Huawei finds itself in the crosshairs of Western security agencies
spectator.us
spectator.us
Although I agree with the premise of the featured article, I have to wonder if this site's intent is actually aligned with the notion of a harmonic western social order incorporating political cooperation and tolerance for diversity of thought and belief, or if it is yet another low-key radicalization / division vector designed to appeal to those who are too intelligent, educated, naturally docile, or otherwise moderate to be swayed by the more extreme purveyors of discord such as Brietbart, etc. In other words, the site seems to be right on the edge of dog-whistling without actually going over that line, and my instinct is to not upvote articles sourced from it.
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/american-spectator/
It appears that it is a publication that leans heavily to the right, though apparently their reporting is factual. I would take that to mean that while anything that is explicitly stated as fact is likely true, the takeaways and editorials on the course of action is going be quite biased.
Skimming some of the other articles, they don't seem to be particular fans of Trump, with a couple of exceptions, so I'd guess they are probably of the Neoconservative Bush/Reagan bent rather than Trumpian.
One of the most effective forms of misleading reporting involves cherry-picking facts that support your narrative.
You can also conveniently ignore stories where it is obvious that facts may disrupt your desired meta-narrative.
Some organizations have even found ways of doing this whilst being revered for taking a balanced stance and presenting the full picture.
Isn't that what about 100% of existing news media is doing? They key here is to read more than one source, but having a source that would alone represent more than one narrative by now is pretty close to hopeless.
Shit, you've almost nailed what journalism used to be.
I tend to lean pragmatically towards classic liberal / libertarian. I get miffed less often from right leaning sources than left. Left news often just feels so far to the left that the center is now right.
Separating sponsored propoganda from legitimate news will only get harder as time goes on and media companies continue the buyout sprees that generally have the outcome of aligning narratives and interests.
Just because what they report is factual, doesn't mean they're unbiased. A newspaper that reports every crime by black people while only reporting serious crimes by white people might be factual, but it displays clear bias. A newspaper that reports every truth told by President Trump (but conveniently neglects the lies, rants and tantrums) might be factual but it is clearly biased.
I don't know how much of the Huawei article is propaganda and how much of it describes a genuine threat. But one thing is for certain, which is that governments in the west are not much better. This was clear five years ago from the Snowden revelations; our governments are just being a little more open about it now and forcing private industry into their surveillance regimes.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/7/18130806/australia-access...
"Alike in desire to surveil" is not "alike in values and behavior."
Looking for the next poster to jump in and say something about "But are the values really that different?" or "But which are really the better values?"
Are they connected to the Chinese government and used to exercise geopolitical power? Sure but everyone could have told you that already, because that's how China openly operates. There is basically no distinction between government and multinationals.
As far as the rest of the world cooperates with China's businesses I think everyone sees that facet as a trade-off for access to the largest market in the world.
So I don't agree with the take at the end of the article that finding a Huawei spy in Poland would be surprising or catastrophic for China. Grave cuts to commercial ties to China would probably send the economy spiralling, so nobody's going to do it, it's just going to be a tug-of-war for a long time to come.
I agree that the populace hasn't been paying attention though.
Many western governments hoped they magically democratize as they became wealthier, instead they went the other way.
If they get a zero-day for windows, they can use it all they want... but they should have to disclose it to MS after 30-60 days of knowledge. The NSA is as responsible for technology security in the US as much as spying operations. They need to find a balance to do both.
If they responsibly disclose and that happens before other nation states discover and take advantage of zero-days it makes it much better for everyone.
Who do you think the bigger spy is though, USA v China? Let's be honest.
* Last February, the heads of the ‘big three’ US intelligence agencies warned Americans against buying Huawei phones, which they deemed a security risk.
* Poland ABW arrested the two on the spionage charges, huawei office is being searched
i'm a bit disappointed, because there is nothing new in the article. i was expecting something intel about huawei devices being rigged with backdoors, calling home or having kill switches.
*edit: grammar
How much of a white hat effort is there to check what servers these products connect to? Are there (volunteer?/open source?) efforts to watch for suspect behavior or do targeted disassembly of the firmware?
Combine that with the fact that most countries carry extradition treaties, it's not all that surprising that the US wants him. He's committed a litany of crimes in his lifetime against foreign countries, and often bragged about it. Why is it crazy to you that a foreign country wants to detain someone that has hacked said country's critical military infrastructure and participated in information laundering that potentially impacted a US presidential election?
My understanding is that China has aided Vietnam in arresting criminals the Vietnamese government is after. Do you have an example of what you stated?
Because I have no interest in Chinese politics, don't support any dissidents there and it's unlikely that they'll be interested in what I think, vote or support financially.
Not so with the European/US spying operations, when you e.g. support Assange, are opposed to US meddling in the ME, agree with right-wing positions in Europe, are opposed to sanctions against Russia etc. ...
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18886501 and marked it off-topic.
> there are no reeducation camps for minority groups (like Muslims.)
No there are just bombings and complete destruction of various Muslim countries that don't go with the economic agenda of the US.
It's like who would you rather your secrets be stolen by? Americans or the Chinese?
The difference being if you live in China and do these things you may never be seen again.
I'm also against the whisle-blower persecutions that started under GWB and escalated under Obama.
> John Schindler was a prof at the College; he slammed Snowden as a traitor and compared Greenwald to Hitler, and was generally dismissive about concerns about network surveillance; he also sent pictures of his dick to a woman who wasn't his wife. He also co-wrote the report that stated that Sadam Hussein had WMDs, and helped send America to war. That was a lot worse than dick pics.
I mean, while I have no issue with Schindler's evident animus for the current US President, and while the Polish case may (or may not) establish Schindler's intended point, his credibility is IMO way insufficient to be trusted on stories like this. He's really best seen as part of a fringe movement of pro-intelligence online cheerleaders and would-be vigilantes, whose most visible participant is the infamous Louise Mensch[2]
1: https://boingboing.net/2014/08/12/former-nsa-spook-resigns-f...
2: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/06/louise-mensch-an...
It's not an ad-hominem to suggest that an author's previous record on accuracy can be a guide to his present credibility.