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Comment by bradenb | Hacker News Reader

Maybe I'm off-base, but I feel like at this point the question of "who can see my data if it's stored in China?" is a bit silly. I--for one--will just always assume that any data stored in China might as well be public.

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Well, not public, but eventually accessible by those holding the guns and running the prisons. Which is still not great.

I get into many discussions like this; not sure where you are from but educated Americans I talk to do not accept their data being read by anyone except the gov in cases of terrorism. That means, in practice, the gov can read your data. What is the difference in China? Do you want all data or no data or some data and how is some data defined exactly? If this is not black and white the definitions are going to be painful and biased and how to enforce proper use?

Many Americans (but probably not the majority) don’t accept that their data is going to be read in cases of terrorism. It’s why Apple refused to backdoor their phone for the government in a case of terrorism.

Narrow warrants granted by a seperate branch of government in broad daylight is very different from this. And it’s why we need to fight to restore that norm in America. I don’t buy that terrorism is such an exceptional case that we ought to bend due process out of shape.

What little protection remains is a relic of the seventies. An interesting time in America. A time of strong resentment against the government after Vietnam and Nixon. There was a really powerful TRUE left wing in Washinton that had power.

Ofcourse even back then they never extended FISA to non US citizens. Nobody legislates the CIA.

People rag on Nixon --he's not a likeable guy, deservedly, but he also passed title ix as well as the EPA. The true left were to some extent tools of the soviet information warfare effort, which has now transformed into a alt right effort. In both cases in an effort to destabilize (weaken) the US position --but people wanna believe.

> People rag on Nixon --he's not a likeable guy, deservedly, but he also passed title ix as well as the EPA.

It’s good to see this mentioned. I’m sometimes surprised by the good that Nixon did, despite my overall conclusion that he was unfit for office.

> The true left were to some extent tools of the soviet information warfare effort…

This deserves citation to back it up. Please provide links to credible sources.

You can follow down the rabbit hole here[1]. There is an anecdote of a Soviet spy working in post-war London. He frequented high society and people sometimes wondered what he did. On one occasion, someone muttered to him, something to the effect "what do you do, you never seem to be doing anything, are you a Soviet spy or something [laughter]" and he responds, "yes, of course I'm a soviet spy" and people laughed it off [what a funny bloke]. Point is, this interaction shows a sort of acceptance that one in their own circles could be a spy, they could joke about it, not caring it it were really true.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_influence_on_the_peace_...

Huh. My reading of the anecdote is they laugh it off because they consider it absurd (no real spy would tell us they were!), more than acceptance and uncaring. Could be your telling or my reading. Is there more to it, or perhaps how it was related, that leads you to your interpretation rather than mine? I'm not doubting it; it's just my read.

> People rag on Nixon --he's not a likeable guy, deservedly, but he also passed title ix as well as the EPA

That's fair for EPA, but Title IX wasn't an Administration proposal or, IIRC, heavily lobbied for by the Administration. Nixon signed it, but it's not really accurate to credit him with passing it. It was proposed and pushed by liberal Democrats in both houses of Congress.

And people don't rag on Nixon for his legislative agenda, but for pervasive abuse of power, including law enforcement and national security resources, for partisan and personal political purposes.

The true left in the US predated Lenin. And support for the final Russian Revolution among them was mixed. But yes, the Soviets did push their agendas via left wing and antiwar groups. However, some of those efforts, such as the Soviet-American Friendship Society, were in fact focused on peace.

Or you know, to anyone willing to pay $20 to a corrupt cop/employee on wechat? Feels pretty public to me.

Not public, just the government. And Chinese government has better security than Equifax at least.

I doubt that.

Not quite apples to apples, but Equifax lost over 145 _million_ people's records. There are over 1.4 _billion_ Chinese. I'm not aware of the Chinese government loosing its list of people...

I'm not aware that the Chinese Government is obligated to disclose breaches.

That's a good point; though I am now wondering if the Equifax breech got noticed before it was owned up to.

Going back to the higher point; I do wonder what the Chinese Govornment's track record on cyber security actually is, compared to what we more usually hear reported.

I don’t know if I would go public in China if I noticed a breach like that. I have never lived there, but I imagine the climate encourages a bit more discretion.

A major breach would probably surface on the dark web or other places

Not if it was done by an intelligence agency that intends to keep it secret.

From personal experience having lived and worked there for years, their password practices are pretty atrocious. Passwords like 123456 meant for one administrator but shared with the entire team, for example, seemed to raise no eyebrows whatsoever. Not to mention information security practices in general... things like using cracked and pirated copies of Windows and not staying up to date. However, this was a long time ago and things may have improved.

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