You might fairly ask whether or not it is equally foolish for non-US countries to use US services. I think that is also a reasonable question, and deserves reflection.
It's a fair sentiment (and held by others as well on this thread), but IMHO there's no equivalence. In democracies, violence against their own people (or others) will invite opposition from their citizens - while in China people won't even know what's going on.
The consequences are stark - just last week 7 million people lost the liberties they enjoyed. What's a comparable loss due to US snooping?
The list of interventions in foreign countries by the US is very very long ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_interventions_by_the_U... ), although not all of them are unwelcome or unwarranted. So is the list of people killed by the US. According to their own words "We Kill People Based on Metadata". (e.g., https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2014/05/ex-nsa-chief-... )
Sure, America does a lot of shady stuff, but the situation in China is just way worse in pretty much every way imaginable.
I guess, in general, within chinas sphere of influence you are better off having the us have your data and the other way around (e.g., ending up in a chinese prison is 'unlikely' while in europe the same way it's unlikely that ending on an american nofly list or in guantanamo is unlikely while in china). The countries inbetween or people traveling a lot would be more interesting.
Unfortunately, the most likely scenario is that everyone gets the data.
edit: I put "risk analysis" in quotes, because it doesn't feel like the right word for this hypothetical thing.
Major difference between USA, UK, France, Spain, Sweden etc. Vs Russia, Iran, China, Turkey, North Korea is that you end up in a cell, never to be seen again, tortured for your opinions.
I do believe that there are some scountries like India, Pakistan a a couple of others that play in both courts. Semi democratic and semi dictatorial, at the same time..
No, they will definitely not think. Govs/politicians/people in places of power are so arrogant that they will continue the BAU. They will pass another stricter "patriot act/snooper charter", they will issue a tougher gag order, and they will continue as they already do. They will increse the penalties for violators, but they will not stop. The "beast" has a hungry mouth, and it needs that info.
When was the last time we saw someone with power just turning the volume down? Never. Only if they get a hard slap in their faces, they pause for a minute, then they change/re-org and continue in a new method/under new legislation, and life goes on.
Even in an ideal (human) society (I like to use the "Star Trek TNG" in my examples), someone(s) has absolute power into reading private encrypted messages, and we just see a wise Jean-Luc (Sir Patrick Stewart) that does not abuse his right/privilege. But he does have the access.
You are dealing in absolutes. Let me put is way. In dictatorship non-free spy hungry US the cost of making a request to a private company for a government official is much much higher than the same request in for example China.
Because of checks and balances and more or less working elections and free press and now the free internet.
When request is harder to make, the government makes fewer requests, that’s it.
After what has happened to Snowden and Assange? I hope the leakers share your blind optimism. Snowden literally had to flee to Russia, of all the countries in the world, for political asylum.
Excuse me? I think we've all seen the Snowden and other leaks that essentially prove that all US companies have no problem handing over direct access to the US government.
Are we talking about freedom of speech? I 100% agree.
Otherwise, I don't think Google is a good example. There are actually many bad cases among US and EU companies. Just consider a few blow ups that we had with Google (e.g. Street view), Cicso (the issue with NSA), RSA (also the story about NSA), Facebook scandals, Crypto AG, Gemalto SIM cards, and etc.
Are they less evil or more transparent? I don't think so. It's the system that's more transparent in the West not companies. So when something leaks it's more likely that we are informed and it will blow up.
If you want to link everything to national security, then obviously domestic services are right choices. But, I'm still against banning and blocking other services. It's just against how I like the world to look like. It also sets a bad standard for other countries to inherit it. You don't want to disconnect the world more than it's now. History shows that it has bad consequences no matter where you are standing.
I think the right move would be setting good data protection laws (e.g. GDPR), and educating people about data privacy and help them to understand all the risks that are involved.
Kind of. But also more transparent western system makes private companies behave to avoid making the front page in the next scandal.
> Are we talking about freedom of speech?
We are talking about the level of public understanding of what’s going on inside the company. What data the company is collecting and where it sends it for example. (Please, note the transparency is not binary: we don’t know everything about Google, but we know much more about Google internals than about ByteDance).
My phone number and email address spread to many more American marketing lists than European ones, even though I rarely visit. Many of my Facebook ads result from my yearly visit to American cities. I just can't trust American businesses to use my data for the intended purpose only.
In that one comment, you have explained everything anyone needs to know as to why most of the tech innovation originates in the US and not from within Europe, and also why this situation is probably never going to change.