this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2024
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Asklemmy
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I buy good brands from China for my professional tools, phones, laptops, and gadgets. The key is knowing which brands in China are good. Nothing else can compete in terms of value for money.
Motorbikes (for commuting). My midrange motorbike cost under 2k USD brand new, and it gets me to work at the same speed as an expensive one (Asian traffic, haha).
I would be careful with gadgets that have software on them like phones and laptops. God knows what kind of Chinese spyware they come with.
This is classic whataboutism. You should try to avoid it because it's an incredibly poor defense if nothing else.
I've been bitching about the PATRIOT Act since less than a week after 9/11 happened. The Act's continued existence doesn't excuse China's well-documented bad behavior.
If you spent any time reading the articles, you would see Australian sources for incidents dating back to 2012, Lithuanians reporting in 2018, and various private security companies also weighing in.
If the only defence you have for bad behavior is that other people do it, then I guess slavery, mass murder, torture, and theft are all okay. I don't accept when people do those things, and not because I haven't done them but because I believe they are damaging to society no matter who does them. That applies to various acts on the national level, as well.
I made a mistake, not in anything I said but in assuming you were willing and able to discuss this in good faith.
When it comes to hardware, isn't the situation usually...
How else is China collecting all its data on its citizens?
Actually, that's super exciting! I would have a fun time taking it apart, analyzing it, and publishing it. Would be great publicity, and would probably make me more money than the laptop/phone/whatever cost me.
That being said, the USA has the most established history of compromising cryptography and security. It's not so much that I trust China or don't trust the USA, it's that I don't trust any superpower, am fairly wary of nations in general, and in fact don't have much trust for organizations of anything over a handful of people.
And the rest of the world will say the same with respect to American spyware.
As a foreign nation, why would you use a core piece of software on all your government computers? I'll never understand why Windows is used in any secure government installation, let alone non-American ones.
Because Microsoft forces itself on countries with deals. Its how they have always done things. Contractual lock in until folks are stuck needing windows for proprietary software.
Microsoft actively goes to schools and governments using linux or mac and makes cheap contracts, at first, to move them all and they bribe too.
Monopoly is their goal always
If you are seriously worried about privacy you could always use open source stuff. Some hardware from China has compatibility with open source firmware cause they're built out of those projects. The software risk from that stuff is about as high as shit from anywhere else.