Dutch athletes warned to keep phones and laptops out of China (opens in new tab)

Sounds like good advice for everyone traveling to countries that scan/copy your devices on entry.

https://www.wired.com/2010/11/hacker-border-search/

A lot of large companies in the US (including my own) have similar policies for China travel. We are not allowed to take any work devices into China. The company loans us "clean" phones and laptops (without any company data or access to company networks) that we can use while we are there.

Only the Dutch can spy on the Dutch...they can't afford others to do the same...

"Dutch civil servants used social media to spy on citizens, says study" https://www.euronews.com/2021/05/19/dutch-civil-servants-use...

"Netherlands: End dangerous mass surveillance policing experiments" https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/09/netherlands-e...

"The Netherlands, a surveillance state?" https://www.ictrecht.nl/en/blog/the-netherlands-a-surveillan...

"Watchdog: New law lets gov't spy on "all Dutch people"" https://nltimes.nl/2015/09/01/watchdog-new-law-lets-govt-spy...

The shocking fact is that the international community allows such an event to be held in a country where one cannot safely take a phone or computer. But since that could be said for many other “good” countries, then I suppose it becomes normal to engage with these “bad” countries despite their human rights violations. And that is a big source of cynicism for many people: if the “good and righteous” international community does business with countries like China and they themselves engage in the same human rights violations, then the ethical base for these countries’ legal system is demolished. And when the legal system is completely debased, then anything goes. Crimes can no longer be defined and therefore punished. A citizen’s revenge towards its government is no longer a crime. Just another act that can no longer be judged by any ethical standards (other than one’s subjective moral one). When those institutions entrusted with upholding society’s ethical values through the law (ie the right to privacy, the right to a fair legal process, etc.) no longer abide to the law themselves, anarchy ensues. Just watch the consequences of the international community failing to hold responsible those who created the conditions for your pandemic, for the sake of their commercial interests.

Good advice for anyone.

While working for a US multinational I was given a list of countries that when visiting I have to have a formatted/new/empty laptop at the border.

The list included the US.

For anyone interested in a Dutch perspective on surveillance and how the Netherlands tries to place itself in the maelstrom of international digital warfare, this is a good read:

http://www.letterenfonds.nl/en/book/1273/the-invisible-digit...

I maintain the same policy when going to the US. Burnerphone + laptop.

For obvious reasons, the Chinese government is extraordinarily sensitive to criticism. I wonder if the Dutch policy has less to do with device security (the reason given by officials), and more to do with avoiding an international row stemming from some athlete's post on social media during the games.

Unfortunately both my phone and laptop originated in China.

Can they be trusted?

So what’s the solution? Take a clean device and then connect it to online services from China? Or are they advising against that ad well? Presumably this is about physical device searches and not the safety of internet access in general.

Sounds advice, one which I am sure the Dutch government would routinely give to their citizens who visit to any country which gives itself the right to access personal information on the device.

Work for a European company and we have the same rules for Russia, the US and China. I don't know the full list of countries but those are the only two relevant for my travels.

I wonder if their next phones will be Made in Netherlands, or where will they buy them from to avoid spyware built into the firmware straight out of factory.

This is the kind of half baked decisions that show how those on the decision chain aren't deep into security and only are into it for the news.

Well, if you are lets say Politically exposed person (PEP) or holder of any kind of significant wealth, power or influence, this applies to pretty much any country definitely including US. For Android/iOS that's +-already covered with NSA and god knows what lurks in firmwares of ie network controllers in laptops.

Smart move is not this kind of (even if well deserved in this case) fearmongering of specific country, but sobering/smarting up and not putting any kind of sensitive data on blackbox devices with free access to internet.

Happy to live my insignificant middle class life and not be even a bit bothered by this kind of crap. And even with full access to my phone there is nothing really bad that can be done to me / my family.

This from a country (Netherlands) that is world leader in surveillance and extrajudicial punishment (persoonsgerichte verstoring, directly from the Stasi playbook).