Chinese authorities install app on phones of people entering Xinjiang • Hacker News Board

Re: Chinese authorities install app on phones of people entering Xinjiang

#291

Post by elefanten » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 9:27 PM UTC

igravious wrote: post #286

rwmj wrote: post #13

Before I went to China I bought a burner phone, mainly to install WeChat (which is also a kind of malware and also "required" in China). Basic Android phones are not too expensive these days - I wonder if it will become commonplace to own several and physically separate your life across them? FWIW I got a Huawei phone (Honor 10 Lite) for under 200 EUR, but much cheaper phones than that are available. Edit: To be clea…

> China is a police state May be good to make the distinction between the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region† in the very north-west of China and the rest of China itself. The surveillance, monitoring, detention, "education", and de-radicalisation that are happening in Xinxiang are not to my knowledge representative of the rest of China. It is, of course, very troublesome that this illiberal dragnet exists anywhere in…

What definition of "police state" are you using? How do all the things you acknowledge in your third paragraph not make China a police state?

It's effectively totalitarian, special economic zones aside. We've seen what happens if they try to stir the pot politically. Their relative "freedom" is exercised with a guillotine permanently above their heads and no legal rights.

Everyone is surveilled across every arena of life.

And if you really think people only disappear in Xinjiang, look at the history (and continuing present) of human rights or democracy activists. [0]

[0] https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/05/30/human-rights-activism-po...

Re: Chinese authorities install app on phones of people entering Xinjiang

#292

Post by iliketosleep » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 10:03 PM UTC

orthecreedence wrote: post #224

mLuby wrote: post #96

>"China is using technology for the perfection of dictatorship." -Pete Buttigieg, 2020 US presidential candidate PRC may be blazing the trail, but as the tech becomes proved and available, I won't be surprised to see creeping adoption in more "free" countries (especially following crises).

In China, surveillance is nationalized. In the US, it's nationalized (NSA) and privatized (Facebook). The tech already exists and people are using it willingly.

I like your idea about nationalization vs privatization of national security, but it appears that your example about the US could also be applied to China - replace the NSA with China's MSS, and Facebook with Wechat.

However, large companies in China are tightly coupled with government when it comes to national security issues, while there is probably more pushback in the US.

Re: Chinese authorities install app on phones of people entering Xinjiang

#293

Post by dang » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 10:05 PM UTC

Circuits wrote: post #290

dang wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You started a religious flamewar. That's not welcome on HN, and we ban accounts that do it. Please stick to the site guidelines and don't do this again. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I am not going to apologize for challenging the status quo and having opinions of my own just because you threaten to ban me from an obscure tech news machine... people like me are not going to go away no matter how deep your bury your head into the sand. We will be here waiting for you whenever you come up for air.

Nobody's trying to get you to go away! You just can't do religious flamewars on HN. That's not some novel use of authority, that's internet forum 101 all the way back to Usenet. It's particularly important for this site, where the mandate is intellectual curiosity. Battling enemies doesn't fit with that.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Chinese authorities install app on phones of people entering Xinjiang

#294

Post by jlawson » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 10:17 PM UTC

CiPHPerCoder wrote: post #94

jlawson wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Islamophobia is a made up word designed specifically to silence criticisms of Islam without having to address them. No other religion has such a word or such protections. https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Christophobia https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Judeophobia What was that now? I don't care if you have criticisms of Islam. But in the wake of the rise of stochastic terrorism especially among nationalist sentiments thr…

Yes, it's possible to say the word "phobia" after any religion's name. That doesn't mean the term has any currency. Proof:

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=Islamophob...

Hard to interpret your last part. Seems like you're saying you don't oppose criticisms of Islam, you just think nobody should be allowed to make those criticisms.

Yes, it's a bit off topic, I agree.

Re: Chinese authorities install app on phones of people entering Xinjiang

#295

Post by iliketosleep » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 10:26 PM UTC

hartator wrote: post #275

rwmj wrote: post #13

Before I went to China I bought a burner phone, mainly to install WeChat (which is also a kind of malware and also "required" in China). Basic Android phones are not too expensive these days - I wonder if it will become commonplace to own several and physically separate your life across them? FWIW I got a Huawei phone (Honor 10 Lite) for under 200 EUR, but much cheaper phones than that are available. Edit: To be clea…

> Edit: To be clear this is not to avoid Chinese surveillance. That's unavoidable whatever you do because China is a police state. It's to separate out that surveillance from my contacts and my regular life at home. Not sure what's wrong with avoiding Chinese surveillance. And why you think having a burner phone to separate US and Chinese life is not an act to avoid surveillance.

It makes sense to me. Here's why: In China, surveillance is so pervasive that attempts to avoid it are typically a waste of time and may even arouse suspicion. Seperating US and Chinese life does not prevent surveillance, but it does limit the amount of intelligence gathered.

Re: Chinese authorities install app on phones of people entering Xinjiang

#296

Post by igravious » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 10:36 PM UTC

elefanten wrote: post #291

igravious wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> China is a police state May be good to make the distinction between the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region† in the very north-west of China and the rest of China itself. The surveillance, monitoring, detention, "education", and de-radicalisation that are happening in Xinxiang are not to my knowledge representative of the rest of China. It is, of course, very troublesome that this illiberal dragnet exists anywhere in…

What definition of "police state" are you using? How do all the things you acknowledge in your third paragraph not make China a police state? It's effectively totalitarian, special economic zones aside. We've seen what happens if they try to stir the pot politically. Their relative "freedom" is exercised with a guillotine permanently above their heads and no legal rights. Everyone is surveilled across every arena of…

I think a state can be all the things I said that China is and still not be a police state. All the online articles referencing China being a police state that I can find talk about the extreme measures in that one "autonomous" region of Xinxiang specifically. Do an internet search for yourself and see. Can't freedoms in China be pretty terrible in many respects without it being equated with the worst regimes ever?

Re: Chinese authorities install app on phones of people entering Xinjiang

#297

Post by schoen » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 10:37 PM UTC

rovek wrote: post #19

murbard2 wrote: post #6

The US is forcing its tourists to give away a list of all their social media accounts and all their email accounts. If you're a foreign journalist writing pseudonymously for your safety, you must now share that information with the US government to enter the country. This isn't quite on the level of forcing people to install malware on their phone yet, but give it a couple years.

This was optional on the ESTA form when I completed it less than a month ago, maybe it's different for different countries. Not a good direction but also not enforced in my experience.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20337393 for the difference between ESTA and visa applications on this point.

Re: Chinese authorities install app on phones of people entering Xinjiang

#298

Post by aussieguy1234 » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 11:19 PM UTC

mdorazio wrote: post #2

This bit is important: "Foreigners crossing certain Chinese borders into the Xinjiang region"... I'm not aware of Chinese authorities getting quite that draconian (yet) at the normal border entry points in Beijing, Shanghai, etc. However, I think it's still worth following the general advice that if you have sensitive data on your devices, leave them at home and use a burner phone/laptop + restore from the cloud late…

And don't bother restoring from the cloud, if any malware gets installed on your device at the border

Re: Chinese authorities install app on phones of people entering Xinjiang

#299

Post by d1zzy » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 11:49 PM UTC

rolltiide wrote: post #260

educationdata wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bs comparison. The Chinese government surveillance is purely for dictatorship, and they do put political opponents and human rights lawyers in jail at a massive scale. The NSA surveillance is mostly for legitimate security reasons and is under restrict scrutiny.

LOL China does it to protect their people from people that want to undermine and dismantle the party This is true! This is exactly what we want to happen! These are security reasons from their perspective Can you see how that is not so different? In the US we are as oblivious to the exact nature and motives of security threats too, and tolerate our border and surveillance agencies to preempt an unspecified threat. Th…

I disagree that it's similar. It's one thing to perform surveillance on individuals where you have strong reasons to suspect they will engage in terrorist acts (meaning making plans to kill lots of people) and quite another to do so because someone disagrees with you being in power. I'm sure there's an overlap of people who do both but that's not the group I'm talking about and I'm also sure NSA/US authorities abuse their powers (hence why we constantly have to fight against power/survaillence creep) to monitor people that are simply political enemies but that doesn't negate the difference between the 2 situations (ie just because the US may engage in that type of behavior doesn't excuse the behavior China engages in). I grew up in an Eastern European communist dictatorship and I know what it means to be afraid to talk against the party and its leader. I'm now an immigrant to the US (so arguably no as many rights as a citizen) and in no way is there the same type of censorship and oppression.

Put it another way, where do you draw the line in terms of how the government is allowed to behave in regards to its citizens since you can pretty much excuse any abusive behavior under the reasoning of "security reasons"?

Re: Chinese authorities install app on phones of people entering Xinjiang

#300

Post by titicaca123 » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 11:52 PM UTC

xenospn wrote: post #119

jandrese wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically China is too big and doesn't have good natural internal borders so throughout history it has only held together when the central government was especially ruthless. It's just too easy to steamroll off of some early military victories, so all insurrection needs to be quashed before it ever really gets started. This means you need a brutal police state. In modern times the traditions of the past remain even a…

China is also working very hard to get rid of its minorities by simply distributing Han Chinese everywhere.

Get rid of minority? You have no idea what the real situation in China.In China, minority has much better benefits than Han people. If a child born from a minority and a Han parents, the parents will usually choose minority as his/her ethnity. Because the kids can have additional points at the college entrance exams, they can have two or even three children when Han can have only one child in the past. When a Han and a minority commit the same crime, the minority get less punishment.

In a world like today, are you blaming people moving to other regions just to get jobs? Because that is what happens in China and else where in the world. It has nothing to with “getting rid of minorities”.