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Comment by repesorsa666 | Hacker News Reader

I hope you are joking.

The worst things Google would do are million times less worse than least worst things Huawei has done or would do.

My,naive, impression as a none US and none Chinese citizen is that Google will abuse all the data they can get their hands on in order to make money. Huawei on the other hand, may use your data in the way that best fits the Chinese goverment. This may of course be terrible if your an Chinese citizen doing things the goverment does not want you to do, but on the other hand as an European citizen I find it much less likely that the Chinese goverment will abuse my personal data than that Google will.

edit:typos and formatting..

While that is a tempting view at first, I can't get behind it, given what we now know about state-sponsored efforts to destabilize western democracies, through targeted misinformation and outright cyber warfare. I think we have every reason to believe such efforts will become more sophisticated, bold and disruptive. Every bit of data that adversarial regimes may have on you, is a potential lever that they can pull.

Yep, yep, private firms in the west are harvesting our data and using it in not-so-great ways. Same with our security agencies. But... imperfect though they may be, we do have many tools with which to hold them accountable and affect change, even if the odds might be stacked against us most of the time.

Not to mention, we've seen how bad western companies tend to be at securing data (e.g. Equifax) - its not going to be any better in China or elsewhere.

Is the Chinese state-sponsored cyber warfare any worse than what the US or Russia are doing? My impression is that cyber warfare is a part of what it to be an superpower, if your not doing it you are losing(__lots of citations needed__), and I have no reason not to belive that the US is not best in class when it comes to cyber warfare.

It doesn’t matter who has the weapon. What matter is whether it is targeting you.

How is Google abusing your data?

If:

- you're not in or near China

- you are not a Chinese national or a relative of one

- you are not operating in international human rights law

Then arguably the Chinese government has less power over you than the US one, or indeed Google.

[citation needed]

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