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Lithuania says throw away Chinese phones due to censorship concerns

reuters.com

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Re: Lithuania says throw away Chinese phones due to censorship concerns

#231

Post by hangonhn »

pulse7 wrote: post #215

The blacklist is interesting, because it maybe shows China's government interests - some of which are not widely known: - "Independence of Mongolia" - Does this show they would like to acquire Mongolia (when the time will be appropriate)? - "The Organisation for the Liberation of Palestine" - Does this show pro-Israel support?

The issue of Mongolian independence was left ambiguous by the USSR and China (this includes the PRC and ROC -- they both technically claim it). Mongolia had at one point petitioned to join the USSR but was actually rejected. The status of Mongolia was a bargaining chip the USSR used with the PRC and China never really completely relinquished its claim on it (whether that claim is legit is another issue)

Good YouTube overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUa1mvaYNtk

Re: Lithuania says throw away Chinese phones due to censorship concerns

#232

Post by deadalus »

everdrive wrote: post #205
dvh wrote: post #194

"Free Tibet", "Long live Taiwan independence" or "democracy movement". Sent from my Xiaomi, let's see if it works. Anyway, I always thought if I have to use American phone backdoored by FBI or Chinese phone backdoored by China, I choose Chinese because they really cannot arrest me, unlike FBI.

Except your phone is not backdoored by the FBI.

It is backdoored by : Pegasus, NSA, CIA, 14 Eyes

Re: Lithuania says throw away Chinese phones due to censorship concerns

#233

Post by _dain_ »

pulse7 wrote: post #215

The blacklist is interesting, because it maybe shows China's government interests - some of which are not widely known: - "Independence of Mongolia" - Does this show they would like to acquire Mongolia (when the time will be appropriate)? - "The Organisation for the Liberation of Palestine" - Does this show pro-Israel support?

There is the inner Mongolia autonomous region which is part of the PRC.

Re: Lithuania says throw away Chinese phones due to censorship concerns

#234

Post by rsj_hn »

ignoramous wrote: post #206
throwaway4good wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it me or is this an extremely clumsy way of doing censorship? Why not do this at network or server-side level? Why not use some kind of hash (ala Apple'e proposed child pornography hunter)? In this design, everyone would have to have this plain text configuration file ... also other brands (Oppo, Huawei etc.) would have to have it. What if it needs an update? Suppose the hui muslims starts causing trouble ... Or i…

I guess it comes down to, why bother when the simplest solution works ? Make no mistake: As and when they get caught out doing such things, the sophistication of their implementation is bound to increase, in response to it. Money is no object for state-actors and mega-corps.

It may not be a state actor. I am the last person to defend the CCP, but as the chinese phones are made by companies that have lots of reason to fear the government, this may be proactive censorship added by the vendor to avoid getting in trouble, and it might even have been accidentally left in foreign models. We don't know the full story yet.

Re: Lithuania says throw away Chinese phones due to censorship concerns

#235

Post by axiosgunnar »

908B64B197 wrote: post #227
dvh wrote: post #194

"Free Tibet", "Long live Taiwan independence" or "democracy movement". Sent from my Xiaomi, let's see if it works. Anyway, I always thought if I have to use American phone backdoored by FBI or Chinese phone backdoored by China, I choose Chinese because they really cannot arrest me, unlike FBI.

Interestingly, people have been trying to flee Lithuania for the US when the USSR was still around, and not the other way around. I wonder if they might be skeptical of another communist regime starting to interfere with the country. Worked so well the last time...

?

Lithuania has been capitalist for 20+ years and quality of life has increased by a lot ever since.

the three baltic states are frontrunners in gov digitalization, for example

Re: Lithuania says throw away Chinese phones due to censorship concerns

#236

Post by laurent92 »

academia_hack wrote: post #228
pulse7 wrote: post #215

The blacklist is interesting, because it maybe shows China's government interests - some of which are not widely known: - "Independence of Mongolia" - Does this show they would like to acquire Mongolia (when the time will be appropriate)? - "The Organisation for the Liberation of Palestine" - Does this show pro-Israel support?

China absolutely has designs on Mongolia. The whole existence of the modern Mongolian state is a mess of cold-war / world war 2 geopolitical compromises that left basically no one happy. If Sino-Russian relations cool, or the climate of Mongolia itself warms, it could quickly find itself in an awkward spot between two notoriously bad-faith superpowers and with essentially no alternatives to vassalage.

I suppose it would be very different from Tibet: Tibet provides 2/3rd of the water resources of China, and China came and secured it. I don’t think Mongolia has such scarce resources… does it?

Re: Lithuania says throw away Chinese phones due to censorship concerns

#237

Post by rsj_hn »

game_the0ry wrote: post #128

I'm really not sure how serious I should take the threat of Chinese made electronics - almost all electronics are made China, not just Xaiomi and Hauwei. My iphone is made in China by Chinese contract manufacturer (Foxconn) - does that mean all iphones could be compromised with Chinese malware? It could be possible, but how can you tell? Is it possible to observe network packets going form my phone to a Chinese or Ch…

Foxconn is not Chinese, it's a Taiwanese contract manufacturer, that does have most factories in China (but it also has factories in other countries). The reason why Foxconn is so successful is because they do a good job in quality control and honoring contracts, which sets them apart. They are trying to blend Western-style rule of law with Chinese wages and infrastructure.

The successful stories about western companies outsourcing to China do tend to fall into the category of building and running your own factory there, rather than contracting with a Chinese owned and managed factory to produce to spec, which suffers from all the ethical problems discussed in the parent post. E.g. these are all decisions taken by management, not individual factory workers, so if you want to reduce risk, then install your own management.

Re: Lithuania says throw away Chinese phones due to censorship concerns

#239

Post by codezero »

laurent92 wrote: post #236
academia_hack wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China absolutely has designs on Mongolia. The whole existence of the modern Mongolian state is a mess of cold-war / world war 2 geopolitical compromises that left basically no one happy. If Sino-Russian relations cool, or the climate of Mongolia itself warms, it could quickly find itself in an awkward spot between two notoriously bad-faith superpowers and with essentially no alternatives to vassalage.

I suppose it would be very different from Tibet: Tibet provides 2/3rd of the water resources of China, and China came and secured it. I don’t think Mongolia has such scarce resources… does it?

Maybe potential for mining rare earth elements?

Re: Lithuania says throw away Chinese phones due to censorship concerns

#240

Post by PeterisP »

ignoramous wrote: post #206
throwaway4good wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it me or is this an extremely clumsy way of doing censorship? Why not do this at network or server-side level? Why not use some kind of hash (ala Apple'e proposed child pornography hunter)? In this design, everyone would have to have this plain text configuration file ... also other brands (Oppo, Huawei etc.) would have to have it. What if it needs an update? Suppose the hui muslims starts causing trouble ... Or i…

I guess it comes down to, why bother when the simplest solution works ? Make no mistake: As and when they get caught out doing such things, the sophistication of their implementation is bound to increase, in response to it. Money is no object for state-actors and mega-corps.

This has some smell of a compliance issue. I.e. the company gets ordered to block stuff; the order states "this shall be blocked" and provides a list, and then the company does the simplest/cheapest way to comply which is literally checking for whatever was required by the order.
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