[torgian]

This is kinda funny and hypocritical when you devote a few brain cells to this.

Every country is gathering data on everyone. If you think they are respecting your privacy, you’re naive.

The US has been doing it for years. Secretly. EU and I bet you Australia too.

And even China, yes. But hey, at least China is honest about what they’re doing. Gotta respect that at least.

Point is, it’s just a show.

[ethbro]

I'm going to take issue with this, because I see this line of argument a lot on HN recently.

There is a fundamental difference between "like in kind" and "like in severity".

Do the US and China both monitor telecom? Yes.

Has the US built a national firewall? No.

Do the US and China both have legal processes for acquiring court ordered telecom intercepts? Yes.

Is the US legal system wholly subordinate to political goals? No.

Do the US and Chinese governments lean on companies to comply with their wishes? Yes.

Do US companies survive at the whim of the US government and generally lack independent legal recourse to fight pressure? No.

If you want to go through point-by-point with what's similar between Chinese and US data monitoring regimes, I'm happy to do so. But they aren't close to the same.

[3pt14159]

The real problem is that I'm not sure its really going to change anything. Do we really think that the Chinese can't hack our network gear? The SS7 hack was disclosed in 2008 and was ongoing until at least 2017, the last year I looked into it.

Nationalizing 5G or specifying a specific source of origin will help at the margins, but I'm coming to the conclusion that without a fundamental redesign of the internet security isn't possible. Even then, I'm not sure. Even if you somehow change the internet at the protocol level and magically make it secure form the legion of vectors the surveillance can just move somewhere else. Sell some rooted phones on eBay. Buy a security company or a social network. The Chinese bought 500px (a company I was CDS of for a year before I quit) for a hot minute before selling it back to the Americans (to Getty). With the RAWs they now have the sensor fingerprints of a ton of DSLRs tied to real email addresses, etc. Plus countless photos of naked people that were private.

Sure they could probably have gotten that data some other noisy way, but this is basically risk-free, and they probably made a profit on it by scaring Getty that the photo licensing business was about to get into a margins war with China.

[e40]

I really dislike the "they're both the same" arguments. People do the same about the US political parties (and use this as an excuse to either not vote, or vote for their favorite side, based on this).

This thinking allows people to let the worse offender off the hook.

[wenc]

It's fallacious outcome of analogical thinking which says "because two things have some things in common, they have everything in common".

It's a pretty common fallacy [1], and easily deconstructed if recognized.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_the_undistributed_m...

[lightbyte]

"they're both the same" is never an argument, it's a lazy cop out from someone who is either too cynical or disillusioned to care and do their own research.

[pelario]

Not a fan or defensor of China here; but the US has way more history of intervention in other countries; so I would be much much worried about US-based companies that provide searching or social networking services

[refurb]

but the US has way more history of intervention in other countries

Not exactly sure how'd you quantify it, but I think the people of Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, Malaysia, Cambodia, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Mongolia, Singapore, Tibet, Myanmar, and India might take issue with that claim[1].

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_Peo...

[Aunche]

That's nothing compared to intervention involving the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_Uni.... What's worse, is that these wars are often catalysts for even worse Civil wars like in Cambodia, Iraq, or Libya.

[mijamo]

Let's count have many government have been overthrown by each, how many wars have they both been involved, how many political parties or rebellions financed?

[refurb]

Going back how long? China's been around for a lot longer!

[BLKNSLVR]

But China has a worse record of human rights abuses. In regards to intervention in other countries, China consumes them. Tibet, Taiwan no longer exist according to China.

They've all got bad history. If God existed and was to strike down on the unworthy nations of the world, very few would be spared.

And I dislike this as much as any rational person (hello? rational people...?) but if it came to choosing sides in what appears to be inevitable future conflict, I'd choose the US over China and Russia. I hate that it's the case, but the US, I think, is the least worst option. This may be based purely on cultural familiarity, but, well, there it is.

[iforgotpassword]

> This may be based purely on cultural familiarity, but, well, there it is.

Very much this.

> In regards to intervention in other countries, China consumes them. Tibet, Taiwan no longer exist according to China.

Oh dear. Taiwan never existed in the first place according to China because they didn't accept them becoming independent. (Protip: google how many countries actually regard Taiwan an independent nation). And Tibet? It has pretty much belonged to China for over 600 years. Tibet has been very poor even compared to China, and over the past 50 years China has greatly supported the region, establishing basic infrastructure like hospitals, schools etc. You usually never hear about this in the west though, since it doesn't fit the whole "free Tibet" narrative.

Yes there is a lot wrong with China, as with any country on this planet. I certainly don't need to get into US atrocities here for some obligatory whataboutism. But at least get your facts straight when criticising. Like when that Falun gong organ harvesting comes up. If you try to unravel this story you find no halfway credible sources and always end up with this Canadian politician who conveniently always resurfaces with that story when some election is coming up. Or recently there was a report about one million captive Uighurs in China (with a population of only 8 million), where the only source was a UN Secretary saying this "not representing the UN"...

It's sad, because we so proudly compare our free press to the state controlled propaganda in China, but for most people just knowing we have a free press equals not ever having to doubt anything the news say, at least not if it's about another country across the world you already know is evil.

[ethbro]

If China wants more accurate reporting about Uighurs, they can bloody well allow foreign press into the region.

(Scroll down and watch the video halfway, where BBC journalists are constantly harassed)

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-45173573

I get the Chinese government's default position is stonewalling information. But at some point, if people say a thing, and you say it isn't so: you invite them to see for themselves.

The fact that China (and the Soviet Union before it) don't...

[iforgotpassword]

Completely agree here. OTOH it's understandable that China is pretty paranoid about foreign press. As laid out, our reporting on China is pretty one sided and agenda-driven sometimes. which ironically enough, only fosters our paranoia and conspiracy theories about these issues. And on it goes...

Tiananmen square was a rare exception in that regard since a lot of foreign press was already in Beijing during that time, but we still have a very incomplete picture, not only regarding the wildly varying figures regarding the death toll.

[BLKNSLVR]

Thanks for the explanation. I will need to look further into the details surrounding Taiwan and Tibet. Your explanations don't ring entirely true with what I've heard and read in the past, so I've got some digging to do.

[afarrell]

> Taiwan no longer exist according to China

Is there any government which believes that Taiwan is an independent country? I thought there were only three positions being held:

1) The People's Republic of China is sovereign overall of China, including mainland and Taiwan.

2) The Republic of China is sovereign overall of China, including mainland and Taiwan.

3) <whistling as we trade with both>

[ethbro]

I mean, you can also refuse to admit Taiwan is an independent country... while selling powerful military hardware to an organized government within "China" that claims sovereignty over an island they assert is not Chinese.

Apparently!

[notfromhere]

lack of ability is different than lack of desire.

[PJDK]

I don't see how this follows.

All countries have spy agencies - they usually have two roles to spy on other people, and prevent other people spying on them. This seems like a pretty reasonable state of affairs.

How does the fact Australia spies on China (one presumes) mean they shouldn't worry about China being able to spy on Australia?

[bogomipz]

>"Every country is gathering data on everyone. If you think they are respecting your privacy, you’re naive"

This isn't about data gathering or respecting privacy, this is false equivalency. This is about infrastructure, specifically the integrity of a country's telecom infrastructure at the hardware level. The ability to compromise or disrupt a country's Telecom infrastructure is seen as a matter of national security by every country. The article even site the control plane difference in 5G:

>"“This new architecture provides a way to circumvent traditional security controls by exploiting equipment in the edge of the network – exploitation which may affect overall network integrity and availability, as well as the confidentiality of customer data."

There are basically only 5 vendors in the mobile switching space. ZTE and Huawei are both Chinese vendors while the 3 remaining vendors are European - Ericsson(Sweden), Nokia(Finland) and Alcatel-Lucent(France.) None of those last 3 non-Chinese vendors have a record of human rights abuses, censorship or state-sponsored hacking. If you worked in an agency in a Western government tasked with providing procurement guidelines for network operators in which vendors would you prefer?

[baybal2]

You forgot Samsung

[bogomipz]

Do they actually make switching gear? I wasn't aware that they were in that space? Do you know what carriers use their gear?

[baybal2]

They have an amplifier and tower business as I know

[spacehunt]

> China is honest about what they’re doing

As far as I know, China has denied all allegations of them spying on Australia. Has this changed?

[trumped]

I don't think it's just a show... they want to try to block China's access to our data because they want to be the only ones with it. Maybe I only have one brain cell left.

[notfromhere]

"Sure, someone is robbing my house, but at least they're honest about their intentions of doing so" is not a good argument.

[BLKNSLVR]

To add weight to your point in regards to Australia's hypocrisy, there's an on-going case where a now ex-member of one of Australia's intelligence agencies blew the whistle on Australia's illegal surveillance of the East Timorese government.

Currently they're trying to prosecute the whistle-blower AND his lawyer for "revealing state secrets" as a tactic to draw out the process.

See here: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-28/witness-k-and-bernard-...

And for a larger history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia%E2%80%93East_Timor_s...

The ASD (Australian Signals Directorate - equivalent to the NSA) mission statement is: Reveal their secrets - Protect our own.

Which I suppose is in keeping with banning any non-purely-Australian-owned vendors from participating in any communications infrastructure project. I don't think there are any purely-home-grown Australian 5G infrastructure manufacturers though.

[pfortuny]

You can most of the time choose your enemies and your allies. This is just one choice more.

[zaro]

My thoughts exactly, only that somebody else gets the downvotes :)

[chrisper]

Doesn't look like your plan worked out.

[zaro]

Haha.. Yeah, it was worth trying though.