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China forces one of its Muslim minorities to install spyware on their phones

mashable.com

41–50 of 169 posts

Re: China forces one of its Muslim minorities to install spyware on their phones

#41
post #5

>The app reportedly scans for the MD5 digital signatures of media files in the phone, and matches them to a stored database of offending files classified by the government as illegal "terrorist-related" media. What a dumb way to scan for "illegal" content, considering the goverment already controls their portion of the internet. So instead of monitoring who is accessing what they decide to compare checksums of files…

Now now, let's not give any ideas shall we.

Re: China forces one of its Muslim minorities to install spyware on their phones

#42

Wow, those chinese surely are totalitarian in the way they approach surveillance technology aren't they ? Good thing we have nothing like that. Only just closed hardware with closed or with some parts open complicated software mostly made by a few corporations which tend to and have in fact in past coopoerated with governments without even thinking about their customers.

Nobody forces you to use any software or hardware.

Re: China forces one of its Muslim minorities to install spyware on their phones

#43
post #39

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the Muslims—and everyone rejoiced in their unity of hating them together.

With your last line, I then have to hope they eventually came for 'everyone.'

Re: China forces one of its Muslim minorities to install spyware on their phones

#44
post #6

This is interesting. It goes to show how an autoritarian government can fix some problems in a more effective way. You can remove terrorist propaganda from YouTube, but how do you stop the spread of those videos in private platforms or messaging applications? And even if the first version of this spying app only checks for md5 sums, which is arguably useless, I'm sure they're working on something more effective.

Terrorism is so easily thrown around as a blanket term these days. As many others have pointed out, the motivation seems to be more separatist than religious.

Re: China forces one of its Muslim minorities to install spyware on their phones

#45

Wow, those chinese surely are totalitarian in the way they approach surveillance technology aren't they ? Good thing we have nothing like that. Only just closed hardware with closed or with some parts open complicated software mostly made by a few corporations which tend to and have in fact in past coopoerated with governments without even thinking about their customers.

Nobody forces you to use any software or hardware.

Nobody forces them to use hardware either.

Re: China forces one of its Muslim minorities to install spyware on their phones

#46
post #14

I can think of so many countermeasures. - Append a null byte to the end of your files, giving them a unique hash value. - Disallow internet access to the application. - Spoof the server using DNS tricks and control what is sent and received. - Reverse engineer the application to make it look as if it's working while it actually isn't. - Sandbox the application. - Use an alternative phone for all of your "sensitive" a…

How easy do you imagine not only finding information on how to follow through all of these steps, but actually acquire the needed materials (burners) within the strictly controlled PRC is?

Not to mention the likely extreme punishment if any of that was detected.

Re: China forces one of its Muslim minorities to install spyware on their phones

#47
post #40
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The west has been trying to do that for decades. Things just get worse and worse. What do you propose?

The West does not currently have much of a problem with violent separatism. Maybe someone got into a bar fight over Catalan independence or Brexit, but all recent conflicts I'm aware of were relatively peaceful. If you compare this to the situation in Northern Ireland, I'd say things have gotten much better.

yougoslavian people will beg to differ. Civil war in a european country leading to the partition of the country into multiple states based on ethnic and religious criteria happened in europe just 25 years ago.

Re: China forces one of its Muslim minorities to install spyware on their phones

#48
post #39

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the Muslims—and everyone rejoiced in their unity of hating them together.

That sent some shivers. I will never believe that everyone can hate Muslims that much.

*typo

Re: China forces one of its Muslim minorities to install spyware on their phones

#49

Its their country and their laws, trying to solve the problem of Islamic extremism on their own. In western countries, you get detained for years in Guantanamo under torture without knowing for sure why you got arrested. Young girls get married as early as 12 to creepy old dudes and there is no need to ask for installing spyware because the phones and communications are already tapped by default. Anyone criticizing C…

> "Islamic extremism" In Xinjiang region, the concern is more about separatism , which is not terrorism, and which should be a right of any group. > "Anyone criticizing China while permitting their own country to do worse is an hypocrite" One can be critical of their own government while still being critical of others. Even in US, ordinary people don't have much control over the government, in particular over the sec…

> separatism ... which should be a right of any group

wait. how would that work?

seriously.

would that apply to Texans and Californians who want to secede from the US?

what about:

* a sect of highly conservative polygamists in the American West?

* the Michigan Militia?

* extreme American Communist party members?

* David Koresh followers?

* a population of immigrants from country X who now live in country Y?

* ethnic Russians in Ukraine?

do any/all of these groups have the right to separate from their current government?

what are the ground rules?

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