m aware, but if that’s the answer why not include other nations, then? It’s always just the US and I find that very curious and kind of annoying when any criticism is drawn to China on Lemmy. It’s always the same knee-jerk reaction.
How is it a loaded question if the answer is a resounding “yes, it’s not a secret”? I think you mean that it’s a narrow question. If the answer is “but look at all these other nations” it would’ve been more than China and the US. By your logic, it’s also quite a loaded answer, then, don’t you think?
The US is a very different country than any of the 30 other NATO members and often acts in direct conflict with the rest of the Western world. If I did the same and used China to represent the entirety of Asia I’d get chewed out for it, so why is the USA the face of all things people disagree with on this side of the world? Besides, using the US to contrast China creates a false dichotomy and oversimplifies the issue of mass surveillance, obfuscating both the extent and the nuance that people here claim to champion. Stop being so thick.
NSA is a common focus for conspiracy theorists because much of their work is secret, they can’t just come out and say “we don’t do that” or “we do that” because explaining capabilities helps people avoid those technologies to avoid targeting. Specifically, their mission is foreign intelligence, they can only support domestic warrants on individuals through the FBI using a court system called FISA here in the US. However, because of their ability to purchase metadata about phone calls in bulk so they can gather information about foreign communications, Americans assume it’s so they can spy on other Americans. That’s the mission of the FBI though… Which people are fine with for some reason.
Meanwhile, FBI does whatever they want in broad daylight while people are busy being paranoid about what the NSA or CIA might be doing in the shadows. Conspiracies just need a grain of truth, and while everyone is looking over one shoulder paranoid about nothing, law enforcement on all levels from city to county to state to federal are all standing right there looking over the other shoulder and no one seems to mind.
It’s secret like Area 51 is secret. We know it’s there, we know the government is doing something with it, but we don’t know fully what, when, why, or how.
I don’t think the US Govt backdoors phones anymore … mostly because they don’t need to. They find other ways to get the information, like warrantless surveillance of Google and Apple notification servers.
The other reason I don’t think it happens is that there are just too many security researchers trying to find exploits and backdoors. Also it’s pretty well known that any backdoor can be used against you. The NSA has an interest in domestic phones being secure.
Granted, international models might have some alterations/backdoors… Even then, that would be egg on the face that they don’t really need if they got caught with a backdoor that applied only to international phones.
I’m sorry if I act like an asshole, but doesen’t this mean, the same as the comment you answered to? Edit: I’m dumb. The person answering just added some info in the post.
The backdoors the NSA uses are known vulnerabilities, 0days, USB drops, all the normal hacker tools… and if it’s a target of sensitive enough in nature, maybe a warrant requiring Apple Update/Windows Update/whoever or whatever device needs spied on, to deliver a payload to that specific machine.
They’re definitely grabbing analytics and statistics. But so is AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Apple, Amazon, Samsung, Google, Microsoft.
If the Chinese government asked any of those other companies to give them all the data they have on you in particular, They probably tell them to get bent.
But if the US government told them to do it, they would comply and then have a gag order slapped against them to keep them from telling you it happened.
Huawei is beholden to the Chinese government. So it works kind of in the opposite way.
If the Chinese government asked any of those other companies to give them all the data they have on you in particular, They probably tell them to get bent.
More likely they’ll send an invoice. They’re already selling your data to them. (And everyone else.)
If the Chinese government asked any of those other companies to give them all the data they have on you in particular, They probably tell them to get bent.
Haha what? You think there’s any chance in hell that China doesn’t get what they want from any US company? Check out this video, this is what happens when a random American says something China doesn’t like. Now go ahead and picture those companies not bending over backwards to kiss Xi’s ass if it means affecting the bottom line.
John Cena is not a random American. You and I are closer to random than John Cena, a man who is internationally famous and a professional actor. That’s like saying Tom Cruise is a random American, when you know exactly who I’m talking about without googling.
That said, yes, China censors American media and actors, and it’s horrid. The fact that films get made in America and edited for China and America, is a crime to any artful visions the writers, actors, directors, editors and more may have had. But China itself doesn’t have the time and energy to stop you or I online all the time, it barely can do it within the Great Firewall, due to the sheer scope of the population and area the country covers.
They certainly have little interest in you if you’re a waiter at some shitty restaurant, sure. But do you really think they don’t target the agricultural, construction or food industries and the technologies they may be developing?
So far, all of Huawei’s found potential backdoors turned out to be them being extremely terrible at writing secure software or developing secure operating procedures.
That’s how you write a backdoor in 2023 “oops… Guess I made a mistake again”
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