The Clean Network – United States Department of State • Hacker News Board

Re: The Clean Network – United States Department of State

#321

Post by totetsu » Tue, Aug 11, 2020, 1:53 AM UTC

8note wrote: post #307

monoideism wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Open source firmware? https://openwrt.org/

Re: The Clean Network – United States Department of State

#322

Post by glenstein » Tue, Aug 11, 2020, 1:59 AM UTC

d0gbread wrote: post #310

glenstein wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This branch of comments goes back to a commenter who made the accurate point that the US is closer to a liberal democracy than China.

>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.

This is conflating a differentiation for a justification. We can form coherent thoughts about the relative scale of abuses committed by different powers without that meaning we think those abuses are okay.

If we lose our ability to form coherent thoughts about abuses committed by China because we can't express them without also having to labor through false equivalences to U.S. surveillance, those valid and needed criticisms get derailed and the comprehension of China's unique status as an abuser of surveillance infrastructure gets erased. Judging different scales of moral error is important, because otherwise we can never progress from a position of moral error to positive moral standing and we get bogged down with frivolous exercises in whataboutism.

Re: The Clean Network – United States Department of State

#323

Post by thaumasiotes » Tue, Aug 11, 2020, 1:59 AM UTC

sukilot wrote: post #216

cardamomo wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. First of all, attitudes toward Chinese and other immigrants to the U.S. in the 20th century were formed, in part, by the language that was used by those in power. That Chinese immigrants were "dirty" was not fact , it was a racist stereotype. Second, I do not contend that describing anything in negative terms is racist. I am linking the specific history of describing Chinese immigrants as dirty with the Clean Net…

"dirty" isn't a racialized work like "chink". It's a word applied to anything we don't like and want to keep out. China already has a similar system also called (the Chinese word for) "Clean". Is the Chinese government racist against Chinese?

> Is the Chinese government racist against Chinese?

How would we characterize the law under the one-child policy specifying that minorities are free to have two children, but Chinese are limited to one?

Re: The Clean Network – United States Department of State

#324

Post by glenstein » Tue, Aug 11, 2020, 2:03 AM UTC

8note wrote: post #313

glenstein wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an unfair caricature. The steelman version of that argument is that China has likely amassed a more robust global surveillance database (to the extent that that's even the right word to use) than the U.S.

I imagine they don't even need to. All they need to do is gain access to the American databases

I think it's just true in a literal sense that China has constructed it's own surveillance system that under any metric would be larger than that of the United States or any other nation.

Re: The Clean Network – United States Department of State

#325

Post by xenospn » Tue, Aug 11, 2020, 2:05 AM UTC

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…

Well said.

Re: The Clean Network – United States Department of State

#326

Post by glenstein » Tue, Aug 11, 2020, 2:07 AM UTC

8note wrote: post #317

glenstein wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible to criticize the national security state in the U.S. while not losing sight of the fact that China is run by an authoritarian government guilty of abuses at a completely different order of magnitude. That difference is important, because a lot of people even in this thread seem to completely lose sight of it.

I don't think that's to say you should trust a US network because you can't trust a Chinese network though

Correct. Saying one is vastly objectively worse should not be taken to mean that the other is without flaws.

Re: The Clean Network – United States Department of State

#327

Post by thephyber » Tue, Aug 11, 2020, 2:08 AM UTC

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.

All companies are forced to cooperate by law.

We Americans like to think we have the moral high ground against China. For some things, we do. For many others, they are just following in our footsteps.

The US has scarcely not been at war since I've been alive and the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Force has no end in sight. Wartime powers vested in the Executive Branch are far more expansive than we would like to think.

Who do you think re-routes shipments of Cisco networking hardware to the NSA TAO group? Cisco and FedEx/UPS. Same with any computing hardware and likely many other products.

Who do you think complies with National Security Letters? 99%+ of the companies that receive them. QWest tried to challenge their legality and that CEO wasted away in prison.

Patriot Act and Anti-Money Laundering statutes require that lots of industries participate with the USA government: financial, travel, hotel, telecom, etc.

Re: The Clean Network – United States Department of State

#328

Post by evidencebased » Tue, Aug 11, 2020, 2:09 AM UTC

bassman9000 wrote: post #122

hijinks wrote: post #28

only the NSA is allowed to backdoor US networking hardware

Does the CCP and its security agency share tips to avoid tracking? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24108461

The NSA didn't reveal any secrets that couldn't be looked up by anyone who cares about privacy. Is Thief A more trustworthy than Thief B because Thief A told you to lock your doors and windows and Thief B didn't, when both already have keys to your house?

Re: The Clean Network – United States Department of State

#329

Post by wyuenho » Tue, Aug 11, 2020, 2:10 AM UTC

chillacy wrote: post #119

wyuenho wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China has already Balkanized their "Internet" for over 20 years now.

That was their loss. If China does something, does the US have to follow? As it is, this just makes it seem like China was right this whole time and the US ideals of an open internet were a failure.

They view it as a success and have double down on it, while the rest of the world continued to feed them knowledge free minds across continents spent centuries to accumulate. In short, they only took the useful bits to strengthen the government's grip on the population while leaving out all those things that made the vast amount of knowledge possible. They are getting all human knowledge for free, while it it not the same for us.

Strategically, this position is untenable. The free world is defenseless until we demand reciprocity. Balkanization, be that as it may, it's not the end, but a means to an end, the end should be all open for every one.

Re: The Clean Network – United States Department of State

#330

Post by wyuenho » Tue, Aug 11, 2020, 2:13 AM UTC

_lsq wrote: post #112

wyuenho wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The connection is made from: 1. The Chinese National Intelligence Law requiring every citizen to "intelligence work". 2. Huawei had the potential to reach mass adoption outside of China. 3. Huawei is a company deeply connected to the PLA. 4. Therefore Huawei, not only is its HQ required to spy for China, but that it is very likely to work with the PLA to spy for China. [1]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Inte…

These are all valid reasons for concerns yet these do not qualify as proof of wrongdoing from Huawai. For 2) specifically, I'm not sure it would be helpful to declare all private companies started by veterans as "sharing deep ties to $Country's military operations". There's no shortage of "guesses" and "plausible connections" around but the parent comment is specifically asking for actual proof in this instance.

People suspected the NSA were snooping and introducing backdoors and proactively places countermeasures against that. Why should the standard be different when it comes to China?