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Comment by jonyt | Hacker News Reader

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...

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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.

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'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...

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.

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.

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.

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

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