this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2024
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Not that you could before, but I wouldn’t trust any chips, hardware, software, anything made from there from a security stand point anymore.
What alternative is there lol. The rest of high-tech are made in the US or its allies, which is far worse.
Why is that worse?
Because while there are only obtuse and vague accusations that China is backdooring technology, there's no proof besides a Chinese law that says Chinese tech companies have to help authorities.
The US on the other hand was caught red handed doing what they accuse China of with the Prism system. It was caught spying on Angela Merkle. And just ask Snowdon how he feels about living in exile in Russia for exposing that.
How would you reconcile the great firewall with this view? They censor texts(on many platforms) with certain messages. To do this you obviously need access to the content.
It all has to do with transparency. China actively tells you what it's doing and what it collects. Thus, the Chinese citizens can prepare for it and do by using VPNs.
The US is spying. Not just on it's own citizens, but the entire world. Merkel for example couldn't have known that US was spying on her and didn't have the opportunity to protect herself by using a VPN. Mind you, this is on TOP of US companies openly and transparently collecting data as we discovered with Cambridge Analytica.
Again, remember, we're not saying China is good. We're saying USA is worse, since they do everything China does on data collection AND they have backdoors and spy.
*Edit: Interestingly this transparency in what they collect is a primary reason for why the west believes they're oppressing Uyghurs. The problem is they're conflating this transparent information with oppression. Things like do they go to prayer or shave their beards are things that are collected. The west has stated that this shows the Chinese are targeting Uyghurs, the problem with that analysis is that China does this to everyone.
Another example is a data point China collected was are you planning to have a child soon. The west took this as are you getting pregnant and stated that China is trying to force women to have children. The problem with a lot of western articles is they're mistranslating and misunderstanding.
Say what you will about if you're OK with this type of data collection, but at least China is honest about it, to the point we are misconstruing their collecting of data to place insidious ideas on them.
From my point of view, Western powers are more realistically gonna impinge on my human rights than Beijing is.
Your circumstances may be different.
The USA partnered with the German company, Siemens, to install hidden wiretaps into the phone equipment that was used by every embassy in the world. For years the USA had access to literally everything that ambassadors from every country were saying.
Then we have the USA Congress holding a trial after it was revealed that every telecom company in the country broke the law and spied on all internet traffic and gave it to the NSA. The result of that trial? Retroactive immunity for all involved and changes to the law to make it legal going forward.
Then we have the Snowden leaks that show the NSA has chosen "market solutions" for data gathering, meaning that they will collaborate with private companies, even funding them through the network of money, so that those private companies gather as much data as they can on citizens so the NSA can buy it. They also have major partnerships to install persistent vulnerabilities that they can exploit, and there are major revelations in the leaks about how they influence which companies but which companies in order to ensure control over the startup tech that doesn't collaborate with military intelligence.
Prism, Raptor, Echelon - these are the programs we know about. There are undoubtedly a number we don't.
Then you have Oracle, Palantir, AT&T, Verizon and many other tech companies that were either founded by, funded by, or wrre revealed to be infiltrated by military intelligence.
Military intelligence influences cryptography at the highest levels, pushing for specific algorithms to be adopted by ANSI and ISO as the default recommendations.
USA spies get jobs in American tech companies. That's part of the program. High level State Department and Military Intelligence officials take executive jobs openly in companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Google.
And then they lie about it, have been lying about for decades, and create clear and obvious propaganda that belies their motivations. When TikTok was being accused of being Chinese spy tech, the USA forced TikTok to give control of its USA operations to a USA tech company with executives and staff from the USA State Department and Military Intelligence. Even after this happened, they continued to publish scare articles about TikTok being Chinese spyware even though in the USA it was controlled entirely by the government.
The USA has 600+ military bases around the world, it has secret black sites in dozens of countries where it conducts torture, bio experiments, and illegal operations explicitly to avoid legal troubles in the USA (because they aren't there) and legal troubles in their host country (because they have immunity).
Compare that to China.
Actually, hilariously the US government has so much power over Tik Tok that Harvard scholars and the ACLU are terrified of the over reach.
https://jolt.law.harvard.edu/digest/the-tiktok-bill-isnt-only-about-tiktok
Biden's recent tik tok doesn't show Video capitulation to the CCP as the GOP claims, but rather the overwhelming narrative control our government holds over Tik Tok. While other social media was showing the genocide of Gaza, Tik Tok was posting IDF soldiers partying. And still US politicians tried to say China bad since the parties made the IDF look like the compassion less genocides they are.
Do you really need to ask why you shouldn't trust the countries responsible for the vast majority of ongoing neocolonialism, and the ones currently supporting a genocide?
Just look up some of the numerous shit the CIA has done, or the fact that they collect information on every US citizen to use against them, etc. Or the 1965 Indonesian massacre of 700k to 1mil people where the CIA supplied the military dictatorship with information on them.
How many reeducation camps does China currently operate, again?
Probably the amount you'd need to tackle a security threat like the ETIM and its attacks that are right inside your country.
Could they have handled it better? Almost certainly; there's always a better way to do something. But who am I to complain when the Organization of Islamic Cooperation approve of China's treatment of its Muslim population?
Or how Global South, mostly Muslim, countries also approve, and the ones currently committing a genocide in Palestine are the only ones who accuse China of mishandling it?