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Comment by titanix2 | Hacker News Reader

Does it make any difference when US companies are participating in PRISM anyway?

As an European, I would rather get spied on by the US than by China.

The US does not have execution vans for dissidents whereas China does, for instance.

They also don’t have re-education camps for religious minorities, a social credit score, and no rule of law. The U.S. is deeply flawed, especially when you take their war on drugs into account, but I’d still prefer them over China any day of the week.

The US does have execution drones that target people based on metadata [1].

> In 2014, former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden said in a public debate, “We kill people based on metadata.”

> According to multiple reports and leaks, death-by-metadata could be triggered, without even knowing the target’s name, if too many derogatory checks appear on their profile. “Armed military aged males” exhibiting suspicious behavior in the wrong place can become targets, as can someone “seen to be giving out orders.” Such mathematics-based assassinations have come to be known as “signature strikes.”

1. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/how-...

I am not a Chinese dissident. China is not going around the globe putting people in execution vans there. So my personal consequences of Chinese surveillance are rather limited. The possible impact on my life is in no way comparable to the possible impact of the same by the US. I would like to not be mistook landing on no-fly lists, being banned from international banking as well as from making business with any company.

> I am not a Chinese dissident....So my personal consequences of Chinese surveillance are rather limited.

I would recommend that you think of yourself as a dissident, including as a foreign dissident, even if you aren't actually one. I think that attitude can be a great source of moral guidance and perspective.

Which has nothing to do with the question of what would be preferable to European citizens, US surveillance or Chinese surveillance. The possible effects are rather clear cut, which is why I dont understand why anyone would views this differently. I understand that for a lot of people this becomes a moral question quickly, but thats not whats up to debate here. Its not about the justifications for surveillance programs but their direct effect on people living in Europe. I also have less to worry about from North Korean surveillance, simply because I am not a north Korean. We dont have that luxus with the US, despite not being a US citizen. Or more fittingly because we are not US citizens.

> Which has nothing to do with the question of what would be preferable to European citizens, US surveillance or Chinese surveillance.

> Its not about the justifications for surveillance programs but their direct effect on people living in Europe.

That's a bizarre question and pretty self-centered. Also, as a European, if you're trying to somehow choose between one or the other, wouldn't you want to most strongly oppose the surveillance run by the regime that's least aligned to European/Western values?

Its the post we are responding to though. And the notion, that if you could chose, Europeans would prefer to be spied on by the US is absurd. My posts are about nothing more. The threat analysis for most Europeans is rather straight forward on what will have a larger potential to have a larger negative impact on your live.

> The threat analysis for most Europeans is rather straight forward on what will have a larger potential to have a larger negative impact on your live.

Please expound on that threat analysis.

I did it a bit further up. Like you can ask the toddlers who ended up on no fly lists, mistakes happen. And if you are not a US citizen, you dont have any legal recourse. And if you end up with a case of mistaken identity, you can not just be put on no fly lists, but be banned from international banking as well as having any company doing business in the US be banned from engaging in any transactions with you. Which is basically every company. Not even mentioning the worst cases of illegal renditions and being put in torture black sites as well as drone killings if you went on holiday in the wrong region of the world.

And even if you assume a perfectly working surveillance system, there are still people being targeted for legal behavior, like being employed by someone who has business relations with Iran or something trivial like having your PayPal account canceled for transactions to Cuba.

Where as with china, what exactly is the possible personal impact for non Chinese citizens? Having my bosses IP stolen? Not being allowed to travel to China?

I'm actually not sure I agree. I have the nagging feeling that China spying on me is most likely to have zero consequences for my daily life, while the US spying on me can get me on a no-fly list or something.

Well when they copy and outcompete all your industries, then I think you’d notice some consequences.

The US has been caught doing industrial espionage as well, more of a pest or cholera situation here.

The US is not regularly directing its hackers to break into the worlds companies to steal all their IP and then put it into play across all industries. The amount of blatant copying is insane... just head to any market in Asia to see the abundant fakes that flood the markets. There is no comparison.

False equivalency. The US has not been caught on the scale of China and its forced tech transfer policies. US may have some limited targeted activity, but they aren't wholesale strip mining industry IP.

This is an amazing case of whataboutism.

Every single time China appears on HN these days, it seems that it's nearly impossible to make headway in the threads because of the whataboutism that inevitably crops up. I was recently told that it's not _actually_ whataboutism, it's $SOMETHING_ELSE.

Source?

Snowden [0] made very broad allegations against the NSA in that regard.

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/25907502

Really? I would expect China to not have much interest in you individually, whereas the US might.

[flagged]

I'm not sure the US isn't imperialist by your definition. At the very least the second Iraqi war hints to the contrary. It appears the main agenda there was a grab for oil and not a security threat. Not to mention its behavior in South America during the cold war. Now, I prefer the US over China, because its ideals are at least against imperialism and pro human rights, democracy and freedom. They might not always do what they preach, but these ideals combined with soft power approach, is (was?) A source of good. (If only they didn't hate socialism so much, and didn't prefer corporation freedom over human freedom, it would have been even better... well, let's hope the EU can survive)

As a Canadian I would tend to agree. My take on things is that while both countries spy, the reasons they do it are what matters. Broadly speaking the US spies to prevent terrorism and violence, where as China spies to steal IP, control their international diaspora for political purposes at home and abroad, and to destabilize democracies. The CCP worldview is incredibly cynical.

US did, and still tries to destabilize countries. See Iraq, covert CIA operations. It’s well within the norm.

I think what you mean is that The US is Canada’s ally so being spied on by the US is less of a risk.

The US says that it spies to prevent terrorism, violence, etc... but that is just a pretext to justify it. The main reason is to stay the richest.

The only companies that participate in PRISM are government security contractors. You appear not to have understood what PRISM is, which is astonishing given how much documentation we have about it.

Reading the answers to your comment, can get pretty depressive. As people are just taking spionage for granted, trying to choose who we would want to let spy on us.

Please, can we try, or at least pretend we are trying to defend our rights to privacy of data that should be private?

I dont want to have to choose who should spy on me. We are entering into this dystopian reality, and somehow we are fine with it.. but there will be a time, we will understand it's too late, and theres no going back.

I hope we wake up sooner than that. Dont just accept it as it is, it will have severe consequences to our future, if we let them to have all of our data, because this means complete control of our lives and the end of the little free will we still have.

It feels to me like choosing which mob lord would be the less evil to me.. We need to understand we dont actually need to make this kind of choice. Resist. Dont let them have it.

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