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Comment by shimonabi | Hacker News Reader

I have this exact model. I can confirm that the censorship list is not active. I have tried to send SMS messages with censored words and there was no problem.

Recently I had a problem that the phone nagged me about "activating" the 2nd SIM card at boot if the "Find my device" Xiaomi functionality was enabled. It seems to be a part of the tracking functionality if my phone gets lost. The "activation" of the SIM card failed every time, but it sent a SMS to a UK number and billed me about 0,17€ for it. I only figured it out when I saw my phone bill.

I had an earlier Xiaomi phone and I recorded all my phone calls on it. The creepy thing is that I didn't know that Xiaomi was sycing all my files with Xiaomi Cloud.

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Your test means nothing. The problem here is the potent risk, not the current state of the filter.

Exactly the same scenario as with the Huawei 5G products. It is a major risk building your entire "smart" infrastructure with a line of products that could at some unspecified future date start clamping down on you via remote software updates, just because you insulted the dear leader or did something else to anger the regime.

Did we not see this already with H&M stores in China? I can't believe there are still (smart) people here on HN who pretend like there's no danger involved.

I recall the times when this was being discussed and from an European perspective it seemed curious that the US tech crowd was so eager to ban Huawei products — especially after there being multiple cases of back-/bugdoors in the gear of american vendors, while at that point there was none with Huawei gear that we knew of.

I don't trust chinese gear. But I also don't trust the gear built in a nation where the patriot act is active.

The answer is to use a propper vendor mix and to think carefully what is used where.

Additionally it isn't that we have a clean slate in Germany (as an example) ourselves [1].

We can't trust any vendors. Be it soft- or hardware. Be it cloud. At least not when thinking about state level actors.

Nations need to think, as you said, about propper vendor mix and risk assessment.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG?wprov=sfla1

Crypto AG was Swiss, not German.

It was mainly operated by BND, a german intelligence agency. GCHQ and NSA were also involved.

Well, you've stumbled on the real reason for panic and dubious stories about Chinese spying -- the actual problem is it presents a possible hindrance to our own spying because the Chinese won't play ball.

These are not smart people, these are agents doing narative control on this forum.

A lot of it for different subjects. Sometimes 3-4 people chain comments creating a narative that supports whatever crazy stuff of the day is.

I'd suggest reading OP's comment history before flinging such accusations.

Who cares if the list is there or not. They can always just beam an update to the phone, if the argument is that I should be scared of something they theoretically might do at some time in the future.

Xiaomi brings money into China. China isn't dumb enough to slay a golden goose. H&M retail stores take money out of China. The CCP would wait for any excuse to start a nationalist boycott. It's like a free, one-sided trade war. They're still happy to let their factories sell to H&M though.

They've slain AliBaba though.

The discussion about "strategic autonomy", "digital sovereignty", whatever you might call it, is led fundamentally different in various countries. Here in Europe (on the EU level), the discussion is led on how Europe is caught between the US and China, both sides trying to exploit our data. [1] Here in Germany, the discourse is usually more focused on our state trying to exploit our data and disturb our privacy, or on american companies. In the french discussion some people go so far as to call the US dominance in software a kind of "digital colonization". [2] Of course there is danger in China's products, and there are a lot of serious efforts to minimize the risks, but the US hasn't really been any help, it is just the pot calling the kettle.

> Did we not see this already with H&M stores in China? I can't believe there are still (smart) people here on HN who pretend like there's no danger involved.

That comparison doesn't really hit the mark: A consumer-led boycott within China, dubious as the reasons may be, is in no way an attack on our sovereignty. Apart from pretty wack but minor diplomatic incidents, there hasn't really been much actual damage done by China towards the EU. I agree with you that 5G infrastructure should probably fall in large parts under any strategic autonomy policy, but buying Xiaomi phones seems pretty inconsequential.

[1] https://ecfr.eu/special/independence_play_europes_pursuit_of...

[2] https://sur.conectas.org/en/digital-sovereignty-or-digital-c...

H&M was not a "consumer-led boycott" - it was an effort by the owners of the digital infrastructure (major ecommerce platforms in this case) to actively hide the existence of H&M stores in China.

The US vs China argument is detrimental in any case. The discussion should evolve into achieving digital sovereignity as a whole, not argue about whether player x or y in the current rotten system is better.

This will most certainly not be solved on an EU level. The only outcome that they could produce would be replacing US & China with EU-controlled narrative and again, it's just repeating the same problem, albeit in lesser severity.

[2] is right.

It's just that we (mostly) don't know it any different (anymore).

And probably lost the ability to do it different. At least for now. May change. Slowly.

But any time I'm reading something about Industry 4.0, Smart City, Internet of things, I have to supress a hysterical laughing fit :-)

> the censorship list is not active. I have tried to send SMS messages with censored words and there was no problem

your testing is not thorough, there are many other things the "censorship list" could be used for, including not censoring at all, rather "forward this user's internet searches to china", and the things it does could be turned on and off based on other parameters

what is even more creepy is that you record all your phone calls. i dont know where you are, but here in Germany this is very severe breaking of the law that is punishable according to the StGB.

I'm not in Germany. It's legal in my country.

It would be illegal if I gave the recordings to a 3rd person.

If you don't ever share the recordings, it's not too different from making very detailed notes. But yes, it could be illegal.

The censorship list may not be active now or in the place you are, but what if Xiaomi enable it with some rule, or remotely?

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