Lithuania says throw away Chinese phones due to censorship concerns • Hacker News Board

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

#351

Post by LurkingPenguin » Thu, Sep 23, 2021, 2:52 AM UTC

PeterisP wrote: post #240

ignoramous wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> ...and then the company does the simplest/cheapest way to comply which is literally checking for whatever was required by the order.

An ironic form of chabuduo.

https://www.chinaexpatsociety.com/culture/the-chabuduo-minds...

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

#352

Post by paul7986 » Thu, Sep 23, 2021, 2:55 AM UTC

PontifexMinimus wrote: post #335

paul7986 wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or manufacturer any product from there...why does the world continue to be stupid on China and pump up their economy by having the majority of their goods manufactured there? Its going to continue to bite us and everyone in the butt.

> why does the world continue to be stupid on China and pump up their economy by having the majority of their goods manufactured there? Because big companies make lots of profits from it, I imagine. > Its going to continue to bite us and everyone in the butt. Yes, unless we change our ways.

And yet im being downvoted for being negative on China?

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

#353

Post by throwaway4good » Thu, Sep 23, 2021, 2:59 AM UTC

simonklitj wrote: post #344

throwaway4good wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And why does the code snippets seemingly refer to an advertising api?

I’m assuming that’s an effort to mask the true intent.

Or the intent is something other than what the report assumes?

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

#354

Post by est » Thu, Sep 23, 2021, 2:59 AM UTC

throwaway4good wrote: post #178

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…

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…

> Is it me or is this an extremely clumsy way of doing censorship?

yeah it's literally called MiAdBlacklistConfig, to stop certain ads from displaying in the browser.

So it's developed by the AD department. What do you think.

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

#355

Post by sandworm101 » Thu, Sep 23, 2021, 3:01 AM UTC

throwaway4good wrote: post #343

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…

And why does the code snippets seemingly refer to an advertising api?

Another word for ad is promotion. These sites promote certain groups. The censor believes they profit from this activity. It is not unreasonable for such a censor to understand them as illegal ads.

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

#356

Post by throwaway4good » Thu, Sep 23, 2021, 3:02 AM UTC

simonklitj wrote: post #344

throwaway4good wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And why does the code snippets seemingly refer to an advertising api?

I’m assuming that’s an effort to mask the true intent.

Just to be clear; the (incomplete) code snippets in the report have been through a code mangler. The only names readable are of the api that is actually used.

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

#357

Post by slumpt_ » Thu, Sep 23, 2021, 3:11 AM UTC

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #327

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…

> Why not do this at network or server-side level? China doesn’t control the network/servers in Lithuania and other countries. Doing it client-side gives them the power to extend their reach.

This is really evil shit.

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

#358

Post by throwaway4good » Thu, Sep 23, 2021, 3:13 AM UTC

est wrote: post #354

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…

> Is it me or is this an extremely clumsy way of doing censorship? yeah it's literally called MiAdBlacklistConfig, to stop certain ads from displaying in the browser. So it's developed by the AD department. What do you think.

Yeah. It looks more like some sort of advertisement blacklist and not the broad censorship mechanism it is being interpreted as.

Could really be interesting to see the full list of words.

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

#359

Post by ohmyzee » Thu, Sep 23, 2021, 3:18 AM UTC

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #327

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…

> Why not do this at network or server-side level? China doesn’t control the network/servers in Lithuania and other countries. Doing it client-side gives them the power to extend their reach.

It almost looks like they wanted to get caught.

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

#360

Post by fy20 » Thu, Sep 23, 2021, 3:19 AM UTC

gpderetta wrote: post #36

amiga-workbench wrote: post #2

I think you would have to be mad to leave the stock ROM running on a Xiaomi phone, IIRC they were caught logging peoples browser history a few years ago. Several models have mainline LineageOS support, I'm running Lineage on my Mix 2S and hope to have years worth of updates going forward. The hardware is really good value as long as you install an non-tainted OS.

I was stupid enough to buy a Xiaomi phone without enough due diligence. Aside from all spying that is going on, the software is abysmal. The problem with replacing the OS is that I believe most banking apps I use will stop working. Might just need to write this phone off.

I have a Mi 8 and use the xiaomi.eu ROM which supposedly has a lot of the junk removed. I also rooted it. I have no issues with any banking apps, Netflix or SafetyNet.