Comment by wiz21c | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wiz21c | Hacker News Reader

I'm going to be downvoted but... Android has access to all my files and is installed on my phone even before I reach the USA. Since the US government seems to have close ties (1) with Google, this makes me a bit nervous as well.

So I'm not sure the chinese are more evil than our occidental countries...

Moreover, it seems that chinese authorities force people to install their software on the phones. But, last time I checked, I was forced to accept the EULA on my phone as soon as I turned it on (Nokia One for the record). I'm sure that I'm just as "forced" to install Android on my phone as I'm forced to install the chinese software : basically I can refuse, but it means that I have to throw the phone away...

Obviously I make a kind of caricature here, but my point is : whatever the way it is installed, the software on your phone is controlled by a powerful entity, controlled maybe by a powerful government which has, like most of them, some blood on its hands. There's nothing wrong with that, that's history; but we don't need to look to far away to see problems with privacy...

[1] https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-seems/

And?

In my book, both the USA/corporate style of surveillance and the Chinese way are bad and need to be defeated. Don't buy the rhetoric that you have to choose a side in a fight between these two bullies.

We can argue on the one that uses its surveillance for the worst, we can argue on the rights that users have to disassemble and protect their devices on either side. The point is that we need tool to protect our freedoms, because they are attacked by powerful actors, like China.

And indeed, being China's competitor does not automatically makes USA a champion of privacy and user rights.

>> And ?

There's no "and". According to what you wrote, we're thinking the same thing :-)

Except, Google is accountable to shareholders and US legal code. The US government has accountability through elections and the judicial system. What accountability does the Chinese government have?

Hard to say from an outside perspective. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_China

Certainly worth a read and would be very interesting to compare what we class as democracy and accountability country by country from a neutral perspective. Though I'm not aware of any such articles of comparison.

> What accountability does the Chinese government have?

Presumably, they need to answer to their president.

And their president answers to whom? Doesn’t Xi have a lifetime appointment?

Very importantly an independent and strong judicial system.

There's the question of culture. I'd be really happy to have an opinion about my country from a China inhabitant...

I should travel there once, just to see it for myself...

A lot of good that accountability did Kim Dotcom, or the brown-skinned people being blown up by drones, or the hundred thousand civilians killed in Iraq after America brought about regime change. Over the past century America has interfered far more in other countries' affairs than China ever has. A cynical way of putting it: China's government oppresses its own people, America's government oppresses everybody but its own people. As someone neither American nor Chinese I feel China's far less likely to come along and bother me when I'm minding my own business than America is.

People in Vietnam and other SE Asian countries might disagree with this wholeheartedly. They have certainly felt the oppression from China.

>As someone neither American nor Chinese I feel China's far less likely to come along and bother me when I'm minding my own business than America is.

I'd rather be "bothered" by the US than "bothered" by China because in the former you can at least make the case that they shouldn't be bothering you and expect it to be considered. Government as the sum of all the bits that make it up behaves like a power hungry sociopath. Given the choice I'll take the sociopath that at least nominally respects human rights.

>As someone neither American nor Chinese I feel China's far less likely to come along and bother me when I'm minding my own business than America is.

Well no shit, only one of these two countries has had the capability to project power globally for six decades. To say China hasn't intervened in e.g. Ireland's affairs is to say pretty much nothing about its (un)desirability as a global leader.

Within each country's sphere of influence though, I don't agree with the above statement in any sense though. China is far more active/aggressive (and amoral) in the affairs of its people domestically and in its regional sphere of influence than the US generally is.

>China is far more active/aggressive (and amoral) in the affairs of its people domestically and in its regional sphere of influence than the US generally is.

That's the point; it's aggressive in the affairs of _its people_. That being said, I'd disagree that the US generally leaves countries in its sphere of influence alone: the war on drugs for instance resulted in a massive amount of violence and suffering in Mexico, America's southern neighbour. America installed Pinochet in Chile, and also created various other banana republics in South America (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_republic). America is one of the only countries in the world to tax its citizens regardless of whether they live, and imposes so much bureaucracy on dealing with them that there are even European banks that refuse to serve US customers: https://www.spiegel.de/international/business/reaction-to-us.... US intelligence agencies somehow convinced the New Zealand spy agency to illegally wiretap Kim Dotcom (NZ is a close US ally): https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/internet/9569986/Kim-.... The US embargoed Cuba for decades; China trades peacefully with Taiwan.

> I'm going to be downvoted but...

From the Hacker News Guidelines:

> Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

Please try to avoid sensationalist or dishonest language when commenting.

It's sometimes helpful, actually. Virtually any comment critical of Google gets downvote aggressively. I suspect that's a lot of Googlers reading Hacker News (who drank the coolaid) rather than an intentional astroturf campaign, but in either case, I've noticed a comment like that tends to help. It prevents the kneejerk "You criticised my employer/community/ego, so I'll downvote you" reaction, and sometimes leads to a bit more critical thought.

The phone situation is very unfortunate since there is basically no widespread phone operating system that isn't developed by a big corporation with possible ties to the US government.

I for one use an Android fork (LinageOS) and I trust the maintainers to remove any malicious features from stock Android but I can also never say for sure.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com