Question that I’ve been mulling over recently: My threat model dictates that I’m more likely to be surveilled by the US government than by the Chinese government. We can also assume that the Chinese government is not going to cooperate with the US government in any investigations of potential activist activity.
Would it not be best, then, to use a Chinese-made phone that, even though we know that information is going to China, we can also assume that any backdoors in the system are unknown to the US Gov?
I’m interested in everyone’s take on this.
Palo Alto firewall
You guessed it
How do you know information is going to China?
GrapheneOS is about as close as you will get.
Have burners if you want, but realize that with vanilla Android or Apple iOS on those devices, they will suck up a lot of data about surrounding devices, Bluetooth devices, and wifi networks. This can be probabalistically matched to your real identity even if you use VPNs and you aren’t using any known accounts on the burners. As for GPS data, that’s even worse.
Its probably best to have at least one “normie” phone you do boring stuff on, a Graphene enabled phone for sensitive-but-not-illegal daily driving, and anything spicier than that should be a burner in a Faraday bag, which you cycle and destroy/discard regularly.
China is a country that doesn’t care about the individual. If it’s in their interest to give your information to the Americans they will.
The best solution is really GrapheneOS.
China is a country that doesn’t care about the individual.
Literally a country dictated by it’s individuals
I was in a training course recently run by 20 year veteran of Gov cyber security (not US).
When I asked him about GrapheneOS he said it was a good option and much better than vendor android or iOS, but that he uses Chinese phones (Huawei & Honor) for his personal devices exclusively these days.
Sounds like he had a pretty high turnover though and is obviously well aware of what information is shared/leaked and I imagine his devices are as locked down as they can be.
Surprised me though.
Could be an option if you really know what you’re doing. If not you might be better with a trusted provider like Graphene OS.
I know a Pixel isn’t available everywhere, some folks can’t afford them, and giving Google money just feels wrong but a Pixel with GrapheneOS will cut off both the USA and Chinese governments.
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My advice here then would be to buy a used Pixel from not Google (either through a carrier or a site like Newegg or Backmarket or similar). Google won’t get any additional cash, supports keeping waste out of the landfill, and you can use Graphene. For longevity, you can get used Pixel 9s and 9as for not too much so it’s still a decently new phone
Way ahead of me
It’s a good plan. OP needs to make sure the phone isn’t carrier locked.
It’s about the software. If the software is American, like iOS or Android, all your data goes to the US government.
Read the US Cloud Act. They literally have access to everything and they dont hide it.
No way: that’s how you get 5G Havana Syndrome.
Not sure what you mean. As far as I know, all phones are made in China/Taiwan. None are made in the US, other than the US-spec Purism device.
Valid point, more specifically I’m talking about phones developed, manufactured, and sold by Chinese companies such as Huawei and Xiaomi.
I see. I don’t really think the hardware is terribly relevant. The software, and how you use it, is what matters most.
And most phones are shipped with software that is often difficult to change.
That’s kind of my theory about how TikTok was. It wasn’t subjected to US censorship and interests, only Chinese, so there was sort of a window where Americans could actually organize on it. Obviously that couldn’t stand once authority figured that out. Hence, the sudden cows being had over TikTok being owned by China.
TikTok’s whole purpose is mass data-harvesting of its users. An app designed to do that while being owned by foreign nation is a valid concern to point out. Of course, the US doesn’t actually care about anyone’s privacy, they just want the data for themselves. Hence wanting a sale to a US company rather than going after the actual data collection
Hence, the sudden cows being had over TikTok being owned by China.
There was disinformation and spying being used gather Intel and push disinformation. That’s why Biden wanted it gone. Trump was the one who decided he could use it for the same reasons as the Chinese.
There was disinformation and spying being used gather Intel and push disinformation.
Of course. Of. Course.
What Biden actually wanted was to control the narrative about Gaza so that his support for Israel’s genocide wouldn’t cost him the election. Unlike US corporate media—including social media—TikTok wasn’t censoring the truth.
I use Google Pixel 9a with GrapheneOS installed and as far as I know, this phone does not have any known hardware backdoors/exploits, though that might be just because I enabled every possible security option in the Privacy and Security tab of the GrapheneOS’ settings.
If they had hardware backdoors we wouldn’t know about them. In the end, with closed-source hardware, drivers and firmware, there’s a lot we just don’t know about what our devices are doing.
But as a Canadian I consider the USA to be a more immediate threat than China. I’m trying to extract myself from depending on US technology bit by bit, as far as possible.
I’m running a Pixel 9 with GrapheneOS as my daily driver as well, but I’m planning for future needs and/or the need to use a burner phone
Holy cannoli, a voice of reason! Yes.
US phones spy to sell your data to any advertising company AND gov, Chinese phones spy on you by the gov, because control, bad for Chinese people (most using VPN because the Great Firewall, forbidden but tolerated, mainly to access US services, like Google, YT and other big US corporation, blocked in China), relative irrelevant for other countries. Means that China isn’t worse than the US, less currently. Main issue by Chinese people is the control of the gov, but privacy (there isn’t a private company with access to your data without consent) and social rights is way better as those from the US.
