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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

#401

Post by sudosysgen »

Scoundreller wrote: post #262
sudosysgen wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Xiaomi devices are not and never were certified for use in Canada.

Doesn’t usually result in the government requesting a stop-sale on eBay. Happened on newegg too: (Amp link because Reddit is actually down) https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/Xiaomi/comment... Though you can still roam in Canada with them, so I don’t know how that works. Shouldn’t base stations reject uncertified device IMEIs? I guess it’s all okay as long as there’s revenue to be had.

It can if a competitor complains.

I don't know of any devices at all that get rejected on Canadian ISPs. Blocking Xiaomis would cause a lot of issues.

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

#402

Post by mlang23 »

coolspot wrote: post #166
mlang23 wrote: post #102

I wonder how long it will take until $RANDOMCOUNTRY says the same thing about US phones.

There are no mass-produced US phones. Hand-made boutique Purism US-edition doesn’t count.

Oh, right, I totally forgot that Apple and Google are chinese companies, my bad.

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

#403

Post by therealcamino »

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #257
908B64B197 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

In hindsight we know that red scare was as bad as the thing they were fighting against As the Cold War intensified, the frenzy over the perceived threat posed by Communists in the U.S. became known as the Red Scare. The United States government responded by creating the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), which was charged with identifying Communist threats to the United States. HUAC often pressured witnes…

"As bad as" is doing a lot of glossing over things there. HUAC and McCarthyism were reprehensible. That doesn't mean they were equivalent to abuses that occurred in the Soviet Union.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_mortality_in_the_Sovi...

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

#404

Post by everdrive »

deadalus wrote: post #232
everdrive wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except your phone is not backdoored by the FBI.

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

Yes, that's right, I have 17 backdoors on my phone. And whatever China is doing is all happening on my phone, except from the 17 actors you've listed.

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

#405

Post by schleck8 »

belter wrote: post #152

From the shared PDF page 23... "It has been established that during the initialisation of the system applications factory-installed on a Xiaomi Mi 10T device, these applications contact a server in Singapore at the address globalapi.ad.xiaomi.com (IP address 47.241.69.153) and download the JSON file MiAdBlacklistConfig, and save this file in the metadata catalogues of the applications. A list of applications for whic…

I have a Xiaomi device and can confirm the API request. It does this regardless of country, including in GDPR countries. It makes multiple requests like this per minute. And if you click on the Privacy Policy in the Xiaomi Smart Home app for instance, it shows a 404 error.

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

#406

Post by adolph »

bassman9000 wrote: post #260
adolph wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having a gmail address is important to not stick out. https://www.itstactical.com/intellicom/mindset/gray-man-stra...

If you don't use it for anything interesting, you're sticking out even more. A void can be as revealing. If you're using it for something interesting, well, you're not sticking out in the "not having gmail" camp, but what's the point.

Yeah, you also need to subscribe to the Grey Service (tm), which simulates correspondence to your specifications. Tell them I didn’t send you and they will also throw in “for free”* a bug out bag disguised as an ordinary plastic shopping bag from a grocery store.

*Shipping and handling extra, depending on your jurisdiction a paper shopping bag may be substituted.

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

#407

Post by lolthishuman »

GauntletWizard wrote: post #277
rsj_hn wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's really no difference between the state providing a blacklist, and the state inspiring enough terror that blacklists are compiled. Actually, there is - the latter is far scarier.

This is interesting, and it seems like the same coin of censorship but the other side. Censoring or fear or censorship already changes behavior. We have the more apparent China example and more covert USA example but both modify behavior through fear. Yeesh.

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

#408

Post by Scoundreller »

sudosysgen wrote: post #401
Scoundreller wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn’t usually result in the government requesting a stop-sale on eBay. Happened on newegg too: (Amp link because Reddit is actually down) https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/Xiaomi/comment... Though you can still roam in Canada with them, so I don’t know how that works. Shouldn’t base stations reject uncertified device IMEIs? I guess it’s all okay as long as there’s revenue to be had.

It can if a competitor complains. I don't know of any devices at all that get rejected on Canadian ISPs. Blocking Xiaomis would cause a lot of issues.

Just seemed strange that the radio-frequency regulator would demand that 3rd-party selling platforms stop transactions but not also demand ISPs to de-auth them too.

Just suggests that the restrict them are BS or maybe spyware/intelligence related.

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

#409

Post by sneak »

munk-a wrote: post #294
sgc wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Made me chuckle. I know a guy who finds Netflix a total PITA and the streaming experience (sorely) lacking. So he pays for Netflix streaming and dvds, and then downloads what he wants to watch via torrents for the convenience.

I think if you've been torrenting this entire time you're probably set for life - being looped into all sorts of movie sharing rings that you regularly seed for... but breaking into it fresh - it's tough.

I used to be in those groups but stopped years ago. I'm still fine just using exclusively public torrents on public trackers via a VPN.

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

#410

Post by ohazi »

Dah00n wrote: post #393
ohazi wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is absolutely also true. However, there are some phones (including several iPhone generations) where the entire baseband/sim subsystem is isolated from the primary application processor and operating system, and essentially appears as something like a dumb USB modem that the OS can control / use / ignore as it pleases. In theory, this would make it difficult for a carrier to issue a baseband update that (fo…

>However, there are some phones (including several iPhone generations) where the entire baseband/sim subsystem is isolated from the primary application processor and operating system Yes, that's what the developer says. Totally unverifiable though unless it is both open source and you built and installed the firmware yourself.. and still there could be hidden firmware running. This is no different than Intel saying w…

I agree with this perspective as well. Assume your carrier is capable of doing anything on your phone until a thorough hardware and software audit has been performed on the device in question (this kind of audit has been performed on several popular phones), but even then, continue to be careful/skeptical.

It's also a good idea to at least consider the possibility that the baseband application processor link may be software defined, and that an update from the vendor might theoretically be able to turn a dumb-USB-peripheral link into a has-access-to-kernel-memory PCIe link, thus enabling future control by the carrier.

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