Week 8 Posting - Backdoors

I recently watched a meeting between the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, and the South Korean president, Lee Jae-myung, where the Chinese president gifted two new Xiaomi smartphones to the South Korean president. The two exchanged jokes about the device's security, and the Chinese president even joked about checking for backdoors. Backdoors are not necessarily a new topic for me, but they did, however, pique my interest in the history of backdoors. Backdoors deliberately undermine the users' security by allowing for a direct access point to the device; however, these can be implemented for many reasons. Knowing these Xiaomi phones are banned in America, it made me curious how many backdoors have been created in modern technology for government surveillance. It has brought me back to the idea of how every sheet of paper printed can be traced back to a specific printer based on a unique ID printed on each sheet of paper. It is small steps like these that allow for a higher level of data collection and government surveillance. Depending on the situation, this could be a good or a bad thing.

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