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Comment by roenxi | Hacker News Reader

It is interesting to play compare-and-contrast. The US government has a policy that is substantially similar in many respect - if I want to have a digital conversation without the US government getting a copy I'm not sure how I would go about it in practice. Certainly in a work setting, everything may as well get CC'd to the local government and US government offices.

The Chinese are upping the ante and this policy is going to be a social disaster for anyone involved in politics. But it is a good moment to reflect that the problem isn't the Communist Party of China specifically, it is a lack of private digital spaces. Spy agencies don't make us safe.

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> The US government has a policy that is substantially similar in many respect

Not at all. The US legal tools that let the government demand data substantially limit what can be demanded. There is currently nothing in US law that prevents you from protecting your own systems. You might get a NSL, but you can fight it.

No doubt the US government collects a lot of data covertly, but you can fight that too. I'm not a big fan of giant US tech companies, but (based on well-placed friends I trust) I believe Google and others sincerely fight covert collection, and they're pretty competent.

I think a good choice for a private conversation would be a browser peer-to-peer WebRTC conversation on one of many hosts such as https://talky.io/ (for example). Good end-to-end encryption, perfect forward secrecy, open-source clients running on your platform of choice, many possible Web hosts which are unlikely to have been all backdoored by the government (and you can set up your own easily if you want). Obviously if you have been specifically targeted by a state-level agency, your client is probably already hacked and none of that matters, but those attacks are expensive and it seems unlikely that covers more than a small fraction of people.

It is counterproductive to take the position that all countries are similarly bad and there's nothing we can do about it.

Wait... You trust Google to keep our information secret? Don't they literally allow access to all our information for money through targeted ads? Didn't Google just admit to reading all of our emails for like a decade now?

Google AFAICT does not share your data. They use it to target ads on behalf of others, which leaks some of it. But they hold it pretty close.

Honestly, every sensible business tries to limit the data it has that cannot be monetized or inform business decisions. And in this respect, big companies are opposed to governmental covert collection since it limits the company's portfolio of clients, probably hurts their own security, and requires them to do shit that don't turn a profit.

>Not at all. The US legal tools that let the government demand data substantially limit what can be demanded.

and in some level(s) they definitly believe the Chinese way to be a better way.

> if I want to have a digital conversation without the US government getting a copy I'm not sure how I would go about it in practice

Use an E2E encrypted messaging service?

Yeah, this seems like a huge overshoot. The US government does try to snoop on everybody's business but an E2E conversation on Wire or Telegram won't be traced. Could say the same for WhatsApp before they decided to go and comply with the UK's ridiculous request for data.

I do wonder how businesses deal with the snooping because I'm sure there are plenty of CEOs out there who wouldn't use a messenger to do deals or negotiations and many of them might be wary of an app they aren't familiar with. What happens then?

Western governments are covert about surveillance. China is overt about it, you continuously feel insecure and watched... and much like US's security theatre in airports that's the aim. So anyone who might wish harm to the communist party's agenda to feel threatened. How much are people willing to tolerate this sort of behavior? Hitler showed us all the way. In fact from a social development point of view China is going through what the world went through when it experimented with Fascism. So how does this end? Well, probably with some sort of war, likely a cold war of sorts.

It's also obvious that just like in WW2, American business will align itself with business interests even if those interests seem to be outright wrong. No matter, money is money. You would think we'd learned but we have learned nothing.

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