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Comment by beloch | Hacker News Reader

I'd be curious to know if Huawei phones and network devices are currently being used for surveillance in Hong Kong.

Yes? Surveillance is common worldwide and Huawei is a popular brand in the region.

I'm guessing you're curious if the Chinese government is using some hidden backdoor in Huawei products to spy on Hong Kong residents who would otherwise be acting privately.

Probably. Snowden showed that every phone in the USA is used for surveillance by the NSA. I don't have any reason to expect China to be any different.

Exactly. Yet I found NSA surveillance INFINITELY less dangerous than China's.

A large part of that is the oversight panel that is in charge of looking at the program has publicly acknowledged that the programs are not finding anything. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/nsa-program-stopped-no-te...

As a US citizen maybe. But you know a lot of countries all over the world have more suffered under the US influence than that of China?

It's safest to assume all your consumer tech is being used by at least 1 major government to surveil you.

For surveillance in the open very probably, e.g. the UK bought Huawei equipment for that purpose https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_blocking_in_the_United_Kin...

Backdoors in the phones seems highly unlikely. Considering that the government can simply listen in at the cell towers and data centers there is no reason to risk the reputation and thus influence and reach of a Chinese company like that.

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