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China Tortured Me over Hong Kong, Says Former British Consulate Employee

nytimes.com

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Re: China Tortured Me over Hong Kong, Says Former British Consulate Employee

#31

Post by colejohnson66 »

the8472 wrote: post #26
MperorM wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then we beat you up for deliberately sabotaging our investigation. If you didn't have anything to hide why would you wipe your phone? Clearly you must be a spy or worse so we have no choice but to send you to the re-education camp.

The action should be indistinguishable from a remote-wipe if possible.

So it was working right up until you put in the special password? How would you make it look like a remote wipe?

Also, keep in mind, remote wiping your phone after the police take it is evidence tampering. In the US, that alone can get you imprisoned.

Re: China Tortured Me over Hong Kong, Says Former British Consulate Employee

#32

Post by colejohnson66 »

kerng wrote: post #28
cloverich wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until the "best smartphone security" is two passwords: The second you enter when under duress, and it populates your phone with pro government content based on your current location. Or just wipes your phone. Or permanently locks, encrypts, and sends decryption key to some trusted source.

I was wondering for a while why such a feature doesnt yet exist.

In the US, such a feature could be used for evidence tampering. Very illegal.

Re: China Tortured Me over Hong Kong, Says Former British Consulate Employee

#33

Post by PavlovsCat »

ilaksh wrote: post #29

The problem is that moral outrage like this is used to justify war. Nothing justifies war. Please remember that. War is innocent people mass murdering other innocent people.

The problem is that you want to look the other way. What could ever justify that?

Re: China Tortured Me over Hong Kong, Says Former British Consulate Employee

#34

Post by ilaksh »

PavlovsCat wrote: post #33
ilaksh wrote: post #29

The problem is that moral outrage like this is used to justify war. Nothing justifies war. Please remember that. War is innocent people mass murdering other innocent people.

The problem is that you want to look the other way. What could ever justify that?

I did not say that we should just look away.

I am saying the answer is not to have millions of Chinese and American innocents engaged in slaughtering each other or activities that support that.

Re: China Tortured Me over Hong Kong, Says Former British Consulate Employee

#35

Post by throwaway1997 »

cloverich wrote: post #10
khc wrote: post #7

The best smartphone security doesn't help when you are forced to unlock your phone.

Until the "best smartphone security" is two passwords: The second you enter when under duress, and it populates your phone with pro government content based on your current location. Or just wipes your phone. Or permanently locks, encrypts, and sends decryption key to some trusted source.

The Xiaomi phones have this. You can create a "Second Space" with a different PIN (or using a different fingerprint to unlock it) from the first. When you use the second PIN it unlocks a completely separate environment which is not aware of the other one.

Re: China Tortured Me over Hong Kong, Says Former British Consulate Employee

#36

Post by throwaway1997 »

perennate wrote: post #13
panpanna wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder why the embassy did not remotely wipe his phone, since this was his work phone. With that said, I don't understand how he could not have expected that when visiting China.

> With that said, I don't understand how he could not have expected that when visiting China. He was employed by the British consulate in Hong Kong. Generally it's not a good idea for countries to torture people working for foreign consulates given that it's sure to spark huge diplomatic crises. The level of physical abuse forced on him is despicable, hopefully the EU will have the guts to impose strict economic sanc…

He was employed by a foreign consulate but, in the mind of the Chinese government, he is a Chinese and therefore belongs to China.

Re: China Tortured Me over Hong Kong, Says Former British Consulate Employee

#37

Post by timelincoln »

csense wrote: post #21

How should the rest of the world explain to China that being evil is bad, and they should stop being evil?

Part of the issue is that the chinese people literally don't see what the world is saying, the only information they get is constantly filtered and developed by the state. Really the state has created a perfect machine to control the thoughts of the population, its a very scary situation. So we'd maybe be able to conduct some information warfare involving full blown cyber war of unknown proportions attempting to hack into the chinese internet, I think things like starlink are going to make it harder for the chinese gov to implement the great firewall, however maybe they will just launch their own starlink...

Re: China Tortured Me over Hong Kong, Says Former British Consulate Employee

#38

Post by rasz »

csense wrote: post #21

How should the rest of the world explain to China that being evil is bad, and they should stop being evil?

Being evil by western standards is a small price to pay for huge quality of life improvements - from going to sleep hungry to central European wages, from dirt roads to biggest (if not best) rail and highway network in the world, from planting rice knees deep in mud to nice city apartment and office/engineering job. To Chinese population this rhetoric might sound like F you I got mine.

Re: China Tortured Me over Hong Kong, Says Former British Consulate Employee

#39

Post by the8472 »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #31
the8472 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The action should be indistinguishable from a remote-wipe if possible.

So it was working right up until you put in the special password? How would you make it look like a remote wipe? Also, keep in mind, remote wiping your phone after the police take it is evidence tampering. In the US, that alone can get you imprisoned.

Well yes, it's not trivial. The lock screen would have to remain unaffected and the filesystem would have to look like it was rebuilt a few hours ago.

Re: China Tortured Me over Hong Kong, Says Former British Consulate Employee

#40

Post by Huycfhct »

rasz wrote: post #38
csense wrote: post #21

How should the rest of the world explain to China that being evil is bad, and they should stop being evil?

Being evil by western standards is a small price to pay for huge quality of life improvements - from going to sleep hungry to central European wages, from dirt roads to biggest (if not best) rail and highway network in the world, from planting rice knees deep in mud to nice city apartment and office/engineering job. To Chinese population this rhetoric might sound like F you I got mine.

HK and Taiwan both don't like torture and political persecution. Not a "western standard". Plus CCP government ideas of communism is a west/Russian idea. I would say the CCP that destroyed its own Chinese history is more western than Taiwan
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