The keyword here is “former”. In the Huawei scenario, a lot of them seem to be active intelligence officials, not former ones.
When I hear the arguments against China and their tech companies, I don't have a problem believing them, however I do not expect anything less from the USA.
Remember Snowden? I'm simply assuming that Facebook, Google, Apple, Cisco or any other US tech company are tapped by the US 3 letter agencies. There were some reveleations on that(PRISMA) but it's probably just tip of the iceberg.
And now the Chinese. So what?
That doesn't seem to be the case but the narrative. There were enough leaks, document dumps, and whistleblower revelations to dismiss this narrative.
Sure, for the US having competition is a problem but sometimes the US citizen should zoom out on Maps and Google some labels they see. Literally, most of the people do not live in the USA and you can confirm that by Googling labels in the maps, things like "France", "Germany", "Turkey", "Azerbaican", "China", "Japan". You will notice that these are lands that are somewhat similar to the USA but are not the USA but using the stuff made or operated in the USA.
For people looking from that part of the world, the "Chinese are spying on us" panic is met with "Oh really, that's so bad. Poor thing" level of simphaty.
The message to me from that case is clear—if the US government tells you to jump, you answer, how high.
There is no reason to believe that the NSA doesn’t have the ability to access iPhones [0]. Either through explicit help from Apple or otherwise.
Tim Cook’s stance was within the fiction of constitutional order. The FBI wanted to pretend that they couldn’t access the phone and bully Apple to give them access. This is to:
1. Legitimize their own access 2. Be able to, more easily, use the courts to punish someone (instead of droning a foreigner)
That last one is important. The DEA is known to use (unconstitutional) parallel construction to prosecute drug smugglers. If they have legitimate access to your phone, it’s easier to pretend that they obtained their evidence legitimately.
Tim Cook also has an interest in maintaining the aura that iPhones protect your safety. There’s no reason for you to believe that w/out having the source.
[0] or do you believe that no one working on the iPhone has secrets that the NSA can’t leverage? Or that the richest security service can’t manufacture custom chips as needed to clone the devices SSD? Or hasn’t capped the chips in the iPhone already? Or run it through the most through fuzzer?
This ideation is moot if there are members of the US government on staff, committed to 'finishing the patriotic mission' of their spook-agency masters.
I mean, I suppose we could make an argument for all people being equal in all equal ways, but don't forget that the each state actor is driven by different sets of morality, politics and even philosophy, or perhaps lack of it.
The only conclusion we can derive is that this whole surveillance/spying thing will never stop, everyone does it and will continue to do it. It would be wise to assume that everything is bugged, everything has backdoors, and every hardware vendor has been compromised.
It's cute that US citizens have some spying issues and some targeted election interference issues but the sympathy is very limited because in many parts of the world they were dealing with this since ever and the USA was the culprit.
I think we are approaching a time in history where we are going to actually choose if we are human resources that are to be spied on and controlled by the political class or are we individuals.
Choosing the government or agency you are being spied on is a false choice because it assumes that you made the choice to be a human resource and you are to be exploited but you can pick your masters by fighting against your master's competitors.
The moral argument is unconvincing given what's happening in the USA with all those immigrant camps and political agenda.
Nations aren't single discrete entities, so everything from individuals to collectives of all sizes within a nation will want to align with the US or the Chinese, depending on money, politics, ideologies, etc. I personally would much rather have the NSA read my emails, not the Chinese. It may be an unfair choice, but it is a choice.
> I think we are approaching a time in history where we are going to actually choose if we are human resources that are to be spied on and controlled by the political class or are we individuals.
I don't think you are right about this bit. The oppressor/oppressed duality is never going away, because it isn't determined by some kind of social realisation that we could do better as a species. It is determined by our biology and our drive to acquire resources. That kind of change won't happen until our biology changes.
Many fights of the political elites are more and more about their personal egos than biological or natural necessities of the population they are responsible for.
Sure, there are still issues and global risks that may undo our progress but overall we are approaching a future where we are no longer depended on large political institutions but since we have these in place they will continue doing their thing and the risks will be due to fighting between those institutions.
This issue is relevant to non-US persons and countries because the USA is actively trying to prevent Huawei from doing business in these countries.
The US-centric views are so prominent on the HN that sometimes I wonder if ever anyone at the silicon valley intended to "Make the World a better place". How can you make the world a better place if you cannot recognise that a world beyond the USA exists? It's even in your statistic! Turkey or Sweden is not simply some data points, they are real countries, allies of the USA, with their own interests.
The Europeans are often accused of being anti-American but maybe that is not the case, maybe it's just that Europeans every once in a while need to protect their own interests and that is perceived as treason.
There is no reason to be so smug in explaining obvious things and assuming complete ignorance on my part.
Then it won't be so much fun.
You're almost there.
In addition to that, if you think the US government is more hostile towards its citizenry than the Chinese government is, well... Also, if you’re relying on infrastructure that the government controls for your security, then the intentions of the NSA aren’t really your biggest problem.
The part of the article before the paywall suggests former intelligence employees, not current ones.
In any case this is obviously fuzzy, but frankly this is not transparent either in the West.