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Comment by sasasassy | Hacker News Reader

In these cases I'm always reminded of an Obama speech he made shortly after the beginning of the Edward Snowden disclosures, where he guaranteed in national television that the US did not spy on national citizens.

Imagine that, not being a national citizen, but from an allied country, and being told point blank that you are a-okay for spying without any kind of shame.

AFAIK China does not intercept all of my country's communications, which the US has been doing for decades.

Sigh, it's just a bad choice between sleazy US or dictatorial China. At least there are some other 5G choices available.

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> AFAIK China does not intercept all of my country's communications, which the US has been doing for decades.

Well I think that's a brash assumption.

Without Snowden, we wouldn't have known about the extent of US surveillance.

A "Chinese Snowden" would not have their revelations accessible to China via their great-firewalled internet or state-run news, nor would the chilling effects of their Orwellian surveillance state likely produce such a person to begin with.

> Imagine that, not being a national citizen, but from an allied country, and being told point blank that you are a-okay for spying without any kind of shame.

This was the case from the beginning of modern countries - even back in old Greece or in 400 BC with the introduction of doves (per https://www.focus.de/wissen/mensch/tid-5865/geschichte-der-s...). It was and is always a case of tacit acceptance - you as a country knew you were spied upon just as you were spying on other countries, and you relied on this to get your own spies traded back alive.

It's a difference though between spying on another country's government organizations (which is ok) vs. spying on its citizens (which is never ok).

> vs. spying on its citizens (which is never ok).

Yet everyone does it. The NSA snoops up everyone and their dog, same does GCHQ, same does the BND, same do the Russians and Chinese for anything they can get their paws on.

Doesn't even matter if it's own or other countries' citizens - the NSA simply asks BND or GCHQ to spy on US citizens on their behalf, and vice versa. Laws meaning to protect citizens from their own secret services are for all practical measures null and void.

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