Yes.
Also phones made in the US have back doors that the US government can access. It’s not really secret.
this post was submitted on 01 Jan 2024
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It's secret like Area 51 is secret. We know it's there, we know the government is doing something with it, but we don't know fully what, when, why, or how.
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(12 replies)
They're definitely grabbing analytics and statistics. But so is AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Apple, Amazon, Samsung, Google, Microsoft.
If the Chinese government asked any of those other companies to give them all the data they have on you in particular, They probably tell them to get bent.
But if the US government told them to do it, they would comply and then have a gag order slapped against them to keep them from telling you it happened.
Huawei is beholden to the Chinese government. So it works kind of in the opposite way.
If the Chinese government asked any of those other companies to give them all the data they have on you in particular, They probably tell them to get bent.
More likely they’ll send an invoice. They’re already selling your data to them. (And everyone else.)
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(3 replies)
Short answer is "likely".
If you work in a field with sensitive data (financial, healthcare, technology, politics) you don't get a phone designed by a China-government owned company.
I upgrade to "most likely".
You don't really want a device linked to any third party to be fair.
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If Lenovo's multiple rootkit fiascos are anything to go by for Chinese-corporation-designed electronics, yes.
Most of Lenovo’s rootkit fiascos are due to lack of vetting bundleware providers though; Huawei is actually unlikely to have a backdoor in their phones. Their 5G infrastructure on the other hand is known to have at least two different potential backdoors designed in such a way that they may just be a chain of unfortunate vulnerabilities. Or not.
Probably, but iPhones and Android have them for the Five Eyes and anyone else who is willing to pay/push for laws to make it happen. All you do with a phone is pick your poison, do you want China to spy on you, or America, the UK, or some other government or company who then sells it to the highest bidder.
Any cell phone, dumb or smart, is a tracking device. The smarter it is, the better it is as snooping on you. Doesn't matter how or where the phone's hardware is made, it's going to track you without consent. You just need to ask "Am I worried about China or am I worried about another government?" to even "If the backdoor is big enough, can third parties get me too as I walk by on the street?"
yea phones constantly ping something so at least the network operator can map out where it has been with good accuracy if you become person of interest
The network operator will naturally have a log of the nearest cell tower to your phone as you move around and each entry there gives an (almost, but not quite in heavilly built places because line of sight obstructions and signal bounces) circular area within which that phone was at that time (not absolutelly sure about the tower measuring and keeping logs of radiowave power levels, but if it does that circular area can be further improved to something like a torus), and the higher the density of cell towers around the phone (i.e. in cities) the smaller the areas and hence the higher location precision.
Also, at least in the US, it's possible to get the operator to triangulate the phone's position using multiple towers to get a much more precise location, which is how law enforcement (and who knows who else) can find people via their phones.
Even the dumbest of mobile phones can be tracked this way.
not trying to argue 'both-sides', but most likely so does the US government/five eyes/whatever for android (and sometimes ios)
I mean, it's written into law in Australia https://fee.org/articles/australia-s-unprecedented-encryption-law-is-a-threat-to-global-privacy/
And you can be sure that data is shared with 5eyes.
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(4 replies)
Not a backdoor, a loading dock
On the same vein, do wo know if Intel Management Engine is a NSA backdoor?
I keep hearing about the potential of it beeing a back door, but haven't heard an exploit using it roaming about the interwebs
It's not known to be a backdoor, but it's a juicy attack surface that customers are largely ignorant of and provides little consumer benefit. If I were an NSA employee and my boss handed me a blank check to develop a preboot exploit for Intel PCs, I'd start with IME.
Is there an IME equivalent on AMD cpus?
The platform security processor, PSP. There were some mumblings of open sourcing the implementation details of it in 2017 or so, but that never happened, so it's still a black box that is potentially exploitable.
Probably. Also, look at myactivity.google.com . Any info you have there can be handed over to a government
Well I'm fucked. Thanks for sharing that link, I had no idea Google tracked what time I used Signal messenger.
Not sure what to do with this information but I didn't realize it was that granular.
Yeah. You can turn it off or set it to delete, and I think legally Google do have to keep their word on that thankfully, but some weird shenanigans happened with incognito mode on Chrome
It doesn't matter if it's a Huawei or some American phone, China, USA and others will spy on you no matter what phone you choose only the means differ. If you buy a Huawei china will have backdoors in your phone and the USA will buy all your info and if you get an American phone the USA will have backdoors and china will buy the data.
Also I find the focus on china kinda weird. I ultimately don't want anyone stealing my data, not even the USA. Just like china the USA has been involved in mass surveillance and a lot of war crimes. For example American soldiers have been found guilty of rapping and killing children. From Wikipedia (United States war crimes > war on terror > Iraq war):
On 12 March 2006, a 14-year-old Iraqi girl named Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi was raped and subsequently murdered along with her 34-year-old mother Fakhriyah Taha Muhasen, 45-year-old father Qassim Hamza Raheem, and 6-year-old sister Hadeel Qassim Hamza al-Janabi.
After all of that I want to ask you one question, do you really want the USA sterling your data?
Also what you answer that question with doesn't matter since both china and the USA will be stealing your data no matter if you want it or which phone you buy.
As a final note I should maybe mention that I'm not American if you haven't figured that out yet. Also please don't accuse me of spreading Chinese propaganda. I'm advocating against the USA and the CIA, not for china.
Also sorry for being so political in a kind of not that political thread.
So if i want China to not have my data i should by a chinese phone?
/s
But it sounds like you are advocating for china. Look how much you wrote about another country when someone asked specifically about china and a Chinese phone manufactured in china.
If you think he is advocating for China then you need to reread what was wrote
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My point is just that I don't want anyone spying on me and it doesn't matter if the one spying is the US, china, french or russia. They have nothing to do with my personal data.
You’re missing the point entirely. In the US, companies can take the federal government to court to stop them. When agencies installed backdoors on Cisco equipment it was done through intercepting hardware through carriers, and individually installing them on targeted hardware. Not forcing Cisco to hand over access to every router they sold. You can argue about whether they should do that at all, but it’s not the same.
Thank you. This is an important correction but does hover not mean that the US government isn't spying on you through your phone, just that they, if they do it, have other means to do so. 2017 wikileaks revealed that the CIA had an immense collection of tools to hack personal phones and computers. But this probably means that they don't hack everyone just people of special interest, which is good news 😀
Here is the wikileaks article and here is an yahoo article.
EDIT: of course they can also buy the data from Google.
if they don't, it's the only phones without.
Are you the FBI? You have to tell us, you can't lie.
Have no idea...all I know is, everything is manufatcured in the PCR.
PRC*
PCR is funny, though
Just as much as the US government has.
I'm sure it's nothing in comparison to what the CCP get from TikTok
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