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China Forces Muslim Minority To Install Spyware On Their Phones (bleepingcomputer.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bleeping Computer: Chinese authorities in the province of Xinjiang are forcing locals of the Uyghur Muslim minority to install an app on their phones that will allow the government to scan their device for "terrorist propaganda," local media reports. In reality, the app creates MD5 hashes for the user's files and matches them against a database of known terrorist content. The app also makes copies of the user's Weibo and WeChat databases and uploads it to a government server, along with the user's IMEI, IMSI, and WiFi login information. The app is called Jingwang (Citizen Safety) and was developed by police forces from Urumqi, Xinjiang's capital. Authorities launched the app in April, and also included the ability to report suspicious activity to the police. At the start of July, Xinjiang officials started sending WeChat messages in Uyghur and Chinese to locals, asking them to install the app or face detainment of up to 10 days. Police have also stopped people on the street to check if they installed the app. Several were detained for refusing to install it. Locals are now sharing the locations of checkpoints online, so others can avoid getting arrested.
Is a duty of all Muslims. It is written in the Qur'an.
Praise be to Allah.
Erm... you should know that the Uighurs are not foreigners to the land but natives.
They have been Muslims for centuries and before the formation of the PRC were semi autonomous.
However they are seen as a threat as they are not part of the Han ethnic group that the current chinese government comes from.
Um, maybe it's the man-dress, AK-47 and car packed with 200 lbs of ANFO.
Just sayin'.
I wonder how many of them will get duplicate phones, and how hard it is to conceal the real one, or have a duplicate set of SIM cards to mask your identity. Pretty draconian.. This will make people at lot more aware and vigilant about their data security.. I wonder how hard it is to partition your phone such that you have a factory reset on one, and the government spyware app on the other, such that you can easily switch the two. e.g. have the program jump to another address in flash to find an alternative main().. I've done a lot of this kind of work for fail-safe firmware uploading, but don't know much about the flash system/OS of a phone...
I'm living in this city. And yeah, they forced me to install their crazy china app. I deleted all my critical information such as photos from the phone before handed to the police.
This app is constantly sending my phone data to CN servers. I could filter them out using my VPN, but some of my friends are already caught by police for attemting "app decompile".
So I changed my phone. Install 2 OS on one phone.
1 is infected by china, and the other 1 is safe.
This system works like Veracrypt's Hidden OS. I made this for myself about 4 years ago.
You can switch OS1 and OS2 using smartphone's hardware button. I don't write details because I don't want chinese to fuck my phone.
I've already asked by the police to show me the app. When my phone was moved suddenly, it automatically switched to OS1.
Only I can use OS2.
Technology is not for a noob. Fight against them, digitally.
MD5 has collisions like a mofo. Besides, this sure sounds like a universal, "we don't like this person and therefore they're a terrorist" type of situation. I would be interested in knowing just what the application is capable of because I get the feeling they can remotely upload/delete whatever they want to/from your phone.
Seems like a legit reason to not have a smartphone.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Perhaps you've never heard of a guy named Saint Peter, who denied knowing Jesus Christ three times because he was afraid of the laws and/or rules of this world.
See, John 18:13-27
You are welcome on my lawn.
What if you deny it? How can they prove what you believe (or not?)
You are a Muslim if you are on the List of Muslims.
If you deny it then you are a Denier that is on the List of Muslims.
Everyone on the List installs the Spyware. Deniers too.
You can be added to the List of Muslims at any time.
"His name was James Damore."
You've hit the nail on the head. This actually makes the position of the extremists arguably easier. Now you don't have to second guess whether or not your phone is being monitored, you can count on it and work around it. And the solution doesn't have to be fancy or technical: you just setup a set of code word/phrases via snail mail using everyday common phrases, and instead of sending "proceed with the next stage of the operation", you send "pick up milk and rice from the store".
Which is to say: the point of eavesdropping on potentially dangerous individuals is negated by the idiocy of asking these people to assist you in their own eavesdropping by installing the required software.
But the Chinese are not dumb enough to not realize this, which means the real cause of this is something else entirely: first it's a PR move to appease the populace by appearing to do 'something' to react to the threat, but more importantly this gives the authorities a convenient reason to detain anyone for 10 days. I mean, all they have to do is 'inspect' the phone and remove the app and BAM the guy's away for 10 days while you go through and mic his apartment and car, and if need be plant some evidence so that he can be jailed for longer. Or they can just change the log files they have from the apps to include something suspicious and arrest anyone on terrorism charges on that grounds. It's not like the chain of evidence in the Chinese system is reliable: they control the log and the phones, so that means you provably said what they claim you said, after all that's what the records show.
So in the end this is just a way of making sure they have the ability to jail anyone at any time for any reason, which they've had all along, but usually it's been a slightly longer process, this seems to be just a step to make it easier and faster.
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
I can't give you my phone model specifically because information could be used to target me.
Jailbreak or non-jailbreak, it's free. My device work. It's a very small device.
TOOP is not an app. It's a small device with switch.
You have to open the smartphone and replace the part.
(Hardware key)+(some other actions)+(surrounding condition)=Switch_OS_Trigger
I'm a repairman. My work is extremely clean and I'm proud of it. Nobody notice the phone is rigged or not.
Where did you get that idea from, you ignorant sack of shit?
If you think about that for just a moment you should realize how silly your question is. A person that truly believes in their religion isn't going to go and deny it, because adhering to their religion is more important than adhering to the laws and/or rules of this world. Reasonably, If one denim, then they clearly aren't passionate enough about any belief they may happen to have to be liable to pose a threat on account of any such beliefs.
Taqiya (Arabic: taqiyyah, literally "prudence, fear")[1][2] is an Islamic term which refers to precautionary dissimulation or denial of religious belief and practice in the face of persecution.[3][4][1][5]
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Jewish law.
Yes, because a fictional character in Christian mythology is an indicator of how real Muslim exteremists act in real life.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Perhaps you've never heard of a guy named Saint Peter, who denied knowing Jesus Christ three times because he was afraid of the laws and/or rules of this world.
See, John 18:13-27
But then he was crucified upside down for not renouncing him. What's your point?
I'm an atheist so I really don't give a shit anyway.
Actually Muslims are specifically allowed by the Koran and Hadith to lie about being Muslim in order to save their hides. See Taqiyaa, kitman, and the various other officially sanctioned types of deception.
Christians are expected to proclaim their faith though it may cost their lives, and many have done so.
Another poster mentions St. Peter as denying his faith, but those three denials occurred four days before the capstone of the Christian faith was put in place- the ressurection of Christ.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
My point is that history is full of examples of devout believers who denied their faith to evade the laws or the Inquisition or the gas chambers or the lash. Faith is fungible.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Let me help you out. But before I go any further you are correct, there are many Christians who seem to like to cherry pick what they like out of Jewish texts.
Christianity is called Christianity because it's adherents follow the teachings of Jesus Christ. You will find those teachings in a set of books called the New Testament.
Now once again, there are a LOT of Christians who are unable to understand they are to follow Christ's teachings because some of the Jewish texts are so darn "convenient." Take the Ten Commandments as an example of Jewish teachings that are nice to have in your back pocket when you want to look down in judgement on someone else.
Add to that, the Jewish texts are in many instances bound together with the teachings of Christ. It's easy to get a bit confused.
Look, Christians are human. Individually they are in varying degrees fallible.
But, if you strictly look at the teachings of Christ I believe you will find a consistent set of principles that treat people fairly.
Personally I would like to see Christianity simply dump the Jewish texts. With the teachings of Christ they simply are not needed or particularly relevant.
Islam is not a race.
Look, this policy is NOT being applied to muslims, it is being applied to Uyghurs REGARDLESS OF THEIR RELIGION. 80% of muslims in China are NOT Uyghurs, and these policies DO NOT apply to them. The largest majority muslim ethnicity in China are the Hui, who are well assimilated into Chinese society, mostly speak Mandarin, and often you wouldn't even know they are muslim until you see them skipping the pork dumplings at the all-you-can-eat buffet.
This policy is based on ethnicity.
It is NOT based on religion.
If you need this to be repeated a few more times, just ask.
Christianity is also viewed with suspicion in China, but since Christ made a point of telling people to be Pacifists and obey Authority, the PRC is fine with followers of actual Christian doctrines.
No they are not. The Chinese Communist Party controls the clergy and injects political lessons.
"Catholicism, like all religions, has been permitted to operate only under the supervision of the State Administration for Religious Affairs. All worship must legally be conducted through state-approved churches belonging to the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association (CPA), which does not accept the primacy of the Roman Pontiff. In addition to overseeing the practice of the Catholic faith, the CPA espouses politically oriented objectives as well. Liu Bainian, chairman of the CPA and the Bishops Conference of the Catholic Church in China, stated in a 2011 interview that the church needed individuals who "love the country and love religion: politically, they should respect the Constitution, respect the law, and fervently love the socialist motherland.’’ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
are you saying they don't speak much Mandarin and don't share culture with the rest of China?
Exactly. It is based on culture and ethnicity, and NOT on religion. If you promote separatism, you are going to get hammered, whether you are a muslim Uyghur or a buddhist Tibetan, and the punishment is going to be applied collectively.
China is not "anti-muslim". There are 50 million muslims in China. There are mosques in every major city. Most of these muslims dress, speak, and act just like other Chinese, and consider themselves Chinese. Xinjiang is a much more recent addition to China, and was originally conquered by the Qing (Manchus), not Han Chinese. Xinjiang continued to resist, broke away many times, and was independent as recently as 1949. Many Uyghurs feel more kinship with the people across the border in Kazakhstan that with the rest of China.
Not that that makes much of an argument in favor of Beijing's actions, though.
This policy is not coming from the central government in Beijing. This is an initiative of the Xinjiang provincial government.
My understanding is that Japan doesn't allow many people to immigrate there, period.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
They have been Muslims for centuries and before the formation of the PRC were semi autonomous.
White Americans are constantly told they are not "natives" because they've only been in America for a few hundred years.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
Faith is fungible.
Nope. Appearance of faith is fungible. As a lifelong atheist, I get to deal with stupid people all the time, and mostly I deal with them by not correcting them when they assume that I'm of {their favourite/their hated/any} faith.
My son does the same. While you and I can split hairs on slashdot all day long, in real life it will be way too exhausting to correct people's misconceptions. It's better to simply avoid the argument that {their god is real/moon landings were faked/the MRA is out to get them/the earth is flat/etc}.
Of course, on slashdot I get to determine how much of my time to waste; IRL the other party will continue the conversation long past the time that I am tired of it and I may not be able to get away.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
I thought all phones made in China where already full of spyware, or are they only accessible to the NSA?
I seriously would like to know what the history books will have to say about these times of data collection by governments and companies alike.
I hope they will say that it was just a black page in history, because that would mean things would have gone better. If they say that this was the period that the great enlightenment started, it means that things would get far worse.
Well, privacy was nice while it lasted, but just like your virginity, one you get fucked, you ain't getting it back. The difference is that you have no say in the matter. Not really.
I think I need to re-watch "The Circle".
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I've argued against the Saudis before, even pretty recently. But, they're at least ideologically opposed to the Islamic State. But I've also read that one of bin Laden's goals was to drive this precise wedge between Saudi Arabia and the US, so this all becomes muddled very quickly. That, and our attempts at regime change have not been wildly successful. Most Americans know Iran as "some Muslim country that hates us," and don't seem to realize that the reason for that is that we overthrew their democratically-elected government and installed a brutal dictator to protect Anglo-American oil interests there.
So generally it's complicated. I don't know how much we can blame the nonviolent Wahhabists for the violent Wahhabists. We would probably rather have the stable government and their supply of oil than try to set anything else up. Either way, it's a bad situation, but there aren't a lot of good options for changing it.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
"If a damsel that is a virgin be betrothed unto an husband, and a man find her in the city, and lie with her; Then ye shall bring them both out unto the gate of that city, and ye shall stone them with stones that they die; the damsel, because she cried not, being in the city." -- Deuteronomy 22:23-24
Emphasis added. The generally accepted interpretation of these verses is that if a woman were attacked in the middle of a city, someone else would hear the attack and come to stop it. If the woman didn't "cry out", and was therefore a willing participant, then she was guilty of adultery.
Obviously, in the modern world, that assumption isn't valid, but 1000 BCE Israel was a different culture. The Torah also doesn't have nearly the minute detail that current US law has.
But only certain branches (mustly Saudi) Muslims believe that Jihad should be violent. Why do we support Saudi again? Why do we allow Saudi funding of mosques abroad?
Actually, no. There are no versions of Islam that prohibit violent jihad, since Mohammed himself clearly stated that violent jihad is the highest form of service to allah.
I generally agree w/ most criticisms of Saudi Arabia, but since President Trump's visit, they have been shifting their policies, and taking a hard line not against moderate Muslims or anti-Muslims, but against Jihadists. You mentioned Wahabism: the only other Wahabi country in the world is Qatar, which has been the focus of criticism from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Emirates & Bahrein. Saudi Arabia is also unique in being critical of Turkey, which has been proving emphatically that it's a bigger adversary of the US than even Russia! Most recently, Turkish military did their own beheadings of Kurdish troops in Syria (not ISIS), and leaked the locations of secret US military bases in Syria. Somewhat surprisingly, the US hasn't chosen to call Turkey out on that, but the Saudis have.
I also wonder whether the Saudis have had any cash to give mosques anywhere lately. As Hugh Fitzgerald recently noted:
Meanwhile, the Muslim Arabs are more divided among themselves that at any time in their history. They are preoccupied with their own problems. In the Gulf, Saudi Arabia and several Gulf sheikdoms (U.A.E., Bahrain), as well as Egypt, are relentlessly pressuring Qatar, which they charge with supporting the Muslim Brotherhood. For the Saudis, the Muslim Brotherhood practices an inadmissible form of “terrrorism” because it has repeatedly shown itself a threat to the Saudi regime. In 2003, the Brotherhood attacked the Saudi rulers for allowing American forces into the Kingdom; the Saudis were even more shocked when the Muslim Brotherhood helped overthrow Mubarak in Egypt, for this was interpreted as a potential future threat to the Saudi rulers as well. Also unacceptable to the Saudis are Qatar’s continued close ties with Iran, that go beyond the economic links naturally resulting from the fact that Qatar and Iran share the largest natural gas field in the world. And Al Jazeera, based in and funded by Qatar, reports critically on the Saudi regime, as it does on other Arab rulers (though of course exempting those in Qatar itself); some of this news is highly embarrassing to the Saudis and other ruling families. In late June, the Saudis, the U.A.E, Bahrain, and Egypt cut diplomatic ties and severed all their land, sea, and air links to Qatar, and made thirteen demands. These included ending all support for “terrorism” (i.e., the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, ISIS, among others), expelling known terrorists who had been living in Qatar, and stop paying ransom to Al-Qaeda and ISIS for kidnapped Qatari nationals. As for its ties to Iran, Qatar was told to close the Iranian diplomatic missions in Qatar and the Qatari missions in Iran, to expel members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, and to cut off all military and intelligence cooperation with Iran. Furthermore, all trade and commerce with Iran by Qatar must strictly comply with US and international sanctions. And Qatar was told to stop funding Shi’ite militias in Iraq.
Another demand was for the Turkish airbase in Qatar to be shut down, presumably because Erdogan, though a Sunni, has been too friendly to Iran for the Saudis to accept.
...
Saudi Arabia is the busiest of all, engaged on every front. It is leading the campaign of Gulf states against Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood. It is propping up the Sunni ruler of Bahrain, keeping his Shi’a population under control. It is fighting a proxy war ag
Perhaps you should look into where it came from and how it came to be so well armed and well funded. After you've done so you may come to a very different conclusion. IMHO Trump's largest foreign policy mistake is to take the Saudi side (the guys that wouldn't let us have a base) against Qatar (our best allies in the middle east - the ones who actually let us have a base in their country). Qatar is giving us plenty of "material support" against I.S. while the Saudis seems to still be feeding the other side.
Saudi Arabia is not one of the former funders of the Islamic State. They have their own factions that they back - the Islamic Front, which was a coalition of 7 Islamic parties from various parts of Syria. It is opposed to ISIS, the Baathist regime as well as the US backed Free Syrian Army. Problem is that aside from the Kurdish SDF/Rojava, all those factions are Sunni Jihadist groups, while the Baathists are Alawites allied to Hizbullah & Iran.
In addition to that, the Saudis have been too nose deep in problems of their own to effectively support Jihad against the West. Aside from their dispute w/ Qatar, they are fighting proxy wars against Iran in both Syria and Yemen. In Syria, their supporters - the Islamic Front - has been too damaged thanks to both Russian bombardment as well as Hizbullah & Iranian military activity. In Yemen, the Saudis are involved in the full blown war against the Iranian backed Shi'ite Houthis, and have even enlisted troops from their allies, like UAE in this conflict. Qatar too was a part of this alliance until recently, when the Saudis had them removed. In Bahrein, the Saudis are desperately supporting the Hanafa emir/sultan from being ousted by the majority Shi'ite population of the country and becoming an open ally of Iran. Oh, and while all this has been happening, oil prices have been plummeting, so that it's no longer a cheap expertise for the Saudis to both bribe their own citizens not to revolt, while keeping all these neighborhood fires in Bahrein, Yemen & Syria in check.
OTOH, Qatar is one of those countries that has deftly played both sides of this conflict. On one hand, they allied w/ the US to be the headquarters of CENTCOM, thereby making themselves indispensable. OTOH, they've been supporters of the Jihadists since day 1. On one occasion, the CIA spotted Osama w/ a member of Qatar's ruling al-Thani family, and could not take any action since the Pentagon/State Department did not want to mar relations w/ Qatar by killing a member of the al-Thanis.
Besides that, Qatar has also supported Hamas, Hizbullah, & the Muslim Brotherhood while al Jazeera, the state owned TV network, used to broadcast those Osama videos last decade. Besides that, Qatar has close ties to Iran, which certainly throws into question how reliable an ally they are of the West. That alone should have made the US raise red flags against them, rather than try & mediate b/w them & the Saudis. While al Jazeera doesn't dare expose any misdeeds of the al-Thanis, they have been happily reporting critically on the Saudis, the Egyptians, the Emiratis & others in the region. Also, Turkey has been playing a role that is anything but at odds w/ the US - most recently exposing the locations of secret US bases in Syria and beheading Kurdish fighters allied to the US.
The US is in a bind, since it would be an expensive proposition to move CENTCOM out of Qatar and to another country in the neighborhood. They wouldn't wanna pick Saudi Arabia, since that was one of the starting issues for al Qaeda. They could pick Kuwait, but it's unclear that Kuwait is any friendlier to the US than Saudi Arabia: 1991 is a distant memory. Also, w/ Congress pressurizing the president to keep alive the rivalry w/ Putin, the US
Saudi Arabia is a command economy, and every Arab citizen (one has to be Muslim to be a citizen of that country) is a welfare recipient from the government. In other words, that country is the closest thing to a Communist country that one can imagine in terms of government owning all property and paying the citizens. The slaves you describe are the expatriate labor from various countries, be it poorer Arab & Muslim countries, such as Egypt, Pakistan, Indonesia, or from other non-Muslim countries such as Philippines, Sri Lanka & India. Those people are SOL: their passports are confiscated by their 'employers', so that they can't even quit if they don't like the working conditions.
That said, the falling price of oil and its relative irrelevance compared to the last century ensures that their days are numbered!