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.
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.
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.
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
It’s a good plan. OP needs to make sure the phone isn’t carrier locked.
or bootloader locked as well, those Verizon pixels are locked down
“carrier locked” does include Verizon phones.
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
