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Comment by MattGaiser | Hacker News Reader

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.

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.

View on HN

Please don't post rhetorical rants to HN. They don't fit with curious conversation, which is what we want here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Comments like this demonstrate a severe lack of understanding around how intelligence today in the US works, especially in a post-Snowden world. Our government routinely performs dystopian forced mass-surveillance of citizens accompanied by gag orders.

> 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.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO

[2]: https://www.eff.org/issues/national-security-letters

> Our government routinely performs dystopian forced mass-surveillance of citizens accompanied by gag orders.

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.

>instead lead to a Congressional investigation and later the Senate Intelligence Committee to provide oversight

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 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.

I think the point was that they were allowed to destroy the evidence or at least did not get punished for it.

The question should be whether the CCP has a long game where the youth potentially being tracked and catalogued today are the leaders, politicians, diplomats, journalists, etc that may be of interest to have influence over in the future.

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.

I’m guessing it’s more about criticism.

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.

> A National Security Letter is hardly an absolute order.

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 .

>At least they actually have to dissent before being put in jail,

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...

There are hundreds of thousands sitting in US prisons who haven't been convicted because they can't post bail. There are judges being paid in the back by private prisons to convict and send innocent people to jail because it's good for business. US prison and justice system is completely broken.

Over-incarceration is big problem yes, but a red herring to the direct targeting and silencing of all political opposition.

They are taking people off streets in unmarked vans for protesting against police brutality and for BLM in the USA. If that isn't "being targeted for political opposition" Then i don't know what is.

At least you can plausibility make the case that they've committed some sort of crime (eg. property damage). Also, AFAIK no one had been "disappeared" (ie. they were released one or two days after). To be clear, the administration's actions were despicable and may be unconstitutional, but they're nowhere close to the actions that the CCP takes against dissidents and journalists. We haven't seen trump kidnap journalists from the "mainstream media" that he hates so much, for instance.

Those things are illegal in China . Every country has its own idea of laws and freedoms . We may not like it , but according to their laws it is a legal action

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.

>Those things are illegal in China . Every country has its own idea of laws and freedoms . We may not like it , but according to their laws it is a legal action

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 no rule of law in China, only rule by law.

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.

Drone strikes are blunt instruments it indiscriminately kills innocent men , women and children just in collateral damage , even if the target was justified . Many times target is not even correctly identified.

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.

Many incarcerated people in the US are being held pre-trial. Here's a quick quote I found on Wikipedia:

> 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 US absolutely has the moral high ground compared to any communist country and it’s not even fucking close.

Take care of the education of your poorest citizens, stop orchestrating coups, stop imprisoning black men en masse, give people single-payer healthcare. Then we can talk about moral high ground.

While bad, not one of these rises to the level of genocide and oppression that form the core of China's tactics to control its population and exert influence abroad, and, yes, that does mean from a moral perspective the US is better. "Terrible" is still better than "inhumane".

I'm really sick of this. The Verge's article [1] is the yardstick for just how far America's own self-hatred will go. To compare the present genocide of an entire culture to America's sins, right now, would be laughable but that so many Americans have bought wholesale into its fantasy. If you were to gather up the prison industrial complex and the tens of thousands failed by privatized healthcare, it would be a drop in the bucket.

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...

>. To compare the present genocide of an entire culture to America's sins, right now, would be laughable

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.

Genocide? How about native Americans?

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes

> The NSA, however, can and will use data they collect on you against you.

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 NSA cannot legally do so (usually, exceptions exist), or utilise the information specifically in a court of law. Legal definitions of what does or does not specifically constitute "search" are vague to the point of meaninglessness.

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-...

> The four other members of the Five Eyes are under no such restrictions.

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.

Addressing surveillance of UK nationals by the NSA:

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 first link supports my point that it emerged from a no-spy agreement between the parties: "Until now, it had been generally understood that the citizens of each country were protected from surveillance by any of the others." It has nothing that supports your point because nowhere in it does it say the UK uses that data to skirt its own laws, and it is obvious that the US collecting data on Britons does not break its own laws.

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.

> It doesn't say that the US asks the UK for data on people it is prohibited by law from spying on.

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.

> 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.

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?

The law is bendy when the actions are all secret and you don't have anyone challenging you. it's enough to make up a semi plausible legal argument/loophole to cover your ass. See eg the treatment of legal coverage in the James Banford books - there's usually a i house lawyer who is paid to have opinions favourable to the agency.

Particularly where lack of standing, mooting by the government dropping its case, or most problematical of all, state secrets privilege, born of U.S. v. Reynolds.

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....

https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying/state-secrets-privilege

Snowden since then released a cache of documents showing that the NSA wasn't doing what the EFF suspected. Continuing to claim otherwise is conspiracy theory raving.

Care to link?

This or any of your numerous other conspicuously unsourced claims?

Are any of your claims sourced? You linked to documents that either had nothing to do with your claims or directly refuted them. I, on the other hand, posted a CNET article that directly supported my PRISM claim.

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.

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

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...

I'm sure that's among the cases he meant when he said "fringe cases". Most Americans don't have families in China

Why are these fringe cases? If anything these are the obvious cases where the CCP can use data they have on you (i.e. who your family members are, your history of criticism, etc.) and use that to silence you.

Yeah, but it only works when they have some kind of leverage on you. A very lazy google search tells me that there are about 4 million Chinese Americans, which is 1.3% of the population. So 1.3% of Americans could be manipulated this way. That is a lot, and I think 'fringe' is hyperbole, but I still agree with the sentiment that the typical American can feel pretty safe from China. Expats and Americans with family or friends in China are obvious exceptions, as are people who have sent explicit photos or had affairs on Chinese apps, and people who are in debt with Chinese companies.

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.

And our leaders wine and dine with people who we call allies and good friends yet have their journalists, activists and political rivals killed without flinching.

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.

>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.

Not yet, but they recently passed a law that says otherwise.

Interesting you should mention Snowden. The phrase that haunted me from that first interview with Snowden is "turnkey tyranny". The powers of the US security apparatus and its FAANG deputies are vast, unparalleled. My belief (I may be wrong) is that Five Eyes are still far and away the premier intelligence superpower, with China a distant second (or Russia, I don't know).

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.

>although the word genocide would be hyperbolic here: We have no evidence of extermination or of plans in that direction

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.

My shit don't stink kinda argument. The majority of the arguments defending the US by comparison, to me comes as propaganda. If you are a patriot American you should be using the Chinesse situation as leverage to get better accountability and transparency from the gov instead of trying to point out how other governmnets are just worst.

Sure but the title of the article is saying one is worse than the other, so it's fair to refute that. No one is arguing the US situation is perfect and we shouldn't also seek to make that better.

Look, there's a reason China gets the brunt of our ire, and it's not because US based companies are particularly laudable. It's more that China is notorious for its international campaigns to infiltrate foreign institutions, surveil its diaspora, its dissidents, and its political enemies, and use tools like blackmail and threats to apply pressure, using any means possible, to achieve its policy goals, often on foreign soil. China is also noted for its campaigns of systematic repression. When you are in the business of rounding up an ethnic minority for genocide, it does tends to color the discussion.

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.

Yes, yes. CCP China very bad. But US bunch of hypocrites, historically speaking. In my opinion, this is a great opportunity for the world to use the situation as leverage to keep them both accountable, rather than defend one over the other.

The US does all of these things. Remember the CIA?

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.

Sanctions on places like Iran Venezuela are "genocide" in the same sense that silence is violence, i.e. when you don't believe words have meaning, and when you seek to obscure rather than enlighten.

>When the US Government can unilaterally demand security cooperation from Google in any way, shape, or form like the Chinese government can, then sure.

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.

1. The request cannot include content. So your messages need a warrant.

2. The company can challenge it in court and have it reviewed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter

In theory they can challenge in FISA court yes, FISA court has denied less than 0.1% of the warrant requests in 30+ year history. It is rubber stamp court. I am sure such rubber stamp processes exist in China as well.

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.

> When Google starts to have any inclination to put a bag over my head if I search the wrong thing, sure

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

> The employees revolted so strongly the project was cancelled.

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.

In a non democratic system citizens can revolt peacefully against such policies.

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.

The threat in the US is not from the government, it is from the private sector. The issue is not what Google wants to do using access to your personal data (sell ads), it is what Google's customers (not users) want to do with access to your personal data.

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.

Google’s customers want to serve you ads so they could buy your products. There’s nothing that they could do to you that is remotely on the scale of what Data Collection in China is capable of doing to you.

Being able to swing public sentiment by showing the right people the right set of "ads" carries a lot of power.

How about being able to swing public sentiment by

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:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbTXb6bEMfI

This is not about China. This is about you saying Google having this power is preferable to any government because they are more responsible or whatever.

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.

Being able to censor public sentiment does too, especially when you can even get others to censor public sentiment on foreign soil for you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blitzchung_controversy

Is there any way to even get a name from the products Google sells to its customers?

>The threat in the US is not from the government, it is from the private sector.

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.

>When Google starts to have any inclination to put a bag over my head if I search the wrong thing, sure

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?

Elon musk furthered a coup? Any references to that?

Not the op but I'm betting they're referring to this: https://www.newsbreak.com/news/1607170043110/united-tesla-co...

> Google based information is probably part of the Disposition Matrix, though that's unlikely to end with just a bag over your head.

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.

>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

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.

> When the tech companies actually start censoring aggressively and hunting people down(rather than just removing enough to satisfy angry people), then sure.

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.

I’m less worried about google and the US governments influence on people in the US and more worried about the pervasive data collection combined with us government action in people outside the US and not protected by the same laws. The US government is pretty constrained inside its borders, it’s definitely not constrained outside.

> 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.

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.

There is no such thing as a private company in China in this context, except in name only. The government is deeply enmeshed in these tech companies' products, from requiring real verified names to censorship and other draconian policies.

The notion that there are big tech companies in China operating outside the CCP's influence is, charitably, naive.

> The government is deeply enmeshed in these tech companies' products, from requiring real verified names to censorship and other draconian policies.

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/

the "they" is the difference.

"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

> "they" in the USA is much more democratic (though clearly it is not perfect)

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).

>And for the most part, elected executives do operate independently under the framework of law

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?

Yes, and when any of that happens, you can present your rightful indignation, but this will be rather useless because it will be too late to do anything meaningful to change course.

Tu quoque type of arguments are useless when you re the world's leading power (and want to keep being so)

They're not when to contender is a totalitarian dictatorship with proven disdain of human rights, and ever extending cyber-aspirations.

I am sure if the Internet were around during the Holocaust, people will fight against bringing it up by bringing up things like segregation, lynchings etc. in the US (definitely huge problems and evil, but nowhere as evil or large scale as the holocaust).

Why wouldn't they bring up the war crimes and unrestrained murder of civilians instead? People seem to have a very romanticised view of the allies. We were the victors so we gloss over the horrors committed by our own hands.

Civilian causalities in Germany and Japan was about 12 million people. 6 million died in the Holocaust.

Ok? And America and most of Europe and Russia would have very much liked to not ever have a second world war at all. Russia lost over 16 million of their own people ffs.

Please provide examples of US citizens who have never been to China being abducted by the Chinese for searching the wrong thing. Or is this just your own delusion?

I’ve had too many Chinese business contacts mysteriously “commit suicide” for it to be coincidental.

Chinese contacts who have never been to China. Fascinating.

Some introductory coverage of China's international kidnapping campaign, which affects foreign citizens, is available here: https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/03/29/the-disappeared-china-r...

"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.

These are all Chinese people the article is talking about. It's quite obvious that using Chinese apps as a Chinese person is dangerous. That's not what I asked about and certainly no reason to ban the app in America.

That could be because in the US (and even more so in the UK) the biggest newspaper and media owner is more likely to own the government than the government is to own the newspapers and the media.

As for demanding security cooperation:

https://transparencyreport.google.com/user-data/us-national-...

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