Hacker News Reader

Comment by missosoup | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, because a phone imaged by an entity controlled by the CCP is better than a phone without Google or Apple.

I'm no supporter of either Apple or Goog, but applauding a mass spyware device from the CCP would be satire a couple years ago.

It's not like they have a track record of subverting phones for targeted genocide or anything[1]

[1] https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2019/09/massive_iphon...

View on HN

Dude the US spied on the undersea fiber to steal contract from companies in my (democratic) country.

Say what you want about the chinese, but they're not the only ones playing that game.

> but they're not the only ones playing that game.

The original comment is literally comparing Huawei favouably to US counterparts, though

Not related? Tapping an undersea cable doesn't compromise encrypted traffic.

Unless it looks like the NSA gets Apple and Google to put in back-doors, the products are still significantly safer than Huawei which is just an arm of the government.

All phones are mass spyware devices. Do you want someone who has control over your life, the ability to imprison you, or physically come to your house to know everything about you...

Or someone who is kept completely away from you by those sworn to protect you?

Google and Apple and etc are controlled by the American government. The one who can actually do something to you.

The CCP can't do anything to me. Try getting to me. The USA has power over me. The CCP has zero power in my life.

So yes, I would prefer my spyware to be sending my info to someone with zero capability to put it to use.

"Yeah, because a phone imaged by an entity controlled by the CCP is better than a phone without Google or Apple."

A phone without all of them would be the best deal but, as an European, I'm 100% sure that assuming all three of them are spying on people using their phones, currently the Chinese are the least likely to give any data about me to my government.

Do you have any evidence of that?

https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/31/china-google-iphone-uyghur...

https://www.volexity.com/blog/2019/09/02/digital-crackdown-l...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/27/the-world-know...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2019/09/06/apple-h...

So, no, then? There's nothing in any of these links to support the claim that there is "CCP spyware" on the phones.

In fact at least two of your articles are about them putting spyware on iPhones, which undercuts your point further.

So does any of that have to do with Huawei? Or is it just an OS that Huawei happens to use was included in an indiscriminate attack?

I remember talks here on HN about Chinese made IOT devices phoning home to servers in China. There have also been discussion on HN about Huawei's telecom equipment being backdoored or simply rigged to siphon information back to china.

If this were the case, why do the vast majority of mobile phone networks around the world continue to use and even buy more from Huawei?

Naiveté and a bit of corruption and/or blackmail. More people need to watch this recent interview with a former CCP insider on the Chinese threat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cwXifDaCjE&t=3s.

Lots of people talking about Huawei backdoors, none providing credible evidence of them actually existing. They have their share of security vulnerabilities but no worse than competitors such as Cisco[1].

Random Chinese made IOT devices phoning home to servers in China is definitely a thing, but has nothing to do with Huawei.

[1] https://www.techrepublic.com/article/evidence-of-backdoors-i...

What kind of data is being sent?

Devices that need to legitimately phone home for something tend to do so by requesting servers within or close to the country they were developed in.

Imagine people getting riled up at the thought of Apple phoning home to a US-based NTP server..

I also feel amused that huawei smart phone are quite popular, and you are only able to find claims from mainstream media outlets instead of users with Huawei phone, which have been proven to lack the ability to verify tech details...

> which have been proven to lack the ability to verify tech details

Sorry are you saying that Huawei users are thick or something?

(If you have evidence of Huawei phones having software preinstalled that uploads a user's whatsapp conversations and whatnot to some IP then be my guest! But I don't think you do...)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com