Employees at some Chinese ministries must stop using iPhones before the end of September.
This seems like a logical step, both as a political counter move to the US limiting Huawei and TikTok, and as an actual security measure. If the Chinese state can get intel from Huawei devices, surely the US can get intel from iphones. I’m surprised they didn’t include Microsoft.
Edit: a word.
Probably too difficult logistically to forbid Microsoft
Well that and MS is like a national champion in China. MS is one of the few companies to follow Chinese law and thus, Bing is the only foreign search engine allowed. MS is what China is hoping every other foreign company will emulate. So yeah, no way China is going to go after MS.
*Edit. Heck, MS is expanding in China even amidst the tech war because they love China so much.
https://nypost.com/2022/09/29/microsoft-faces-us-scrutiny-as-it-nears-10000-employees-in-china/
If anything USA should be banning MS for national security issues.
Year of the Linux desktop coming as soon as that ban happens
Of course they pose a national security risk. Imagine your government officials walking around with devices fully capable of recording bodily activities, location, sound, video, and transmit it to a foreign power, with or without the wearer’s knowledge. 🤯
Then add the ability of third party powers to use Israel’s NSO spying capabilities for these devices.
The moment I could replace these devices with my own home-grown ones, I would. If anything, it’s surprising it took them this long. Maybe they thought they had enough control over Apple.
Imagine your government officials walking around with devices fully capable of recording bodily activities, location, sound, video, and transmit it to a foreign power, with or without the wearer’s knowledge.
They don’t have to imagine it. They are actively DOING it with TikTok! Then there’s the not so small matter of all the spying that Huwaei was doing using their 5G network equipment.
Here’s another one: Have you read the articles about Mozilla reporting what a privacy nightmare today’s cars are? China has banned Teslas from being parked in our around their Government Offices and Military bases. Today’s cars, especially EVs, are absolutely loaded with high end spy tech. Video recording in optical and non-optical wavelengths, audio recording, gps positioning, radar and ultrasound systems, remote control of those systems, remote data access to those systems…
Since China banned Tesla’s cars from being parked in sensitive locations what do you think they are doing with their auto brands such as BYD?
Everyone is spying on each other like mad.
Haven’t read Mozilla’s report but I’m in the field and am fully aware. What I can tell you is that at least some of the Motown manufacturers are very privacy oriented at least for now.
Huawei is an unmitigated disaster. Security analyses of their equipment from some years ago showed hundreds of security holes on a single piece of infrastructure networking equipment. Countless vulnerable copies of OpenSSL, you name it. Even if they didn’t have any backdoors, the equipment was such a Swiss cheese that you could enter it from many of the gaping holes. The only reason we use it is cost, making the moneys for the shareholders.
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Of course it is, for the Chinese. Listen, if it isn’t a homegrown tech product, it’s a threat to your national security, and even most of the homegrown ones are, regardless of what nation you’re from or in. This is fact.
Agreed. Investing in local R&D and having at least enough production capacity to locally manufacture enough decent-quality devices for government use is essential for national security.
But it is also very expensive. The US and China can probably afford it, and I suppose the EU as a bloc can. But for anyone else the cost would be prohibitive. India is a top-five economy, and yet we have only been able to develop 130nm (!) chips locally. (Taiwan makes 5nm chips and China is now reaching 7nm.)
Perhaps a solution would be for many of the ‘other’ countries to band together. The blueprints could be open-sourced so all partners can trust each other. Whether something like this will work in today’s political climate is of course another question.
Nice move, China. Right then, let’s start drafting the tit-for-tat regulations right away.
China isn’t exactly happy with the US government right now due to the sanctions imposed over advanced chip technology, and this move could be viewed as part of a an ongoing reaction to that. So far, Micron has been the main target for retaliation. The US government already imposes its own restrictions on Chinese hardware and services. Notable, Huawei equipment is banned and TikTok can’t be installed on government devices.
Already did. This is the tit-for-tat regulation. America did cause, and China did effect.
I mean it’s not like you’d catch a US government official carrying around a Huawei phone either - fair is fair.
USA: let’s ban Huawei
China:
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So is basically every American tech company. I think its safe to assume that government has access of some sort to any entities that are physically present there be it US, China, India or France. US has some scary gag laws that make whistleblowing almost impossible. Just look at Snowden and PRISM.
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One more reason I’m proud to be an American, where our tech companies have no ties or connections to the government.
Good one xD
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Say no more fam https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/
Can’t wait to see where Linux phones are in a few years but I have my doubts. Mostly around the app ecosystem (yes I know, just use the web browser for a lot of them), but hopefully the concept stays alive!
Any US technology has NSA backdoors. I’m surprised it took them this long to realize, since they do the same thing.
I’m sure they’ve known for years, there just wasn’t a lot they could do it about and relations with the US were good enough that it wasn’t a serious problem…until now.
If the US can do it, so can China. But, of course, both suck (iPhone and Huawei).
iPhones pose a risk to the National Security Agencies’ ability to spy on the citizens
No shit, having domestically sourced technology is a prerequisite to having any semblance of security.
If this happens, then 💀 🍎
China bashing aside how likely is the us engaging in tech espionage of foreign countries? Are there any merit in the statement below? (Serious replies only)
“Measures are believed to be aimed at eliminating perceived national security risks from telecoms devices made by a US company”
It’s been documented already. I guess the next question is if there’s any reason to think it’s stopped.
Update: I guess not. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/13/us/politics/us-spying-allies.html
China bashing aside how likely is the us engaging in tech espionage of foreign countries?
That’s the new way countries are spying on each other. China and the states are both doing it a lot.
Buy stock in Huawei, got it.
Huawei is not a publicly traded company. It’s a private company wholly owned by its employees.
Huawei may be “owned” by its employees but that isn’t the same thing as being controlled by them. Huwaei’s structure is extremely unusual and highly opaque.
https://sayari.com/resources/huaweis-ownership-opaque-unusual/
Surely quite a lot of it is owned by the Chinese government. I thought that was the point of the ban, in China essentially all companies are controlled in some level by the Chinese government, and so no Chinese company can be trusted.
Perhaps some mom and pop equivalent corner shop isn’t controlled by the Chinese government, but certainly anything operating internationally will be.
It’s definitely likely that they collaborate with the government in some capacity because of how important Huawei is but that was only one part of why sanctions the enacted. IMO the bigger problem for the US was that Huawei was catching up to western corporations in crucial technologies like 5G so the sanctions were put in place in prevent them from competing. It’s just run-of-the-mill protectionism.
They weren’t just catching up, the US had nothing, Ericsson had nothing and Huawei had functioning 5G base stations deployed. It took Ericsson another 6? months to get even basic shilled 5G of the ground.
Apple’s recent reductions on their privacy stance are having consequences.
Huh. Who woulda thunk.
They haven’t reduced their privacy stance, as far as I’m aware. In fact, the only public previous reduction was a concession to China over iCloud storage
What reductions?
Did they have privacy to begin with?
Yes put all their government employees on most likely outdated Android which probably don’t have up to date security patches. Brilliant.
Not for long. Now that HarmonyOS 4 is out they’re pushing HarmonyOS NEXT which has all of the Android libraries removed.
I would bet dollars to donuts that foreign governments have already exploited HarmonyOS 4.
I wouldn’t bet against it but from the CCPs perspective that’s still better than iOS & Android where it’s a near certainty that the NSA has back doors baked into the OS.
