Silicon Valley’s Vast Data Collection Should Worry You More Than TikTok
jacobinmag.com
jacobinmag.com
Whether or not that tit-for-tat behavior leads to a net benefit for the US is up for debate. But the fact the EOs cite "national security", "privacy violation", etc. as the main reasons for banning makes you wonder "are those the real reasons behind this ban?" If they are, then questions raised by OP's article is perfectly legit, and makes the ban look either misplaced or hypocritical. If the ban really is tit-for-tat, what's stoping the EO from just saying so? Honestly, this whole situation makes the White House/Department of State look like they don't even believe those allegations themselves, which weakens their ground in any legitimate discussion around"national security threat" , "privacy violation" etc.
Then there is guilty by association on China/CCP, based on their association with communism. Which by all accounts is largely nothing but name nowadays. CCP itself looks more like a capitalism organization than a communism party, on the spectrum from communism to capitalism. But most time, one random netizen wholeheartedly claims that CCP is evil, just based on it having communism in the name. Then anything Chinese people doing are tainted as well. Like I was called associated with Chinese government in [2], because I stated that "五毛" is being used too abusively, and "government hired net moderator" is probably better [3].
For god's sake, I am now routinely worried my future at this country, just because I come from mainland China...
[1] https://legaldictionary.net/guilt-by-association/ [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23494968 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23494950
In my opinion the claim of persecution based on origin is unfounded. The apps have demonstrated potentially illegal actions by gathering the data how they do. I don't think they are the only ones that do this in the market but that is besides the case. I hope more get unmasked. This EO may produce precedent in regining intrusive borederline illegal spying (intrusive data gathering) via social media sites and applications. POTUS does have the power to reign in companies operating in the US market especially when demonstrating potential harm to citizens.
I'm worried about the asymmetry of enforcement as much as you are. However, I wouldn't put it past the current POTUS to do something stupid and invalidate his athority.
You reap what you sow. When the CCP has great influence on the activities of chinese companies, it's only reasonable for foreigners to be suspicious. By the same token, it's only reasonable for Russia/China to be suspicious of backdoors in Microsoft/Intel, for instance.
>Then there is guilty by association on China/CCP, based on their association with communism.
This is getting into strawman territory. There's plenty of reasons to hate the CCP that doesn't involve "communism". Human rights abuses and the lack of civil liberties, for one.
It seems like the author is expressing opinions that others in the comments also hold:
> We should be worried about private companies and governments potentially collecting data on millions of unsuspecting people and censoring content they don’t like. But those based in China represent just a sliver of that threat.
> The answer isn’t to dismiss the potential menace of China’s surveillance programs, or to cheerlead for a rival set of tech oligarchs who simply happen to live in California and speak English.
> We should broaden the concerns and criticisms of TikTok and its relationship to China to tech firms more generally, and push for an across-the-board guarantee of online privacy and free speech for all of the world’s people, whether they’re more worried about being tracked and manipulated by people in the United States or China.
A bit utopian? Sure, but as so many here have already pointed out, this is Jacobin ;)
The Europeans and the Indians who both have social media markets big enough to support their own should play the same game that the Chinese and the Americans are. That is, if there is any indication that foreign governments can access the information and that your own government cannot they should ban the social media application, search applications and mail applications and build their own.
Right now there are effectively two countries in the world that have big internet companies. The US and China.
It appears that China's protectionism in the internet has worked. It also appears that the US is practising similar protectionism in regard to TikTok. It's not completely unreasonable from either party.
The next step is that the other potential majors, the Europeans and the Indians do the same.
It might even make a more interesting world. European and Indian TikToks, Googles, Facebooks, AliBabas and so on.
It would be interesting to see if the NSA care about it.
My point is that if the USA is monitoring citizens from EU, it isn’t through American businesses that intend to comply with GDPR.
A client should be something much more agnostic, that anybody can use on any platform. The platforms would need to agree to an smtp/http like protocol allowing a person to upload and download data. Nations seeking sovereignty can be more protective of data stores and ranking algorithms, BUT as end users, WE would benefit from being able to plop different ranking algorithms between the data set we are connected to, and client we use to view. If I dont like my client, ranker, data provider etc, I can swap out the component, WITHOUT losing my friends or access to my own graph.
Innovation can happen independently at the client and ranking levels, new winners can rise and fall more naturally, where everybody isnt "stuck" with the lowest common denominator default.
In my view, anything else will continually lead to a few titans owning the whole network stack and graph, and governments can peruse antitrust and security angles all they want, but the same problem will just keep happening as long as they incentivize isolated proprietary silos over choice.
1. Silicon Valley is a metonym and does not exclusively refer to the companies in it.
2. Silicon Valley is where the most important and powerful new-era data collection companies are.
How about worrying about all big government/business collecting data.
So its safest to assume any digital data anywhere will eventually be in the hands of any significant actor who really wants it. Its just a matter of how long it takes to get there.
They happen to be situated in USA specifically. It's the world's traffic relay.
For Europeans, the best strategy is to arbtirage between the two poles in this new Cold war. Some data goes to the US, some to China, this is useful when either of them becomes too demanding.
2 - Eric Schmidt's Pentagon Offensive: "..through his own venture capital firm and a [$15] billion fortune, Mr. Schmidt has invested millions of dollars into more than half a dozen defense start-ups.. The former Google C.E.O. has reinvented himself as the prime liaison between Silicon Valley and the Military-Industrial Complex.
[1] https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/china-versus-am...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/02/technology/eric-schmidt-p...
WhatsApp, IG, FB, YouTube is used globally and after Snowden revelations I'm pretty sure they can be used to look out for your interested as a US citizen, not that this is aligned with my interests as a non American citizen.
AI in the wrong hands (MIC) has been a warning in countless films. Competing with China's Military by weaponizing AI is not the solution to a problem. It's "becoming what you fear".
We've seen SV employees protest the moves their corporations are making (facial recog, lethal robotics, etc) so Eric taking this out of Google into "startups" is really skirting around the perception issue (ie. PR of doing "evil").
Perhaps competing with China in AI is not the perfect solution, though I cannot think of a better one, but it sure beats being out competed by them.
There are no absolutes here, its about accepting that we live in an imperfect world and picking the least bad outcomes we can.
Again, because of all the places, it's most tiring to have to repeat this in HN:
[...] ByteDance’s CEO has already promised to “further deepen cooperation” with official party media, on top of the ideological censorship it has already engaged in on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
What’s more, a 2017 law lets the Chinese government force companies to secretly hand over data, including data on foreign citizens.
Is it possible that the NSA and other Five Eyes can't spy on its messaging?
EDIT: Or maybe just that they're worried about that possibility in the future?
Political forces in the US are constantly trying to influence facebook and twitter's content control policies. What does that look like when it's the CCP doing it?
Think creatively here, it's not just going to be Chinese flags overlaid on everything. Just amplifying stupid/criminal/vulgar/etc. content (more than the internet already does) could have a subtle but significant negative effect.
... but one hopes data collection concerns aren't the real reasons for going after TikTok, but instead that it's part of tit-for-tat action aimed at getting China to accept and enact more aspects of the bargain for joining the global free-market economy, rather than just the parts that help it. They've chosen "defect" for like 2.5 decades, which I'm pretty sure was basically expected to happen back when they were allowed to join the club, but had better not be tolerated indefinitely.
The President has spent his term undermining such concepts.
This is why I don't read articles like this. 2nd sentance in and we're bashing the president for what purpose exactly?
And why do you think CCP has control over TikTok?
Edit: What are you implying here?
Some CCP members are having party activities inside a private company.
Are they plotting a plan to force Mr. Zhang Yiming to spy on US teenagees?
Or are they just doing the typical CCP "study" activity to learn the retheroic from Mr. Xi?
Who are these guys, are they senior executives in the company? Or random employees who are CCP members.
In the end, what do you want to get from the picture, depends a lot on your prejudice.
https://mobile.twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1291879371461... for example.
"More than 130 employees at ByteDance, the Chinese owner of video-sharing application TikTok, are part of a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) committee embedded in the company. Many of the employees work in management positions, an internal document reveals."
https://m.theepochtimes.com/mkt_app/tiktoks-parent-company-e...
Associating CCP is a crime?
Note that there is only one party who claims to be totally devoted to serving people. That's CCP.
Can I claim that these CCP members are helping bytedance to better serve it's customers, and help curbe the greedy capitalists from infringing Chinese citizen's privacy?
Or are they finally granted power over the bytedance company? I.e., are they organized to study Mr. Xi's thoughts, or trying to dictate the company's policy etc.
My position on associating with CCP is irrelevant for the original question, but since you asked now, - yes, associating with a communist party (Chinese or otherwise) while not a crime, is not a good thing either. I'm an immigrant from ex-USSR and I've seen first hand what "party who claims to be totally devoted to serving people" means in the real world. You can associate with whom you want, but I wouldn't want any entity associating with a communist party touch any aspect of my life, let alone my data.
CCP still do horrible thing, like Xinjiang concentration camp.
But it's major part is different than USSR, at least it practices market economy, with private sector as it's main economy driver.
I want people to understand how China works in its reality, not illusion created by media.
First off, it's exactly the same logic that communists used in USSR. "Look at these beautiful Moscow Subway stations!" (nevermind the gulags); or "Hey, citizen! Go ahead and celebrate and march for the International Workers' Day!" (nevermind the fallout from Chernobyl is peaking).
Second, in the context of the article we're discussing (who is more worrisome from data collection perspective - CCP or SV), why me - the foreigner - would have any illusions of being treated better than China's own citizens (Uyghurs)? Granted, I won't be put into the camp, but to think that my data would be treated with any respect, is to be naive.
I dont think it's the same, at least not to what I understand.
You have plenty of means to travel freely inside China. As long as you don't engage obvious news reporting activities. That can be proved from numerous videos on Youtube.
Second, you are again making the associative thinking, which I painstakingly trying to point out. Of cuz context matters, and time changes; even today, the concentration camp is less brutal than it was a few years ago. And again, Chinese government has not been actually caught on spying foreign citizens. It certainly spy on its own citizens, which is bad. But you cannot just say that because they might be doing that, then they must be doing that...
Should you be worried that your Tiktok usage data be spyed by Chinese government? Of cuz, I dont use any of bytedance apps, I dont use any FB apps, I never discuss sensitive information on Wechat.
But does that warrant that we can ban the company without legal process? No...
When Google starts having an interest in being able to blackmail people to get them to spy on their country or give up IP, then sure.
When the US Government can unilaterally demand security cooperation from Google in any way, shape, or form like the Chinese government can, then sure.
When the tech companies actually start censoring aggressively and hunting people down(rather than just removing enough to satisfy angry people), then sure.
One problem is the data. The other (larger) problem is how each controlling entity wants to use the data.
Google wants to sell ads. They don’t care about your porn preferences, whether you have a mistress, or whether you do drugs. Maybe the ads approach is obnoxious, but that is all it is. They want to sell stuff, not take over the world.
The Government of China wants power. They want influence. They want information. They want control. And no Chinese company is allowed to refuse its pursuit of those.
And even if both countries required the same absolute cooperation from their tech companies, governments In the West are very limited in their ability to take the kind of actions against their citizens that the Government of China can.
The US Government isn’t even allowed to tax a newspaper excessively, yet alone throw the editor in jail for running critical content.
> When Google starts to have any inclination to put a bag over my head if I search the wrong thing, sure. > When Google starts having an interest in being able to blackmail people to get them to spy on their country or give up IP, then sure.
The CCP could have all the data they want on you but there is almost nothing they can do about it because an ocean and a military separates you, outside some fringe cases.
The NSA, however, can and will use data they collect on you against you. The US government is no stranger to this, where COINTELPRO [1] used the results of domestic spying to try to put an early end to MLK and the Civil Rights Movement.
The US has caused demonstrable harm to citizens via surveillance yet you seem to support it compared to the less dangerous alternative out of some misplaced sense of patriotism.
> When the US Government can unilaterally demand security cooperation from Google in any way, shape, or form like the Chinese government can, then sure.
Have you not heard of PRISM? The NSA? National Security Letters? The US routinely can and does force companies to give up information on citizens in the form of dragnet surveillance. One way to do this is a National Security Letter [2].
> Google wants to sell ads. They don’t care about your porn preferences, whether you have a mistress, or whether you do drugs
And neither does the CCP. Neither does the NSA, actually, unless they want something from you and to force you to do something.
> The Government of China wants power. They want influence. They want information. They want control. And no Chinese company is allowed to refuse its pursuit of those.
Welcome to participating on a global scale. The US isn't the only country allowed to be a superpower. It's probably not good if China surpasses the US, but the US also doesn't have anywhere close to the moral high ground w.r.t. domestic surveillance as you mention.
With nowhere near the same implications.
> The US government is no stranger to this, where COINTELPRO [1] used the results of domestic spying to try to put an early end to MLK and the Civil Rights Movement.
The big difference being that COINTELPRO was not done with the authorization of Congress and instead lead to a Congressional investigation and later the Senate Intelligence Committee to provide oversight [1]. The airing of those abuses culminated in additional oversight of domestic intelligence activities.
In China, the airing of those abuses would end with the journalists being censored/bagged.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee
> The CCP could have all the data they want on you but there is almost nothing they can do about it
Oceans are a great shield against blackmail...
> One way to do this is a National Security Letter
A National Security Letter is hardly an absolute order. They can be reviewed by a judge. They cannot include requests for content like messages. Those require a warrant. They can be beaten in court. They are not a broad tool that the NSA can apply as they wish for whatever ends they wish. Not only that, citizens are allowed to oppose it and elect legislators to repeal them.
> And neither does the CCP. Neither does the NSA, actually, unless they want something from you and to force you to do something.
Except there is a massive difference in what each wants from you.
> but the US also doesn't have anywhere close to the moral high ground w.r.t. domestic surveillance as you mention.
The lack of prisons full of political dissidents who committed thought crimes on the internet puts them head and shoulders above. The existence of an independent judiciary does as well.
Though, it lead to no actual punishment for anyone involved in the program. Further, the only reason such a show trial was possible was that the CIA accidentally missed a box of records when they destroyed all of the evidence. What use is oversight when the agency can destroy all the evidence?
What use is {x} when someone can {attempt to avoid x}?
Because we live in the real world, and no authority is omniscient and absolute.
Generally with totalitarian governments, the propaganda and control is for domestic consumption to maintain their power, but this does also extend to nationals living abroad. However the CCP does have ambitions for empire in the shorter term that should be cause for alarm and vigilance.
Getting eveyone to acknowledge China as undisputed rulers of whatever territory China decides is China.
Strong effort these to have “fact checkers” on anything potentially political. At some this will be the job of one government or another.
Russia had the Joke department. Gotta make sure all jokes are correct thinking.
What % of NSL has been turned down ? FISA warrant rejection rate is like 12 for 30,000+ warrants. For all intents it is absolute order if the Courts hardly reject it.
> The lack of prisons full of political dissidents ...
Your prisons are fuller than any other large developed country more than 3 million people are in prison, your judicial systems are racially and economically biased . In a country embodying capitalism, is this not worse than putting dissidents in prison? At least they actually have to dissent before being put in jail, here the system is rigged such that poor hardly have a vote or voice, rich keep paying lower tax than middle class, and gets exploited and still happily vote for the people robbing them blind.
Perhaps you have better rights as a citizen, the rest of us around the globe not so much.
China does not kill by drone extra judicially outside their country. I don't have to be afraid of clear skies.
I don't have to as afraid that I will be grabbed by Chinese Intelligence to a black site like Guantanamo bay with no legal course or judicial oversight.
I need to be lot more worried of U.S. funding and meddling in local politics than of China. Every single time U.S. has engaged in covert/ overt meddling in ME/Lat Am , Far East etc, it has always lead to lot of death and suffering.
For citizens of the world there is no protection, If I do business with FAANG outside the U.S. and even if keep my data outside, still U.S. courts have full rights to grab my data, against my country laws under which the tech giants supposed to operate in my country .
For all your rights and amendments against surveillance and wire-tapping on paper , the rest of the world has none. Your security agencies can legally monitor at anyone at will without any oversight.
U.S. companies have and continue to backdoor / frontdoor everywhere in the world as they please, and suffer no consequences.
Privacy and basic human rights should not be just American right, I hope rest of us get treated as humans too in your system.
Does it make China better? of course not! it is not whataboutism. Both are bad.
For rest of us, the U.S. has already done lot more damage. China will do lot more damage in the future no doubt, but today U.S. is in no position to talk .
I mean, can't you say the same about the US? All you have to do is not commit crimes.
edit:
>China does not kill by drone extra judicially outside their country. I don't have to be afraid of clear skies.
A few comments down: https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/03/29/the-disappeared-china-r...
For example , It is hard for me to see why drugs are criminalised so much in the U.S. a little weed could get you 10 years in prison till few years back ,civil forfeiture, abortion laws or why laws in your country all horrify me.
To understand guns laws , I will have to understand the rationale of second amendment the long history of gun ownership.
Similarly to under China today , there is 2,000 year history you will need to keep in context .
Again not defending China , it is important to see how we see things coloured by our own biases.
Oh please, give me a break. There's no rule of law in China, only rule by law. Just ask the Canadians that just happened to break some law right after Meng got detained in Canada.
Also, "damaging property" as a crime and being detained near the scene of a protest turned violent is way more universally accepted as illegal than whatever trumped up charges of "spreading false rumors" that the Chinese legal system levies against dissidents.
There's an epidemic of extrajudicial killings in the US right now. Indefinite detention without trial and torture have been normalized under three presidents, and one can't expect change there under Biden, so we're looking at a quarter century of these policies at a minimum.
The danger of whataboutism is that the US doesn't have a leg to stand on anymore.
The most recent execution of Canadians in China have been on drug charges. They had trials, it's crime and punishment by the books. Sure, it's politically motivated, but is it worse than a drug dealer getting shot dead while running away from a police officer?
And when we look at the history of criminalizing drug use and possession, who's responsible? China started cracking down because the British demand for opium was harmful to the Chinese people. The US started, and continues to wage, a "war on drugs" which was really a war on marginalized populations and an excuse to exercise imperial power in the middle east and south america. Rule by law, indeed.
A responsible government would not kill without a trial , without the chance for the accused to face his accusers, there is no judicial oversight to any of this .
I am not sure kidnapping people( bad as it is) compares to a drone strike . No national security concern should justify killing children and lack of real outrage makes the amercian public complicit too.
> In 2020, the non-profit Prison Policy Initiative issued a report,"Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2020," that said, based on the most recent census data and information from the Bureau of Prisons, an overwhelming majority of inmates in county and municipal jails were being held pre-trial, without having been convicted of a crime
> In 2017, 482,100 inmates in federal and state prisons were held pre-trial.
That's not 3 million but it's quite a lot.
The CCP's orchestrated intent to scrub out 2 peoples and their religions from the face of the earth on their way to a 3rd complete, divisible nation (Taiwan) has not been seen since Nazi Germany. This is the scale of atrocity and disrespect for the basic right of a human being to say, "I am who I am", we are dealing with at this very moment in human history.
Please, please, consider that however tough things are in the US for very many people, it can change with a vote. That is a democracy, however broken and fragile.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/21355465/tiktok-us-china-informatio...
Really? As much as I dislike cultural genocide, such as the still ongoing cultural genocide against Native Americans, I fail to see how it is a graver sin than the Iraq War. And please, tell me how my vote can stop it.
Nk other nation in world history has caused more destabilisation and upheavel across the globe than the USA. Arming terrorists, starting wars for oil, dropping millions of tonnes of cluster bombs over vast areas, spraying civilians with horrible chemicals that caused birth defects for decades, dropping atomic bombs on cities, faking evidence of WMDs, assassinating leaders, constant drone murder-without-trial strikes in foreign nations with "collateral damage", overthrowing democracies, putting in dictators, mass surveillance and the most organised and terrifying system of rendition and torture that has ever existed.
The human cost in death, maiming and misery is absolutely incalculable.
Frankly, I'm really sick of people sticking their head in the sand and not looking closer to home before they attack others because "we're the gold guys" and "they're evil communists".
The hypocrisy is simply stunning.
The NSA can't collect your data if you are a US citizen or are a non-US citizen inside the US, and they certainly can't "use [it] against you."
> Have you not heard of PRISM? The US routinely can and does force companies to give up information on citizens in the form of dragnet surveillance.
PRISM does not use dragnet surveillance. It's right there in the slides that Snowden leaked and repeated in the documents the government declassified. https://www.cnet.com/news/no-evidence-of-nsas-direct-access-...
The four other members of the Five Eyes are under no such restrictions, among others, and parallel construction can at least putatively separate the fruit from its poisonous tree.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-dea-sod/exclusive-u-s-dir...
https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/450393-nsa-impr...
https://theintercept.com/2019/10/10/fbi-nsa-mass-surveillanc...
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/newly-declassified-court-do...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/09/nsa-loophole-w...
Say you're the NSA. By law, there are certain sorts of spying you're not lawfully allowed to do on Americans. (And agency rules constraining you too.) But wait. Allied countries have different laws and surveillance rules. If there are times when America's spy agency has an easier time spying on Brits, and times when Britain's spying agency has an easier time spying on Americans, it's easy to see where the incentives lead. Put bluntly, intelligence agencies have an incentive to make themselves complicit in foreign governments spying on their own citizens.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/06/is-the-...
None of your links provide any evidence that they do so, which makes sense because the agreement that the Five Eyes programs derive from was a no-spy agreement between the members. If the US government asked other countries to spy on its citizens to skirt its own laws, there would have been evidence in Snowden's document haul, and that would have been the biggest story in them. Instead, bupkis.
To reiterate the initial point, I don't know why you have those links given that they say absolutely nothing that supports your claim.
The phone, internet and email records of UK citizens not suspected of any wrongdoing have been analysed and stored by America's National Security Agency under a secret deal that was approved by British intelligence officials, according to documents from the whistleblower Edward Snowden.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/20/us-uk-secret-d...
Reuters reports the agreement as reciprocal:
Britain’s spy agency GCHQ has tapped fibre-optic cables that carry international phone and internet traffic and is sharing vast quantities of personal information with the U.S. National Security Agency, the Guardian newspaper said on Friday.
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-security-britain/briti...
Lawfare on the Five Eyes agreement itself which specifically does permit information sharing:
Born from spying arrangements forged during World War II, the Five Eyes alliance facilitates the sharing of signals intelligence among the U.S., the U.K., Australia, Canada and New Zealand. The Five Eyes countries agree to exchange by default all signals intelligence they gather, as well as methods and techniques related to signals intelligence operations.
https://www.lawfareblog.com/newly-disclosed-documents-five-e...
Your second link simply states that the UK has access to intercepts that it shares with the US. It doesn't say that the US asks the UK for data on people it is prohibited by law from spying on.
Your third link likewise does not say anything about any of the member countries illegally spying on their own citizens using other countries' data.
This all makes sense because what you are claiming is illegal, and there would have been lawsuits against the US government about it if there were any evidence (even the slightest hint of any evidence) it was happening because it would be by far the most egregious overreach in the leaks. The government cannot pay a third party to illegally search a US citizen any more than it can pay a third party to illegally detain one. Instead, the only illegal US program in Snowden's leaks was the phone metadata collection, which has since been shut down.
From the quote of the third link:
> The Five Eyes countries agree to exchange by default all signals intelligence they gather, as well as methods and techniques related to signals intelligence operations.
This seems like a pretty clear implication that a Five Eyes country gets information about its own citizens via automatic sharing of information gathered by the other countries. Whether they technically "asked" for the information or not is not relevant.
No, it does not. If it did, Snowden's documents would have contained evidence showing that the NSA either has a copy of the GCHQ wiretap data or that the NSA has direct query access to it, either of which would have been a blockbuster story. There was no such evidence.
Instead, what your quote means is that the parties to the agreement can ask the other parties for any information about their collection they like, and the default response (if there are no overriding rules) will be to return that information. The US cannot ask another country for data about its own citizens without a warrant because, as I've stated multiple times, that is illegal.
You are creating some all-seeing bogeyman by misreading some words. This is better than dredmorbius's comments in that you misread some words instead of not reading them and pretending they said something, but do you understand that misreading words is how conspiracy theories are created?
See: "State Secrets Privilege"
Essentially, by invoking the state secrets privilege in this way, the government argues that even if all of the allegations of serious law-breaking and Constitutional violations are true, surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans is exempt from judicial review.
In response to the government’s assertion, and as it has since the first wiretapping cases started in 2006, EFF argues that in creating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, Congress preempted the state secrets privilege, creating a separate but still very secure way for the case to be decided. The FISA law not only prevents the immediate dismissal of the case, it affirmatively instructs courts to determine whether electronic surveillance is legal....
This or any of your numerous other conspicuously unsourced claims?
I'll let you look this one up yourself. It might take you some time to find it, but by doing it yourself, you'll learn some things that will fix a few other conspiracy theories you might have that you haven't brought up yet. Look for "minimization" and "Section 702." Both will be good starting points.
Interesting, I’m sure you’re aware of the CCP coercing critics (who are US citizens) by threatening their families in China?
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-wray-idUSKBN248...
Those are what comes to mind for me, and maybe there are more ways China could threaten an individual in the US, but I still think it's at most 5% of Americans who could be personally targeted by China (and I do think it's good to ban TikTok because I do not want that number to go up).
Meanwhile US surveillance affects 100% of Americans. We have stronger rights and don't have to fear being disappeared for dissenting, but mass surveillance has the power to suppress or misdirect speech and there are entities in the US that are figuring out how to use that.
You don't see anyone in power losing sleep over the Saudis or Israel constantly assassinating people they don't like. Or even bothering to care about a madman like Duterte from going on extrajudicial rampages and killing tens of thousands of his own citizens. Apparently they're the good guys because they fall into line with us.
Not yet, but they recently passed a law that says otherwise.
The difference is that China actively abuses the powers it has, restricts its citizens on the internet, surveils their legal rights (not just their borrowing status a la credit ratings) with the state-controlled social credit scores, and continues to track apostates who emigrate abroad. It's China that is working on the model modern tech-enabled concentration camp for ethnic minorities in Xinjiang (although the word genocide would be hyperbolic here: We have no evidence of extermination or of plans in that direction). Moreover, the CCP has gone in the wrong direction under Xi, away from a stable oligarchy that was progressive in certain areas, and towards dictatorship and lockdown.
If a true totalitarian ever controlled the US security apparatus, such a tyrant could turn that turnkey. (I'm not talking about Trump, who might try some unconstitutional tricks, but when he's defeated in court, tweets something nasty about the judge, then abides by the ruling). Right now, however, the US still has restraint, has checks & balances, which are imperfect but let's not underestimate them or be ungrateful. Similarly, although things are fraught with traditional US allies like NATO, it's not like the US is leveraging even a fraction of its sigint supremacy in, say, agricultural trade negotiations with France.
Point is, US & allied capabilities are scarier than any other country by far, but the way that China (and Russia, though overhyped) actively use their power in practice is way more insidious. The media has educated people to call out "whatabout-ism" when they see it in the Trump crowd. Let's call it out when we see it from the fascist CCP and their apologists.
Clearly you haven't been following up or digging to hard, as forced sterilization programs qualify in the U.N. working definition of genocide. Just because there are no ovens and gas chambers, does not mean it isn't happening.
Further, your classification of what Trump has been doing as "Tricks" cements for me at it least some level of disingenuity. There are things you don't do as an official of the State, and the Trump admin has gone leaps and bounds passed just about every other historical example I could find in terms of trying to coax the line of Unconstitutionality you can getaway with just that much further. Though I appreciate the distinction you're making between Trump who'll push as far as he get away with vs an individual who refuses to be stopped.
However, I do absolutely agree with you on the relative capabilities of the intelligence community of the West. The level of integration of data streams strived for is nothing short of "Total Information Awareness". There is no room in a world of men for such power. I'm not even convinced it should be wielded under the auspices of being a national secutrity/defense apparatus; however as long as one Nation is willing to have one, it's pretty much inevitable everyone else will too.
Google based information is probably part of the Disposition Matrix, though that's unlikely to end with just a bag over your head.
>When Google starts having an interest in being able to blackmail people to get them to spy on their country or give up IP, then sure.
So what do you think of something like Elon Musk openly admitting to furthering a coup to secure resources? Is it only a problem with intellectual property?
>When the US Government can unilaterally demand security cooperation from Google in any way, shape, or form like the Chinese government can, then sure.
This isn't the case?
While bad, this isn't remotely the same either in scope or scale as China's similar issues. In the US you end up in this matrix if you're perceived to be a legitimate, real, prone-to-violent-acts threat. In China you end up in their "disposition matrix" if you say anything negative about anyone in favor.
> So what do you think of something like Elon Musk openly admitting to furthering a coup to secure resources? Is it only a problem with intellectual property?
What makes you believe Musk?
> This isn't the case?
No, it isn't. At least nominally some kind of additional oversight, e.g., via a FISA warrant, is required.
Now, none of the above is meant to imply that operatives and agencies adhere to the rules 100% of the time. They do serve to mark a distinct, clear difference between the US and China, though, because at least in the US if/when these agencies and operatives are caught there are legal repercussions to face. In China there aren't any because these agencies and operatives' actions would just be standard operating procedure. It makes a difference.
There is nothing to this except "I'm fine when the US does it." You have no idea which targets are real, prone to violence threats, or how valid either states research is before acting. Further, even if you're fine with the current US targets Google is still fine giving them that data even though it's being used to kill people.
>What makes you believe Musk?
The ousted president blaming such foreign interests, the new president opening up the mines despite public protest, and why would I doubt him?
>No, it isn't. At least nominally some kind of additional oversight, e.g., via a FISA warrant, is required.
In the absolute best case scenario, this only stays their hand when working inside the country. Though, I don't agree that they face repercussions for violating these laws.
Google actually did attempt to participate in that via Project Dragonfly. Users searches would be correlated to their ids and sent to the government, which is actively surveilling people in order to decide who to suppress. Many of these are minorities who end up with bags over their heads in those concentration camp drone videos. The employees revolted so strongly the project was cancelled.
> When the US Government can unilaterally demand security cooperation from Google in any way, shape, or form like the Chinese government can, then sure
Tech companies sometimes sue to be allowed to disclose the secret requests that are made of them. Since 9/11, it’s been a lot harder to say no
Exactly - the buck stopped at company leadership beholden to internal/public reputation, rather than a central authoritarian government with the power to make you disappear.
A company is hardly better. Google could have decided to let the unhappy employees go. Most of them would probably have stayed and wiped their tears with their comp anyway.
Government is supposed to keep the private sector honest, so to speak. With weak government, and a private sector with single entities that have more data about citizens than government, the risk is arguably greater.
There are reasonable limits placed on government in the US, but those limits do not apply to the private sector.
Comparisons of China to the US make some sense when based on size, but if ignoring size, comparing the US to China on the issue of digital privacy and propaganda seems strange assuming one is trying to illustrate that the US is some sort of high benchmark. It is arguable there are other countries where citizens are enjoying greater digital privacy and more freedom from propaganda than in the US. It would seem to make more sense to compare the US to those countries.
a) funding a massive 50 cent army b) censoring any information the state does not want you to see c) jailing anyone who say the wrong thing with their data d) controlling pretty much your entire life through the social credit system
You guys are drawing lots of false equivalences. Streamers in China have been 'disappeared' for weeks for offenses as harmless as singing the national anthem badly, or saying nice things about Taiwan.
When tech companies start doing this, maybe we'll have an equivalence:
That is a false choice. The government will always have the power. In a democracy it must be held accountable for that power by its citizens.
Isn't that covered by the OP? Regardless of the private sector's surveillance capability, they don't have access to violence. This by itself makes it less worse than the CCP.
As for demanding security cooperation:
https://transparencyreport.google.com/user-data/us-national-...
I am not sure how this distinguish CCP from any other power nation's government, and warrants unlawful ban on a private company's APP.
The notion that there are big tech companies in China operating outside the CCP's influence is, charitably, naive.
This simply has no factual evidences, let me give you examples:
One claims CCP install party committee in all companies, and those committee controls major personnel appointment, and other critical managerial activities, etc. As we inquired, there is no open report whatsoever about such powerful "committee"...
The person then gave a link of a old USSR organization [2]. For all we know CCP is about as different than USSR than US is to USSR...
As for the Chinese internet law [3], does not apply to company like TikTok, which explicitly does not allow mainlander to join the network. See [4], "Important: TikTok checks your cell’s SIM card at startup and if you are using a Chinese SIM it will block the access."; there is no way the company voluntarily to bend to a law that it has no obligation to comply...
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24016881 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24018111 [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Internet_Security_Law#:~.... [4] https://www.saporedicina.com/english/access-tiktok-china/
"they" in the USA is much more democratic (though clearly it is not perfect)
"they" in the CCP is almost exclusively a small number of mostly unchecked elites such as Xi
I thought the elected executives in all levels of the government have enormous power over many aspects of the society. And for the most part, elected executives do operate independently under the framework of law, without directly involving democracy process.
> "they" in the CCP is almost exclusively a small number of mostly unchecked elites such as Xi
Same here, Xi was mostly appointed through some shadow power committee embedded inside the CCP higher power circle.
After "elected", they also operate largely independently, within the structure of law.
Of course, Chinese laws are obviously given more power to the government at all levels.
But I feel so puzzled about people's idea that a few individuals can actually exert their will in so large a nation like China. That's simply beyond the human capability (both mental and physical).
Rule of law is a thing. Trump and his organizations are currently under investigation in the state of NY.
> without directly involving democracy process.
Are you aware of how a representative democracy works?
is this not exactly what a national security letter (NSL) is? the government can demand anything of a tech company, including that the company not tell anybody about it, as long as they claim it's for reasons of national security.
2. The company can challenge it in court and have it reviewed.
The fact you cannot even mention that you received a NSL forget the scope and nature of actual request, and entire secretive nature of the court proceedings and no plans to every unseal this data, canary declaration being the only way to even tell your customers. If I said this happened anywhere else you will say that country is repressive.
"Oh," but you might be tempted say, "that wasn't just for a Google search! And many of those who are citizens elsewhere? Like the Chinese government, I don't believe that citizenship is valid." You will of course understand that the parent poster did not phrase the matter in those specific terms, and that in any event this is not a comfort.
Google may have more of an opportunity, but Beijing has a stronger motive.
Civilian causalities in Germany and Japan was about 12 million people. 6 million died in the Holocaust.
You can arrange words that make the US and China sound morally equivalent, but when you actually look into it to compare the realities in detail, you see how vapid and empty this approach is.
One million Iraqis killed by the US. What is that if not genocide. Currently, civilians are being killed by the US every day with their bombings. More civilians being killed every day by their sanctions. It’s genocide.
You don't need the qualifier here. "Just removing enough to satisfy angry people" is mob rule, and is genuinely problematic, even if it's not on the same level as dissidents getting bags over their heads.
If you were in China, you couldn't even write an article criticizing Tiktok like here the author here is writing an article criticizing SV. Have some perspective.
https://jacobinmag.com/2020/03/eduard-limonov-obituary
They're a propaganda piece, not a news outlet. Just a propoganda piece promoting murderous ideology, and it's even named after murderers who teamed up with slave owners.
I don't value much of what Jacobin has to say, but I would be more worried if there weren't voices able to say these things. You won't see an analog to this in China.
> Jacobin is a leading voice of the American left, offering socialist perspectives on politics, economics, and culture.
The article literally says "Oppose It All". "Silicon Valley and the NSA would love us to think that it’s who does the spying, not the spying itself, that’s the real problem."
You will not get Americans to give it up. You will not get any US politician to slay the golden goose.