Government Surveillance on Chinese vs US made phones (lemmy.world)

submitted 3 days ago by tapdattl@lemmy.world to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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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.

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[-] utopiah@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 days ago

Why even a phone then? I'm not being facetious here it's actually a follow up on https://lemmy.ml/post/42255169/23589434 namely what do you actually need a phone for?

Maybe you are used to it and it's convenient for a lot of things you do. But do you actually need one, especially knowing that it's a legitimate threat to you?

How about no phone but a small laptop or tablet with SIM as USB dongle?

this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2026

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