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This is really good for the consumers, since the Chinese are free to innovate instead of waiting for Intel.

Lately they have been coming out with really good things. The Matebook X Pro is amazing and can easily compete with Dells latest offerings, and Deepin Linux 15.6 has its own very modern user interface that makes it very enjoyable to use. Finally a linux distribution with a good sense of western style and performance, and it comes from China of all places.

Its important to be careful of spyware however, but that goes for American software as well. There is plenty of evidence that NSA is spying on everybody, and probably has access to most Americans emails and web habits already.

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Well if the US does it too, that's alright then.

Caveat, I'm a European (well a Brit, so almost European) and I'm appalled by US and yes British violations of privacy and surveillance overreach. Things like the threats to cripple or ban private use of strong encryption are appallingly damaging and misguided.

However nations with an elected government accountable to the people doing this stuff is one thing. We still have the right and mechanisms to protest and these protests have frequently made a real difference. strong encryption of private communications is till legal and threats to it have gone nowhere. The fact that governments from multiple political groups, in multiple countries have looked at this and decided that the benefits to their electorate outweigh the dangers offers at least some comfort. It's at least possible that they are right, although I would prefer much stronger checks and balances.

Pervasive active harvesting, analysis, intervention, censorship and subsequent punishments of 'private' communication by a totalitarian state, with the open goal of enforcing ideological obedience is not the same thing, and it's not ok. At all.

The issue with your comment is that it's absurd. You are complaining about US overreach, so presumably your basis for judgement should be the situation in the UK.

Does the UK do mass-surveillance of it's own and foreign citizens, on UK soil and outside ? Yes [1]

Strong encryption of private communications is NOT legal in the UK. You have to give the police access when they request it and you cannot use the rights you have in the US to avoid giving this access [2]. (unless you consider strong encryption stuff where you have to make all keys available to the police, border guard, gchq, foreign intelligence services, and others still strong encryption. I don't)

The other huge difference is that the UK refuses to be accountable for their mass surveillance afterwards. In the US a big demand is that there is a paper trail for spying, to the person being spied upon. Granted, this may be buried in something like a phone contract for mass-targeting. When they target you specifically, however, you will be notified (afterwards, if the judge so decides, but can even be beforehand), and failure to do this makes the spying illegal. Furthermore, this gives private individuals and companies the option to sue to have the police/FBI/NSA/DEA/... explain themselves (and more generally the US state).

In the UK however:

1) No notification is given to the person being spied upon. The state just does it.

2) There is no recourse. If you were spied upon because a police officer wanted to be your boyfriend and needed to know where your actual boyfried was to beat him up, that's legal. [3] (yes, I realize these guys got fired, however, their actions were ruled legal)

3) If anyone in the UK takes the side of the person being spied upon, whether an internet provider, an application provider (ie. outlook.com/fb/gmail/...), they will be vigorously pursued and punished for that. This is highly illegal.

4) The UK has cooperation treaties (ie. EU treaties, and others) that let police officers in ~70 countries spy on British citizens (I heard that these treaties were used to install a phone tap, yes really, on Angela Merkel's phone. Yes, that Angela Merkel. The utter incompetence is baffling in it's scope. And yes, the guy (an officer) did this as a joke and got fired for it)

So to say I don't understand your criticism here massively understates the situation ... Obviously, as a UK citizen you've got some more local problems to sort out before you criticize the US.

In reality, the UK/EU is pushing these news articles and blowing up cooperation for EXACTLY the opposite reason : they don't want increased privacy for people, they want to further reduce it. They want the US to honor spying requests without respecting US law. They don't want Facebook to ask "can you explain why this is really necessary" when a police officer is asking for the exact location of EU citizens. They don't want to give reasons, and they certainly don't want the person to be told afterwards (and potentially sue them). They want full FB and instagram chat logs in every divorce case. They want ever single email a person ever sent in every commercial dispute. They want every police force and secret service in Europe to have access to every Europeans every mail, immediately, with zero oversight or tracking, and especially without any paper trail available to their victims. THAT's what Europe is fighting for.

THAT's what they're calling "US surveillance overreach".

Well, that, and the fact that the US successfully recorded some rather high level conversations between Merkel and Macron and managed to get caught doing it. In other words, they're incompetent, and angry. And of course, that's the US's fault (despite, of course, that Germany was also caught attempting to bug Obama, and caught having successfully bugged several high level officials before getting caught). And of course, they're angry for Trump getting elected (if you don't believe me, watch this [4], and listen to the questions).

That's why there is this campaign of "the US is horrible on privacy". There is "no cooperation". But, sadly, the US is the champion of privacy in this particular fight.

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

[2] https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/25/traveler-who-refused-to-gi...

[3] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1371833/20-police-of...

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y70LrlzrkNk

Thank you. I'm emigrating from the UK soon and this is one of the many reasons why.

Agreed. The UK is very clearly the least free of all "western" countries. You're only touching on government surveillance. There are other aspects too, like super injunctions.

I say that as someone with a UK passport.

Most of the problems are actually EU-wide, even including a few not-quite-EU countries.

I wonder why this is being downvoted so badly.

Yeah, for freedom of speech you can simply see where Nazi websites are hosted. It's not the EU.

But the UK really stands out within the EU.

I don't think that is related. A lot of the Nazi websites are hosted via HostKey in Russia. In fact, some of these websites were used to start "white power" rallies in the US just to stir up the hornets nest. I'm a fan of free speech, but am generally against Nazis as a concept. We fought a war over this :)

But it is. If people/their government are not prepared to defend what's unpleasant for them, it means they're not entirely dedicated to free speech in Voltaire's sense (“I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”). Who knows, what minority opinion will they decide to ban next?

I don't think anyone should be dedicated to Voltaire's sense of free speech, as it's a ludicrously absolutist position. I'm fairly certain that in Voltaire's time, they didn't have coordinated harassment/doxxing campaigns on social media.

You don't think (coordinated) harassment existed before social media?

Please.

(and doxxing is not about expressing your thoughts and ideas)

"You don't think (coordinated) harassment existed before social media?"

Where on earth did I say that? You cannot deny, however, that it is far more prevalent.

And that doesn't stop people from crying "censorship" when people who dox get banned from Twitter.

Here:

> I'm fairly certain that in Voltaire's time, they didn't have coordinated harassment/doxxing campaigns on social media.

Harassment: Existed.

Doxxing: Off topic. Not thoughts and opinions. (Voltaire said "disagree". You don't agree or disagree about someone's home address or real name)

Social media: We live in a more connected world. In a less connected world the same effects would be had in your local community.

> And that doesn't stop people from crying "censorship" when people who dox get banned from Twitter.

Straw man. Also publishing other people's copyrighted works is not censorship.

You're changing the topic. doxxing (which you have now brought up TWICE) has nothing to do with it.

> I don't think that is related. A lot of the Nazi websites are hosted via HostKey in Russia.

In isolation you're right. To expand it: "If you want to host an anti-{russia,putin,trump,jew,white,black,asian,democracy,kim} 'news' website" (as in against all or some of those) then the US would be the place to do it.

IOW: Good luck with anti-Putin in Russia or Nazi in Germany. The US is your best bet. The US didn't raid news papers forcing journalists to drill holes through their hard drives. The UK did.

> I'm a fan of free speech, but am generally against Nazis as a concept. We fought a war over this :)

We didn't fight a war over someone's right to be a Nazi. They really did start it. And the US didn't really join until it was actually attacked, if you're American. They also didn't fight a war about someone's right to be Japanese (or even their right to believe in the divinity of their emperor).

Chamberlain even thought Nazis could be part of the "peace for our time".

Because it's absurd to throw all EU countries into one pot in this regard, especially if you include (and focus on) the UK?

You had me until “the US is a champion of privacy in this particular fight” - I think they are just further behind, and not particularly championing anything privacy related.

Surveillance with out warrant, but which is not actively used for malign purposes, is a matter of concern. If it could be used for malign purposes it’s very concerning.

China routinely imprisons political subversives. It has among the lowest rates of voluntary organ donors in the world, yet it has one of the largest rates of organ transplants. Those organs come from prisoners, many of them political prisoners. They’re using that surveillance system to identify and incarcerate these people right now.

But hey. The NSA has files on people too so who cares? How many people, have been broken up for spare parts by the NSA or due to overreaching US and British Intelligence? In China it’s probably in the tens to hundreds of thousands. This isn’t ‘very concerning’. It’s horrifying.

EDIT: I think I misunderstood your point. In my post I did specifically call out British involvement in mass surveillance right alongside the US. Or maybe you think I should have called it out more? I’m a bit confused.

> China routinely imprisons political subversives.

And the US and UK, the Netherlands, France and I believe Italy have all been caught protecting police officers that used surveillance powers for that purpose I alluded to (finding boyfriends of a girl a police officer likes and beating them up). Given that list, I feel like we can safely assume that all EU states in fact de-facto allow and protect police officers doing this. Likewise police officers have been caught sporadically using official "legal intercept" tools to "help" in divorce, finding children they abused, finding ex-lovers they had a quarrel with, and the like.

Note: I don't mean just that police officers did that, that's troubling enough by itself that those tools allow that. My main complaint is that the justice system protected those police officers from the consequences of those actions.

The only case where the police seems to find this behavior by their own officers unacceptable is when it's directly used to help a (non-police-officer) criminal. And this is very widespread behavior. It happens in the US (but of course, in the US the victims (eventually) get notified that an officer did that, so you can sue them), it happens in the EU, and in the EU it's completely unchecked and unchallengeable, and "surprisingly" this does not lead to them using it more responsibly.

I find things just baffling. FB/Google/MS/... are all begin vigorously pursued for essentially selling your contact list ... by people who used violence against ISPs/ASPs (like FB/Google/MS/... but not just them) to allow police officers to beat up love rivals and abuse children. And when they got caught doing that ... they immediately rallied behind the criminals (because yes, what those officers did was in fact criminal in almost all cases).

I feel like we've got much bigger problems here than Trump's campaign using contact lists from phones/FB to get more people to vote for him. And I feel like the EU should not be criticizing anyone for being weak on privacy.

The US government is somewhat accountable to the public. Their spying agencies however are not. They never have been, have always operated in secret. The public certainly wasn’t consulted on the mass surveillance program.

The spying agencies are as accountable as any other agencies. They do what they do at the behest of the public's elected representatives.

Did the Senate ask the CIA to spy on them?

"An internal investigation by the C.I.A. has found that its officers penetrated a computer network used by the Senate Intelligence Committee in preparing its damning report on the C.I.A.’s detention and interrogation program. "

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/08/01/world/senate-intellige...

Congress can vote to get rid of the CIA, or stop them from spying. The CIA exists because of an act of Congress and at the pleasure of Congress, which consists of elected representatives .

You just gave a non-answer to try to avoid answering it. Public agencies such as the CIA are politically armoured against any attempt to get rid of it. These organizations aren't accountable nor are they at the service of the US congress.

The CIA was created by an act of congress, and can be disbanded by an act of congress. That is ultimate accountability. Any other level of accountability is at the will of congress. These are basic facts of how the government works.

Maybe we'll know 50 years after everyone involved is dead. As your own article points out, the senators certainly had the power to hold the CIA accountable. The fact that they did not do so despite making angry noises in public can only be properly responded to with the thinking face emoji.

Exactly. Sure you don't directly elect them but they still face public scrutiny because nobody wants to be the swamp that some senator makes campaign promises to drain. Every few years (not nearly often enough IMO) an agency learns that lesson the hard way.

ICE is currently that swamp, CIA, NSA, FBI, and the VA are still dealing with the fallout of that loss of face.

>accountable

You do know they have the worst dirt on everyone right?

A downside of constantly electing dirty politicians.

but in US, the pressure-flow goes like this:

step1. public pressures on the electorate

step2. electorate pressures on spying agencies

... and step1 is impossible in China

step 2 happens behind closed doors. you can not publish what is discussed, you can not even mention that you are dicussing it. there is in fact no guarantee that step2 happens, at all, or that it has ever happened.

Which means theatre is as good as real reform is at satisfying step 1.

How many people know about driving the cocain economy by the CIA throughout the 70s and 80s? About project Phoenix? MKULTRA? MKULTRA surfaced after 20y in the making. About the torture assistence in the South America? Now? At that time? How is there any eloctorate pressure on the CIA? Until recently not a lot of people even knew about the NSA, I wonder how there could have been electorate pressure. There is only pressure - even if there is - when some small facts surface like Iran–Contra.

No idea why you are being downvoted.

I will add more:

- where is the pressure to close Guantanamo?

- where is the pressure to como clean with the lies leading to the Irak war?

"- where is the pressure to close Guantanamo?"

There is a lot of it. However, it's countered by the pressure of, "Where do we send those people? My constituents don't want them in our district."

I get what you mean, but your word choice is off. The "electorate" means the people represented by the elected official, not he officials themselves. i.e. the electorate is the public

oh thanks for the correction. /s/electorate/gov_officials

The mass surveillance was a result of the wide sweeping Patriot Act after 9/11. There has never in US history been a single intrusion into our civil liberties more than the Patriot Act. In specific, Section 215 is what allowed the bulk collection of our records.

Luckily, it has now expired and was not renewed. Some reading on this very controversial section:

https://www.csis.org/analysis/fact-sheet-section-215-usa-pat...

https://www.eff.org/cases/section-215-usa-patriot-act

> The mass surveillance was a result of the wide sweeping Patriot Act after 9/11.

As if the three-letter agencies never tried to cripple encryption before September 11th, 2001...

But it got demonstrably worse afterwards. It went from a quiet thing to a well funded effort, all in the name of "defending 'merica from terrorism". GW Bush and his admin enacted the law which Obama just made worse.

While I personally wasn't around in the 90's, I believe we're yet to see anything on the level of the Clipper chip and nineties' crypto wars in general in the 21st century. Or maybe they've learned to hide their activities better, but that's a bit of a Russell's teapot.

Their diffie hellman hack, and router 0 days are everything they wanted out of the clipper chip.

What diffie-hellman hack are you referring to? I'm curious.

https://thehackernews.com/2015/10/nsa-crack-encryption.html

https://weakdh.org/imperfect-forward-secrecy-ccs15.pdf

Basically, for about $100M per prime (probs cheaper now), you can pre compute a big table that you can use to decrypt the diffie hellman exchange. From there you have the negotiated private keys, and you're off to the races for a full, real time decrypt. Since before the Snowden leaks, there wasn't the public thought that the choice of primes for diffie hellman mattered really for it's security, most implementations hardcoded the prime. Something like 92% of the top 1 million https sites were using the same 2 primes, and similar numbers of VPN and SSH implementations were vulnerable too.

So for a one time cost of ~$200m the NSA was able to decrypt the vast majority of internet traffic as long as they caught the diffie hellman exchange at the beginning.

In the Snowden leaks, BULLRUN said they were secretly weakening every cryptosystem they could even in standards. The Core Secrets leak also said the FBI was "compelling" U.S. companies to "SIGINT-enable" their systems in secret. The groups doing this also operate secretly with effective, criminal immunity. Such a situation is way worse than them pushing an obviously-backdoored chip that we could've all spotted and worked around.

As democratic as the US is or isn't, its government does not answer to me. China one also doesn't. So, what difference does it make?

If I'm developing some kind on tech, both have been caught using their state agencies to do industrial spying; if I'm active in some push for some non-mainstream activism (like, abolishing copyrights), both have done out of jurisdiction enforcement of their policies, and there isn't much difference on means either.

Personally, I'd imagine China spying on me is a smaller risk than the US, since my country is more under political influence of the US. But whatever you do, you will have to protect or subject yourself to government spying, thus there isn't any big difference.

The difference is how that surveillance is used. Right now you my not have any personal contact with China, so you might not care what the do to their own citizens. I might have taken the same stance in 2001 before meeting the girl who would later become my wife, who was a Chinese citizen. Since then I’ve travelled to China for work, completely independently of any family connection. A relative, child or grandchild of yours could work in China, marry a Chinese partner. I could go on.

Even aside from that, China is actively exporting their political and economic model all over the world. They are using economic investments and financial grants to companies, institutions and cultural organisations as leverage to stifle criticism, and silence factual reporting of events in China all over the world, and almost certainly in your own country too.

For better or worse (I’d argue worse but that’s irrelevant) China has explicitly stayed out of foreign countries’s politics. That’s one reason why so many dictators and corrupt governments are willing to work with them. China, unlike the US or the EU, has decided the political oppression a country’s leader practices is none of their concerns. They just want to do business.

> As democratic as the US is or isn't, its government does not answer to me. China one also doesn't. So, what difference does it make?

That seems like an absolutely absurd comparison. The US government is elected, if enough of the population cared about the issue (and who knows, as it gets worse, they might) the government can be held accountable at the ballot box. The same is in no way true in China.

Are you assuming that parent is an American voter? Or that the Americans will protect the rest of the world with their votes - even when it's counter to "American Interests"?

Going with the copyright theme: most American voters would have been happy with the copyright provisions of the trans-atlantic treaty since that increased "shareholder value" that would benefit their 401k's.

The difference is, I don't think China has the reach the U.S. has, (if you're outside China).

maybe not in software, but in hardware they certainly have a lot of reach

> I'm a European (well a Brit, so almost European)

Wow, that Brexit is really taking a toll on your collective psyche, isn't it? :)

https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/isbritaineuropea...

Spyware: therein lies the rub. As a civilian I suppose I'm not a target. But if I ever expected to handle classified, sensitive or even just politically compromising material with my device I would never go for a Chinese brand. Sure, the NSA gets its grubby fingers in where it wants.. But China's surveillance engine has the heft, sophistication and motivation to collect all the data it can. Every piece of silicone could be compromised. It's also much more likely to come back and bite you in the form of stolen IP, a visa ban, or online harassment and censorship than US and European surveillance operations.

What modern tech product can you buy that isn't a potato which hasn't, at some stage in manufacture, been through China?

Or, indeed, what modern tech product has not been compromised by the NSA?

People are being a little naive. The US gets its "grubby" hands on every little thing you do, as does China. The question is not, "Which 'grubby' hands do I wish to allow to do my deep body cavity search?" But rather, "Why, exactly, do I need to submit to deep body cavity searches by 'grubby' hands at all?"

I think this claim about the NSA requires actual evidence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)

on HN you get down voted for asking for evidence.

two clains were made:

* that the NSA as compromised all major tech

* the us gets it's grubby hands on all your data

in support of which no evidence was presented. a user kindly linked me to a Wikipedia page on PRISM. However, that program is only ISP data, requires a warrant for domestic purposes.

That's true, but different companies have different standards of manufacturing. Apple, for example, exert extreme control over their products, right down to the silicone. Short of a potato, they offer the highest degree of certainty and protection.

Meanwhile, Qualcomm has several programs running below the OS level that track users "anonymously" in various ways. Such systems can much more easily be co-opted by other parties such as governments.

>As a civilian I suppose I'm not a target

That's a very poor assumption. One very common method is to get some dirt on someone, then blackmail them into getting a job with access to data they want. That doesn't have to be classified data, they're also interested (probably more so) in corporate espionage so they can make products better and cheaper.

Then there's economic disruption. Where you're not a target as an individual, but as a group. E.g. everyone using their device with Verizon's service might have their service go funky, people think it's Verizon and switch. Or certain websites appear slow/unavailable so you buy something from a different one.

Of course there's lots of other ways they could use it to their advantage, but the point is, civilians are very likely to be targets too, for a multitude of reasons.

The difference is China uses spyware to steal from anyone who has access to economically valuable information.

That's every engineer in the world.

US does not seem to steal for economic purposes at all.

Well at least not on the same scale.

Then you haven't read any of the various books about the CIA. "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" or "Inside the Company - CIA diary" make a good read. It's only about economic purposes. On a much larger scale than China.

I have not read those books. It sounds the CIA pressuring third world nations to do things not in their economic interests. I don't support that.

That is bad but different to stealing technology using hidden back doors which China reportedly does. I have no evidence either way.

But pressuring third world nations to do things not in their economic interests is not that different to what the One Belt One Road program is doing using loans on uneconomic projects.

Both are bad but US does not seem to steal technology through hacking like China does. I am not sure why

"Both are bad but US does not seem to steal technology through hacking like China does. I am not sure why"

Maybe not through hacking but historical a lot of the industrial revolution that happened in the US was by means of "stealing" British technology, improving on it and don't have any regards for their patents at that time.

There is really some irony somewhere in there.

I have heard that was not state sponsored but people memorizing schematics. I am not sure though. I am interested in learning more.

China does innovate. But it is a nation sponsoring technology stealing on a huge scale. I don't think USA ever did that. I am happy to be proved wrong.

That was 200 to 300 years ago. Nobody alive today was even alive during the industrial revolution, so I would not consider this to be a relevant indication of current activity.

History has a consequence to current activity. Take China. They had to open their borders in 19th century and then saw the British flood the market with opium and thus making millions of addicted chinese. Years of shame that all Chinese still remember, and that's why they don't allow single western companies come and sell any product. They know western companies have a history of abuse and won't let history repeat twice

It's a little hard to say which is worse. Not aware of the 'One Belt One Read' program. But in terms of technology stealing by nature they are mostly stealing from bigger guys and lessening their advantage/power. CIA basically preyed upon the weak, destroy countries stability and makes life hard or impossible for millions.

The strong will always prefer to steal from the weak, those who cannot fight back. I'm not saying Chinese are good or they aren't doing the same or the potential horrendous impact them stealing some powerful technology. But one have to agree in most cases it's not preying upon the weak and defenseless.

Its just an interesting observation really.

Great observation, which links to something I have been trying to communicate for some time: the biggest "sin" of the US is not that it has illegaly invaded countries, or killed civilians, or spied, or stolen. The biggest sin is that it has squandered a huge moral, technological and economical lead, and instead of having lead with it for a fairer and multipolar world, it has, at every opportunity, tried to profit from the relative weakness of the "adversaries".

Now nobody believes in anybody, because when it was needed, principles were traded for strategic advances.

"US does not seem to steal for economic purposes at all."

Sorry but they use their intelligence for economic reasons e.g. Airbus contracts. And Snowden leaks also revealed that spying is not only limited to security or political targets...

And to be honest with the current American President who is "hugely" (so yuge you could not believe it) untrustworthy and is certainly not a friend of the other western countries, I can't honestly say that it's very difficult anno 2018 to determine who you can trust.

I found lots of links saying US does 'industrial espionage' but no one says this helps US companies.

> The U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence said it does collect information about economic and financial matters, and terrorist financing. "What we do not do, as we have said many times, is use our foreign intelligence capabilities to steal the trade secrets of foreign companies on behalf of - or give intelligence we collect to - U.S. companies to enhance their international competitiveness or increase their bottom line," it said in a statement

http://money.cnn.com/2015/04/30/news/airbus-germany-nsa-spyi...

China has wide spread state sponsored stealing to help their companies. US does not seem to.

we'll take his work for it then.

because, you know, the us does not steal trade secrets, which proves that trade secrets are not stolen, by the us.

Plenty said that. The problem is that the reports are old with Google et al prioritizing new, ad-generating content. Even if you have links, many of those pages' links will be dead. It's online decay. I just spent an hour trying to find some reports of it from mainstream sources based on pieces of things I remembered. Here's two:

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1996-11-01/news/1996306048_...

https://nypost.com/2000/07/10/giant-u-s-spy-vacuum-sparks-a-...

A lot of it happened in the Advocacy Center and/or Office of Executive Support. The European Parliament's report on Echelon talks about some of it:

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/EPRS/EPRS_STUDY_538877_Affaire...

Far as that last part, the U.S. does something quite different: a corrupt Congress makes patent and copyright laws so ridiculously strong that they make compatability/competition with big, U.S. companies anywhere from difficult to impossible. The best examples are in smartphone market where Apple tries to block Chinese and Korean products. Microsoft also pulled in about a billion in Android royalties despite not contributing anything to Android's success.

Also note that a lot of Silicon Valley heavyweights started out with big funding from the government, esp DARPA. Kind of similar to state-sponsoring of companies in China. From there, the U.S. companies legally rob or block competition via vaguely-worded, broad, long-lasting patents. Recently, competition blocking API rulings. The Chinese do it via spies and suppliers that iterate fast. I don't see one having moral high ground over the other if they're both doing things that harm the many to benefit a tiny, rich few legally backed with bribery or other corruption.

> US does not seem to steal for economic purposes at all.

Is that a joke? https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Former-CIA-Director-Says-US...

Comment about not posting irrelevant inflammatory statements removed and turned into a submission here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17490716

Feels like that HN link a few weeks ago about how China employs tens of thousands of people to derail online discussions that are critical of China, often strawmanning the U.S., and the E.U. instead.

Right now on HN two of the top five discussions have been derailed in this manner. Curious.

"Everyone I don't like is a foreign shill."

I don't want to derail this even further, just want to offer a different point of view.

I'm a Chinese citizen, and ever since I started reading HN a few years ago, it feels like the media and comments in general are mostly negative towards China, or specifically to Chinese government. In rare occasions you have people trying to offer some different perspectives from someone who lived in China (like 1 out of 10 comments), but a large percentage of them get downvoted. This has not changed at all. So really, if there were a propaganda effort, it had failed miserably. The audience on HN just don't buy pro-China propaganda (for better or worse).

The ironic part about your argument is that whenever there is a positive news about China (like this one), it quickly derails into criticism of China.

There’s some scary things going on in China. The fact you couldn’t have these discussions in China is one and so I see HN as erring I’m the side of skepticism.

> but that goes for American software as well.

Exactly. It's surprising that there's a big hue and cry over Chinese spyware (the Lenovo episode) while the US's NSA has been proven to possess know-how to even spy on leaders of other powerful developed nations, and destabilize a nation's nuclear program with just malware.

That's sheer proof of the effectiveness of US's propaganda machine.

I think it's a difference in belief. Do you prefer American culture and values or Chinese culture and values? Which would you rather protect?

I'll need to think about this a lot more, but I agree Western spying is currently by far the lesser of the two evils.

The ultimate goal of Western spying comes down to these two things:

1. Preventing another 9/11

2. Selling advertising

[Citation needed]

I mean, there's more than that. The CIA spied on Congressional committee tasked with oversight over the CIA, this became public, and essentially nothing happened in response.

I think it's cute that you believe that the NSA's purpose is to protect American culture and values.

I don't believe that. If it came down to it, I would rather America be the world super-power over China, normal Americans make their culture, not the NSA, CIA, FBI, etc.

Yes, but the question is "who do you prefer spying on you", not "who do you want as a superpower".

Ultimately, I disagree. If we are using the assumption that information is power, and the purpose of spying is to protect national interests (even if that only means the interests of the government in power), then I'd prefer the US spying on me. They already are and have been for years. It makes me uncomfortable, but if the US stopped spying the Chinese sure as hell wouldn't, and so I can't rightly advocate for less spying from the US.

I call it a necessary evil.

True. All just belief.

Some believe in the West.

Some believe in China.

Some believe in neither.

Some believe in both.

Etc etc etc.

You'll be arguing back and forth forever if you're just arguing belief systems. It's not like math. You can't really ever "prove" one system is "right".

There are some differences in governing style though that go beyond "culture" questions.

I'll be honest, I cannot think of a Western nation equivalent of the "great firewall" in China. I'm also not aware of a national campaign to block VPNs, as seems to be happening in China. I'm not aware of Western nations actively blocking access to foreign websites, either, as China seems to be.

Thus, based on this and other examples, I don't think it's unfair to think that the internet seems quite a bit more tightly controlled in China. This is not to excuse NSA style spying, but first impression is I might not even be allowed to openly talk about Chinese spying on Chinese social media to be honest.

The very existence of a great firewall is the hallmark of the failure in their state apparatus to manufacture consent. But of course you can openly talk about Chinese spying on Chinese social media because that much is already rendered irrelevant to the mainstream voice so it's no longer a threat to the state that needs to be contained.

Just a side note, China also prevents access to some Chinese websites outside of China.

From Korea, via Vietnam through Chile and on to Iraq and Afghanistan - I think I'd prefer Chines "soft power" to US foreign policy...

Indeed. Others have argued that although both spy on everything and everyone, at least the US is a (nominal?) democracy, while China is a dictatorship. True enough. But if there are bombs falling on your head, that doesn't matter much. Which of those two counties has invaded dozen of countries over these recent decades? One shouldn't be surprised that someone from South America, Africa, or Asia would prefer China over USA.

> Which of those two counties has invaded dozen of countries over these recent decades?

Ehh... Isn't it both?

Is it? Honest question, I don't remember any China-led interventions, but I can't say that there were none. The US-led wars got a wide coverage, especially in NATO countries which were dragged into them, and the public was focused on them, so I can 100% believe that there were some underreported Chinese actions.

China has a history of invading its neighbors, and was the main disseminator of communism SE Asia, while the URSS focused more on the SW.

Which post ww2 invasion has China done? Granted, like the USA they've been involved as backers in places like Vietnam - but there's a difference between giving support, and invading?

Let's not forget that the US has a history of things like, training, supporting ho chi Minh - only to end up fighting a war against him. Training, supporting Mujahideen - only to end up fighting a war. Supporting Saddam Hussein, only to fight a war. Training, supporting contras and similar forces in Latin America - and is now fighting a shooting war on drugs in these countries...

[ed: as mentioned in a sibling comment - China intervened with troops in Korea - my apologies - I'm afraid the Vietnam War and later conflicts are more fresh in my mind.

https://history.army.mil/brochures/kw-chinter/chinter.htm ]

There was nothing soft about chinese troops fighting for north korea and supporting many decades of the most brutal dictatorship. Or the personnel and materiel support of the khmer rouge while they buried a part of their population alive.

Due to internal strife and catastrophes China was not very active on the international floor in the last century but boy did they step in it when they did.

I don't think either China or America has values worth defending at this point in history.

You realize you just said freedom, equality, and justice aren't worth defending?

From the point of view of non-American citizens, your constitution does not matter much. So, for 95% (or 85%, if we talk about China) of people, those rights are meaningless.

Not even sure they are very relevant to Americans either.

I'd believe you if it weren't for the TSA, rich/poor divide (and subsequent access to education, healthcare, and employment), and daily police shootings of unarmed citizens.

What you are describing is a silly parody of reality. People are spending their lives making these things better, following these values. Politicians struggle to do the best possible. These values are very alive in the US.

Or he said the US does not really value those?

"American Values", in this context, is used as a bait-and-switch.

The version that you're referencing would have most of the NSA up on the gallows. But it is obviously not the version running our society and being pushed onto the rest of the world.

You would be horrendously surprised if you knew what was going on in other western countries. You go on YouTube to find long form discussions between two (real) intellectuals on important topics and the vast vast majority of them are Americans. There is nobody fighting for western values anywhere else in the western world. Everybody is too scared.

America as it stands today, is the most free country in the world. It may sound grim, and that's because it is.

Even taking your assertions as true - this does not mean that anything done to protect the country is itself in line with those values, or that it cannot actually undermine those values. Such thinking is the general fallacy of power.

I don't indict NSA/USG because I want the US to collapse, but because their behaviors are setting up the collapse.

I think those are good values. I also don't think those are American values in 2018.

America’s values haven’t been freedom, justice or equality for quite a while.

From an outside perspective, America is a horrible country where the rich live in a world of their own and everyone else suffers.

You have the largest population percentage of jailed citizens of any country on earth. Yet one of the smallest percentages of rich people getting convicted for crimes they are indicted with - so there isn’t really justice or equality in your justice system.

Freedom for the most part is true, but you need wealth to utilize it.

Equality is a joke. You’re the only country in the world that has no maternity leave. You’re the only country in the west that has no workers rights on maximum hours, paid vacation or sick leave. You have one of the best healthcare systems in the world for the 1% who can afford it and one of the worst healthcare systems in the world for those who can’t. You have next to no social mobility, you have a terrible educational system and you truly punish unskilled langur. It’s ironic, but America isn’t even in the top 100 as far as the American dream goes because breaking out of the social casts you’re born into is so hard.

Don’t get me wrong, America is a symbol of freedom compared to China and it saddens me that you’re constantly falling behind, but the next 150 years of human history belong to China.

A few things, from a non-US resident.

Freedom isn't the right to do what you want. It's the right to be left to your own devices, within the law. America is the most successful meritocracy in the world. Freedom of endevour, if you will.

Second, equality don't mean everybody is equal. It means given any two people with the same qualifications, experience, work ethic, etc and same risk via statistical analysis, they should have equal opportunity.

Third (and I don't even why you're arguing about employment opportunities), employment is a contract between two people. If somebody can't find a job paying 20 dollars an hour for their service, they should have the right to negotiate a lower wage to justify their employment. A minimum wage of above 20 dollars simply makes that person unemployable. Talking about paid vacation, it's the same thing. If you're worth it then your employer will provide it. If you are not worth it, and it is a right, then too bad you don't get a job. Some US engineers I know get insane amounts of paid leave that I could only dream of (coming from a country with mandated vacation).

America along with China are two of the very few countries left where people get compensated what they're worth. China not so much because of rampant socially accepted bribing, connections, etc.

does it matter if us culture (those "rights") is just on paper?

I've yet to see a US citizen prosecuted in the US for "hate speech". That seems like more than paper to me.

A better question might be, which is more likely to protect you and your loved ones.

I'm struggling to read your comment without the inference "culture and values " == mass surveillance.

Why do we have to accept that American devices are rooted at all? To me, "American values" means that US citens' communication isn't tapped without a warrant obtained with probable cause of a crime.

Instead it sounds like I'm supposed to choose between a surveillance state.

You should not trust any nation state that has influence over the corporations that build their processors, but the U.S. at least has a right to privacy built into the constitution that affords its citizens (can corporations) the right to challenge any spyware it might ask a corporation to build into a processor in the courts. That is at least something.

In China, as far as I can tell, anything goes. Corporations work hand in hand with the government, and control of the population through spying and "social scores" is a high and very open priority for the government.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't American constitution apply only to US' citizens? Even in the ideal case, were it to perfectly protect Americans from three-letter agencies' weaseling, it offers absolutely zero guarantees for non-citizens, which is 95% of world population or so. Americans could pressure USG to stop spying on foreigners, but why would they? I don't see any incentive for an average John Doe to do so.

So, overall, there's not that much of a difference for most of the world. One might even argue that for outsiders Chinese relatively stable direction and autocracy is marginally better than American flipping every 8 years, since it allows you to better assess threat profile.

Edit: added a bit about assessing threat.

It's corporations have rights to and if they want to have a global reputation, fighting for users' privacy makes business sense. Or at least so I would hope.

US laws are pretty clear in that foreigners (AKA non-citizens) don't have those rights their Constitution give to their people, so, again, what changes?

The Constitution calls out 2 groups of people: "Citizens", which it uses when referring to voting rights and who can run for office, and "People", which refers to everyone, citizen or not, within the jurisdiction of the US.

> which refers to everyone, citizen or not, within the jurisdiction of the US.

Only a tiny percentage of non-Americans are within the jurisdiction of the US. This means that the vast majority of them are not protected by the constitution - which was the parent's point.

Because possessing know-how is not at all like having a vendor-supplied backdoor, and writing malware is something that anyone knows how to do.

Its actually auite the opposite. It is not surprising that there is a huge outcry when country x has its spyware programs revealed.

To be fair, spying on leaders and destabilizing national security threats is their job. They wouldn’t be a very good intelligence agency if they didn’t do that.

The question is more about building in faults intentionally, versus exploiting accidental faults. The later is fair, but the former is very troublesome. I haven’t seen any evidence of the first one. In fact, when such attempts have been made — primarily in encryption — they’ve been routinely shutdown. See Clipper Chip, and most recently NIST coming out against against the very ecliptic curve coefficients it suggested, and then going on to say not to ever trust NIST coefficients in encryption.

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