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The Clean Network – United States Department of State

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Re: The Clean Network – United States Department of State

#301

Post by p_l »

azinman2 wrote: post #236
yencabulator wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is my impression that modern companies that care about security assume that all networks are compromised and act accordingly. I think more to the point, Google et al assume that all networks are compromised by state level actors . As in NSA. As in the people who wrote this "Clean" policy.

Do you want to add the CCP to that list?

Probably after NSA, with "banned" devices from at least Juniper (who got caught for shipping NSA backdoor that was repurposed by IIRC China, but only because there was an NSA backdoor to utilize), and probably ban Ericsson due to well-known rogue state with penchant for messing with telecoms in order to do industrial espionage.

Said rogue state is, of course, United States of America.

Re: The Clean Network – United States Department of State

#302

Post by Barrin92 »

segfaultbuserr wrote: post #191
ISL wrote: post #80

I have the same feeling about this as I did the announcement of the "Department of Homeland Security". The name sounded Soviet in origin, with only the exchange of "Homeland" in place of "Motherland". It reminded me of things my family had taught me didn't happen in the United States. "We call on all freedom-loving nations and companies to join the Clean Network." is a sentence straight out of an authoritarian playbo…

> The name sounded Soviet in origin, with only the exchange of "Homeland" in place of "Motherland". It reminded me of things my family had taught me didn't happen in the United States. Back in 2014, China launched a crackdown on illegal online content, it was named "净网行动", which literally translates to "Clean Network Campaign/Action". The targets were illegal materials, mainly materials officially considered obscene,…

Baudrillard made the observation that the Soviet Union as well as the US during the Cold War really should be seen as a larger reinforcing system of deterrence that is used to map out and control rather than a conflict, two sides of the same coin.

Rather than being afraid of a single hegemon, it's the internal opposition that stabilizes systems of control, and he also pointed out that this is even mirrored within the oppositional two party system of the United States, which while looking like it advances freedom and debate and so on really advances security, and it's much more efficient in doing so than monolithic autocratic governments which tend to collapse in on themselves.

Re: The Clean Network – United States Department of State

#303

Post by 8note »

squidlogic wrote: post #261
elliekelly wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Chinese government has shown no interest in cooperating with many western governments . Even though the Chinese government is, in some ways, an “enemy”, most of the 1.5 billion people living in China are not. We should be interested in what the people have to say and I’m sure the people of China are interested in what we have to say, too. We should be building connections amongst the people, not walls. I’d even s…

There will be a natural decoupling between our two nations. We did the same with Soviet Union when we realized their ideology left no room for long term peaceful coexistence (see the Long Telegram). A lot of political leaders are realizing that the communism of China, while different in many ways to the Soviet variety, is still incompatible with the USA.

I'm not sure China under any ideology would allow for peaceful coexistence with the USA.

It seems like a national pride thing that China cannot be subservient to the US, and the US can't survive a world where it's billionaires aren't in complete control.

There's maybe a synthesis where the Chinese billionaires take over America? That way it's still wealth in charge in the US, and the Chinese in control of china

Re: The Clean Network – United States Department of State

#304

Post by [deleted] »

MattGaiser wrote: post #287
supernova87a wrote: post #110

This really comes off as a hastily prepared political dig against China, when there are in addition so many other actors and countries trying to take advantage of poor security. The JPEGed giant logo at the top doesn't help... Other observations: -- "Remove untrusted applications from US mobile app stores": so, this would call for even tighter control by Apple, Google, over its app distribution and monopolies? -- Cle…

> Why is CCP-owned infrastructure uniquely susceptible to this? If we can't protect our transmissions with encryption, secure data storage techniques, what does it matter that the equipment is supplied by China? What unusual attack do they get access to by owning or manufacturing the equipment? Their companies are by law forced to cooperate.

[deleted]

Re: The Clean Network – United States Department of State

#305

Post by SkyMarshal »

tomc1985 wrote: post #68

Why the hell does any of this have to be China specific? Tomorrow the bugbear could be anyone else Like, we want clean networks free of foreign influence and sruveillance, full stop. Or are they implying that Five Eyes surveillance is good and OK?

As with most things the Trump admin does, this one too is sloppy.

There was no need to call out the CCP in the document, it's obvious who this measure is primarily directed at. Also, characterizing it as an initiative of the "Trump Administration", instead of the United States Government or State Department, was unnecessarily political and also obvious.

Also as mentioned above, China already has a Clean Network initiative. I wonder if the Trump admin copied that name, or chose it accidentally.

Re: The Clean Network – United States Department of State

#306

Post by colordrops »

glenstein wrote: post #285
supernova87a wrote: post #110

This really comes off as a hastily prepared political dig against China, when there are in addition so many other actors and countries trying to take advantage of poor security. The JPEGed giant logo at the top doesn't help... Other observations: -- "Remove untrusted applications from US mobile app stores": so, this would call for even tighter control by Apple, Google, over its app distribution and monopolies? -- Cle…

>This really comes off as a hastily prepared political dig against China I think 'Clean net' is a horrific, short sighted, dystopian joke that will be the subject of ridicule and fascination as a historical subject. I also think there's no surveillance operation in the world as vast and as troubling as China's, and there's nothing fundamentally inaccurate or misleading about pointing that out.

> there's no surveillance operation in the world as vast and as troubling as China's

Replace "China" with "US".

Re: The Clean Network – United States Department of State

#307

Post by 8note »

monoideism wrote: post #288
supernova87a wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, we mixed up which hardware, in which questions. My question immediately above had to do with routers, etc. that the administration has also put attention onto.

OK, we crossed wires, no problem. However, for the reasons I mentioned above, compromised routers are still a very bad thing. At the very least, it's a beachhead from which to launch further attacks inside a data center or business. At the worst, they can use SSL strip to strip encryption off of any website/end-user who hasn't locked down HTTPS only. Plus, there are still many protocols in common use that are not enc…

The bigger question is "how do you know your router isn't compromised already"

Chances are, the US government is pushing for china-free networks to ensure it has a monopoly on hacking American systems.

If we as a whole drop the assumption that the network is safe, we can build things where I would trust you to hook up a compromised router to my home network.

Re: The Clean Network – United States Department of State

#308

Post by solstice »

rtkwe wrote: post #264
solstice wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't sound useful or very sophisticated from a spying POV. I guess mass-shutdown of Telco infrastructure would be catastrophic but that could most likely be avoided by having a mix of suppliers and a minimum of known-good hardware in the field.

You'd have to maintain that mixture of manufacturers broadly across all the 'critical' bits of infrastructure for it to really matter and there's a lot of infrastructure to defend. Just disrupting payments or mobile data sporadically across the US could deal a big blow to a lot of businesses. Just look how poorly they've fared with the COVID disruptions.

Disruptions would be there for sure. But I think building up that kind of capability is necessarily single-use only, and only makes sense if your goal is to use it as a direct prelude to an invasion of a country. Because people will relatively quickly discover where the problems came from, punish whoever's responsible and then switch manufacturers. I don't see how this could be of benefit to secret services whether from China or any other country, except in the worst case stated above. A few billions in economic losses due to stock market disruptive etc dont mean much in the grand scale of things (and can't therefore be very attractive for intelligence services). Military planners would be foolish to outright dismiss this possibility, sure, but I don't think us-China relations are at this point yet. (And hopefully never will.)

The solution to all of this is to work together and increase the security of the overall system and ditch security through obscurity and security through NDA, go open-source and full inspectability for all critical infrastructure, be it comms, industrial controls, medical infrastructure, transport etc. And E2E encrypt all communications. Everything else is just screwing around with the symptoms instead of addressing the root causes.

Re: The Clean Network – United States Department of State

#309

Post by coliveira »

k33n wrote: post #295
coliveira wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole goal of trumpism is to create slaves to the ideology of white and western supremacy. It has so clear racial undertones that it's not a surprise they want to attack China: they see it more as a racial target, poorly disguised with "homeland security" excuses.

Actually Trump is just fighting for the interests of Americans. Interesting fan-fiction though!

Wrong, Trump only fights for himself. Americans will also suffer the consequences of a new irresponsible "Cold War". Trump, on the other hand, will continue lining his pockets.

Re: The Clean Network – United States Department of State

#310

Post by d0gbread »

glenstein wrote: post #290
eranimo wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're so close to getting the point

Serious question: if you pick any given surveillance state from a liberal western democracy and pick it out of a hat, and set it side by side with China's surveillance state, are you telling me you would not be able to tell them apart? Because that's the point at issue in the thread you are replying to. And I'm personally kind of amazed that it's possible to lose sight of something I find to be an incredibly obvious…

I think you may have pulled the wrong point. This thread seems more about how the US prides itself on being a role model when we are often hypocritical. If we're good to slide on our principles and ideals "as long as we can tell ourselves apart from China" that's a pretty sad state.
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