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Comment by walrus01 | Hacker News Reader

I'm sure that a Chinese citizen would see the NSA as an equal or greater threat. The difference from my perspective is that as a citizen of a NATO country with a functioning democracy, I'm highly unlikely to be rounded up by my government and put in a prison or concentration camp for expressing my political opinions or religion.

You only need to look at the past several years of news from Hong Kong and the Uyghur/Xinjiang province situation to see the stark real world difference in human rights, political freedoms and press freedoms.

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I'm not 100% sure from your comment whether you're making out that:

(a). China is bad (yes, known)

(b). The US is not quite as bad (debatable but for the sake of argument lets agree that this is true)

(c). The US is benign

My comment was only refuting the 3rd supposition. I'm not sure if you actually believe this is true. Though terms such as "country with a functioning democracy" make me think you might...

My point was absolutely not (c). The US has a vast and complex array of sociopolitical, economic disparity, racism, police brutality issues, some of which have been highlighted throughout 2020. But I definitely consider it to be the lesser of two evils.

The lesser of two evils is still collecting literally as much data as it can on you. And helping the Saudis with it too:

https://theintercept.com/2014/07/25/nsas-new-partner-spying-...

US Intelligence has too long a history of its own largely consequence-free abuses too. Someone else having a surveillance state doesn't make the one at home any better.

Someone from outside the US will probably worry more about its history of backing coups than the domestic problems you mentioned. If the US puts a Pinochet in my country and their algorithms say I'm likely to be a communist sympathizer, am I at risk?

Definitely. Those of us from Latin American countries have a history with the US that we don't have with China, and so while China might be bad to us, we are (mostly) outside its sphere of direct influence; on the other hand, the US has a proven track record of supporting blood-thirsty and ruthless dictators in the relatively recent past, and meddling with our democratic institutions and electoral processes, so it's the "biggest threat" to us, so to speak.

Black and white sophism. No country is going to meet c), no country is benign. What matters is how much better the country in aspects like this. And the US still much better, NSA included.

> My comment was only refuting the 3rd supposition. I'm not sure if you actually believe this is true.

The country is an imperfect union. Although the country attempts at every turn to work towards "A more perfect Union"; clearly we have similar issues that other countries do.

In a comparative analysis, OP was merely saying the US is head and shoulders above a country that suppresses freedom of speech, eliminates political dissent and the people who promote freedom and sends them away to actual concentration camps under the guise of "re-education".

2 million people. No less.

How are those different from American concentration camps, such as Guantanamo?

*Insert joke: [internet <- Chinese router - US router -> home network]

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