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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

#381

Post by alias_neo »

downWidOutaFite wrote: post #346
alias_neo wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Word of warning for those who trust Google as a defender of digital privacy and human rights. Surely that is literally nobody? At this stage I would be seriously concerned for anyone who identifies with this description.

Considering Google has forfeited a lot of money over many years for resisting Chinese censorship I would say they're more trustworthy on this issue than Apple or Microsoft which have both publicly caved. The remnants of the "Don't be evil" culture is what allowed Dragonfly to be resisted. No such culture exists at Apple or Microsoft.

I hear what you're saying, however, that is exactly the issue. It's remnants, a "vocal minority" within Google using their moral compass to resist.

Because it is coming "from the bottom up" it can't be relied on when Google can pull the plug on these people at any point if they resist too much.

I can't say much for Apple/Microsoft, but to be safe I would tar them with the same brush.

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

#382

Post by powerapple »

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 Independence of Mongolia is probably about Inner Mongolia, which is part of China. You can read some history about how Mongolia became independent. The official map of ROC (Republic of China) does not officially recognize Mongolia. The PRC (CCP) recognized the independence of Mongolia. Probably people in Mongolia think Inner Mongolia in China should be part of their territory, and there is an organization for that.

China is pro Palestine if you follow the news. The relationship between Palestine and China goes back to 80s.

I don't think Xiaomi cares what people in Lithuania are reading, other than selling its phones. I don't think CCP cares about what people in Lithuania are reading.

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

#383

Post by aembleton »

jaywalk wrote: post #31
ChemSpider wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used the tweet due to the paywall of the Reuters article. Another user below found the best link, the true original source: Here's the official report: https://www.nksc.lt/doc/en/analysis/2021-08-23_5G-CN-analysi... (link updated)

Since when has Reuters employed a paywall? I know they had planned on implementing one earlier this year, but that was indefinitely postponed.

Bypass it by blocking arcpublishing.com in uBO, hosts or DNS

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

#384

Post by selfhoster11 »

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.

On a related note, Realme recently bricked two (maybe more) phone models with an update that caused a soft-boot loop if the weather service (!) was removed by the user to reduce bloat. The problem is not fixed. People have lost data. I personally put Realme on my "never do business with" list.

If their engineering is so poor that they haven't caught this in time, nor reacted by releasing a one-line software patch that can be applied manually (cause users sure as hell can't do it themselves - stock can only apply signed updates), they shouldn't be trusted with anything.

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

#385

Post by jaynetics »

MangoCoffee wrote: post #345
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'm surprised that Taiwan is not on the list.

it is, as mentioned both in the article and the list excerpt in the pdf linked above.

313 "台独万岁" “Long live Taiwan’s independence”

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

#386

Post by nullifidian »

xster wrote: post #369
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Independence of Mongolia refers to Inner Mongolia, a Chinese region with a low ethnic Han population. It and the country of Mongolia serve as buffers against the Russians.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner_Mongolia Han: 79%. It's just one Google away. > against the Russians This seems to be rewriting the history of Russia creating an independent country of outer Mongolia out of collapsing Qing territory. It'd be akin to saying an independent Alsace nation "serves as a buffer" against the Germans.

So if China moves millions of Han Chinese to Xinjiang (which by the way they've been doing since at least the 50ies), so that they become the majority there, then the plight of Uyghurian self-determination and independence ceases to exist? Doesn't work like that. People remember.

>Qing territory

Both China and Russia have been oppressive identity-suppressing culture-destroying mutli-ethnic empires (something very very very very bad) since forever. (The identity-suppressing culture-destroying part really started up in the 19-20th century, when it became evident that the empires won't survive without colonization and suppression in the modern age) "Qing territory" doesn't say more to me than the British Empire's "territory". Same for Inner Mongolia, Tibet, Xinjiang, and arguably even Canton.

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

#387

Post by afroboy »

ohmyzee wrote: post #359
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

They are too powerful to give a damn, they looked at USA and their allies and how they overcome any evil thing they do just by being the strongest country and they said why we can't do the same?

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

#388

Post by dgregd »

How this is different from what Apple is going to do with that on-device image hash algos? The other big story on HN last few days is that a Google Drive account was blocked [1] because of a "terrorist" content. Why should I replace one set of censorship algos with another set of algos? At least Xiaomi limits their censorship algos only to Chinese users.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28621412

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

#389

Post by dumb1224 »

russli1993 wrote: post #367
yumraj wrote: post #298

> The capability in Xiaomi's Mi 10T 5G phone software had been turned off for the "European Union region", but can be turned on remotely at any time , the Defence Ministry's National Cyber Security Centre said in the report. While a lot of comments are rightly focusing on the censorship aspect of it, IMHO, the most concerning part of this is that this intrusive capability, while disabled for the EU region can be remo…

But they didn't find anything in Huawei's device or oneplus device. That shows this is not a marching order from the ccp or government to export censorship abroad. If so, then all products with Chinese origin should all have them. What is likely happened here is that xiaomi included code they needed to comply with laws in china in products for aboard, but it is deactivated for in any region other than mainland china.…

I share your sentiment. However it is the way it is at the moment. I think it's difficult for people outside of China to have a clearer view because it's hard to verify any situation unless they are in person. Knowing the language isn't enough since unlike the Anglo-sphere no much are known expect news media (largely from non-mainland reporters who have strong political stance already) or entertainment industry.

But I'm still optimistic. Even in english reporting one can still be heavily biased towards negativity (e.g Russia, Ireland etc). As long as we keep the communication bridge open eventually we'll have a better understanding of each other.

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

#390

Post by 5e92cb50239222b »

hxii wrote: post #379
5e92cb50239222b wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you have any problems with AOSP? I want to replace the stock spyware on me mom's 9T, but the experience seems to be mixed, judging by a couple of forum discussions.

Minor inconveniences mostly, but that's probably because I keep flashing different ROMs to try stuff out. My only "issue" is that because of my escapedes with flashing I now have only Widevine L3 support, so no full-HD videos on Netflix. But this should be easily fixed by flashing xiaomi.eu ROM and then going back to AOSP. This is my daily driver: https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/rom-11-0-official-davinci...

Cool, thank you.
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