Yes.
Also phones made in the US have back doors that the US government can access. It’s not really secret.
It’s secret like Area 51 is secret. We know it’s there, we know the government is doing something with it, but we don’t know fully what, when, why, or how.
I don’t think the US Govt backdoors phones anymore … mostly because they don’t need to. They find other ways to get the information, like warrantless surveillance of Google and Apple notification servers.
The other reason I don’t think it happens is that there are just too many security researchers trying to find exploits and backdoors. Also it’s pretty well known that any backdoor can be used against you. The NSA has an interest in domestic phones being secure.
Granted, international models might have some alterations/backdoors… Even then, that would be egg on the face that they don’t really need if they got caught with a backdoor that applied only to international phones.
The backdoors the NSA uses are known vulnerabilities, 0days, USB drops, all the normal hacker tools… and if it’s a target of sensitive enough in nature, maybe a warrant requiring Apple Update/Windows Update/whoever or whatever device needs spied on, to deliver a payload to that specific machine.
Why do these threads always circle back to the US? It’s always the obnoxious “USA bad because other country bad”
And no, I’m not American
Because asking whether a chinese phone is spying on you is a loaded question.
How is it a loaded question if the answer is a resounding “yes, it’s not a secret”? I think you mean that it’s a narrow question. If the answer is “but look at all these other nations” it would’ve been more than China and the US. By your logic, it’s also quite a loaded answer, then, don’t you think?
The US is often used as a synecdoche for the five eyes, the “western world”, nato, etc. Stop being so obtuse.
The US is a very different country than any of the 30 other NATO members and often acts in direct conflict with the rest of the Western world. If I did the same and used China to represent the entirety of Asia I’d get chewed out for it, so why is the USA the face of all things people disagree with on this side of the world? Besides, using the US to contrast China creates a false dichotomy and oversimplifies the issue of mass surveillance, obfuscating both the extent and the nuance that people here claim to champion. Stop being so thick.
It’s just pointing out that chinese are not the only people to spy on you
I’m aware, but if that’s the answer why not include other nations, then? It’s always just the US and I find that very curious and kind of annoying when any criticism is drawn to China on Lemmy. It’s always the same knee-jerk reaction.
Because from what I see, the degree to which that happens is kind of wide and involves way more countries than just the US and China.
Source
It wouldn’t be very secret if it was published on the internet. It’s definitely a credible concern given the level of control China demands of companies operating in the country. The US also essentially has backdoors into most communication, and possibly phones as well, so it’s not that crazy for China to also have them.
China is also very aggressive in hacking into companies. Even if they didn’t have a custom backdoor, them finding a way in and essentially banning Huawei from fixing it, is another option.
I was under the impression it was was common knowledge/rumor that Cisco hardware all has a US installed backdoor. Huawai having a backdoor specifically wasn’t the big revelation/concern. It was that it was Chinese/foreign government controlled. Everyone puts backdoors in, it’s just a matter of only having friendly backdoors you can control.
The rumor probably exists, but the US seems to just bully companies into getting access rather than building back doors into equipment, based on available evidence. They do maintain unpublished 0 day exploits though, so it could also be both.
