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Huawei 5G kit must be removed from UK by 2027

bbc.com

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Re: Huawei 5G kit must be removed from UK by 2027

#461

Post by bluerobotcat »

sudosysgen wrote: post #449
bluerobotcat wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US certainly flirts with this kind of politics too. However: - Snowden was an American citizen. Gui Minhai is Swedish. - Snowden didn't get kidnapped abroad. The possibility seemed real but, for whatever reason, that line did not actually get crossed. I certainly wouldn't defend the US in this (let's not pretend that the US has a good reputation regarding world politics). But the things the US does pale in compar…

Then give examples where they actually did far exceed what China does. Snowden was just an example. The only reason why he didn't get kidnapped abroad is because the US failed. They were absolutely attempting to do so. In any case, the CIA has an entire program devoted entirely to kidnap people abroad, move them in jurisdictions where they can be tortured, and then deal with them. It's called "extraordinary rendition…

I don't think debating counterfactuals is a productive way to have this discussion.

I also want to point out that the reason I mentioned Gui Minhai was to counter the claim that escaping the grip of China was a simple matter of moving abroad.

With respect to this original topic, there are also various examples where Chinese who moved abroad are threatened either by phone calls from China (with reference to their family) or by Chinese agents (presumably) in the new country. (I could list some if you want, but I assume you're familiar with them.)

These are things that the US does not really do.

But, yeah, US's track history in foreign policy is terrible. But China has its own take on terror and it's not pretty by any means. If you care about things like democracy or freedom of speech I will assert that China is emerging as the bigger threat by far.

(I take terror to refer to the systematically frightening people with the threat of violence, to make them behave in a certain way.)

Re: Huawei 5G kit must be removed from UK by 2027

#462

Post by tibbydudeza »

Just the beginning of a new cold war.

The Belt and Road initiative was a clear sign that China is confident and more assertive geo-political player and intends to eventually replace the US as the dominant world power.

An easy choice of the UK to make considering they export very little of consequence to China ... Australia on the other hand.

Re: Huawei 5G kit must be removed from UK by 2027

#463

Post by mercer »

Confiks wrote: post #413
SheinhardtWigCo wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know that it’s difficult for you to discuss anti-astroturfing methods without disclosing information that could make circumvention easier, but can you give us an idea of how much effort is put in to detecting this kind of activity on HN? You seem very confident that this doesn’t happen here; is that because you’re doing something to prevent it? We are, after all, talking about an entity that is known to use these t…

Thanks for asking the question and putting so much care into stating it. I have no idea what kind of methods HN employs. I personally always check the posting history when I'm in doubt about the intentions of a poster. Most of the time, I find an extensive amount of fairly well considered comments on a variety of topics. That leads me to the conclusion that the account is 'genuine'. To state it a bit more naively: if…

> I personally always check the posting history when I'm in doubt about the intentions of a poster.

I do the same, and in the cases where it's somewhat obviously a new or 'bad intentioned' it still surprises me how fast the comments are grayed out and/or dead (often within minutes).

I've always been curious how much of that was human curation and how much of it some algorithm. I've never gotten to see or play around with HN-style site data, but personally I'd probably write some code that takes into account valuable 'curator' users (with some checks and safeguards of course, and manually tagged by the moderators).

Re: Huawei 5G kit must be removed from UK by 2027

#464

Post by kube-system »

sixstringtheory wrote: post #441
kube-system wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A closer car analogy: antique vehicles without seatbelts were not banned from public roads when seatbelts became mandatory.

Except that it's already been decided the towers will be removed, which is counter to your example. My analogy was meant to highlight the delay in action against something that has been deemed a risk.

Almost every safety regulation does this; few are effective immediately. Manufacturing plants need retooled, workforces need retrained, new equipment needs to be acquired and implemented, compliance measure must be implemented, etc.

>Except that it's already been decided the towers will be removed, which is counter to your example.

Grandfather clauses are implementation grace periods that are equal to the expected lifetime of the device. This is not counter to the example -- this is an example that sometimes these grace periods are very generous even for things we are very sure are unsafe.

Re: Huawei 5G kit must be removed from UK by 2027

#465

Post by amanaplanacanal »

blackrock wrote: post #349
chrischen wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly their political model is already spreading, since blocking foreign companies from local markets, mass surveillance, extra-legal imprisonment of suspected terrorists, war on encryption, is something the US has been more and more adopting.

Are you trying to describe China here, or the United States?

Why not both?

Re: Huawei 5G kit must be removed from UK by 2027

#466

Post by sudosysgen »

bluerobotcat wrote: post #461
sudosysgen wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then give examples where they actually did far exceed what China does. Snowden was just an example. The only reason why he didn't get kidnapped abroad is because the US failed. They were absolutely attempting to do so. In any case, the CIA has an entire program devoted entirely to kidnap people abroad, move them in jurisdictions where they can be tortured, and then deal with them. It's called "extraordinary rendition…

I don't think debating counterfactuals is a productive way to have this discussion. I also want to point out that the reason I mentioned Gui Minhai was to counter the claim that escaping the grip of China was a simple matter of moving abroad. With respect to this original topic, there are also various examples where Chinese who moved abroad are threatened either by phone calls from China (with reference to their fami…

The context of the chain is that you can leave the US or the UK, but you can't leave China. The original comment literally said - if you don't like the US, you can leave, but if you don't like China, you can't leave.

If you are an enemy of the USG, you can't leave the US. If you are an enemy of the Chinese State, you can't leave China. I fail to see the difference.

I assure you that US citizens that move abroad and act in ways that conflict with the USG are also surveilled. The tactics are different, because the US has sufficient power to surveil you without needing any threatening. If ever the threat of violence is judged effective that is what will threaten you. First under the threat of extradition (which is violence), if that fails the US will make phone calls to the government of the country where you live in, and if that fails and you're still worth it then it's covert action.

Maybe if you live in the Anglosphere China is a bigger threat, but in that case it's not a big threat at all. But for people that live anywhere else in the world or have done so the US has done enough terrorizing and threatening to see that the US is a bigger threat to your freedom. What good is democracy when the US controls your economy and defence? What meaningful freedom do you have of acting according to your interests when that boot is against your neck? Both China and the US are exactly the same threat. It is absurd to give more power to the US to isolate China. If what you care about is freedom, the best scenario is actually to have both China and the US in economic competition.

Re: Huawei 5G kit must be removed from UK by 2027

#468

Post by dependenttypes »

dang wrote: post #434
wyuenho wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does HN have anything like Twitter or Facebook to detect organized network of sock puppets?

I don't know what they do so I can't say. We certainly have lots of code dedicated to such things.

That brings a surprisingly amount of false positives. After all nobody would think that two users might share a proxy ip address.

Re: Huawei 5G kit must be removed from UK by 2027

#469

Post by dang »

dependenttypes wrote: post #468
dang wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what they do so I can't say. We certainly have lots of code dedicated to such things.

That brings a surprisingly amount of false positives. After all nobody would think that two users might share a proxy ip address.

We're pretty familiar with users sharing IP addresses.

You're right that software defenses inevitably produce false positives, so have to be used carefully.

Re: Huawei 5G kit must be removed from UK by 2027

#470

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

arp242 wrote: post #440
VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've wondered how EU people feel about things like this. Euros have been inundated with "Americana" for the last 40 years or so. They watch TV shows about Americans, movies about Americans. They use American social media networks. It's like a culture-overload like USA is always "in your face". USA never had any problem with Skype as a Danish company being used by a significant number of Americans. But TikTok, a Chine…

I think the issue is that the United States – for all its faults and Snowden leaks and whatnot – can still be trusted, somewhat, to do the right thing. There clearly are trust issues (for good reasons) but I would sure trust the US gov't more to not install backdoors in equipment private companies deliver to befriended foreign nations. China, on the other hand, has no clear separation between the state and large priv…

One lesson from Snowden's leaks is that the US is engaging in surveillance on supposed allies - not just enemies. This includes intercepting and modifying network equipment during delivery (Tailored Access Operations), and intercepting internal government communications of allies during trade negotiations. The consequences of the latter are quite significant, since knowing the other side's strategy and bottom line gives the US a serious leg up in negotiations.
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