0x815

joined 5 months ago
[–] 0x815@feddit.org 0 points 1 month ago

I didn't miss the point, but this is a different topic. We need to provide housing, end homelessness and possibly the right to a bank account for everyone. These are different things.

 

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/4285233

The European Commission is set to launch an investigation into Chinese online retail platform Temu over whether it is in breach of rules meant to prevent the sale of illegal products online.

The move follows the Commission's request on 11 October for information from Temu under the Digital Services Act, asking what steps it is taking to stop illegal products being sold on its platform.

[...]

Under the European Union's Digital Services Act, companies with more than 45 million users are designated "very large online platforms" (VLOPs) and are required to do more to fight illegal content as well as counterfeit products on their platforms.

[–] 0x815@feddit.org 1 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Affordable housing and the threat by malicious actors to attack digital payment systems are two different things. Homelessness has to be addressed, of course, but we are dealing here with something else.

 

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/4262252

A combination of good high-speed internet coverage, high digital literacy rates, large rural populations and fast-growing fintech industries had put the Nordic neighbours on a fast track to a future without cash.

[...]

But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and a subsequent rise in cross-border hybrid warfare and cyber-attacks blamed on pro-Russia groups have prompted a rethink.

[...]

The Swedish government has since completely overhauled its defence and preparedness strategy, joining Nato, starting a new form of national service and reactivating its psychological defence agency to combat disinformation from Russia and other adversaries. Norway has tightened controls on its previously porous border with Russia.

[...]

[Norway's] justice and public security ministry said it “recommends everyone keep some cash on hand due to the vulnerabilities of digital payment solutions to cyber-attacks”. It said the government took preparedness seriously “given the increasing global instability with war, digital threats, and climate change. As a result, they’ve ensured that the right to pay with cash is strengthened”.

[...]

 

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/4231811

The UK Government has made substantial progress in removing China’s Hikvision surveillance cameras from sensitive sites, with over 50% of these devices already replaced, according to a report by the UK Defense Journal.

Efforts are ongoing to ensure full removal by April 2025 amid growing concerns about the security risks posed by Chinese-made technology in government buildings, the report by the UK Defense Journal said.

[...]

However, the security concerns extend beyond surveillance equipment. Lord Coaker’s letter also addressed potential risks posed by electric and connected vehicles, particularly those manufactured in China.

He clarified that while the focus has often been on Chinese-made technology, the security risks apply to specific on-board systems found in a variety of vehicles, not solely Chinese or electric models.

“The potential national security risks apply to specific on-board systems, and therefore, these risks are not exclusive to Chinese-made vehicles or electric vehicles,” on lawmaker said.

[...]

[Edit title for clarity.]

 

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/4219031

Chinese EV battery maker SVOLT Energy plans to shut its European operations by January 2025, in a move that clearly points to China’s retreat from the market - and declining EV sales in Europe.

In 2020, SVOLT announced plans to invest €2 billion in two battery plants in Germany’s Saarland, creating up to 2,000 jobs. However, it halted plans for a plant in Lauchhammer [in the German state of Brandenburg] due to losing a key customer and concerns over tariffs and subsidies.

[...]

A lawsuit and local protests have also delayed a planned factory in Ueberherrn [in the German state of Saarland] until 2027. SVOLT's Heusweiler plant [in Saarland], intended to produce battery packs, was set to open in July, but reports suggest the company has now ceased all production in Germany.

Meanwhile, just like in the U.S., the EV market in Europe is cooling. New car sales in the EU dropped 18% in August, with Germany down 28%, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association. EV market share fell 44%, with Chinese brand BYD selling only 218 cars in Germany, or 0.1% of the country's EV sales.

[...]

SVOLT, spun off from Great Wall Motor in 2018, counts Geely Auto, XPeng, and Great Wall among its clients but has struggled financially, reporting a cumulative loss of 4.4 billion yuan ($618 million) from 2019 to 2022.

The company aimed to raise $2.1 billion through a Shanghai IPO in 2022 but abandoned the plan a year later.

 

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/3885525

Taiwan is expected to have access to low earth orbit satellite internet service by the end of the month, a step the government says is crucial in case a Chinese attack cripples the island’s communications.

The forthcoming service is via a contract between Taiwan’s main telecoms company, Chunghwa, and a UK-European company, Eutelsat OneWeb, signed last year, and marks a new milestone in Taiwan’s efforts to address technological vulnerabilities, particularly its internet access, after attempts to get access to Elon Musk’s Starlink service collapsed.

Chunghwa co-president Alex Chien said 24-hour coverage was expected by the end of the month, with commercial access as soon as sufficient bandwidth was reached.

Taiwan is under the threat of attack or invasion by China, which claims historical sovereignty over Taiwan and has vowed to annex it, by military force if necessary. In the meantime it is under a near constant barrage of cyber-attacks, and has had some of its 15 undersea cables connecting it and its outer islands to the world cut multiple times, usually by accidental anchor snags from passing ships.

 

Taiwan is expected to have access to low earth orbit satellite internet service by the end of the month, a step the government says is crucial in case a Chinese attack cripples the island’s communications.

The forthcoming service is via a contract between Taiwan’s main telecoms company, Chunghwa, and a UK-European company, Eutelsat OneWeb, signed last year, and marks a new milestone in Taiwan’s efforts to address technological vulnerabilities, particularly its internet access, after attempts to get access to Elon Musk’s Starlink service collapsed.

Chunghwa co-president Alex Chien said 24-hour coverage was expected by the end of the month, with commercial access as soon as sufficient bandwidth was reached.

Taiwan is under the threat of attack or invasion by China, which claims historical sovereignty over Taiwan and has vowed to annex it, by military force if necessary. In the meantime it is under a near constant barrage of cyber-attacks, and has had some of its 15 undersea cables connecting it and its outer islands to the world cut multiple times, usually by accidental anchor snags from passing ships.

[–] 0x815@feddit.org 5 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Addition:

TikTok Has Pushed Chinese Propaganda Ads To Millions Across Europe -- ( July 2024, updated September 2024)

According to TikTok's newly public advertising library, ads from China’s largest state media outlets touting everything from China Covid lockdowns to tourism in the troubled Xinjiang region have been broadcast to millions of the platform's European users.

TikTok Ads Paid for by Chinese Media Target European Users -- (August 2023)

Chinese media sponsored over a thousand ads on TikTok targeting European audiences. Additionally, accounts that carefully obscure their connections to China may pose further risks in coordinated information manipulation campaigns.

This are just two examples, there is much more across the web.

 

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/3758180

Archived link

Chinese social media giant TikTok is “more dangerous” to Ukraine in terms of spreading Russian propaganda and disinformation than the Russia-founded messaging app Telegram, according to Alina Aleksieeva, the deputy head of Ukraine’s State Center for Countering Disinformation (CPD).

[...]

“We often perceive Telegram as the primary culprit, given its abundance of anonymous Russian channels and the impersonation of Ukrainian ones,” said Svitlana Slipchenko, deputy executive director of the data analytics platform Vox Ukraine.

“But the problem extends beyond Telegram — fake news is widespread on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and Threads,” she added. “The danger is focusing too narrowly on one platform while Russian propaganda continues to thrive across the entire digital landscape.”

Earlier this year, the CPD published a list of over 80 TikTok accounts used for Russian disinformation. The list includes official accounts of Russian state media, such as TASS, Sputnik, and RIA Novosti.

[...]

Ukraine has previously considered banning TikTok. The app’s future in the U.S. is uncertain due to concerns that ByteDance may have ties to the Chinese government. U.S. authorities have also accused the app of spreading harmful content and misinformation and posing privacy risks.

[...]

Ukraine has been paying close attention to foreign social media apps due to the risks they pose to its users amid the ongoing war. Earlier in September, Ukraine banned Telegram on official devices used by state and security officials, military personnel, and employees of critical infrastructure facilities.

[...]

 

Archived link

Chinese social media giant TikTok is “more dangerous” to Ukraine in terms of spreading Russian propaganda and disinformation than the Russia-founded messaging app Telegram, according to Alina Aleksieeva, the deputy head of Ukraine’s State Center for Countering Disinformation (CPD).

[...]

“We often perceive Telegram as the primary culprit, given its abundance of anonymous Russian channels and the impersonation of Ukrainian ones,” said Svitlana Slipchenko, deputy executive director of the data analytics platform Vox Ukraine.

“But the problem extends beyond Telegram — fake news is widespread on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and Threads,” she added. “The danger is focusing too narrowly on one platform while Russian propaganda continues to thrive across the entire digital landscape.”

Earlier this year, the CPD published a list of over 80 TikTok accounts used for Russian disinformation. The list includes official accounts of Russian state media, such as TASS, Sputnik, and RIA Novosti.

[...]

Ukraine has previously considered banning TikTok. The app’s future in the U.S. is uncertain due to concerns that ByteDance may have ties to the Chinese government. U.S. authorities have also accused the app of spreading harmful content and misinformation and posing privacy risks.

[...]

Ukraine has been paying close attention to foreign social media apps due to the risks they pose to its users amid the ongoing war. Earlier in September, Ukraine banned Telegram on official devices used by state and security officials, military personnel, and employees of critical infrastructure facilities.

[...]

 

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/3693467

Chinese social media giant Bytedance was dealt a stinging blow last September when Ireland’s data privacy watchdog issued it a record $370 million fine over its failure to properly safeguard the personal data of children using its app TikTok. New corporate filings suggest that Bytedance expects more fines like this to come. The company has explicitly set aside $1 billion to cover future fines from European privacy regulators.

Bytedance has faced a barrage of lawsuits and investigations from regulators around the world over TikTok’s addictive design, handling of user data and lack of safeguards for teenage users. Only yesterday, the attorneys general of thirteen states and the District of Columbia filed separate lawsuits claiming that TikTok was designed to be used compulsively and had harmed children and teens as a result.

The $1 billion provision for future fines was revealed in corporate accounts for TikTok’s European operations filed this week with the United Kingdom’s Companies House. The accounts also showed that TikTok’s European revenues surged to $4.57 billion last year, up from $2.6 billion in 2022. Its losses have also nearly tripled to $1.3 billion in 2023, up from $512 million.

[...]

The scale of total fines and penalties facing TikTok on the European continent could be even larger than the $1 billion provision in its 2023 accounts. The European Commission opened an investigation into TikTok under the Digital Services Act (DSA) in February 2024. The European Union can fine companies up to 6% of global revenue for breaches of the DSA, or impose a ban.

 

Russian Agriculture Minister Oksana Lut urged people to go to church and pray for rain as the persistent lack of precipitation puts the sowing of winter wheat at risk.

 

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/3659714

Chinese police have detained four workers of the Taiwanese iPhone maker, Foxconn, in circumstances Taipei has described as "strange".

The employees were arrested in Zhengzhou in Henan province on "breach of trust" charges, Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council said in a statement.

[...]

Taiwanese authorities suggested the detentions may be a case of "abuse of power" by Chinese police officers.

And said the case undermines the confidence of businesses operating in China.

In October last year, China's tax and land authorities launched an investigation into the company.

At that time, Foxconn's founder Terry Gou was running as an independent candidate in Taiwan's presidential election.

Taiwan has urged its citizens to "avoid non-essential travel" to the mainland as well as Hong Kong and Macau after China unveiled guidelines in June detailing criminal punishments for what Beijing described as diehard "Taiwan independence" separatists.

[...]

 

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/3639969

At EFF we’ve long noted that you cannot build a backdoor that only lets in good guys and not bad guys. Over the weekend, we saw another example of this: The Wall Street Journal reported on a major breach of U.S. telecom systems attributed to a sophisticated Chinese-government backed hacking group dubbed Salt Typhoon.

According to reports, the hack took advantage of systems built by ISPs like Verizon, AT&T, and Lumen Technologies (formerly CenturyLink) to give law enforcement and intelligence agencies access to the ISPs’ user data. This gave China unprecedented access to data related to U.S. government requests to these major telecommunications companies. It’s still unclear how much communication and internet traffic, and related to whom, Salt Typhoon accessed.

That’s right: the path for [U.S.] law enforcement access set up by these companies was apparently compromised and used by China-backed hackers.

[...]

Internet Wiretaps Have Always Been A Bad Idea

Passed in 1994, CALEA requires that makers of telecommunications equipment provide the ability for government eavesdropping. In 2004, the government dramatically expanded this wiretap mandate to include internet access providers. EFF opposed this expansion and explained the perils of wiretapping the internet.

The internet is different from the phone system in critical ways, making it more vulnerable. The internet is open and ever-changing. “Many of the technologies currently used to create wiretap-friendly computer networks make the people on those networks more pregnable to attackers who want to steal their data or personal information,” EFF wrote, nearly 20 years ago.

[...]

[–] 0x815@feddit.org 6 points 2 months ago

Let us not forget the people in Xinjiang who pay a harsh price for cheap Chinese EV cars. Unfortunately, forced labour and supply chain transparency wasn't an issue here.

[–] 0x815@feddit.org 4 points 2 months ago

I’m from Europe and I’m kinda getting tired of reminding people from the US that your blind patriotism is just that…a blind spot that is used against the US citizens on every corner.

For starters, I/m from Europe, but my friends from the U.S. might not need to be reminded where they live, they know that themselves. And we are all tired of this whataboutism all over the place. There is a lot of criticism on the U.S., the surveillance there, and Clarence Thomas. The thing is that in these posts, there are no whataboutisms, no one commenting, "but in China ...".

[–] 0x815@feddit.org 5 points 2 months ago

As an addition:

[–] 0x815@feddit.org 13 points 2 months ago (5 children)

I guess they can't say much in this case. Maybe a bit whataboutism (chat control? Google does the same?), but you can't defend this imo.

[–] 0x815@feddit.org 9 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Thanks for this.

Maybe you know Total Trust, a documentary.

Total Trust is an eye-opening and deeply disturbing story of surveillance technology, abuse of power and (self-)censorship that confronts us with what can happen when our privacy is ignored. Through the haunting stories of people in China who have been monitored, intimidated and even tortured, the film tells of the dangers of technology in the hands of unbridled power. Taking China as a mirror, Total Trust sounds an alarm about the increasing use of surveillance tools around the world – even by democratic governments like those in Europe. If this is the present, what is our future?

If you speak German, you can watch it on Arte TV, but it is only available 3 more days.

[–] 0x815@feddit.org 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Sorry, I pasted the text from the article (the original link links to a Reuters page which describes Lukoil as you can see). I deleted this link now.

[–] 0x815@feddit.org -3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Dual-use products can be used for civilian use cases and potentially also for the military, that's why it's called 'dual-use'. That is pretty obvious.

It really helps if you read the article and try to understand. What is arguably more important is to stay away from this propaganda channels. It's all on you, of course, you can do what you want, but if you keep reading and parroting these garbage propaganda and you'll never learn how to think on your own, you'll never get a life.

[–] 0x815@feddit.org -4 points 4 months ago (5 children)

[...] called quantum technologies “potentially revolutionary and disruptive” and classed them as “an element of strategic competition” with rival states [...] for components that can have military as well as civilian uses [and potentially] give China a scientific and military edge.

So the article is quite clear, just read it.

Basically, it is what China has always been doing, too. Many argue that China has even harsher rules regarding international collaboration -in both science and economy- and does not show any willingness for reciprocity.

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