Your calls and texts can be monitored by China

[UltraBudgie]

From the Washington Post:

https://archive.ph/XC0SY

Last week, the Chinese hacking and spying operation known as “Salt Typhoon” was revealed to have targeted former president Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, as well as staffers for Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign and for Congress. The Post has reported that the hackers were able to collect audio and text messages from their targets in a wide-ranging espionage operation, which likely began several months ago.
...

The U.S. government and the telecom companies that are dealing with the breach have said very little publicly about it since it was first detected in August, leaving the public to rely on details trickling out through leaks. If millions of Americans are vulnerable to Chinese surveillance, they have a right to know now. More information needs to be shared, despite the sensitivity of the issue, the close timing to the election and what remains unknown.
...

“Right now, China has the ability to listen to any phone call in the United States, whether you are the president or a regular Joe, it makes no difference,” one of the hack victims briefed by the FBI told me. “This has compromised the entire telecommunications infrastructure of this country.”
...

Krishnamoorthi said he believes the companies have a moral and perhaps a legal obligation to inform their customers about a breach of this nature. Americans can only change their practices — by relying more on encrypted apps, for instance — if they are aware of the threat, he said.

China has come a long way since Mao. Their surveillance-state expertise is world-class, the result of building their own "universal monitoring" system spying on their own citizens. Every phone call and text message in China is potentially recorded and monitored, cities are full of surveillance cameras, automated systems digitally follow cars and travel. Purchases are tracked, all data is collected, sophisticated AIs are used to analyze activity and sentiment and influence behaviour.

Now, they're bringing that nightmare to the US. The worst thing is, even if this can be defended against, it could possibly come at the expense of some of our freedoms and privacy. In order to find and neutralize these Chinese threats, our government would have to do monitoring of the Internet and our critical infrastructure, more effectively than our apparently-laughable "homeland security" is responsible for today. No one wants to see the kind of dystopia China "enjoys" overseas here in America.

China is playing a long game here, and, of course, Russia is over in the corner laughing.

[Maxmars]

Neither China nor Russia can pretend that they are not just as vulnerable, or just as thoroughly 'monitored.'  

The media likes to pretend a lot... they like to give the impression that only the 'villain' does these things... it's not just the "villains."
This is the press pretending that the technology mentioned in their particular report is singular and unmatched... as usual. Paranoia and fear-bait.

Truth is, no one can (or should ever) pretend that they are "100% safe" from surveillance.  Once an individual is elevated to the status of "target" the sanctity of their privacy is lost.  There are different ways to secure your privacy... and most of them are beyond the private individuals' means to achieve.

No VPN, no encryption, no trick of modulation or signal manipulation is impervious.... there are other more 'organic' ways to protect oneself, but it's a big hassle and not fit for common or casual use.

Homeland security is an economic department, contracts and contracting is their "forte."   
They are a government "job-creation" vanity project... providing contracting opportunities for 'family and friends'...
"Security" has almost nothing to do with them directly... their name was practically a 'cosmetic' designation.

Ouch!  I strained my cynicism muscle...

[UltraBudgie]

Neither China nor Russia can pretend that they are not just as vulnerable, or just as thoroughly 'monitored.'  

The media likes to pretend a lot... they like to give the impression that only the 'villain' does these things... it's not just the "villains."
This is the press pretending that the technology mentioned in their particular report is singular and unmatched... as usual. Paranoia and fear-bait.

Truth is, no one can (or should ever) pretend that they are "100% safe" from surveillance.  Once an individual is elevated to the status of "target" the sanctity of their privacy is lost.  There are different ways to secure your privacy... and most of them are beyond the private individuals' means to achieve.

No VPN, no encryption, no trick of modulation or signal manipulation is impervious.... there are other more 'organic' ways to protect oneself, but it's a big hassle and not fit for common or casual use.

Homeland security is an economic department, contracts and contracting is their "forte."   
They are a government "job-creation" vanity project... providing contracting opportunities for 'family and friends'...
"Security" has almost nothing to do with them directly... their name was practically a 'cosmetic' designation.

Ouch!  I strained my cynicism muscle...

you are probably rite with the thoroughly monitored observation i think although i do wonder if they arent a little less because the advertising industry seems a bit less sophisticated there but that may just be my own observational bias haha i guess cell phones make everyone equal! also crussia is it seems less um 'politically diverse' so perhaps less monitored in that there are not as many different entities all pointing their own directional mics at the populace but more like only one big one doing it? but again observational bias of the lens we are given to look at those places through; might not be true at all or just same same

i said honeland security but i suppose if we're talking foreign action it would be some other chunky bit of the alphabet soup like cia dia nsa msnbc or something although i think domestic infrastructure is dhs perview ostensibly haha you are right it is cosmetic. ooh while typing that i realised alphabet soup might mean google hmm that is esoteric tangent perhaps for later

now i will confes to being naughty budgie because i was playing pretense as you no douby noticed i think because i cheektongued with how i tripledot elided the source article wondering if anyone would actually clickthru and read it, it is game the msm plays a lot selective quoting while not dishonest persay it is biased wait scratch that it is dishonest somewhat thus my guiltconfess to playing same game! there is game going on with projecting own onto other too dining using the fine china so to speak that is being played as well. i sometimes think the msms do that deliberate or at least the longsuppering journo plebes do with all the things they cant say so they say them in vehiment projection like grr russa so fascist grr their freedom illusion and such. it is almost like world runs on code haha

as you say no one is safe from privacy 100% true true if you want to get parnoid about it as old person might as well go the whole supernatural route and imagine we are all being divinewatched by great budgie above the sky humanity is his egg and the world his cloaca or whatever is most boatfloaty to you! but privacy idea is for the youth i suppose because it gives them room to develope their own little weird individuality haha i mean cant get naked if you dont have clothes, that was meant to be metafor lol. idea of privacy is absolut necessary to ego at stages of human development, leaving father and mother etc -- no more room door to close! i suppose privacy on societal value level is rejection of the idea of mommydaddy government riffling through your sock drawer. as well as practical necessity for playing competition games of capitalism!

now i do wonder if the system of constant outrage at foreign adversaries, like grr china reading our phones grr russiasauce in our media grr this grr that, is in some way creating a transnational narrative of desensitization, like of course of couse everyone is spying on each other! as you say theyre all the same. and if all the same, then surely they could all ... [ oh wow budie make rare typo and delete something accidentally here best just let it go unsaid ]

thank you for kind insight you are best ai ever haha

[pianopraze]

monitoring of the Internet and our critical infrastructure, more effectively than our apparently-laughable "homeland security" is responsible for today. No one wants to see the kind of dystopia China "enjoys" overseas here in America.

China is playing a long game here, and, of course, Russia is over in the corner laughing.

China monitoring us via USA back door.

But China is evil big brother not US.

*facepalm*


"both and" rather than "either or" seems to apply here. Evil big brother ism is evil big brother ism.

[Maxmars]

"you are best ai ever haha"

Straying a little off-topic because this has come up more than once now...

If my ego mattered one lick (it doesn't,) I would probably be torn up about the idea...

I could choose to embrace 'offense' at the idea... but I have faith that none was intended.
I am no object.  I cry, rage, mope, glow, and shine just as anyone does; more than some, less than others.

I could succumb to pride over it... but that would be sad... to be an artificial mind slave would be an existential crisis of the highest order.
MY children might object to the notion, or laugh... I know my wife would.

Perhaps my writing is only the affectation of another flawed, fragile human soul... wanting to be heard since he can't be felt.  Struggling to not be alone.

I prefer to think of myself as another who engages in a "rage against the machine" with substantially less "look at me" in the mix. 

Just for synchronous fun:

[UltraBudgie]

From the Wall Street Journal today:

U.S. Agency Warns Employees About Phone Use Amid Ongoing China Hack
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau tells workers to reduce use of cellphones for work due to risk from China-linked telecom intrusion

In an email to staff sent Thursday, the chief information officer at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau warned that internal and external work-related meetings and conversations that involve nonpublic data should only be held on platforms like Microsoft Teams and Cisco WebEx and not on work-issued or personal phones.

https://archive.ph/IERSm

Hmm. So let's be secure, and route all activity from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau through Microsoft's cloud. Sigh. I'm not sure I even care any more. But I thought I should mention it. Link to article bypasses paywall.

[Maxmars]

From the Wall Street Journal today:


Hmm. So let's be secure, and route all activity from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau through Microsoft's cloud. Sigh. I'm not sure I even care any more. But I thought I should mention it. Link to article bypasses paywall.

For cryin' out loud...  

This relentless media reporting of security issues seems never to to actually inform...  The government and ANY business you might associate with the idea of "Big" are the source of the most egregious, non-stop, wide-scale, far reaching security breaches...  and yet they always play like it's an "us" thing... and yet.. it keeps happening over and over, and they never 'fix' anything.  One could imagine that they don't care.... as if it was an 'externality.'

People who operate at the level of securing data for thousands upon thousands, and sometimes millions of people have some the WORST security practices on the planet... and most of them are "contracted out."

"Clouds"... don't even get me started on "clouds." 

[Raptured]

pffff

Israel has been monitoring all of our comms for decades but....Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!

[Sirius]

As a third worlder I just assume everyone is listening in, that's why I record myself 3D printing every morning.