Comment by ardy42 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ardy42 | Hacker News Reader

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> I am sorry, but how do we know that youtube video is real? The channel it is uploaded to doesn't seem trustworthy at all.

The copy I linked is clearly a re-upload of a re-upload, it was just the first copy I found.

How do we know anything is real at all? I don't have a specific chain of custody for the video, but I judge that it's likely true because the practices shown are consistent with other reports (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8PgCUap1Vg, https://www.hrw.org/report/2015/05/13/tiger-chairs-and-cell-...). It gets other details right, like the anti-motorcycle crackdown. Also, the low-level Chinese police that would create a video like that very likely do not understand how bad the optics of it are when seen by foreigners.

> Do you have a source for this? I find it hard to find information on this, I assume it's because I don't speak Chinese.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WeChat#State_surveillance_and_.... It wasn't hard to find.

>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WeChat#State_surveillance_and_.... It wasn't hard to find.

This says nothing about the amount of days. Neither do the sources.

>Its parent company is obliged to share data with the Chinese government under the China Internet Security Law and National Intelligence Law.

Can be said about the US as well, companies can be forced to share their data with the government.

edit: Thanks for the HRW report, I'll have a read

> This says nothing about the amount of days. Neither do the sources.

Is the amount of days really the most important aspect of this?

> Can be said about the US as well, companies can be forced to share their data with the government.

While the US is definitely not perfect, that's a false equivalency. One can only draw superficial parallels between the US and China on this topic. The key difference is actually in the area of political culture. For instance: both the US and China make a big deal about the "rule of law," but they're actually talking about very different things. The the US, it means the law is applied consistently and even constrains the government. In China, the government is in a very real sense above the law, and the phrase merely means that they demand you comply with their rule through the laws they make.

>Is the amount of days really the most important aspect of this?

No, but if people cannot get such a simple thing right, and find citations for that, I also don't trust they got the rest right. No one has linked me anything that says "all messages from everyone need to be stored for whatever amount of days".

If you are going to paint China as the bad guys, at least do it over stuff that can be supported by facts, or if it is supported by fact make sure you can show them if someone asks.

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