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Comment by eesmith | Hacker News Reader

Let's see, if the US is listening in, then there's a small chance they will misinterpret my actions as suspicious, arrest me, and perhaps even lead to my imprisonment. This may include extraordinary rendition, should they make that decision while I am in another country.

If China is listening in, then there's a chance I will be denied a visa to visit China or, should I be given a visa and visit, then they can arrest me, etc.

Upsides in either case? None.

So I would rather have China listening in than the US.

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I think you're very much mistaken about the risks involved. For example[0]. I really have a hard time understanding people who think the US is worse than China. China is orders of magnitude worse. Sure, the NSA may spy on your electronic communications but the level of invasive, oppressive surveillance is not even comparable[1]. As far as I know no people are in jail in the US for protesting the government's policies. In China that's not the case[2].

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/08/daughter-gui-m... [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/twelve-days-in-xinjiang-how-chi... [2] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/political-prisoners-chi...

You may feel that from a human rights perspective China is morally inferior to the US. This has no bearing on whether you're better off being spied on by one or the other. If you're located in the US, the US government has an extreme amount of power over you and China has almost none; it's obviously better to be spied on by China. If you're in China, the logic reverses.

Not to mention, with the NSA, the primary concern should be transparency and whether what they're doing is legal/allowed by the constitution. With China there are real national security concerns.

We can have discussions and concerns about the NSA while also recognizing foreign nations pose an equal or worse threat. At least with the NSA there is some hope of reigning them in when they overstep.

> At least with the NSA there is some hope of reigning them in when they overstep.

Honestly? The response to the Snowden leaks would seem to indicate the opposite.

> With China there are real national security concerns.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. Certainly China does face national security concerns.

The thing is since I am in the US, the Chinese government has very little power over me compared to the US. Since I am a US citizen, they also have very little interest in me compared to the USA. Concerns may differ for those in a different position than I am. My industry isn’t a target for espionage.

His point wasn't that the US is worse than China, but that he lives in the US, and not China. As bad as china is, they are not likely to abduct him from the US. His own government however can do as they please.

I am not mistaken. I do not live in China and have no plans to visit.

What can China do to someone a US citizen, living in the US, using a Huawei phone? Even if all telephone calls are monitored?

What can the US do to someone in the same situation?

Yes, others are in different circumstances and would make a different choice. Best of course would be to have no mass surveillance system.

> What can China do to someone a US citizen, living in the US, using a Huawei phone? Even if all telephone calls are monitored?

Sell personal details like credit card numbers or the SSN to a criminal syndicate.

No one said they would spy to steal state secrets.

Another possibility is identity theft. Read about the scandal involving Australian passports used by Israeli secret services in 2010: http://www.smh.com.au/national/mossad-hit-snares-australians....

> Sell personal details like credit card numbers or the SSN to a criminal syndicate.

That kind of ticky-tack stuff seems more like the work of organized crime ring than a national government of a state like China. Anyway, that stuff is subject to much more prosaic risks, like your being at the mercy of your dentist's office's online security set-up.

If they allegedly sold organs on the black market and force prisoners to play online games to earn virtual currencies (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/may/25/china-prisoner...), it is not inconceivable they sell data.

The Chinese government is not monolithic. There are individual people in their government, any of which who have access can do nefarious things.

I don't think people need a reminder of that. The US government also isn't a monolith, as J. Edgar Hoover's abuse of power as the head of the FBI reminds us.

Of course. This statement:

> That kind of ticky-tack stuff seems more like the work of organized crime ring

seems like you are idealizing China. I idealize neither and wish my privacy to be wrenched back from the illegal search and seizure of the NSA.

That "you" isn't me.

I'm not "idealizing" China; I just think that, realistically, credit card fraud is a weird tack for a large world power to take. If we're talking about rogue individuals, OK, but you probably need a local fence, complicating things, and you could make the same argument about just about any entity you interact with. I'd say the risk of a call center employee stealing your SSN to commit fraud is higher than someone in the MSS doing the same.

To quote someone else on HN in the past

You should be worried about the government who has the power to imprison you.

The US absolutely does make lists of "suspicious" citizens. Just look at what the FBI did to protestors of the keystone pipeline.

> What can China do to someone a US citizen, living in the US, using a Huawei phone?

What can the US do to someone who's not a citizen, living outside the US, with access to their communications? It's not difficult to find an answer to this. China would do the same to you and you won't be able to fight against it because you're not a citizen of China.

US get extradite people from all around the world quite easily. On the other hand, extraditing a US citizen to another country is very difficult as US is more likely to block such efforts. For this reason it might be safer for US citizens to be listened to by Chinese government instead of US. It's a tradeoff you need to make and it depends on your circumstances of course.

I think the US is far more likely to be able to persuade most states to extradite you than China is.

DDoS the whole infrastructure. They have done that to GitHub before by hijacking traffic to Baidu. With millions of phones in the US under their control it’s fairly easy to overwhelm any website (Mercedes comes to mind in recent news) they don’t like or even cripple the whole national wireless network.

Also even if you are not of direct interest to China, what about your friends and colleagues? They can use you as a tool to get to those that you have direct communication with.

They can target business leaders and steal secrets. Not sure how many are using a Huawei phone.

I'm sure some could care less about Constitutional rights for those who are undocumented, but ICE most certainly is targeting activists for immigration reform, aka those protesting government policies.[1]

"First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist...."

https://theintercept.com/2018/02/08/ice-nypd-ravi-ragbir-cit...

I do not live in China and am unlikely to be extradited to China for anything I get up to online.

Dont fool yourself. If you get a Huawei phone and use it with a U.S. carrier with any services by U.S. tech companies that can be back-doored or subpoenaed, then you could potentially have both the U.S. and China spying on you. It has already been proven in the past that these Chinese phones send considerable amounts of data to Chinese servers.

If you are someone working with a military contractor or the government(with any kind of security clearance) I dont think the U.S. would want you using a Chinese phone for obvious reasons

>It has already been proven in the past that these Chinese phones send considerable amounts of data to Chinese servers.

Not that I don't believe this, but can you provide a canonical source to support this claim? I don't keep up with this literature.

Also, what are they sending? My natural response to this would be "well of course they do" because presumably most phones come with some software/services from the manufacturer.

What about blackmail? They can use your surfing data (porn, social media) to blackmail you. If you do your banking or shopping on your phone, they will have access to your credit card data, social security #, etc. that can be sold or used for cyber warfare. You're right, no upsides, but there are huge risks with having the Chinese steal your information.

Ahh, you are right. I didn't think about that possibility because I don't have a smartphone.

And because I read "listening in" literally, as intercepting audio, rather than metaphorically as being able to intercept all traffic.

Also, the US has blackmailed people, like the FBI attempt to blackmail Martin Luther King Jr. We know the US gathers the porn habits of people who it considers might be a threat, including of a US person (https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/26/nsa-porn-muslims_n... ).

So really it's a matter of balancing the odds. The odds are low that either government will care about me. It feels more likely that my life will be upended by a mistake, like what happened with Brandon Mayfield, and a mistake by the US government is far more likely to affect me than a mistake by the Chinese government.

The US gov't is unlikely to jack the results of $200M and 11 years of research and give it to state-controlled companies.

If these are intelligence agencies, wouldn't they also consider assassinating you?

I'm honored that you think I'm that important.

The hypothetical choice is, would I rather have the US or China listening to my phone, if I had to choose one, and "none of the above" was not an option.

It is not easy to assassinate someone in another continent, and I don't live in China.

There's also the chance that the assassination will fail, and even backfire, where the further investigation might reveal agent identities. I'm just not that worthwhile to possibly waste those resources.

I mean, if you're that worried that something is going to happen to you, then you do think you're that important.

It was an intellectual exercise to answer the posed question "Who would you rather have listening in?"

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