Chinese border guards put secret surveillance app on tourists' phones | Hacker News Reader

Chinese border guards put secret surveillance app on tourists' phones

theguardian.com

59 pointstnolet14 comments

Discussed yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20335816

Disclaimer: using a throwaway for the matter.

I've crossed this border before, and I did get my phone checked. A few additional facts:

- 1-2 years ago, they were only taking the phone away while crossing the border TO China. If exiting China, they were using a portable machine in front of you

- they attempt to connect your phone to a local WiFi network, download and install an app. The apps runs quick and is unlikely to send much data

- at that time, they weren't checking iPhones, Android only

- having another user on your Android phone, with restricted privileges (especially for chrome) seemed to be enough to prevent them from installing anything. The guard ended up searching the phone manually (i.e pictures) - but still on the restricted user

Oh and: all police checkpoints have "charging" stations along the way.

Edit: formatting

> The apps runs quick and is unlikely to send much data

What makes you think this?

The apps runs for about a couple of minutes. The only way it can be sending data is over WiFi (I've seen it running on a friend's phone who didn't create a second user). The phone had gigs of data. So it might be collecting sensitive data but surely not dumping the whole content of the phone.

I am curious; what border did you cross? How was Xinjiang? Did you just go there for tourism?

The same as mentioned in the article: Irkeshtam (kashgar -> Kyrgyzstan). Yes mainly tourism, but also to see from my own eyes what's happening in Xinjiang, and the situation at the time wasn't great at all and very close to what you can read now and then (and it probably still is).

This has been going on for at least a year.

See https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/china-orders-xinjiang...

Some news outlets have also mentioned it in passing previously:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/twelve-days-in-xinjiang-how-chi...

https://www.economist.com/briefing/2018/05/31/china-has-turn...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/23/in-chinas-far-...

Around that time, a user on reddit also reported that the app had been installed on his phone:

https://www.reddit.com/r/security/comments/8ofiiw/chinese_bo...

So not really news. Best advice remains to buy a burner phone to bring. Avoid public USB charging stations.

It's illuminating that even on Hacker News, the first two comment are "It's old news" and "They don't do too much". Even here public perception on surveillance is changing.

Yes and no. It's atrocious, but what can you do besides not going there, trying to persuade Trump et al. to conduct a much different foreign policy, use a burner phone, all of the above?

And all of these have been already said. Today/yesterday in quite a few submissions and their comments.

  It's atrocious, but what can you do besides
  [...] trying to persuade Trump et al. [...]
  all of these have been already said.

American politics would look very different if people who were for/against abortion, or for/against gun control, or for/against tax cuts were so quick to abandon their positions when they suffered a setback.

Burner phone it is for China travels.

you gotta love the openess of android. such delightful side-loading is not possible on ios. oh and sandboxing makes everything so hard.

What about iPhones though?

Apple iphone has signature check on packages being installed

I guess Apple refused to sign that

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