Travelers on Air Force One ordered to throw away gifts, phones after China trip | Hacker News Reader

Travelers on Air Force One ordered to throw away gifts, phones after China trip

techcrunch.com

27 pointsleopoldj32 comments

Soviet children gave the US ambassador a plaque of peace -hidden inside was a recording device that drew no power and gave off no emissions - it was activated when the KGB beamed a specific frequency to it and the feedback from it using fancy maths could give a realtime recording.

Source ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device)

Thank you!

Actually throw away as in discard and leave behind in China? I thought the logical thing to do would be to put them into a faraday cage and inspect them later in a lab.

The reporter only says placed in a container, so fairly likely yes.

EU officials have to do the same when leaving the US

Source? I didn’t know EU officials are required to use burner phones in the US

https://www.theregister.com/security/2025/04/15/report-ec-is...

Anonymous sources, the EC didn't confirm anything, and the "proof" is well they didn't deny it either.

Quality reporting as usual from El Reg.

https://www.computerworld.dk/art/291220/frygter-spionage-eu-...

They definitely should. The US is a profoundly untrustworthy country.

Standard Practice? Yes. News? No. Hacker News? Hell no!

it's literally the most important plane of US government

secrecy concerns about happenings on board are obvious and are just basic security procedure

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the only question is whether there was an alternative way (on support transports) to keep anything to regift or smth

Seems odd to “throw the items in a bin”. You’d more likely want to know who was given what, put each item in a sealed container, then analyze them later on. Unless you were dumb enough to think it was a bomb.

If I am not mistaken, isn't doing this an insult to China ?

Do me they could have put the items in a sealed maybe 'lead' box and examine them later.

The Chinese government would be stupid to not do the exact same thing when departing the US. They aren't stupid, and they aren't going to wage war on the basis of some discarded lapel pins.

Aren't there companies that issue burner phones and burner laptops for the same reason?

It's standard practice in the industry — if your company has a competent IT department — to mandate burner laptops and devices in China.

And now for EU visitors to the US.

Ten years ago, a Dutch company I worked for had a standard protocol after government delegation trips to China: every phone and laptop used on the visit was fed straight into an industrial shredder.

So what happens to the stuff after, I presume the embassy picks it up for processing, or it gets forwarded to US on another flight for processing, presumably some Chinese janitor is not going to have access to Rubios burner phone to resell.

I wonder if Tim Cook supplied burner phones.

He gave everyone an iPhone 5S.

Why did his non-news published by this perpetual rag make the front page?! Nuclear down-voting this.

Didn't China steal the F-22/F35/B2/C17 blueprints, and also stole COVID?

The former, yes. The latter, no, that one was partly paid for by Fauci & co. who also did their best (but failed, [1, page 9 and onwards]) to keep this fact out of the news.

[1] https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/letter-and-t...

Not sure why you got down voted, I thought it was common knowledge the US funded the Wuhan lab doing gain-of-function research?

shouldn't they have been warned before even flying there?

Jensen didn’t even know he was going on the trip… not a lot of forethought or process involved.

I mean, the Chinese are probably ordered to do the same thing after a state visit to America

It should be SOP for any country's diplomats visiting another country.

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