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A highly retweeted tweet claims:

Chinese social media users report Huawei phones automatically deleting^* videos of the protests that took place in China, without notifying the owners.

* Not sure if it’s from the cloud or device level

Our sci-fi movies have not even imagined this level of dystopia…

and this has been quoted or also reported in a few other media. However, it is not clear who exactly has made these claims and what has been done to verify them.

Are Huawei phones actually known to delete videos from your phone's storage based on logic applied by the company or the Chinese government?

Alternatively, does Huawei or does the Chinese government delete videos from Huawei's cloud when determining their contents is politically inappropriate? I'm asking specifically about videos one has stored for one's self rather than posts on social media and such (where it would be "regular" censorship, of the kind which unfortunately exists in many world states and is not sci-fi-like)?

einpoklum
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  • It's unclear how they would accomplish this. – Daniel R Hicks Dec 14 '22 at 18:21
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    @DanielRHicks: Well, Huawei has some built-in closed-source apps installed on its phones by default; and there's also code of the "MIUI" environment, which is a variant of Android's vanilla UI. So, it's possible that that software might have code which performs some analysis on media files you have on your phone, and with or without phoning home, makes the decision to delete such files. I'm not saying it's likely that this is the case, but it certainly seems like something doable. – einpoklum Dec 14 '22 at 18:45
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    @DanielRHicks It's also possible they could at least flag them, or maybe just preemptively delete them (either batched or in real time), based on location and time information corresponding to the protests. – Cristobol Polychronopolis Dec 14 '22 at 20:30
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    @einpoklum - The computing power required to recognize a protest group and distinguish it from, say, a crowd of folks singing folk music together would be substantial, and likely not practical in most cases. Cristobol's suggestion of basing things on time and location is probably more practical. – Daniel R Hicks Dec 14 '22 at 20:59
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    @DanielRHicks: Oh, I'm not saying they would analyze the _video_ - they can analyze the meta-data or surrounding text: "Hi Yichen, I was at the demo just now, things are cuh-razy: [video]". With some context like location information it's not impossible. – einpoklum Dec 14 '22 at 21:58
  • @DanielRHicks The computing power required to "delete something" is negligible, and can be sent via command from somewhere completely different. – Jeff Lambert Dec 15 '22 at 00:09
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    @JeffLambert - But the computing power needed to recognize the image as one of interest is substantial. – Daniel R Hicks Dec 15 '22 at 02:30
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    @DanielRHicks So what? I don't think you can just assume that power has to come from a person's handheld device, especially if they're all linked up to a centralized cloud service. – Jeff Lambert Dec 15 '22 at 07:38
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    All they'd need to do is auto delete any photos taken within a certain geographic area during a certain time period, I'd imagine. Very easy to programme "if coordinates and timestamp match, then delete". – Showsni Dec 15 '22 at 16:38
  • @JeffLambert: That's a strong assumption. It would mean wasting people's battery with this computational work. It would mean phones heating up (somewhat) when they should be quiescent. That would have been quite conspicuous. – einpoklum Dec 15 '22 at 16:58
  • @einpoklum I think my assumption is the opposite of that. As far as I can read the claim here, there's nothing stopping it being 100 people in a room of super computers watching everyone through a backdoor, sending commands to individually delete photos on the phone. Why do you think all of this has to happen on a single device? What in the claim says that is the case? – Jeff Lambert Dec 15 '22 at 19:56
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    @JeffLambert: So, that would be straightforward for media that's "on the cloud". But what if it's just on your phone? It has to be sent over for central processing to take place. And that is also something rather detectable. Moreover - do you mean a Chinese government room, or a Huawei room? I'm not sure I see the motivation for Huawei to have this; and if it's the Chinese government, then would we not have heard about other phone brands? – einpoklum Dec 15 '22 at 20:00
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    @einpoklum _shrug_ I dunno man, I was just trying to respond to the assumption that "it's not possible because it all has to happen on the device." Beyond that is all just speculation, but dismissing it because it's "not computationally possible" I don't think passes the smell test. – Jeff Lambert Dec 15 '22 at 20:03
  • @JeffLambert: Fair enough. I was actually guessing someone would impeach the sources of information here, because it sounds like a "evil Chinese taking candy from a baby" kind of claim - but who knows these days. – einpoklum Dec 15 '22 at 20:05
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    Note that the claim you quoted is about Huawei phone users **in China**. As such I'm pretty sure these deletion are legal and mandatory according to Chinese censorship laws (which I personally disagree with but that is irrelevant here). I would also assume that this equally applies to other phone companies in China. In summary, the claim essentially says that phone companies in China comply with Chinese laws. – quarague Dec 16 '22 at 10:41
  • @einpoklum You speak of Huawei and the Chinese Government as if they are completely separate entities. They are not. Huawei is ultimately controlled by the government. Anything Huawei has, the government can get. Most phones already run hidden and isolated processes that operate the cell radio and talk to the towers. So any device that has an active communication with a Huawei tower can potentially be scanned and compromised. Nobody needs to be in a room watching, automated facial recognition is already big in China. Everyone is location tracked since Covid. – David S Dec 16 '22 at 23:11
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    1. "Ultimately" is rather vague. 2. "Can get" and "does get" are two different things, as are "does get and uses conspicuously". 3. It is not known that Huawei has copies of media on your own device. 4. "Most phones already run etc." - reference? 5. So, why would this not be true for Xiaomi or OnePlus for example? 6. Everyone is location-tracked in many world states. – einpoklum Dec 16 '22 at 23:17
  • Take care to distinguish between (i) "deleting videos" (from quoted tweet); and (ii) "delete videos from your phone's storage" (in your question). (i) "Deleting videos" from some cloud storage seems to be quite easily done (and is probably regularly done in the PRC). (ii) "delete videos from your phone's storage" seems a bit harder and would represent another "advancement" in the PRC's censorship capabilities. –  Dec 24 '22 at 01:16
  • @danielrhicks: You stated, "*The computing power required to recognize a protest group and distinguish it from, say, a crowd of folks singing folk music together would be substantial, and likely not practical in most cases.*" You assume that they care about not making mistakes--in particular that they err on the side of not deleting crowds singing folk music. This is incorrect. They err on the side of deleting absolutely everything subversive. For example after the Bridge Man protest, they deleted even references to bridges. –  Dec 24 '22 at 01:21

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