We Chat, They Watch
citizenlab.ca
citizenlab.ca
> Upon analysis, files deemed politically sensitive are used to invisibly train and build up WeChat’s Chinese political censorship system.
Also I think it's super cool how they did the research.
Every Chinese site I've ever used requires phone number or ID verification. Most of them only allow Chinese-registered phones, meaning it's absolutely impossible to communicate with Chinese people from the outside world, aside from a very small number of carefully vetted services like WeChat.
But I fear the rest of the world looked at China and thought, "Wow, we should've done that a long time ago!" Accounts I registered about a decade ago now demand I confirm an email and sometimes a phone number. Email accounts I've had half my life lock me out unless I link it to my phone number and prove my identity. Some services ask for a fucking ID card scan, which prompts me to just drop the service. Some things I've used in the past only accept US phone area codes, which having left the US, means those services are now completely inaccessible to me.
China says it's for state security. They're at least kind of honest that their intention is to keep the population in check and watch their every movement. The rest of the world says it's for personal security. Then another day passes and another heap of phone numbers, names, SSNs, and addresses leak and another identity is stolen.
I've never heard it phrased this way before, dangerous indeed.
That doesn't enter the equation for what I would imagine is 99.99% of users.
It's the erosion of privacy in the name of a) "Safety"
and
b) convenience
The average person of the world has shown that they will trade virtually anything for the perception of convenience, or "safety".
Look at the most recent gun ban in Canada for an obvious example; An act riddled with nonsense, already acknowledged to be completely ineffective at preventing gun crimes, pushed through by a minority government during a pandemic to the applause of a large part of the populace there in exchange for the false perception of "safety".
The most frightening thing is just how effective it is.
The next bill can ban more, fix the bugs, etc, but the flag has been planted: there's no room for those weapons in Canada.
A huge number of people have wanted to ban weapons like these since Ecole Polytechnique [1] -- and probably much further back. We've been lucky to have few enough such mass murders to remember many by name, and it also makes them horrifying enough that we're not going to sit back and pray the crime away. The Liberal Party (currently in power) ran on banning these weapons. Then they banned the weapons. They did the job they were elected to do.
I don't think that's a good example tbh.
[edit] Let's be super clear when you say "pushed through by a minority government during a pandemic" -- you're seeming to imply that the minority is somehow strong-arming the majority. That's the exact opposite of how that works in the Canadian parliamentary democratic system. A minority government is in a very weak position and can be removed at any time. If this was at all controversial the next confidence motion would be swiftly defeated and the government would fall. A minority government wouldn't do something like this without absolute confidence.
Unlike a majority government a minority government must rule by consensus or face immediate removal. I think they normally don’t even make it past the 3 year mark.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/École_Polytechnique_massacre
Therefore, the ban is ineffective in serving its mandate, punishes law abiding, statistically harmless individuals needlessly and saddles the taxpayer, of which only 60% of households in Canada are, with yet more debt for nothing.
It has also set a very dangerous precedent in Canada as to how "unpopular" rights, not explicitly in the Charter, can be stripped by the pen stroke of a populist.
But HN, and this topic in particular, is not the place for this discussion. Good luck to you when the political pendulum swings.
To be fair, if it's not in the charter, it's not a right. You are of course correct re the pendulum and unpopular privileges.
1. > I don't need perfect to be the enemy of good. There's no reason to possess these weapons any more than there's a reason to possess nuclear warheads
Slipper slope don’t you say? Quite a lot of guns on that list were not even available in Canada or would be available. Furthermore, we have some of the strictest gun laws around.
What you said above to me sounds like we also need to just ban McDonalds and others from Canada too - considering obesity kills more Canadians than gun deaths no?
2. > The next bill can ban more, fix the bugs, etc, but the flag has been planted: there's no room for those weapons in Canada.
Have you by chance gone throw the process of getting a PAL? Our issue is not responsible gun owners - it’s the access to illegal guns coming from south of the border and this bill did absolutely nothing to stop it. It was political theater at the end of which a minority of citizens were affected (and they probably didn’t even vote in for the Libs anyways)
> it also makes them horrifying enough that we're not going to sit back and pray the crime away
By not dealing with the influx of guns from the south - we are literally doing JUST that further more at the cost of law abiding gun owners too.
And of course, you can eat McDonalds safely in moderation without developing obesity, but you can't really get shot safely or in moderation without developing death.
Re 2: I have not tried to get a PAL, though I do understand it to be quite an arduous process.
Re 3: Indeed more should be done to keep weapons on the US side, however I don't think there's any reason we can't do both things at the same time.
> but you can't really get shot safely or in moderation without developing death.
I think 50 Cent offers a counterpoint.
Guns in general (both in the US and CA) have more self harm / accidental deaths to the owner than to others - If we wanted to reduce deaths by firearms, this is the number to watch out for. Which is why I brought it up. Far more people die due to drunk driving than firearm related deaths.
What I’m saying is that this issue has an significant amount of focus for an insignificant amount of return in Canada. (Again I’m referring to legal firearms).
2. I brought up PAL because just like we need a license to drive a car safely and the consequences of not having one and driving a car are serious, the same applies to guns as well.
3. > Indeed more should be done to keep weapons on the US side, however I don't think there's any reason we can't do both things at the same time.
I agree that we can do both at the same time - I don’t see anything being done about it though. I pointed (and feel) that this is why it makes this entire bill pointless.
I live in Toronto and have family in Scarborough - both places where firearm related deaths and crimes have kept going up YoY. (One of the people who died in the Nova Scotia’s shooting was a part of my interns family - a family that does have firearms btw - and yet they are against the bill). That said, I’ve yet to hear of crimes committed by PAL holders. This law has done nothing to keep us safe (or even relatively safer) while taking away a lot more.
Further, as a taxpayer - the buyback is going to cost quite a bit while our deficit is through the roof due to COVID. And I’d rather we not spend money for show when it is much needed elsewhere.
If you extrapolate what's been happening in China regarding the internet to electronics in general and the rest of the world, the logical extreme is total surveillance, internet censorship, and eventually loss of direct control over the devices that you own. (Only a terrorist or dissident would want to install their own OS!) (Sideloading? What's wrong with the app store?) (Who needs admin anyway?) (Tor? Isn't that the network run by all the sexual predators?)
Only a cultural norm of protecting all possible personal rights at nearly any cost, even those you don't personally value or agree with, is likely to successfully stand against such an outcome. The reason is that any particular person isn't likely to make use of (or even feel strongly about) most of the rights and privileges available to them. Put another way, it's your job to protect your neighbor's rights and your neighbor's job to protect yours.
I've yet to see any valid reasons to possess drugs or alcohol. With guns, there is at least the justification of self defense.
>and pray the crime away.
Is that not what is being done with all crimes (drunk driving, but also many assaults) associated with alcohol?
There are two ways government can work. You can either have it where you have to justify to the government why you should have something, or you can have it where the government can justify why you should not have something. The former is far worse. The latter only works if the logic used is consistent, else it is really the former in disguise.
People always seem to want the former when it comes to guns, but the latter when it comes to things they personally like which have been associated with government restrictions. Why is the double standard held so openly?
For recreation, therapy, socialization, experimentation, mysticism, or just because it's my own damn body.
> With guns, there is at least the justification of self defense.
That would be fine if gun violence wasn't a thing.
How many fist fights, rapes, harassment, spouse and child beatings, car crashes, on the job accidents, chronic illness, and early deaths must society be forced to accept just so people with disposable income can enjoy a nice red wine with their meal?
Seems pretty selfish.
Are they correct or are they missing something core enough to the issue that makes poor implementation and almost assured outcome?
And for bans in general, there are many bans that went poorly yet people still generally approve of a ban, even when it has unintended costs, as long as they have a strong dislike of the item being banned.
For example, CSA image bans have a history of being used to restrict freedom (such as the recent attack on encryption) and great personal cost to individuals (any kids who get caught up in laws that didn't make exceptions for kids committing the criminal acts), and they can largely be judged as a failure (from police and news reports of how the problem continues to grow worse). Yet such laws have extremely widespread support, more than most any other law I can think of, to the extent where even reasonable rollbacks of the existing to attempt to fix some of the current problems can kill a political career.
Reasoning that equally applies to guns.
>That would be fine if gun violence wasn't a thing.
Drug violence is also a thing.
So in conclusion, it appears there is a double standard being applied here. I suggest getting to the root of that, as otherwise all arguments can easily be dismissed as coming from someone who is applying a double standard (which is a version of special pleasing, a logical fallacy, and thus invalidates any logical basis for their views).
A service I built+run started getting overrun with bot users. The signup CAPTCHA didn’t help because they’d sign-up for accounts using humans - then after that’s done they’d copy their access tokens to the bot users. We couldn’t use a CAPTCHA for every operation on the platform.
But by requiring a real phone number that we verify (by placing a TTS phone call - not an SMS - as processing received TTS calls is much harder for the bot makers to automate) - but also looking-up the phone number’s SS7 info to prevent people from using Skype, Google Voice, and Twilio users - all commonly used by bot operators.
(Legitimate users that want an account but can’t make it past our bot screen can still contact us directly to be set-up - and to-date no-one has done this or complained about the (admittantly user-hostile) verification process.
It's highly likely that prospective users just leave when encountering your restrictions and having their phone numbers rejected.
Just an anecdote, but I rarely give out my non-Google Voice number on sign-up forms. I don’t want my mobile in a database to be spammed.
If a phone number is required on sign-up, and my Google Voice doesn’t work, I usually pass. Whether for personal or commercial use.
Does that really work? I'd like a service like that for my personal phone.
I think that _is_ being very charitable. Way too much in fact.
The thing with Chinese censorship is that people living under it either don't care about it or are fully aware of it. It's very much in the open.
On the other hand, Facebook/Instagram, Microsoft, Google, etc all start requiring your phone number for verification or some other valid reason, reeling and locking you in, and before you know it not only one entity but any entity willing to pay for your data has access to it.
We should of course be outraged at both approaches.
Also, is removing fake news/propaganda not censorship solely because it's not the government doing it? Because if that's the case, Facebook and Google only really started removing fake news _because_ governments started to apply pressure on them.
Who is that being charitable to? The Chinese government also censors to stymie deliberate propaganda; it's just that in their case we typical HN posters happen to be on the side the propaganda that is being censored is for, whereas in our case we are on an opposing one.
I'm not convinced by the usual counterargument that "China blocks true information whereas we block fake news". There doesn't to seem to be anything qualitatively different between a cartoon of Liu Xiaobo ascending to heaven from a Chinese prison and most of the examples on https://www.cbsnews.com/media/russian-ads-on-facebook-a-gall... (which I assume is meant to be a sample of deliberate propaganda that we want FB to block); both tend to contain some kernel of factual statements that are probably not contentious (you can probably get official documentation that Liu was jailed and died in China, too), but the point is not in this content but in an exhortation that the reader should feel about them in a particular way and translate this feeling into support for a particular political movement.
(I spent a good few minutes trying to come up with a politer response than the following. I failed.)
Bullshit.
I keep seeing this “free speech” slippery-slope claim. It’s simply not true. I don’t know of a single mainstream or even semi-mainstream us or eu-based site that demands PII to stock “hate speech”. They ask for two main reasons:
1. Money. A confirmed “real” user is worth more.
2. Anti-abuse/spam. The sites are tired of dealing with bots.
Frankly, this happens a lot in the West these days, too. Take OKCupid, for instance. And the third-party doctrine.
Indeed. I am very appreciative to wechat that I can keep in touch with my family and friends and enjoy the technology. By valuing my freedom and the freedom of my Chinese contacts, I do not communicate sensitive materials on wechat. The freedom is only ensured within boundary so know thy boundaries. I have plenty of channels to enjoy my western freedom. Whether we should impose our western freedom upon "Chinese freedom"? That is a good question. Fortunately that is not a question I need to resolve.
It is illuminating that those who try to exercise their western freedom on the Chinese domain is helping China to the opposite of their goals. If you have that honorable goal, do your due diligence of educating yourself with the right technology.
Most of the profitable industries in China are state-owned where most of their staff are part of or have some connections with communist party. It is not easy for the unprivileged people to make a living in China. These unprivileged people have a high likelihood to become scammers. Therefore, ID verification is a way to prevent scammers.
Despite of the security reason, there is not way to find out how companies handle personal data. Chinese legal system has no respect to personal data.
Additionally, Chinese education system encourages obedience and penalises people who distrust/challenge the authority. Simply because the authority can easily find another to replace you given the fact that there are 1.3 billion Chinese people. Therefore, people live in China have no choice but to accept whatever is given by the authority.
You could maybe try registering your own server, but do you want to have the possibility of questionable messages being saved on a server that you own when dealing with Chinese authorities? Any "oops, sorry" goes out the window when they think you're actively dodging filtering to that extent.
If you're inside China and care about your safety, you would think twice about sending "questionable" messages even on the most secure channel because you're still physically vulnerable to rubber hose cryptanalysis.
If anybody messages you or your family/friends receives something suspicious something and the Party suspects you're intentionally avoiding their watchful eye with a custom mail server, I think you might end up worse off. All it takes is one goofball finding a vulnerability in your system and dropping a joke image or bit of text to royally screw you.
Furthermore, while it's nice in theory to deploy your own servers and get all of your friends and family to exclusively chat through your homemade application, it's very unlikely. WeChat is basically an OS all its own these days. It's a social network, chat app, payment app, shop, and more. People are incredibly reluctant to give up convenience unless they're very motivated and technologically inclined. And for people inside of China, getting a VPN or non-Chinese messenger is quite difficult thanks to locked down app stores and most people communicating only through phones.
I don't use Facebook and won't budge on that issue. My parents won't use anything that's not Facebook. If they won't take 10 seconds to register for anything else, then they certainly won't want to deal with anything I'd try to scrap together. The end result is that I make a VOIP call to their phone about once a month and they ask me to just give up and use Facebook at some point. It's probably a similar situation with most people wanting to leave XYZ terrible messenger.
> most major domains outside of China are blocked
I don't think this is true; GFW works in a disallow-list fashion and domains have to be explicitly blocked (which is why people do keyword attacks[0]).
But I believe that GitHub is not blocked yet just because it is not "major" enough because it is used almost exclusively only by programmers.
If non-programmers started to use it more, I believe it will get banned.
Except VPNs are illegal in china. If a site is banned in china. Using a VPN to circumvent the law is breaking the law.
Email is not secure.
So what if email is insecure, neither is Wechat. And encrypted email is still a thing.
There is a big difference between countries with independent judicial systems, and China where judges are below the local party secretary.
Chinese laws are decoration. What actually counts is what the party decides.
Just because there isn't "the party" making decisions in the US doesn't mean that there isn't a lot of flexibility in when and how the law is applied. It just gets left up to the local sheriff or prosecutors.
But that doesn't mean that the legal system in the facist dicatorship of China is comparable in any way to a proper democratic judiciary.
Chinas system is an unconstitutional state by definition.
It's also worth noting that a cellular connection that is roaming is not generally subject to the restrictions the firewall imposes.
The government opening up businesses to connect to services such as facebook or twitter to promote china businesses and so on is just the government giving permissions.
But for the every-day citizen, the use of a VPN is technically illegal as it circumvents the law.
people downvoting you are morons downvoting for technicality, while you are right
On big CCP reunions (next one at the end of may), they somehow block most of the VPN for several days, so they have the capacity to do it. But it never last so long, I feel they use it a bit like a pressure cooker, to release pressure when people are getting upset.
For me it is not a big deal - for most Chinese it is not a big deal. Somehow most people who never touched Wechat it seems to be a big deal.
Having lived in Singapore, Hong Kong (current) and China, I can tell you that in Singapore's case, folks are aware that they live under a semi-dictatorship, that their government controls all media (radio, tv, everything is state-owned). But they always say "but I guess the government is doing a good job".
One has nothing to do with the other. The government can do a good job without the dictatorship, but it's the way folks rationalize their helplessness, their sense of lack of control over their fate.
This is also why we in Hong Kong ARE fighting against these kind of controls, probably in vein, but I for one do NOT want to resign in rationalizing for the government's over-control without a fight.
Just out of curiosity, what times are you referring to, when china became dystopian?
Well, have you ever heard of the tiananmen place?
Or ... the "cultural revolution" from Mao himself?
Or the cleansing events after the revolution?
Or, ... before the red revolution, years of bloody civil war, with ruthless warlords taxing even dying of their underlings, or general things in old china like child towers outside of town, where the unwanted babys were thrown to die, so their souls did not haunt the houses of the living?
In other words, you have been sleeping before(or did not bother with china at all), if you only consider the current events the strong ones, that qualify for dystopia.
As far as I can tell they are the most successful government at least in modern history in terms of increasing living standards (huge GDP growth and even things like being the only country to successfully almost eradicate SARS-CoV-2), so it seems they would keep power even in a fully functioning democracy with no censorship since they are so good.
Then maybe the censorship is actually integral to their success as it reduces the time wasted on going in directions different from the government's one and possibly boosts morale and happiness?
Also culturally and from a human rights perspective Taiwan blows the chicoms out of the water.
Taiwan shows what China could have been if they would not have been taken hostage by the communist chinazis.
But anyone coming from the Western world, and agreeing with what their government is doing in terms of censorship, that I can't understand.
India will eventually show them eventually up as having an inferior political model but on balance I can see how an evidence-based person would conclude that China's government is working well, on the basis that it presided over the fastest leap forward in living standards in human history. I'd still rather live in Europe, India or America though.
I doubt it. If anything India's system is less effective, equally or more corrupt, and downright barbarous in some social aspects (e.g. castes). Plus the rampant inequality which is much worse than China.
So, on the long term, I am optimistic that India will catch up. Especially now that the USA is moving away from China as "work bench".
I hope we here in Europe will follow that policy, too. It just makes much more sense to support an emerging democracy than to support a facist regime.
Though, I mean, part of that difference is that the rest of the world feels uncomfortable with sudden shifts like India's, and so usually gets together to trade-sanction the problem away so that things will go back to the way they were (which might cause the country to lash out, at which point it becomes a World War); while, on the other hand, the international community is so used to "the way things are" with countries like China, that they don't do anything.
Singapore disagrees.
They simply bankrupt the opposition through lawsuits and void their candidacy. That is not a functioning democracy.
See, I have the better argument!
Indeed, in the 50’s and 60’s it seemed plausible that the economies of North Korea, Cuba, Russia, the DDR were all going to surpass their Western counterparts before long. The wheels started to come off in the 70’s and by the 90’s it was all over for them.
Do you not realise just how large the Communist world was back then? The USSR alone was vast. Now China and North Korea are all that’s left.
So it's not the death camps then? Hmmmm... I must say that I remain totally skeptical as to your assertion.
I am indeed. But of course your use of the term "threat" might imply to some readers that it is not a reality for those poor souls... I would substitute "hellish reality".
WeChat is owned by the 'private company' Tencent. And most here think it's perfectly valid when Facebook or Google censor things they don't like. I'm sure you think that Google is a real private company, while Tencent is not. But the difference isn't really all that valid anymore; the US government has backdoors and special access to our tech behemoths, just like the Chinese do for their tech companies.
Maybe it's not such a good idea to cheer for Google, Facebook, and the other companies when they censor whatever it is you currently dislike politically. Do you naively believe they'll not someday censor you, too?
Hm... Why is it tragic? Simply rephrase it: most Americans do not even realize there is censorship". Is it tragic? If yes then for whom? Probably not for them but rather for external observers.
That's an objective assessment. It is tragic for those people, whether anyone else cares.
Yes, there is some of this in the U.S. due to chilling effects from mass surveillance. I find it abhorrent. However, actively filtering and blocking messages is even worse.
The University of Wuhan and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, have worked collaboratively on research on a SARS like novel coronavirus found in Chinese Horseshoe bats back in 2015 [1].
The research, as noted on the bottom of the report, was funded by grants from National Institute of Health (under Anthony Fauci's leadership), US AID Emerging Pandemic Threats program and other funding sources, including many US based researchers.
It's very likely that it originated naturally from a bat or other animal and made it's way into the wet market. But the government denying denying early on, the doctor blowing the whistle early on that is now dead, and the shut down of research coming out of China into the origins means that information about the virus can never be taken one hundred percent seriously.
Trump and his administration lie constantly about his response, but there are journalists and people he has fired (as opposed to have killed, disappeared, thrown out.a window, etc) that can put together evidence about what is going on with the virus and other issues in the US.
I absolutely have no faith in the Chinese government ever letting any information out that one of their labs was the cause of the globe pandemic if they were.
Sure, because on most Western messaging platforms these days losing a message is pretty rare. It’s not a problem on WhatsApp for example. It’s rarely a problem even with SMS. So either the technology is really shoddy or messages are being blocked, which explanation would you prefer?
"We didn't censor, people jusy don't care".
Edit: I "felt" like ZOOM is 100% USA company. When I read (here) that the bulk is in China and USA has the shell/legal entity the above was my first thought. When I read some more that everything is routed via China and that their crypto is not actual crypto, I became certain that the Chinese Big Brother was doing that. I am not a conspiracy guy. I just see what China likes to do to its own people and now the out a camera in everyone's faces, "for free".
it's so sad all the other alternatives, facebook/Line/Telegram/etc are still lagging behind Wechat as a chatting tool, if there is one equally good, overseas wechat user might switch.
Kind of outrageous to criticize WeChat and leave out Facebook, when it clearly wants to join the party. I realize Facebook doesn't implement the same degree of censorship as WeChat, but to be fair, I live in Japan, and even for me the joebiden.info is censored.
The concerning thing is the site isn't spam and offers a political view with photos/videos of real moments that may reflect poorly on joe .
To censor that is crossing the line into censoring valid political speech.
That's certainly not a universally agreed upon perspective. Just because you're a private company doesn't mean you can do anything you want (eg. discrimination), hence the existence of regulations.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/02/facebook-...
Facebook's handling of filtered out messages is honestly not an improvement over WeChat worth celebrating.
Whether the company is private or not is immaterial. What matters is its scale, and how much you can actually avoid it.
Facebook is not easily avoided. I personally went under significant social pressure to get an account and actually use it. Getting out had a measurable cost (not being aware of events that mattered to me). That's not too bad, but even then I'm cheating: my SO has an account, and I regularly profit from that.
Same for YouTube: they have a near monopoly on most western audiences. If they block something, that's near censorship. Next to it, most alternatives might as well not exist at all.
Why does this not apply to other situations such as who I hire?
Also, is not Facebook used by parts of the US government? If Facebook prevents me from sending that link to any government representative then does that not constitute the government (by choosing to use Facebook as a communication channel) censoring my speech? It would be similar to the case of Trump blocking individuals on Twitter. Imagine if government offices swapped to some religious based chat forum as their official means of communication where messages from all people not of a certain religion (as determined by the sight) are filtered.
The problems arise when the censorship is compelled by third parties who are using it for their own benefit, rather than the benefit of others.
> Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
This is the first I've heard about this. Had a look at the site and the content loaded doesn't seem to be malicious (technically), just content on some questionable areas about Biden.
What's going on here?
At the bottom it claims: "It is not paid for by any candidate, committee, organization, or PAC." While that may be technically true (it would be hard to verify), it's certainly misleading. I'm assuming because of that claim it runs afoul of FB's community standards.
And, is Fb now a judge in the US who should decide these things?
I don't think it's good to trying to justify what Fb is doing.
Regardless of the answer to that question and the validity of the information on the site, the site looks like expert craft in sketchy campaigning. It isn't being very honest about what it is and it is not a good faith attempt at informing voters, all under the direction of effectively the Trump campaign. I think FB should be allowed to block crap like this.
edit: and to be clear this opinion applies for the reverse political ideologies as well. I wouldn't want to see e.g. Apple/Android blocking stuff in text messages, but I don't have a problem with FB/Twitter/Reddit doing it because that's where problematic discourse festers, by design.
Regardless, I don't understand how you can definitely say it's true, there's no way you can know that. More likely than not, this person is being compensated in at least some way indirectly.
As to what Facebook is doing, this is designed to deceptively mislead voters, not just on content, but on source. We're going to have to agree to disagree here.
https://twitter.com/jernejv/status/671620692924846080?s=19
It's still censorship.
So to me it's in the grey area bordering on black, but I'm also not a fan of this type of campaigning (playing on the man).The fact that they try to present it as an actual Biden website is also questionable.
Are we really at the point where we can defend censorship of a website that doesn't have any illegal content, no links to illegal content, and the purpose of which is not to do anything illegal, but whose only purpose make ones political opinions known.
On Facebook messenger, one of the biggest messaging apps in the world. This is honestly disgusting, and I think they are going to face backlash for it.
Did they say anything about legality? Facebook is free to do what it wants and the public is free to criticize it.
Legality isn't a magic shield against criticism.
yes
It has the full, unedited video segment, and you can't even send that site in a direct message to a facebook friend. You're making a motte and bailey to try to defend one of the largest companies on earth directly interfering in what I can say to a single other person. Maintaining a community is one thing. This is quite another.
My guess is you are a Monarchist then?
They own stakes in many american media companies and movie production houses. They use this influence to also change our Media and push pro-Chinese propaganda to the American public.
Or are we using propaganda and opinions interchangeably here
It's not a matter of "separated from opinion", but rather the cutting of certain scenes or modification of certain lines of dialog. They also effectively engage in various forms of product placement on a more nationalistic level.
and anyway in recent years they tried to promote China in movies as cooperating nation helping world
Here's a whole article on it: https://www.cnet.com/features/marvel-is-censoring-films-for-...
The whole point of the 1984 scenario was that people couldn't talk about the preceding period and no evidence supporting its existence could be found.
Let's suppose that there are five tiers on the spectrum of "good" to "1984": Acknowledge the history; Omit it; Contradict it, Erase it, Punish dissenters.
Prior to 2016 most US politicians never went past Omit.
Bush 2.0 did a good job of making the media toe the line by shutting out any dissenters. This was the beginning of the neo-con manipulation game.
I posit they use WeChat more than just to censor/spy in wechat, but rather more as an one of a set of apps that can be used to side-channel leak data about the phone/user. (Israel is also the other giant player in this arena). I don't understand any tech-savy privacy conscious person being ok with it, other than being one of those who has completely given up on privacy.
There is a reason the military banned tiktok, for example. (and it's not just because I've never seen a user on tiktok not look like total base-dumbass)
Mind elaborating on this?
[0] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/jailed...
[1] http://www.phayul.com/2020/03/22/42960/
[2] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2020/04/25/tech...
What's the use case?
I'm assuming you mean of not-Chinese origin, basically expats. Yes?
Are there no other options? Are no non-Chinese messengers allowed in China?
You learn to live inside the Chinese internet. Video sharing sites in China have ripped most everything off of YouTube anyways, and there is less enforcement of copyrights.
Outside China, it is the most reliable means of communication to people without access to unrestricted internet. This has become even more difficult within the past year with the blocking of Shadowsocks proxies. You are unlikely to have friends with the ability or knowledge to install v2ray+vmess+websocket+tls for a reliable, unrestricted connection.
Your next best option is Facetime/iMessage, in my experience.
I'll use it to evict stuff from my head so I can concentrate on other things (a "oh yeah I'm running low on tomatoes" thought results in a message for me to go back to later).
Since the UI is in the style of a messaging program then it's really low friction to enter stuff, as opposed to a dedicated note taking application. It's UI is also so clean and of a design not seen anymore.
Its QR code scanner is really good as well.
It should be noted that I'm also using it to message other people on the platform, but half the time I switch to the application I'm not using it to communicate with other people.
Someone may criticize sending so much data to "scary China" but I'm aware of what data I send through the platforms that I use. You wouldn't send your company's private information to a random server, and there's no reason why any other non company sponsored platform should be trusted.
I'm not into discussing controversial topics so the most scandalous message I've ever sent probably revolved around defending an unpopular bubble tea shop. I have alternative contact means so it's not like I'm being restricted in what I talk about. There's a proper time and place for everything. (and in the west there's memes about landing on a list for viewing an edgy meme or source).
I'm not setting up a second account just to have something to send it to. Additionally the messages won't be available on my computer.
In places where I have almost no signal, a WeChat call will still sound good.
Why are Americans using WeChat I'm not sure.
Please encourage your tech-savvy friends to use safer applications, like Signal for messaging - not WhatsApp; and FOSS alternatives to Zoom, e.g.:
https://fosspost.org/alternative-software/end-users/zoom-alt...
no less importantly - try to ween them off of GMail, Yahoo Mail, Outlook365 or Apple mail.
Open source software makes it easy to sidestep these kinds of issues.
Cc: spy_on_me@nsa.gov
on all your emails. Actually, that's not good enough, since your correspondents need to have that too; plus, Apple probably monitors your interactions with the webmail interface too and that can be scrutinized to learn more about you.
Would like to see a similar analysis on Signal.
I don't like how signal requires phone number.
It seems to me that coloring all apps the same regardless means that all apps may as well just do exactly as you describe...
Anyone who doesn't isn't thought of as any better...
Presumably, doing the right thing (TM) becomes their USP?
Not until proven innocent, no. We need hardware and software we can inspect, that's not an unattainable goal.
It may seem far away, but any other direction is even worse... so I'd rather head towards a goal that is far away than into a wilderness that is just as far away, but boring and empty at best, terrible at worst.
It seems like the net effect would be to just provide cover for all actual offenders making them equal with everyone.
A company proposing a means of communication that would subtly or not so subtly twist the communications towards authoritarianism should not stand. Why would Some Country let Tencent silently block targeted messages between two of its citizens?
Blocking WeChat altogether of course warrants discussion because some people need to contact family and friends in China. But the discussion should happen if more and more non-Chinese start using WhatsApp, if anything to protect non-Chinese citizens from trouble the next time they visit China.
Also if you actually read you’ll find that your point in the second paragraph not true. The filtering only happens with China based accounts whereas surveillance are reportedly global.
I'm wondering though if this is intentional or just "incompetence/laziness". WeChat itself seems self-interested in not bothering with content transmitted outside China, but perhaps it is just such a small amount of their user-base, that they never bothered setting up a "firewall".
People don't use WeChat to organise dissent against the government or for any kind of malicious or illegal activity. The intention is for well meaning folk to communicate and do business online.
Political dissent, including protests, demonstrations, boycotts, sit-ins, and marches, have contributed to the advancement of society on many occasions.
https://books.google.com/books?id=0yvPaXt3lyoC
The dissenters who galvanized these reforms were certainly well-meaning.
You can be a well meaning normal person and still expect to receive information about what your country is doing wrong.
Applying this as the China standard and saying its norm is being complicit.
The entire difference is the CCP is using this information to fuel its propaganda that it uses to suppress its people's freedom.
Hong Kong seems to want to keep their freedom and does not accept China as the normal.
In the western world you can be critical of your government all you want and the norm is that nothing is censored.
I mean, even Snowden was allowed to publish his book, even though he didn't get to keep the proceeds.
Do you think the CCP would have allowed that at all?
Freedom dies when it's not protected.
Every administration around the world fighting for loosening e2e secured messaging protocols is basically envious of China!
This is perhaps the least surprising discovery I've heard this entire year.
I wonder if all this is applicable to Taiwanese companies as well or not.
And why ISPs don't block such obvious widely spread spyware?
If your store doesn't have it, people will use another store. And if your phone can't use that store, people will use another phone because that one is useless to them.
We should discuss how people can get better choices than Wechat. But in the end it will involve political solutions. Not just technical ones.
for business everyone is using VPN or email, do you really think people will be isntalling Chinese spyware to their phones to talk to their business partners in China?
If there is none, please realize that a lot of companies use G Suite and pay for these services, which might allow Google to provide them for free to individuals. I don't know for sure that this is the case, but I have seen no evidence for your 'claim' either.
Do we have reason to believe iMessage and Whatsapp are more secure?
Clearly the only solution is to forage your own silicon for artisanal fabrication of your own chips.
https://www.archive.ece.cmu.edu/~ganger/712.fall02/papers/p7...
Though, my limited understanding of iMessage is that if you were to sniff the network traffic you could detect this.
This is not a secret, it's documented behavior. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303 And it's not theoretical, because Apple does decrypt iMessage communications in response to law enforcement requests: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud-exclusiv...
Edit:
> Messages in iCloud also uses end-to-end encryption. If you have iCloud Backup turned on, your backup includes a copy of the key protecting your Messages. This ensures you can recover your Messages if you lose access to iCloud Keychain and your trusted devices. When you turn off iCloud Backup, a new key is generated on your device to protect future messages and isn't stored by Apple.
So Messages in iCloud is end-to-end encrypted, but if you enable iCloud Backup (a different product/feature), then your backup will include the key used to encrypt it.
I changed phones a while ago. Lost hundreds of thousands of messages. Didn't inconvenience me in the least. Anything important is on less ephemeral services like email or backed up manually.
A subpoena is another form of security, at least as far as a free society is concerned.
Except that there is no way to prove this. There is no way to prove that it isn't also sending a copy from the client back to the server. Whatsapp could deploy individualized specific clients to target users, perhaps at the behest of governments. The only full answer is totally open-source software with users able to cryptographically verify that they are downloading and running the same software as everyone else.
Absolutism isn't helpful IMHO, there is no true security in this world only degrees of trust and risk. You can always go one step further in securing a product but the first step still matters.
I think there's real value in companies implementing e2e (and it's hard! it's super hard politically to get this done when the business sees little value for the effort and I know this because I've successfully fought to get e2e into a product).
The reality from my point of view is that it takes idealists inside to convince a commercial entity to lock themselves out of value (commercial surveillance) they could capture. I find a company's stance on e2e to be a valuable signal.
https://faq.whatsapp.com/en/general/26000050
Something is being watched. I imagine they are hashing images and comparing them to a database.
Thank you.
What you want belongs as an operating system or app distribution mechanism concern. A third party OS extension might make sense. Even that's a bit fraught if there is any kind of dynamic code execution (aka code that appears at runtime, say, a web view).
How can Facebook/WhatsApp do this on Android or iPhone?
The security qualities of iMessage and WhatsApp is known. It’s not of WeChat.
More secure than WeChat? ABSA-FREAKING-LUTELY. And do I trust Apple to remain secure? Yes.
I'm mostly putting this here because I've heard people talking about security guarantees without considering tweaks in the supply chain or binary deliveries. Even Signal could get breached with enough effort from Google to push new bits and bypass certificate validation. (Though practically that is not going to happen.)
WeChat has been proven to be a heavily monitored and censored network. Whatever security failings iMessage and WhatsApp have, they pale in comparison to what's in place for WeChat.
What's dangerous is convincing yourself that proprietary systems won't betray your trust.
I thought it was clear those words came from my mouth.
All the westerners I know in China don't send sensitive information through Wechat. It's just good to have a low trust stance by default.
You say the security failings of iMessage and WhatsApp pale in comparison to WeChat; I agree with parent comment and ask - in light of PRISM etc. - on what grounds can you say we should not be just as suspicious?
I also, separately, think that in aggregate Apple has incentives to make iMessage secure. While Tencent has incentives to share WeChat data with CCP.
These are among many reasons why the comparison was false equivalence. The world is not just black and white “secure vs not secure.”
What basis do you have for this certainty?
But your question is by nature setting up a false comparison. There is no observed censorship apparatus in place in the US. You can always pose "what if" scenarios about super classified efforts, but functionally there is no active system in place.
Compare this to the vastly-resourced, all-encompassing one operated openly and enthusiastically by the CCP.
Given societal norms I think there is a strong expectation that my iMessages will not be censored in the near future either.
This means there is little incentive for NSA to train and develop an actionable automatic censorship application.
Again, this is true even if they intercept, decode, analyze, commit physical action on the basis of the analysis, and store every one of my messages.
I suppose there is not really the same kind of overt deployed censorship in the US like there is in China. I do personally think that the NSA somehow gets most messages sent in the US, but I have no idea what they would do with it or if that hypothesis is reasonable.
Would I prefer that access be held by the US Government, which for all its faults is extremely engaged with and integrated into the global system, beholden to Law and a robust court system which enforces a strict set of checks and balances on its behavior, and is philosophically rooted in individual liberty?
Or would I prefer the CCP, which does not even recognize the concept of individual liberty, is beholden to no one but itself and its own desires, and ruthlessly upholds its iron and unquestioned (unquestionable, at least in China) will upon the entire nation with absolutely 0 oversight?
Yeah, gonna go with the US here.
Uhm yeah but countries do nothing when Russia annexes Crimea, what do you think they’d do if the US simply spies on them? Absolutely nothing. It’s literally happening right now and it’s public knowledge and “it’s just a matter of national security.” Case closed.
Now, is China any better? Of course not, and the CCP has countless policies which are far worse to their own people than the US. But the key question is -- do you live in or have any connection to China? If not, then I would go with the CCP surveillance because there is no obvious mechanism for such surveillance to harm you directly. On the other hand, if you live in a 5-EYES country (as I do), any data obtained from US surveillance can be used in parallel construction (or other not-entirely-legal methods). Hell, here in Australia our mass surveillance systems have been used to punish minor infringements such as littering.
Obviously I'd prefer not to be surveilled at all, but between the two I'd choose the one that has the smallest threat of direct impact on my life.
they can spy on your business dealings and potentially find material to blackmail you
If you think you're marginally more likely to be arrested and prosecuted for littering because of super secret iMessage collection... why not consider the marginal effects of turning a blind eye to (and contributing to the economic expansion of) an illiberal, anti-democratic power that, in your words, does "far worse to their own people than the US"?
They seem to already be comfortable collecting your data as they please and influencing various levels of your government. What harm could it do to enthusiastically profile yourself for them?
It's a bit silly to require every comment which critises the US to also have to include a disclaimer that "yes, I also think China/Russia/other-enemy-of-the-US is bad".
> They seem to already be comfortable [...] and influencing various levels of your government.
I'm really not sure what you're referring to. If you're talking about the Australian government, I'm not aware of any substantial evidence that the CCP has actually influenced our government. Our government is friendly with China and does many things against the interests of the public as a result, but there is far more evidence of just ordinary domestic corruption.
I will also point out that there is strong evidence that the US (in particular, the CIA) effectively helped facilitate a soft-coup in Australia in 1975 (in response to Menzies' threat to close Pine Gap because the US lied about what it was used for). Oh, and the CIA offered $24m of laundered money to the Opposition for that election in order to help them win -- if only there was a word to describe that...
So if we're going to point-score about foreign influence in the Australian government -- the US literally replaced our prime minister in a (to quote Victor Marchetti, a former CIA officer) "kind of Chile coup". But I'd love it if nobody interfered with other countries' democratically-elected governments.
The United States is not the leader in this process. It’s a kind of follower because the first government that publicly declared that China has to be contained was Australia’s government.
The government of Australia in 2008 had already issued a white paper clearly stating that if we do not contain China, if our allies don’t contain China, then even Australia will become a Chinese colony.
So the Australian government had already taken a clear position. We have a choice: we either contain China or we become a Chinese colony.
Then, in 2011, just immediately after the tsunami and earthquake, [Australian] Prime Minister Gifford came to Tokyo. She made a little trip up to Fukushima when she arrived, just to show she is not afraid, and then she gave a speech in Tokyo, saying very clearly that Australia and the United States, Japan, have to cooperate to hold back China.
At that time, the prime minister was Mr. Kan, and Mr. Ichiro Ozawa was a very influential politician. Ozawa believed in containment.
So, the Australian prime minister comes to Tokyo and tells the Japanese: “Get up. Deal with this issue. Face China.”"[1]
I haven't vetted any of this but FYI.
[1]http://japan-forward.com/asias-next-page-india-japan-must-sh...
Why did the citizens reward and vote in the party who pulled those election tricks.
Why would you blame the US but not bother to change the laws? This can happen again.
It's one of their constitutional rights. Their purpose is to act as a surrogate for the Head of State (currently Queen Elizabeth II) and the role was designed to mirror the process of the UK's Head of State -- the Queen picks her ministers and in theory doesn't need to choose the leader of the party with the largest number of seats.
Do I think it's a system that should be changed? Yes, but this is complicated by the need for a mechanism for double-dissolution (which cannot be automatic because it could then just be gamed to re-trigger elections).
> Why did the citizens reward and vote in the party who pulled those election tricks.
As is usual, propaganda. The laundered $24m wouldn't have been used to buy toilet paper.
> Why would you blame the US but not bother to change the laws? This can happen again.
Given that the US triggered and orchestrated the constitutional crisis in order to further their own foreign policy (which was confirmed by President Jimmy Carter to have been the case when he vowed that the US wouldn't do it again), I think it's entirely fair to blame the US.
In order to change the role of Governor-General you'd need a constitutional amendment. To say that it's effectively impossible to get a constitutional amendment passed in Australia is an understatement (only 8 amendments have been passed, out of 44 attempts in the past ~120 years -- and most of those were passed soon after Federation). One of those failed amendments was to switch Australia to a republic model which would've replaced the Head of State and Governor-General with a President -- but the overall set of rights given to the President would've been the same.
It should also be noted the inclusion of double-dissolution in our Constitution was somewhat controversial at the conventions during drafting, but was eventually agreed to be vital if the Senate was to have the powers it currently has. So we would need some mechanism to avoid deadlocks, and the lack of obvious alternative solutions to this problem results in most proposals just keeping the existing system but changing how the Head of State and Governor-General are elected.
Tell that to the forcibly disappeared political dissidents, or to the Uyghurs who are being "re-educated" as we speak.
And remember, even if you're not connected to China now, that can always change in the future.
My point is that if you have a connection to the US (as all 5-EYES and allied countries do), then today that has a more direct impact on your life than any theoretical future risk that the CCP will be able to have a direct impact over your life. The premise of this discussion is that you have to choose one or the other. I am well aware of the massive threat that is retroactive surveillance, which is why I would choose neither (obviously).
> Tell that to the forcibly disappeared political dissidents, or to the Uyghurs who are being "re-educated" as we speak.
Those are all people who have direct connections to China in some respect, and what has been done to them are all horrific human rights abuses. However, I don't see what that has to do with what I said.
The point I'm trying to make is that you're not taking into account the fact that your use of CCP-backed services implicitly contributes to human rights and surveillance abuses within China. Once you consider this, I think minimizing the use of these products and services is worth incurring the added "risk" of being surveilled by the Five Eyes.
> In 2014, former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden said in a public debate, “We kill people based on metadata.”
> According to multiple reports and leaks, death-by-metadata could be triggered, without even knowing the target’s name, if too many derogatory checks appear on their profile. “Armed military aged males” exhibiting suspicious behavior in the wrong place can become targets, as can someone “seen to be giving out orders.” Such mathematics-based assassinations have come to be known as “signature strikes.”
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/how-...
A implies B & C is not the same as asking whether B & C share the same qualities as A.
You actually created a strawman in order to say that your parent had a false equivalence.
It's not perfect but compared to the pretty much unlimited control the Chinese censors have over their companies it's a hell of a lot more trustworthy.
I am free to say vile things about political leaders (so long as I don’t flat out call for anyone’s harm) here in the west which is nice. I feel bad for my fellow nerds in mainland China that don’t have as much access to the same information and opportunities that a largely free internet affords. I hope that one day we will see a liberalizing of China in this regard.
Can anyone enlighten me?
We ought to block any know tools that a foreign government uses to spy on our citizens. They block everything of ours and anything that offers a different point of view.
That report is one of the reasons why Zoom has such a poor reputation for security. The other being Zoom is largely Made In China software, so subject to the requirements of China's totalitarian government: to bolster domestic industries by stealing technology and R&D from around the world (by infiltrating companies, communication networks, computer servers and end-user devices using any software and individuals it has influence over, including hackers from Ministry of State Security and People's Liberation Army).
This is achieved through direct legal requirements to co-operate with Ministry of State Security corporate espionage (via China's 2017 National Intelligence Law), and more broadly through the China's attempts to switch the allegiances of all ethnically Chinese people through the overseas political interference organization called the "United Front Work Department" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTXPxWtl8Zw), and also through the Thousand Talents Plan.
A governor/President cannot go and throw a bunch of journalists in jail. Even if he did, the courts would let them out again.
In a communist dictatorship, there is no power outside the executive.
Touche
To an extent this is true, except china has USA beat hands down still with the camps
The important thing to note is that America interned _American Citizens_ merely because they had Japanese ancestry. Just like America's habit of executing its own citizens (including juveniles) and torturing its own citizens, we can't have any faith in your country treating our own people well when it sees fit to teat its own people worse than dirt.
Britain interned German citizens in WW2 (but only a relatively small proportion of them). But Britain never even considered interning its own citizens for having German ancestors. What sort of message would that send?
Yes, that way. Those are black marks on our history.
But we don’t censor them. We discuss them, teach them, in the hopes of reducing the chances of it happening again. That doesn’t happen in China.
Although we do have the "Witness K" indecent here in Australia. The media can't tell us much of that, but we do know about it. Sort of.
I would mostly be worried about the kgb (the secret police). The disappearing in the middle of the night never to be seen again would make me nervous. The beatings or listening to phone calls or bugging of rooms were common.
I wouldn't want to challenge the government if I owned a media company because it will be taken away. Same with any business.
Ever have a business (store) be taken from you/your family and given to others who are more friendly with those in power? It happened to my grandfather in Hungry.
1: It's not the topic
2: it's a blatant falacy
3: it distracts from the main point adding unneeded emotionalism
and 4: Even with it's current slide toward Eastern European style strongman state, it's not remotely as bad to it's people.
Likewise, in a discussion of US propaganda, to bring up Chinese censorship as a rebuttal would be a strangely off topic distraction.
I do not like what China is doing to their people. But I also do not like our western self righteous hypocrisy. Do we really need to feel good about us doing bad things if somebody else is worse? By that logic let's take some African country and call China a saint.
All message is under China control.
Big difference.
Just pointing out that American companies engage in similar sorts of surveillance and censorship that Chinese companies do, although admittedly the CCP is more heavy-handed and paternalistic in its approach.
You embrace state influence in full regarding your thoughts and words.
Hackers and scammers are no less prevalent on WeChat. Loads of people I know come in contact with them quite often. WeChat's monitoring isn't about stopping petty crime.