So this research is based on a subset of 590 million or more CVs that were leaked by Chinese recruitment platforms. The author uses keywords like "华为", "Huawei", "People's Liberation Army" and "PLA" to identify people who worked for multiple institutions.
That seems like a great dataset for some statistical analysis, but unfortunately we aren't even told how large the subsets are. (The figure of 590 million is from a news report about the leak.) So it's hard to tell how large the problem is, and how it compares to other companies or countries.
The results are presented as three profiles based on three CVs from the leak, but edited to obscure their identity. It's only mentioned in the conclusion that the profiles are actually composites, which I take to mean that they combine information from multiple CVs each. That's unfortunate, because many of the claims rely on one and the same person being involved in multiple activities. We'll have to trust the author that those modifications do not embellish anything.
The three profiles are:
1. A software engineer in Huawei QA since 2011 who from 2012 on also held a research and teaching position with the PLA's National University of Defense Technology, working on signals, remote management and scripting. The paper claims that this places them within a branch of the Strategic Support Forces (who are responsible e.g. for cyber warfare). It's not clear to me whether that's something specific to that person, or whether any similar research at NUDT is classed that way. NUDT also does civilian research, e.g. Microsoft was criticized for publishing a paper on beauty estimation co-authored with NUDT researchers: https://ecommons.udayton.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=107...
2. A Huawei engineer who was responsible for building lawful interception capabilities, working on roll-outs in multiple countries. He served as a representative for the Chinese Ministry of State Security on one project "likely guaranteeing project specifications". The author tries to imply that this was to grant the MSS access to other countries' networks, but alternatively Huawei simply has product managers responsible for communication with the law enforcement agencies doing the intercepting in their own country's networks. The author also tries to link that person to a "backdoor" in infrastructure of Vodafone Italy. However, Vodafone has denied the allegiations in the Bloomberg article he cites: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-48103430
3. A network engineer who developed civilian and high-security military communication systems at CASTC, then worked at China Unicom for a year and then went to Huawei to lead network expansion projects. At CASTC, he gained expertise using Cisco and Nortel switches. The author construes this to imply that he assisted in espionage attempts involving fake Cisco routers.
Of the three, I'm going to classify 1. as harmless research (otherwise Microsoft is just as implicated as Huawei) and 3. as "person with security clearance changes jobs". 2. however at least supports this part of the paper's conclusion: "the institutional relationship
between Huawei and Chinese state security services directly contradicts Huawei claims that they
have no relationship with these services." Huawei should probably clarify those statements to mean that the relationship doesn't grant Chinese security services access to other countries' data.
This article would benefit from the publication of the full dataset, there are no clear evidence in support of his claims IMO. I'm not supporting either of both party, I'm just a little bit skeptical without the full dataset. The paper is almost useless and the article is behind a paywall.
A lot of people in this thread are complaining that the US does this to but does anyone seriously believe that having Huawei tech embedded in American infrastructure is a good idea?
- I genuinely think that the Huawei stories are by and large protectionist fearmongering and that Huawei products would win in a free and high-information (and high-correct-information, of course) market. I think better, cheaper products are good for the US.
- If Huawei is actually using their products to spy, or there is even a belief of such, that incentivizes the use of end-to-end secure protocols that don't trust routers, open-source and verifiable devices for end users, etc. If it's just the US government, there's a strong pressure on US companies not to treat their own government as an adversary, which creates the danger that it's easy for the government to become an adversary (even if they are not today, it can change hands quickly).
- I don't think China is any more evil than the US. So if I'm okay with using infrastructure from AT&T and its Room 641A, Verizon and its Quantico circuit, and the various PRISM companies, I have no logical reason to object to infrastructure that may be similarly compromised by the Chinese government.
> I don't think China is any more evil than the US. So if I'm okay with using infrastructure from AT&T and its Room 641A, Verizon and its Quantico circuit, and the various PRISM companies, I have no logical reason to object to infrastructure that may be similarly compromised by the Chinese government.
One big problem is that there is no recourse against China. Unless you have some long term plans of joining their politburo and making changes 25 years from now, there's no way to way to apply direct pressure for change.
Say what you want about the USA's intelligence organizations but at the end of the day there's a path for change. We elect a new top of the house every four years and all our intelligence agencies (are supposed to...) report to our civilian leaders. China's is a black box that's only getting darker over time.
The evidence suggests that blanket surveillance is a thing, and that's it very clearly unconstitutional.
Of course in this situation it's always possible to appeal to "national security" but that's an unconvincing legitimisation unless it can be proved that national security has been enhanced to an extent that warrants the suspension of constitutional protections.
So far as I know this has never even been tried in court, never mind proven.
It's shown up in court, but defendants have had a tough time showing legal standing [1]. Keep in mind that the state secrets privilege [2] is judicially mediated. Given the lack of demonstrable, specific harm, the matter is--rightly, in my opinion--deferred to the political branches as a political question (as opposed to a legal one).
That said, let's keep in mind context. Here we have a government program which we're able to freely debate. If enough of us prioritized its removal, it would be outlawed. That functions as a fundamental check totally lacking in China, moreso now that Xi is a dictator.
> Given the lack of demonstrable, specific harm, the matter is--rightly, in my opinion--deferred to the political branches as a political question (as opposed to a legal one).
I'm not sure how it can be relegated completely to political representatives, given that the secreacy means that the check on representative desicions (an informed populace voting for their representatives) isn't present.
> That said, let's keep in mind context. Here we have a government program which we're able to freely debate. If enough of us prioritized its removal, it would be outlawed.
You can freely debate specific policies in China, and broadly unpopular policies in China are suspended.
That can't be said for the US, where whether a law is passed has more to do with whether the ruling class supports it, rather than it's broad popularity.
> That functions as a fundamental check totally lacking in China, moreso now that Xi is a dictator.
The whole 'Xi is a dictator' thing is severely overblown in Western media. Oh no, he has the same term limits as Angela Merkel now. Literally a dictator.
PS: linking to the states secrets wikipage to increase your number of citations is lol inducing.
Doesn't the fact that it's a "political question" effectively argue that the US is more like China here?
The claim from upthread was:
> Unless you have some long term plans of joining their politburo and making changes 25 years from now, there's no way to way to apply direct pressure for change.
It genuinely seems like the most productive way for me to end this legal, constitutional spying (and China's spying is also legal and constitutional, mind you) is to spend 25 years being a wildly popular politician or entertainer, run for president, and issue an executive order, or to spend 25 years as an activist changing hearts and minds until there's support for a constitutional amendment banning it. There's clearly no direct way for me to apply pressure in the US.
... and if you say there's no demonstrable, specific harm, doesn't that support my claim at the top that I don't mind China spying on my traffic? Or does Chinese surveillance have demonstrable, specific harm in a way that US surveillance doesn't?
What pressure was put on the NSA and what is the outcome[1]? Let's include all the FVEY[2] countires. Look at Australia's encryption laws[3]. It is actually better to live in China than in AUstralia from this point of view. I do not think that you can use the argument that we can apply political pressure to intelligence agencies or governments and have a better outcome. At least this is not the reality in many cases.
> - I don't think China is any more evil than the US.
In my opinion, citizens of China have it far worse, due to things like the Great Firewall. I'd much rather live in the US than China, at least it's vaguely democratic.
Yet, citizens of China have enjoyed a steady increase in the quality of life across the board, while the opposite has been happening in US. Meanwhile, US is an oligarchy and not a democracy. A long term study from Princeton shows that the main predictor of any law being passed is whether it's favorable to the rich. The public opinion does not matter:
>What do our findings say about democracy in America? They certainly constitute troubling news for advocates of “populistic” democracy, who want governments to respond primarily or exclusively to the policy preferences of their citizens. In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule—at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes. When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the U.S. political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it.
citizens of China have enjoyed a steady increase in the quality of life across the board
3 million Uyghurs in internment camps have increased quality of life? ~400 million still stuck ineural farms? The gap between the to 1% in China and the bottom is vastly larger than in the US. And of course it is easy for China to “improve” coming from the ruins of the cultural revolution. There was nowhere to go but up.
This comment is regurgitating stats and numbers without much context.
I feel that over-priveleged peoples in the West with a really good life and pretty much every comfort available, often tend to just look at these superficial charts and numbers and tend to gloss over the context in these other countries.
It's pretty sad really that you are comparing China to the USA in this way just by mentioning that the USA is a oligarchy and somehow that's worse than being in China. The US at least has the option. Chinese people do not.
This worshipping of communist governments and downplaying the USA's freedoms and comforts really need to tone down a bit.
I find the US, the UK, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Israel all absolutely horrific in different but often surprisingly similar ways. Europe, Japan, and a few smaller nations less so - moderately, but not trivially.
There are superficial differences in the tribal totems and rhetorical promises used to promote conformity, and in the mechanics of manipulation and repression.
Beneath that, the dynamics are very similar.
Life can be quite pleasant in any of the above if you're upper-middle class.
If you're on the wrong side of any of these regimes and on the receiving end of institutionalised government violence, it really isn't.
So - as an overprivileged person in the West, I believe I am happier living in the US than in China. There are a lot of freedoms and comforts available to me as an upper-middle-class person. Were I not, I suspect I'd be happier in China.
And there's no shortage of e.g. college students from China who want to return after their studies instead of trying to stay around America and get a work visa. They're smart, and they're under no Chinese censorship when in America, so it seems to me that one is not vastly better than the other.
(Also the unspoken question is how China, the USSR, Korea, etc. would be were it not for their economic suffocation by the US. I didn't bring this up in the context of the Great Firewall, but if we're talking about quality of life it's absolutely relevant. It's important for the US to buy Huawei because not doing so when they have a better product is just repeating the same immoral economic suffocation.)
20 years of indoctrination, obvious and covert, tends to produce a very strong national identity. This coupled with a sufficiently different culture at home makes one unwilling to settle in a country full of strangers worshipping money and freedom of individuals. They come to the US to learn from the best and replicate what works back home for the country.
Of course, there are those that don’t. That’s beside the point, there always are.
Majority of Chinese students would want to stay in the US. Based on my very informal unscientific study over the last many years.
Recently the visa backlog implicitly pushes people away, no lack of demand. In fact too much demand.
This is getting downvoted but it’s an important sentiment. You can argue that America and China are equally bad (I disagree), but regardless, you can’t really argue that America and China are equally bad to Americans.
I'm not sure it's true though, paradoxically if you're an American subject to Chinese surveillance or vice versa you're probably better off than being under domestic surveillance, because at least you're out of the respective jurisdiction.
Like, what is Huawei going to do if it has information on you and you live in Boston, compared to the local police?
From the perspective of individual liberty it seems better to be subject to surveillance by someone who doesn't have legal authority over you than be subject to someone who does. I'm not sure the American prison population or minority groups have to fear a foreign government more than their own.
> Like, what is Huawei going to do if it has information on you and you live in Boston, compared to the local police?
It could to take what your local industries you are researching and give it to a Chinese company that will take it into the international market. Is that not harmful? Do you think the US government would similarly take your work and send it to a Chinese competitor before it is made public?
> From the perspective of individual liberty it seems better to be subject to surveillance by someone who doesn't have legal authority over you than be subject to someone who does.
Well, this idea is false. The CCP has power in the U.S. over people they surveil, through the information gained with that surveillance. It doesn't take much to compromise ordinary people, if you can watch a lot of what they do.
> I'm not sure the American prison population...
They're already in prison.
> ...or minority groups have to fear a foreign government more than their own.
Not sure what kind of minority you're talking here, but foreign governments can compromise you and take over your life just the same regardless of the colour of your skin.
Since when is the Chinese government in the business of compromising ordinary Americans? It's a daily occurence for marginalised people in the US to get arrested for minor drug offences, or be stuck in airport security or police checks, or more and more relevant facial recognition systems.
What the average American does not need to worry about is the Chinese coming after him because he smoked pot on the weekend. The primary threat to American civil liberties is their own government, not distant foreign ones.
> What the average American does not need to worry about is the Chinese coming after him because he smoked pot on the weekend. The primary threat to American civil liberties is their own government, not distant foreign ones.
Sure, your own government is responsible for not trampling on your civil liberties; that doesn't mean it's somehow not worse to be also surveilled by the Chinese government, in addition to your own.
When China is spying on you, that doesn't mean the U.S. isn't; it means they both are.
As far as I can tell, your argument is: Because governments in the U.S. don't recognize some things you consider civil liberties, like smoking cannabis recreationally, you don't care that the Chinese government is also spying on you, and you don't think the U.S. government should take a stance on that spying?
It seems pretty incoherent to me.
> Since when is the Chinese government in the business of compromising ordinary Americans?
Roughly since they have had intelligence services. It's not like the Soviets invented Kompromat, and it's not as though they were the last to use it.
I simply responded to the point literally made in the post above which was
>you can’t really argue that America and China are equally bad to Americans.
Yes, the American government can be a 'bigger bad' for Americans than the Chinese government. And it's also not incoherent in a general context, because using China or some other cold war enemy as a strawman to divert attention from domestic civil rights violation is as relevant as it has always been in the US. The Soviet Union was no danger to ordinary Americans either (well nukes aside), because by definition ordinary Americans are.. well ordinary and entirely uninteresting.
Instead of falling in line with the US government circus of blaming China, Americans would do well to pay close attention to their own government. As another poster pointed out, one of the primary reasons for this in the 5G arena is companies struggling to compete with Huawei.
> Yes, the American government can be a 'bigger bad' for Americans than the Chinese government.
I didn't say the thing you are refuting, that was somebody else paraphrasing my more precise statement.
I said that the Chinese government is more willing to be evil to Americans than the U.S. government. The outcomes are a matter of proximity and control.
The reason I made this distinction is because right now we are at a crossroads, deciding whether or not to potentially give the Chinese government more proximity and control when it comes to ordinary Americans. My point is that they really don't have your best interests at heart.
> Instead of falling in line with the US government circus of blaming China, Americans would do well to pay close attention to their own government.
This is not an either-or sort of situation. Americans would do well to pay close attention to both the domestic actions of the U.S. government (and their local and state governments), and equally close attention the foreign actions of the government of the PRC.
> As another poster pointed out, one of the primary reasons for this in the 5G arena is companies struggling to compete with Huawei.
I'm not even convinced there's much of a market for 5G in the U.S; but sure, there is a competitive angle to this. Tell me, though, why Huawei is so interested in making the carrier equipment, but the modems so much less so?
So, I am an American, but my primary loyalty is to humanity as a whole. I think we should do what's best for the world, not what's best for Americans, if those two are in conflict. I don't think promoting the American intelligence apparatus is good for the world, and I think it has little enough value to Americans that I'm willing to abandon it.
(I think you can construct an argument that America treats the rest of the world better than China, though. I don't think I believe it right now but I could be convinced.)
It's always disturbed me how Americans use the word Americans when humans would be much more apt. It shows that deep down the rest of the world is nothing but a resource to be exploited in the minds of many Americans.
> So, I am an American, but my primary loyalty is to humanity as a whole.
Being able to say that sort of thing with a straight face is the tremendous privilege of being an American.
> I don't think promoting the American intelligence apparatus is good for the world
In a vacuum I would not promote them, but in a counterintelligence scenario, I side with U.S. and Canadian intelligence services over the PLA, 100%.
The thing I try not to do is believe the CIA when they say somebody is committing an act of war against the U.S, because their track record on that is not great. ;- )
> (I think you can construct an argument that America treats the rest of the world better than China, though. I don't think I believe it right now but I could be convinced.)
Well, look into it. I don't think you can compare the callousness and limitless self-interest of the CCP (and the culture of the people they empower) abroad to even the greatest excesses of modern U.S. foreign policy. China is ruthlessly raping the developed world of its natural resources, and leaving superfund sites in its wake, and nobody is tempering that; some because they're afraid, others because they simply never cared.
When the U.S. has an interest abroad, at least Americans feel they have a right and duty to keep tabs on it. That is a huge step up from most of the world. That doesn't mean that American businesses and U.S. government organizations don't do bad things abroad, but it does mean that ordinary Americans can say and do something about it.
There's a false dichotomy here between trusting U.S. intelligence services, and trusting the PLA. If you don't trust either, you may still be surveilled by U.S. intelligence services in America; if you "equally distrust both", you will be surveilled by both, in America.
You're right, the US government would never violently expand its borders and encourage settlers from the majority race, oppress the existing people with police brutality, and track people through their smartphones.
these points are all out of a reasonable time frame or far exaggerated against American government vs the Chinese government
Like, yeah, we have police brutality, and it’s a real problem. But did we crush a bunch of student protestors into human pancakes and then forbid anyone from talking about it? No.
Did you know about the Jackson State massacre or the Orangeburg massacre, in both of which the police killed college and high-school students? Or the 1985 police bombing of a residential neighborhood in Philadelphia that killed six adults and five children and destroyed 65 houses?
The US doesn't need to suppress people from talking. There's enough social control that people don't talk in the first place. The information is all out there and technically public, which against the US populace is more effective in making sure people don't think of the police as they should.
But you're not forbidden from talking about what you mentioned, that's why you're posting here, no? Try to post anything about Tiananmen on any forum based in China. To me this is the key that makes CCP strictly worse than the US govt.
I hadn't heard of these incidents before, but when I read your comment (which would have been censored in China) I searched for "philadelphia 1985" and quickly found an old clip from Frontline reporting on the events (which would have been censored in China) on YouTube (where it would have been censored in China, setting aside that YouTube is blocked entirely).
Wikipedia (which is blocked in China) also has an article (which would have been censored in China if not already blocked), saying that the police first evacuated the surrounding houses and there was a protracted gunfight before they bombed "a fortified, bunker-like cubicle on the roof". This is not quite comparable to the military killing thousands of unarmed protestors.
Those are not similar events. All of them have been condemned and appear to have largely been driven by individual reckless actors. Excuses about police believing they were under fire are dubious, but the fact that the excuses indicates the mentality behind how these actions are viewed (not ok).
Police brutality is a serious problem. But it’s not the same problem as those enabled the TS massacre.
> The US doesn't need to suppress people from talking. There's enough social control that people don't talk in the first place. The information is all out there and technically public, which against the US populace is more effective in making sure people don't think of the police as they should.
You have all the right facts and stats and information but alarmingly lacking the right context in which these facts and stats apply.
I am seeing this as a sign of a person living in absurd comfort (includes me too) and trying to understand a developing nation without having to go through any of the difficulties.
I only said slightly worse but I'd rather my government oppress someone outside my country if I had to choose. In either case, don't give up your guns.
>that incentivizes the use of end-to-end secure protocols that don't trust routers
That doesn't work for metadata. Also, confidentiality is only one aspect of security. You also want availability, which can't be assured with clever crypto.
To a significant extent you have to fear US if you are planning on blowing things up and you have to fear China if you have valuable IP. I don't have to like it, but hit me up with Room 641A over PLA Unit 61398 any day of the week.
You don’t think an authoritarian regime that claims human rights are “Western rights” and denies most aspects of classical liberalism is worse than the US?
No man is wrong except the man who says he’s right...
Today is a Lucky 10000 day for you. We'll start with human rights in China [0] and look at some highlights. (Yes, every citation is to Wikipedia today. You've earned it.)
* There are millions of people imprisoned in China. Could be as few as 1.5mil, but likelier around 3.5mil, [2] including likely over 1mil in "re-education" concentration camps in the Western region of Xinjiang. [1] By comparison, while the USA's legendarily held the highest per-capita incarceration rate for decades, presumably this is because we are more honest than China about our rates. (Not to mention Russia.) Also, consider this map of incarceration per state in the USA. [3] Thanks, Louisiana.
* The Internet is neither Free nor neutral in China. [4] You can expect not just to be spied upon, but also to have lots of non-Chinese literature removed from your view, and also to face social consequences from your Internet browsing choices. You would already be known as outspoken for your posts, which would not be hidden or pseudonymous, and which would travel through both automated and manually-reviewed filters before being published. Rumor has it that both Russia and China are researching ways to construct their own Internet-like sub-networks and infrastructure so that they can disconnect entirely from the rest of the world.
* A family-and-caste system, hukou [5], is used to systematically deny freedom of movement to the vast majority of Chinese citizens. While the system has experienced reforms since Deng, in the time of Mao, hukou was an oppressive tool, and to this day, one must apply for a permit to move to large cities in Eastern China like Beijing. Worse, if I understand correctly, the hukou permits can be zoned within a metropolitan area, so that one is only permitted to move to certain parts of Beijing. As a reminder, for contrast, the USA has a strong history of legally supporting the right to freedom of movement since 1823 [6], even if we have often failed to ensure those rights. [7]
* The USA has freedom of religion written into the Constitution, in the First Amendment. China does not have freedom of religion. [8] Party members must be atheists. Christians must belong to state-run churches. [11] Tibetan Buddhism is state-managed; lamas must fill out permits for reincarnation [9] and the Panchen Lama has been kidnapped and replaced with a state-chosen impostor. [10] Falun Gong has been systematically persecuted. [12]
* Tibet. [13] Additionally, Hong Kong. [15]
* In more recent fields of human rights: Homosexuality and non-binary sexuality are only recently permitted, within the past few decades, and associated rights like marriage/civil unions are still forthcoming.
* Meta: The Communist Party of China wants to appear to have a unified will. To this end, they tend to allow whatever the Central Committee wants, to promote their ability and right to do whatever they like to the people of China, to dismiss individual human rights as deleterious to the Party and its state, and to concentrate power arbitrarily. Compare and contrast with the USA.
Please do not haul pre-existing lists of links and talking points into HN threads. These discussions are supposed to be thoughtful conversations. Boilerplate kills that.
Also, nationalistic battle is off topic here, even in a thread like this one, and your comment is a huge step in that direction.
Also, please don't snark. That's in the site guidelines too.
I am honored to have been mistaken for boilerplate! Thank you. In truth, this morning I woke up, read the claim, "I don't think China is any more evil than the US," and decided to examine it. What followed was 100% my own words, off the cuff, based on reading Wikipedia and their citations and sources. (For what it's worth, not much of this resembles what I remember studying when I was younger; "modern" Chinese history focused on Mao and Deng.) I stopped after I realized that no amount of refactoring would revive footnote 14.
Please don't make insinuations about astroturfing. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you think that these aren't fresh words, then please explain where they came from.
Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something. Do you have commentary on the state of human rights in China?
I'm sorry I mistakenly assumed your words weren't freshly written. Still, please don't take HN threads further into nationalistic flamewar. We don't want it here, and there has been a dismaying surge of it lately.
> The Communist Party of China wants to appear to have a unified will. To this end, they tend to allow whatever the Central Committee wants ...
This is the principle of democratic centralism[1]. A case could be made for conceptions of democracy other than the western one, but with the abolishment of term limits China is not making that case very well.
I'll say this: my gut says "no" BUT if the US uses Huawei as much as China uses Cisco et al then there is one very good thing that can happen--economic interdendence which tends to encourage peace!
The key is for balance and competitiveness on both sides to be maintained.
China backs its companies with government support more aggressively than the US does (in recent decades anyway) which means the US could lose its edge and end up totally reliant.
That would be fine in an ideal world where both sides have good faith, but in our real world China is doing everything it can to ratchet into dominance rather than mutual reliance.
Yes. It is a good idea to have Huawei tech embedded in American infrastructure.
First. The allegations against Huawei are BS driven by internal US politics.
Secondly where does this weird nationalism lead us? To a world where there is no Chinese router or chipset in American infrastructure. And by extension no American router or chipset in Chinese infrastructure.
That is a world which is a lot poorer and filled with unconstructive paranoia.
Yes. I did. Honestly it is rubbish. Secret methodology. No baseline comparison (how does Huawei compare to other similar sized companies?). This is not social science. It is politics.
Every thread that paints China in a negative light on HN always follow the same pattern:
- USA whataboutism
- Mass flagging (resulting in the story getting knocked off the frontpage despite having a great upvote, comment and submission ratio)
- Comments negative towards China receive 1-5 quick downvotes before slowly climbing back to normal again
It’s really unfortunate that an otherwise well moderated community is so easily defeated by this abuse, and that there appear to be nothing being done to fix it despite many obvious and simple solutions (ignore flags and downvotes by those who abuse them, ban shills that resort to whataboutism from posting in threads containing /China/Chinese keywords).
That is not at all an accurate description. This is a classic example of how people feel like the site is biased against their point of view even when it's the dominant one. It's known as the hostile media effect: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme....
Your comment also broke the site guidelines against insinuations of astroturfing. People having opposing opinions on divisive topics is evidence of nothing other than that the topic is divisive. But the insinuation poisons discussions badly. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting to HN. More on that from a few minutes ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20370575.
This is a ridiculous suggestion. There is never a huge amount of posts that criticize the US gov, so it doesn't get enough viewing time even though there are a huge amount of horrendous actions the US are doing and elsewhere (UK etc).
Banning comments about whataboutism? LMAO. Censorship because people comment about how bad the US are? And youre bothered about Chinese ruling?
How do we know that "former" is not just on paperwork?
When I hear the arguments against China and their tech companies, I don't have a problem believing them, however I do not expect anything less from the USA.
Remember Snowden? I'm simply assuming that Facebook, Google, Apple, Cisco or any other US tech company are tapped by the US 3 letter agencies. There were some reveleations on that(PRISMA) but it's probably just tip of the iceberg.
I think the big difference is that US companies can meaningfully resist the US government if they choose to, and they often do. Chinese companies cannot.
The way that Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio so meaningfully resisted the government that he was convicted of insider trading for telling people his company would be successful when it actually relied on a government contract that was pulled in retaliation, which he couldn't use as a defense in court because of national security concerns? For which he served four years in prison, and Qwest no longer exists? That sort of meaningfully resist?
The message to me from that case is clear—if the US government tells you to jump, you answer, how high.
Correct, it's been twelve years. Nacchio was the most recent person stupid enough to say no to the US government. They made an example of him. In recent years, US telecom CEOs know they should quietly say yes, and not put up a fight.
There is no reason to believe that the NSA doesn’t have the ability to access iPhones [0]. Either through explicit help from Apple or otherwise.
Tim Cook’s stance was within the fiction of constitutional order. The FBI wanted to pretend that they couldn’t access the phone and bully Apple to give them access. This is to:
1. Legitimize their own access
2. Be able to, more easily, use the courts to punish someone (instead of droning a foreigner)
That last one is important. The DEA is known to use (unconstitutional) parallel construction to prosecute drug smugglers. If they have legitimate access to your phone, it’s easier to pretend that they obtained their evidence legitimately.
Tim Cook also has an interest in maintaining the aura that iPhones protect your safety. There’s no reason for you to believe that w/out having the source.
[0] or do you believe that no one working on the iPhone has secrets that the NSA can’t leverage? Or that the richest security service can’t manufacture custom chips as needed to clone the devices SSD? Or hasn’t capped the chips in the iPhone already? Or run it through the most through fuzzer?
>US companies can meaningfully resist the US government
That doesn't seem to be the case but the narrative. There were enough leaks, document dumps, and whistleblower revelations to dismiss this narrative.
Sure, for the US having competition is a problem but sometimes the US citizen should zoom out on Maps and Google some labels they see. Literally, most of the people do not live in the USA and you can confirm that by Googling labels in the maps, things like "France", "Germany", "Turkey", "Azerbaican", "China", "Japan". You will notice that these are lands that are somewhat similar to the USA but are not the USA but using the stuff made or operated in the USA.
For people looking from that part of the world, the "Chinese are spying on us" panic is met with "Oh really, that's so bad. Poor thing" level of simphaty.
>US companies can meaningfully resist the US government
This ideation is moot if there are members of the US government on staff, committed to 'finishing the patriotic mission' of their spook-agency masters.
I don't see any. The 'anti-' prefix is about human rights, possible issues of IP theft and various immoral activities etc. It's the behaviour, emphatically not the country.
> China exists and its not going to disappear
Good. It would be a genuine loss to all humanity's heritage if it did.
So what? Well, we get to choose which side we allow to spy on us.
I mean, I suppose we could make an argument for all people being equal in all equal ways, but don't forget that the each state actor is driven by different sets of morality, politics and even philosophy, or perhaps lack of it.
The only conclusion we can derive is that this whole surveillance/spying thing will never stop, everyone does it and will continue to do it. It would be wise to assume that everything is bugged, everything has backdoors, and every hardware vendor has been compromised.
What if the "We" is 95% of the world that is not the USA?
It's cute that US citizens have some spying issues and some targeted election interference issues but the sympathy is very limited because in many parts of the world they were dealing with this since ever and the USA was the culprit.
I think we are approaching a time in history where we are going to actually choose if we are human resources that are to be spied on and controlled by the political class or are we individuals.
Choosing the government or agency you are being spied on is a false choice because it assumes that you made the choice to be a human resource and you are to be exploited but you can pick your masters by fighting against your master's competitors.
The moral argument is unconvincing given what's happening in the USA with all those immigrant camps and political agenda.
I'm from one of the poorest countries on the planet, which is neither politically aligned with the US nor the Chinese, because it isn't geopolitically important enough. Though to be entirely honest, it's aligned with whoever throws money at it. I'm wary of the economic moves the Chinese are making in my part of the world, because they come attached with fat strings, which most people are willing to ignore for said economic benefits.
Nations aren't single discrete entities, so everything from individuals to collectives of all sizes within a nation will want to align with the US or the Chinese, depending on money, politics, ideologies, etc. I personally would much rather have the NSA read my emails, not the Chinese. It may be an unfair choice, but it is a choice.
> I think we are approaching a time in history where we are going to actually choose if we are human resources that are to be spied on and controlled by the political class or are we individuals.
I don't think you are right about this bit. The oppressor/oppressed duality is never going away, because it isn't determined by some kind of social realisation that we could do better as a species. It is determined by our biology and our drive to acquire resources. That kind of change won't happen until our biology changes.
Our access and use of resources have changed dramatically. It's no longer true that to have few people living like the kings we need to have a large number of people exploited. Well, maybe we are not exactly there yet but we have come such a long way that we have an incredibly high count of people living very good lives.
Many fights of the political elites are more and more about their personal egos than biological or natural necessities of the population they are responsible for.
Sure, there are still issues and global risks that may undo our progress but overall we are approaching a future where we are no longer depended on large political institutions but since we have these in place they will continue doing their thing and the risks will be due to fighting between those institutions.
Ah, cool. However, you’re example seems a bit Eurocentric. Not to mention that the parent, as well as the rest of the thread, was talking about how this compares to the USA. So I have no clue how bringing Turkey into the discussion would make much sense.
Why does it need to be US-centric? The exercise that I suggested is intended as a way to give you a perspective. Beleive it or not, not everyone lives in the USA and not everyone is US citizen and not everyone is obligated to put aside their own needs and act for the US interests.
This issue is relevant to non-US persons and countries because the USA is actively trying to prevent Huawei from doing business in these countries.
The US-centric views are so prominent on the HN that sometimes I wonder if ever anyone at the silicon valley intended to "Make the World a better place". How can you make the world a better place if you cannot recognise that a world beyond the USA exists? It's even in your statistic! Turkey or Sweden is not simply some data points, they are real countries, allies of the USA, with their own interests.
The Europeans are often accused of being anti-American but maybe that is not the case, maybe it's just that Europeans every once in a while need to protect their own interests and that is perceived as treason.
Thanks again for letting me know the world includes other countries. Even when you again only include European countries as your examples. Your perspective is clearly Eurocentric. Mine is US-centric. Believe it or not I’m sure Chinese people’s views are China-centric. In other news water is wet.
There is no reason to be so smug in explaining obvious things and assuming complete ignorance on my part.
In the context of national security, the keyword is actually “NSA”. Having US intel working in US infrastructure is not a threat to national security, having Chinese intel working in US infrastructure is.
Regardless of how hostile you think the NSA is towards the rights of the US people, it’s still not a national security problem. For that to be a national security problem, the NSA would have to be hostile towards the objectives of the US government.
In addition to that, if you think the US government is more hostile towards its citizenry than the Chinese government is, well... Also, if you’re relying on infrastructure that the government controls for your security, then the intentions of the NSA aren’t really your biggest problem.
Everyone in Israel has to do military service so you would be hard pushed to create a company selling pea shooters that did not have ex-military in it. As for 'military intelligence' that is a large part of what the military actually is, so you would expect them to graduate into tech roles rather than making pea shooters or anything else 'harmless'.
Makes the revelation that "some people working at Huawei have links to Chinese military" just so shocking. Trump's totally right we should all buy USA tech and not use Huawei for 5G. /s
When's the list for other countries being published?
If you're going to write that, then also post https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_in_China because most Chinese people don't seem to serve in the military. It's not like South Korea where young men famously dread the time they have to go to the military.
Indeed. I was doing some research a while back on which countries do and don't have conscription and it's a surprisingly hard line to draw. A lot of countries have it in name, but don't in practice, and the line between having and not having conscription is surprisingly blurry.
Actually, a lot Chinese family consider military service as some kind of 'education' for their kids, especially in rural area. At least in the area I come from, you have to bribe someone to get the quota to serve in the military.
Please don't post unsubstantive comments here, and please don't make lazy canned arguments. That breaks the site guidelines against shallow dismissals and name-calling.
The thing about whataboutism is that it was correct. It was only a logical fallacy in the eyes of US jingoists who didn't want to admit that, actually, the US had tons of human rights violations and the US vs. USSR conflict was not a conflict of good vs. evil.
When both A and B do a thing X, there are two potential logically sound conclusions: either that X is bad and both A and B are in the wrong, or that it's not and neither is. It is unsound to say that A doing X is a problem but B doing X is merely a rhetorical accusation that requires no response.
Yes, it's a pity most people don't understand this.
The idea actually is a valid concept in justice, but only within the realms you posted: If person A does something illegal and then tries to justify the behaviour X with "But everyone does this!", then this is not a valid argument, because either X is illegal or not.
Whataboutism as invented by the economist, though, is just rhetoric nonsense. The USSR was perfectly right in highlighting the human rights atrocities of the US in response to accusations of the US against them. That doesn't make the accusations go away, but it correctly exposes the bigotry.
yes, but it doesn't excuse the behavior at hand, doesn't further the discussion and it's sad to see whataboutism in both the fist and second most relevant comment in the discussion (at the time of the posting).
"but the usa does it" is neither a justification, nor a validation, nor an exculpation. it's just finger pointing and throwing poo at each other in the hope that people, instead of condemning both, concedes the point, leveraging outrage fatigue.
there's a reason why it's considered a propaganda tool, after all.
What is a Western country arresting (and not even yet successfully prosecuting) a Huawei employee supposed to prove, besides that the West is suspicious of Huawei?
It's sad to see these threads get quickly out of hand with emotions getting the best of some of the HN audience. I have been commenting from time to time in these threads, but it seems impossible at times to have rational discussion. I don't really feel strongly about China one way or the another, I just know they do not always uphold the same values as I do. (And so do many other things)
Anyway, I think it's important to look at this issue as a whole from also the viewpoint of the Chinese - to understand how the Chinese society works and why there is such strong emotional response when people start accusing China. Because I don't really have first-hand experience, I found these very interesting videos that I think are enlightening:
serpentza - How China stops Overseas Students Integrating
The author who is from South-Africa has been living in China for some time, and how he describes his life there is quite illuminating. In short: China seems to have mastered how to create an "us vs them" culture and blatantly aggravates their citizens to move their focus away from their internal problems. Well, I know it's a little bit tangential, but I thought it was quite interesting.
A single person's opinion won't help you much in understanding "the Chinese viewpoint". To counter it with another opinion, I don't think the citizens of any country can be said to have a unified viewpoint. Chinese people are just as capable of having nuanced opinions on political issues and disagreeing with each other as everyone else.
Additionally, you can't just assume that emotional reactions to accusations leveled against China are all due to Chinese posters with an "us vs them" mentality. When I see accusations that are exaggerated, get the details wrong or are made up from whole cloth, I am prone to react similarly. Of course I feel the same about official party propaganda, but that doesn't tend to get posted to HN.
Twitter has also been refusing to load tweets in Firefox for Android (on T-Mobile USA), instead showing "Please wait to refresh". Its like they think I'm DDoSing their infra, rather than trying to view a tweet every few days...
Arguing about which nation is spying on you better is like arguing about which cancer causing carcinogen is better for you. It all sucks and isn't going away anytime soon.
China will spy on you just as much as USA/Russia/UK/Israel/ad nauseum... if given the chance. So enjoy staring at your shiney tech and remember that any number of nation states are most likely staring back at you. Enjoy modern life.
My personal opinion is that I'm not at all surprised by this. The Chinese government is a one-party rule that controls all aspects of life. Criticize the government or the party there and you're gone. They would be foolish, with the things they're known to do, to not take advantage of such big opportunity to spy on many countries. I think it's very reasonable for western democracies to be careful before embedding Chinese (or any other authoritarian country) high tech in their infrastructure.
This is such bullshit. Head of an American online travel company based in Bangkok is Ex-CIA. Large rest of the C-suite is all Israeli Defence Forces.
So now what?
> ...goes well beyond Huawei making normal hires and some happen to come from military backgrounds. For instance, Huawei employees list representing or working for Chinese state security or military agencies at the same time as they work for Huawei
That seems like a good way to build trust with citizens outside of China. I believe that a wide portion of people in Western Europe and the US are distrustful of the Chinese government so excluding those individuals is a positive.
I find it hard to take anyone seriously who posts their "breaking research" as a series of tweets; find the correct platform that fits your message; if you are a 10 year old girl, then a series of tweets might be fine.
If you have a lot of followers, twitter can be a very effective loudspeaker even with the character limit. By the way, 10 year olds don’t tend to use twitter — boys or girls (why is it so often young girls who are held up as a negative example?)
so the take is do not have a job before working for Huawei. If there is someone working for American company before joining Huawei, American government is linked to Huawei :D
Also, there are large numbers of people in companies like huawei and cisco working on clandestine eavesdropping and "interception" is a public feature of the products. These people have to have close ties with users of the features.
When people's views are divided, internet readers are a million times too quick to assume that the other side is brigading, shilling, spying, astroturfing, promoting secret agendas, fifth-columning, foreign-agenting, or (this seems to be the latest favorite word) disingenuous—even when they have zero basis for thinking so. (Someone representing an opposing view is no basis for thinking so.) This is a cognitive bias. It leads people to imagine nefariousness and project it onto other users. That poisons the community—and this poison is actually the bigger problem by far. We've even seen individual users singled out for attack merely for a different point of view. In the limit case it even approaches mob behavior.
Therefore all HN users are expected to have the self-restraint to rein in this impulse, most of all on paranoia-prone topics like spies hiding things in technology, nations planting foreign agents, and all the rest of this. Yes, these are things; and internet commenters imagining them is also a thing.
Here are a few of the other explanations I've posted about this.
It's really not. If you spent 10 minutes on HN Algolia and looked through all threads that reference China in the title (e.g. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=china&sort=byPopularity&prefix...), and then visited the comment section of any thread that had no relation to USA (e.g. "WeChat is Watching: Living in China with the app that knows everything about me", "Report on forced organ harvesting in China", etc.) then you'll always find Chinese nationalists/shills resorting to US whataboutism.. You can try to do the same with any other country, and you won't see this trend.
It's also very common for threads that are negative towards China to quickly disappear from the frontpage for no reason despite just recently appearing, or even being at the first position. An example from a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20336543. I really don't understand how you can deny this.
> you'll always find Chinese nationalists/shills resorting to US whataboutism
You've broken the site guidelines again with this. That's not cool. I'm not sure what to do besides repeat the explanation and links I just gave you.
> You can try to do the same with any other country, and you won't see this trend
Of course. That's the geopolitical battle of the moment. It was the same with Russia a year ago. All this shows is what controversy is hot right now.
> It's also very common for threads that are negative towards China to quickly disappear from the frontpage
Moderators routinely downweight hot controversies and political battles, as well as articles that repeat what has already been discussed recently. If we didn't, the front page would consist of nothing but that. Your mistake is in jumping to the conclusion that this has anything to do with our own political views or some secret bias about China. It does not. Our job is to protect HN from (a) mind-numbing repetition, and (b) earth-scorching flamewars. Why? Because those things kill intellectual curiosity, which is the point of this site. Everything we do as mods follows from that principle.
By the way, that last bit can be inverted to get a reliable test for moderator action on HN. If moderators do X, can you find a path from the principle of intellectual curiosity to X? If so, that's probably why we did it. If not, you can always ask us what the path is. We're happy to answer questions, but (again) as the guidelines say, it's better to send them to hn@ycombinator.com.
Could you clarify one thing: if a thread has already reached the frontpage (and is in a position where it should only continue to gain popularity rather than disappear, e.g. 50 upvotes in 20 minutes), does mass flagging the thread have any influence on its score? Because from outside observations it surely seems like it does, especially when you take into consideration that I’ve on several occasions seen a thread get knocked out, only for a moderator to push the thread back to the frontpage again.
I would also argue that by allowing users to resort to US whataboutism then these comments break multiple rules by introducing flamewars and engaging in political battles.. which, in my opinion, result in you failing to prevent (a) mind-numbing repetition, and (b) earth-scorching flamewars.
I’m also very curious about the logic behind down-weighting this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20336543. In my opinion, it’s very high quality journalism, with two journalists risking their lives to give unprecedented access to a region that’s been technologically cut off from the rest of the world. I also believe it’s the first time we saw what China did to the children of the families that had been sent to the camps.
Normally I'm happy to answer questions like this. But when you repeat the very provocation that I just asked you twice to omit from your HN comments, my trust in your good faith diminishes.
It's unfortunately common for some users to question HN moderation as a way of challenging the mods to political or ideological duels. Our experience with that is that no matter how patiently one answers, every answer is met with a fresh flurry of litigious questions, because the purpose is not to learn but to fight. This is risky for us—it amounts to a DoS attack on the site, quickly exhausting our time and energy, stealing resources from other users and from work we might do to improve HN for everybody.
I'd be delighted to be wrong, but your comment seems to signal that you don't want to use HN as intended, which includes respecting the way it is currently moderated. So first I need a reason to believe that you actually do want that, and then I'll be happy to answer whatever you like.
If you feel my tone was aggressive, condescending or negative in other ways then I’m sorry.
I think it’s an unfair interpretation to believe that I don’t want to use HN as intended, I’m just tired of seeing every thread that’s critical of China head down the same path. You said:
> That is not at all an accurate description. This is a classic example of how people feel like the site is biased against their point of view even when it's the dominant one.
The US whataboutism is undeniable, you also acknowledged it yourself, while highlighting the same thing happened with Russian threads. I think it’s naive to believe that “all this shows is what controversy is hot right now”. Because it’s a common and effective tactic that occur on all social media, and in threads that aren’t related to China/Russia, everyone usually seem to be able to behave and stay on-topic.
As for mass flagging and quick downvotes, I can only make assumptions based on personal experience and careful observations (been using HN for over half a decade and tend to refresh the site every few minutes). You seem to blame/credit moderators for causing the threads to disappear, whereas I was under the impression it was often caused by mass flagging.. so I’m genuinely curious if flagging a thread has any effect on its position, or if it simply alert a moderator to take a closer look.
You can be skeptical of the narrative without being pro CCP.
The Huawei “backdoors” everyone made a fuss about were neither worse nor better than the dozens of bugs and backdoors in every other brand that have been found over the years. Mostly typical of poor SDLC of companies that primarily do hardware not software.
Any large company is going to employ people who have served in various security services just by law of large numbers.
For stuff like Telecom you also actively need people experienced with gov security standards to help you comply with them!
Former experience with an agency can be super helpful with this. At least thats why several companies I’ve worked for (in FVEY countries) have hired from services - not so much for skills or connections but because they understand the compliance and certification processes.
Not sure if people realise there are probably 50 Word, Powerpoint and compliance jockeys for every TAO operative in those places.
I’m ok with the Huawei ban tbh but much of the press surrounding it seems bunk to me, frankly. I think I can recognise propaganda when I see it, at least when it relates to my field.
no, its just an absolutely bonkers thread. The idea that Huwawei is some kind of shocking threat that needs to be fought because chinese spooks work there is embarrassing. American spooks and ex-spooks dominate in US communications technology firms. I'm an american, born and bred in Texas. I have no love, whatsoever for the CCP, but its a gross orientalist obsession to see China as somehow singularly malevolent.
> Is it so hard to believe that people not in agreement with you have actual reasons for that?
When people are saying that the US is a bad actor on the same level as China, yes, that should be extremely hard to believe for anyone with a reasonable knowledge of current events.
I've seen too many Chinese pro-CCP posters, they have the exact same logic like you. Any Chinese likes USA must be a traitor aka 汉奸. If you like Google, you are a pro-USA traitor. Use cracked Windows because Microsoft is destroying Chinese OSs, Apple is spying on Chinese on behalf of US interests, don't use Cisco routers because it's backdoored by the CIA, etc.
I think a lot of people are just sick and tired of American hypocrisy. The country that gave us the oppressive 5-eyes regime has not in any way gained moral authority to declare other nations' intelligence agencies involvement in industry to be immoral, or a 'security risk'. Until the NSA is disbanded, there is no security on the Internet.
To explain the perspective and avoid the inevitable "you must be a shill for the CCP if you're so anti-America" accusations, I don't live in China, and choose not to, because I am very much against the actions of the CCP.
But I do live under the imperial shadow of America's decisions to usurp sovereignty and privacy around the world - I did not choose to be subject to this oppression.
I, like so many enlightened individuals who make up this community, am extremely opposed to America's usurpation of the technologies that held so much promise for peace. American hegemony over the tools of peace in order that it can maintain its power is one of the worst circumstances of the modern world.
I'd like to see ALL telecom companies swept clean of ALL repressive spooks who once served their nations intelligence agencies and can therefore never be trusted with the open communication lines of the world.
Mostly agree with you, but on your last point, you wouldn't consider that ex-intelligence people might not be related to their respective agencies anymore, and that they abandonded them because they stopped believing in their cause or for another legitimate reason? Choosing to distrust them for life because of their past experience would be to ignore their talent and skill, which are very valuable in the private sector.
No doubt, subterfuge and intrigue are valuable skills in the private sector, but I really do think that people distrusting a person for life is one of the liabilities that must be borne when a person decides to work for a clandestine agency - especially one that has a long history of covert usurpation of institutions for its own purposes.
Intelligence agencies cannot, ever, be trusted by private citizens. The corruption of government begins with its secrets. That's the nature of the job, and its one of the reasons why there is a very strong motto prevalent in the spook industry: "you can never leave the company".
It gets especially funny for any company hiring Israeli security experts. Or even the US for that matter, college is expensive and there seems to be an array of people who get their degree financed that way.
That seems like a great dataset for some statistical analysis, but unfortunately we aren't even told how large the subsets are. (The figure of 590 million is from a news report about the leak.) So it's hard to tell how large the problem is, and how it compares to other companies or countries.
The results are presented as three profiles based on three CVs from the leak, but edited to obscure their identity. It's only mentioned in the conclusion that the profiles are actually composites, which I take to mean that they combine information from multiple CVs each. That's unfortunate, because many of the claims rely on one and the same person being involved in multiple activities. We'll have to trust the author that those modifications do not embellish anything.
The three profiles are:
1. A software engineer in Huawei QA since 2011 who from 2012 on also held a research and teaching position with the PLA's National University of Defense Technology, working on signals, remote management and scripting. The paper claims that this places them within a branch of the Strategic Support Forces (who are responsible e.g. for cyber warfare). It's not clear to me whether that's something specific to that person, or whether any similar research at NUDT is classed that way. NUDT also does civilian research, e.g. Microsoft was criticized for publishing a paper on beauty estimation co-authored with NUDT researchers: https://ecommons.udayton.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=107...
2. A Huawei engineer who was responsible for building lawful interception capabilities, working on roll-outs in multiple countries. He served as a representative for the Chinese Ministry of State Security on one project "likely guaranteeing project specifications". The author tries to imply that this was to grant the MSS access to other countries' networks, but alternatively Huawei simply has product managers responsible for communication with the law enforcement agencies doing the intercepting in their own country's networks. The author also tries to link that person to a "backdoor" in infrastructure of Vodafone Italy. However, Vodafone has denied the allegiations in the Bloomberg article he cites: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-48103430
3. A network engineer who developed civilian and high-security military communication systems at CASTC, then worked at China Unicom for a year and then went to Huawei to lead network expansion projects. At CASTC, he gained expertise using Cisco and Nortel switches. The author construes this to imply that he assisted in espionage attempts involving fake Cisco routers.
Of the three, I'm going to classify 1. as harmless research (otherwise Microsoft is just as implicated as Huawei) and 3. as "person with security clearance changes jobs". 2. however at least supports this part of the paper's conclusion: "the institutional relationship between Huawei and Chinese state security services directly contradicts Huawei claims that they have no relationship with these services." Huawei should probably clarify those statements to mean that the relationship doesn't grant Chinese security services access to other countries' data.