Buried in the Section 702 reauthorization bill (RISAA) passed by the House on Friday is the biggest expansion of domestic surveillance since the Patriot Act. Senator Wyden calls this power “terrifying,” and he’s right.
This bill represents one of the most dramatic and terrifying expansions of government surveillance authority in history. I will do everything in my power to stop it from passing in the Senate.
NEW: House votes 273-147 to extend FISA Section 702 surveillance powers for two years.
After rejecting an amendment to bolster warrant requirement when spying involves US persons.
126 Rs and 147 Ds voted for the bill.
Now to Senate.
Deadline: April 19
If the bill becomes law, any company or individual that provides ANY service whatsoever may be forced to assist in NSA surveillance, as long as they have access to equipment on which communications are transmitted or stored—such as routers, servers, cell towers, etc.
That sweeps in an enormous range of U.S. businesses that provide wifi to their customers and therefore have access to equipment on which communications transit. Barber shops, laundromats, fitness centers, hardware stores, dentist’s offices… the list goes on and on.
It also includes commercial landlords that rent out the office space where tens of millions of Americans go to work every day—offices of journalists, lawyers, nonprofits, financial advisors, health care providers, and more.
Not a new observation, but it still blows me away how Enemy of the State was a wild conspiracy movie when it came out in 1998 and is now basically common knowledge.
Spoiler alert: If you're talking about your workplace, they already could. Don't do anything on work equipment, network, or systems (including any free/guest wifi they have) that you wouldn't want to have read by your boss or read out to you in a courtroom.
Which is a massive chunk of the internet considering that the biggest providers are there. Aws, Azure, GCP, Cloudflare, etc... And the other ones are in China which is most likely not much better in that aspect.
My understanding is that they'll work if you get the one that has the correct frequency bands for your carrier. That said, "work" depends on exactly what you want it to do any how many hoops you're willing to jump through to get there.
Phone, sms, internet browsing should all work fine. Apps should also mostly work if you download them through the Huawei store or sideload. However, some apps demand account access to Google accounts, or deeper level access to your OS (e.g. banking and payment apps). Those are the ones which get dicey. Huaweis also lack google framework services, which means a lot of the behind the scenes account shit that makes android easier to use (e.g. unified logins) won't work. Android auto and smartwatch connectivity also don't work because they need special access.
If you read that and thought "wow, that's extremely inconvenient" then a Huawei is not for you. However, I know some people just read that and thought "Hell yeah, fuck google, sign me up!"