So, I’m not exactly well versed in all this, could you fill me in on what threats Huawei poses to I, a random poor person going about my day in the US?
I refuse to believe a Corp or the NSA isn’t already looking over my shoulder, and with nothing to steal, wouldn’t using Huawei tech be like picking between McDonald’s and Wendy’s? Same product, different flavor sort of situation?
OK, but in this metaphor I’m not a boxer, in a guy who watched part of rocky 2 and if you mugged me you’d find 3 pennies and a d20. I’m not even the ant unfortunately crushed in the machinations of these entities, I’m the dust in the grease among the cogs.
In a practical sense it is a waste of time and resources for either of them to record my life, but if the China phone has a prettier ui and a cheaper pricetag it would be a huge improvement for me personally. Could one Midwest honky with a foreign phone and no free time genuinely cause any damage?
yes. election time or funding CCP via extortion or identity theft. We’re being spied on by both sides, true, but there is no even a sign of checks and balances on CCP side. In the west we do uncover some “bad behaviour” and try to stop it.
could you fill me in on what threats Huawei poses to I, a random poor person going about my day in the US?
One example: You are likely employed by a business here in the USA. If you were to lose your job, that would be a large negative in your life. The NSA isn’t going to ruin an American business unless its the extremely small chance that there’s a national security reason. The CCP would absolutely ruin an American business if it helped a Chinese one. Unless you work for a Chinese employer, the NSA snooping on you would be more beneficial to you than the CCP.
I get that, but I’m taking on a practical point. I, a warm body behind a counter of a franchise in the Midwest, am not privy to any valuable corporate information that can’t be gleamed by simply walking into the store. We don’t have WiFi and I can’t plug my phone in. What is the espionage device in my pocket actually going to do to me on my day to day life of browsing Lemmy and playing music?
What is the espionage device in my pocket actually going to do to me on my day to day life of browsing Lemmy and playing music?
In your case its not so much the device in your pocket, but the telecom switching gear on the backend that all that corporate and government data flows though. Huawei makes lots of that gear.
In specific cases of phones, while your job may not be high value for espionage , there are lots of people that do work highly sensitive positions. If the specific handset redirects email, txt, or phone conversations then that would be a problem at the national security level.
Considering Chinese companies like Tiktok have been more than happy to sign agreements where data is only transmitted and hosted in the US, with US DoD oversight…
I’ve read that DJI drones periodically send an encrypted data-payload to China, of the sites they’ve been, & what their camera has seen, as 1 little example.
I’ve read that chips whose implimentation was completed in China had extra logic added into them, to backdoor them, so that the computers they were put into ( the were networking chips ) could be entered by whomever had the backdoor key.
IF you have China make your infrastructure, and China declared last-century that “the destruction of the West is the midwife of Chinese dominion”, THEN you are handing the CCP the keys to your empire.
Modi, in India, has “bet the farm” that Russia will fight with it, provisioning India with military-means, to fight China … but Russia’s now an economic-vassal-state of China, so that can’t even be possible … which means that India has now bet its life on … nothing.
Delusion, including self-delusion, isn’t strategy.
Don’t think it goes only 1-way, though:
Do all the cars in Canada have remote-kill-switches which their manufacturers can activate? TTBOMK, yes, they do.
Apparently collection-agencies & banks use these, sometimes… & the police want the complete access to the same kill-switches…
Diebold voting-machines which were involved in some absurdly-obvious vote-manipulation, complete with coded-in back-doors, a few years ago, are another example: US company, helping highjack US elections.
There is good reason why security-geeks prefer Abloy physical-discs locks to electronic “locks”, where security is required: disc-key locks are not “bumpable”, & they have no back-doors or battery-for-security bullshit.
The brainwashed-by-propaganda just invest in the “security” that is pushed on them, endlessly, removing all alternative from the market.
That many Ukrainians still rely on Telegram, a Russian operation, for their “secret” sharing, is proof of non-viability of entire-populations of humankind.
Platforms are predators/parasites, & that includes hardware as well as software.
The world isn’t operating for humankind’s benefit: humankind is corporate-narcissism-machiavellianism-psychopathy’s prey.
Same as humankind is oligarchy’s prey, same as humankind was monarchy’s prey.
Ever since agriculture put-in-place a stable feudalism/class-system, then it’s been the same polarization-trying-to-extinguish-all-alternatives ( like there being any middle-class who has self-determination ), everywhere.
There’s a profoundly important book by Thom Hartmann, called “Screwed”, whose beginning ( the only part I’ve read ) SHOWS how national-economic-strength ONLY exists when the majority of the population is economically-autonomous ( ie a strong middle-class ), and FINALLY I understood economics, because all the “economics” stuff I’d read, until that, contradicted something fundamental…
it isn’t economic strength, when the majority are crushed-prey!
That the majority of the population need to be doing-well for the national economy to be doing-well,
is completely contradictory to the “so long as the top stocks are doing well, & the wealthy are doing well, THEN the country’s thriving” gaslighting, of normal “economics”.
Anyways, cynicism is a more-useful, more survival-oriented default, nowadays, evidence shows…
The BIG problem, is that it COST$$ to even discover if one’s chips got trojan’d in Chinese manufacture, & if one has to choose between profit vs security, profit nearly-always wins, in moneyarchy.
So, it only “becomes a problem” when it’s discovered by someone, out in the wild.
And THAT means that we’ve globally rejected “prevention is cheaper than cure” paradigm, opting-instead for “we can’t afford to prevent, so if a cure is needed, our magical-Entitlement-power will save us, of course”, which is relying-on-bogus-belief, instead of relying-on-integrity.
it’s a game of influence and data collection. Even when you work at McDonalds they still can use you either as data point or leverage information gathered influence/coerce you to do things on their behalf. Look at their control level in China - your behaviour is constantly monitored and your life options get limited in life if your behaviour does not align with CPP expectations. Given that lots of stuff originates in China, would you like prices online be higher for you just because you’ve criticised CCP? Or, more invasively - some content disappearing from your device while bring substituted with some form of fake news etc? Randsomware is still a vector as well. Opportunities for benefiting CCP are endless once they own key device(s) in today’s economy: your smartphone, that is used for company logon, bank operations, personal information storage. Imagine dataset they can feed AI yo simulate you and sll the fraud they can perpetrate under your name. Or they can wipe you off internet, closing your accounts pretending to be you and intercepting all communications. India and China already been proven using coercive powers to silence dissent abroad. So, no, it’s not just specific industries. It’s collective Western citizens.
This isn’t a discussion on just what cell phone a person is using, but instead on network switching gear used on the backend where all the data flows through.
So, I’m not exactly well versed in all this, could you fill me in on what threats Huawei poses to I, a random poor person going about my day in the US?
I refuse to believe a Corp or the NSA isn’t already looking over my shoulder, and with nothing to steal, wouldn’t using Huawei tech be like picking between McDonald’s and Wendy’s? Same product, different flavor sort of situation?
Removed by mod
OK, but in this metaphor I’m not a boxer, in a guy who watched part of rocky 2 and if you mugged me you’d find 3 pennies and a d20. I’m not even the ant unfortunately crushed in the machinations of these entities, I’m the dust in the grease among the cogs.
In a practical sense it is a waste of time and resources for either of them to record my life, but if the China phone has a prettier ui and a cheaper pricetag it would be a huge improvement for me personally. Could one Midwest honky with a foreign phone and no free time genuinely cause any damage?
yes. election time or funding CCP via extortion or identity theft. We’re being spied on by both sides, true, but there is no even a sign of checks and balances on CCP side. In the west we do uncover some “bad behaviour” and try to stop it.
One example: You are likely employed by a business here in the USA. If you were to lose your job, that would be a large negative in your life. The NSA isn’t going to ruin an American business unless its the extremely small chance that there’s a national security reason. The CCP would absolutely ruin an American business if it helped a Chinese one. Unless you work for a Chinese employer, the NSA snooping on you would be more beneficial to you than the CCP.
I get that, but I’m taking on a practical point. I, a warm body behind a counter of a franchise in the Midwest, am not privy to any valuable corporate information that can’t be gleamed by simply walking into the store. We don’t have WiFi and I can’t plug my phone in. What is the espionage device in my pocket actually going to do to me on my day to day life of browsing Lemmy and playing music?
In your case its not so much the device in your pocket, but the telecom switching gear on the backend that all that corporate and government data flows though. Huawei makes lots of that gear.
In specific cases of phones, while your job may not be high value for espionage , there are lots of people that do work highly sensitive positions. If the specific handset redirects email, txt, or phone conversations then that would be a problem at the national security level.
Considering Chinese companies like Tiktok have been more than happy to sign agreements where data is only transmitted and hosted in the US, with US DoD oversight…
Go on. Complete your thought.
I’ve read that DJI drones periodically send an encrypted data-payload to China, of the sites they’ve been, & what their camera has seen, as 1 little example.
I’ve read that chips whose implimentation was completed in China had extra logic added into them, to backdoor them, so that the computers they were put into ( the were networking chips ) could be entered by whomever had the backdoor key.
IF you have China make your infrastructure, and China declared last-century that “the destruction of the West is the midwife of Chinese dominion”, THEN you are handing the CCP the keys to your empire.
Modi, in India, has “bet the farm” that Russia will fight with it, provisioning India with military-means, to fight China … but Russia’s now an economic-vassal-state of China, so that can’t even be possible … which means that India has now bet its life on … nothing.
Delusion, including self-delusion, isn’t strategy.
Don’t think it goes only 1-way, though:
Do all the cars in Canada have remote-kill-switches which their manufacturers can activate? TTBOMK, yes, they do.
Apparently collection-agencies & banks use these, sometimes… & the police want the complete access to the same kill-switches…
Diebold voting-machines which were involved in some absurdly-obvious vote-manipulation, complete with coded-in back-doors, a few years ago, are another example: US company, helping highjack US elections.
There is good reason why security-geeks prefer Abloy physical-discs locks to electronic “locks”, where security is required: disc-key locks are not “bumpable”, & they have no back-doors or battery-for-security bullshit.
The brainwashed-by-propaganda just invest in the “security” that is pushed on them, endlessly, removing all alternative from the market.
That many Ukrainians still rely on Telegram, a Russian operation, for their “secret” sharing, is proof of non-viability of entire-populations of humankind.
Platforms are predators/parasites, & that includes hardware as well as software.
The world isn’t operating for humankind’s benefit: humankind is corporate-narcissism-machiavellianism-psychopathy’s prey.
Same as humankind is oligarchy’s prey, same as humankind was monarchy’s prey.
Ever since agriculture put-in-place a stable feudalism/class-system, then it’s been the same polarization-trying-to-extinguish-all-alternatives ( like there being any middle-class who has self-determination ), everywhere.
There’s a profoundly important book by Thom Hartmann, called “Screwed”, whose beginning ( the only part I’ve read ) SHOWS how national-economic-strength ONLY exists when the majority of the population is economically-autonomous ( ie a strong middle-class ), and FINALLY I understood economics, because all the “economics” stuff I’d read, until that, contradicted something fundamental…
it isn’t economic strength, when the majority are crushed-prey!
That the majority of the population need to be doing-well for the national economy to be doing-well,
is completely contradictory to the “so long as the top stocks are doing well, & the wealthy are doing well, THEN the country’s thriving” gaslighting, of normal “economics”.
Anyways, cynicism is a more-useful, more survival-oriented default, nowadays, evidence shows…
https://www.techspot.com/news/107073-researchers-uncover-hidden-backdoor-widely-used-esp32-microchip.html
https://cdml.com/dangers-of-chinese-made-smart-devices/
https://semiengineering.com/chip-backdoors-assessing-the-threat/
The BIG problem, is that it COST$$ to even discover if one’s chips got trojan’d in Chinese manufacture, & if one has to choose between profit vs security, profit nearly-always wins, in moneyarchy.
So, it only “becomes a problem” when it’s discovered by someone, out in the wild.
And THAT means that we’ve globally rejected “prevention is cheaper than cure” paradigm, opting-instead for “we can’t afford to prevent, so if a cure is needed, our magical-Entitlement-power will save us, of course”, which is relying-on-bogus-belief, instead of relying-on-integrity.
_ /\ _
it’s a game of influence and data collection. Even when you work at McDonalds they still can use you either as data point or leverage information gathered influence/coerce you to do things on their behalf. Look at their control level in China - your behaviour is constantly monitored and your life options get limited in life if your behaviour does not align with CPP expectations. Given that lots of stuff originates in China, would you like prices online be higher for you just because you’ve criticised CCP? Or, more invasively - some content disappearing from your device while bring substituted with some form of fake news etc? Randsomware is still a vector as well. Opportunities for benefiting CCP are endless once they own key device(s) in today’s economy: your smartphone, that is used for company logon, bank operations, personal information storage. Imagine dataset they can feed AI yo simulate you and sll the fraud they can perpetrate under your name. Or they can wipe you off internet, closing your accounts pretending to be you and intercepting all communications. India and China already been proven using coercive powers to silence dissent abroad. So, no, it’s not just specific industries. It’s collective Western citizens.
If you work at McDonald’s or Wendy’s, it really doesn’t matter what phone you use lmao
This isn’t a discussion on just what cell phone a person is using, but instead on network switching gear used on the backend where all the data flows through.
Someone should tell the US, then, because they sure as hell didn’t limit sanctions to networking equipment.
Sanctions aren’t the only tool in the toolbox. In this case it was a Presidential Executive Order
Potato, potato