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Comment by samtheprogram | Hacker News Reader

Moving goal posts would be more like claiming that, because we have evidence Google cooperates with the US Government for some investigations, the US Government has similar influence and control over Google as China does over ByteDance, without any scrutiny or review of the severity of China's influence on ByteDance.

Also, to the very point you bring up... recipients of an NSL can file a legal challenge to an NSL which would trigger a judge to have to review the request. NSL's also do not allow the government to request all sorts of data, but mostly direct PII and service metadata. NSLs are problematic but I seriously doubt any comparative limits apply to Chinese agencies' requests for data from ByteDance.

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Bottom line: virtually all large (tech) companies are influenced by governments. They will surveil you on behalf of your government. Period.

Any attempts to muddy the waters for ideological point-scoring are beside the point. If you want to dig deeper, please bring evidence instead of speculation.

In the original comment you responded to, the CCP put a party member in the ByteDance board of directors.

The CCP is also known to enforce censoring government critical speech on their platforms including TikTok. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/25/revealed-...

National Intelligence Law also allows the CCP to request from businesses any data unlimited in scope without a warrant or possible recourse. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Intelligence_Law_of...

It’s not ideological; one clearly exerts more control than the other, by an order of magnitude. To say the surveillance, censorship, or control on businesses are similar because Google has complied with some government requests (the only evidence _you_ have provided) is naive at best, or disingenuous at worst. Of course the US performs intelligence gathering on its citizens or foreigners for national security. The difference is the scope, oversight, and recourse businesses in the US have.

> The CCP is also known to enforce censoring government critical speech on their platforms including TikTok.

Donald Trump? Jan 6? Julian Assange? Chelsea Manning? There are countless examples of USG censorship. Just because you don't ideologically agree with the victims does not absolve the act of censorship.

> National Intelligence Law also allows the CCP to request from businesses any data unlimited in scope without a warrant or possible recourse.

Do you really believe that Washington doesn't have this same power? That they will just go "oh well, guess we can't investigate this national security crisis because Google said so". That's clearly ridiculous. Washington has the power and resources to break into datacenters if compelled.

> It’s not ideological; one clearly exerts more control than the other, by an order of magnitude.

It is clearly ideological (a priori, CCP = bad) and you have not demonstrated that one is vastly more controlling than the other.

> Donald Trump? Jan 6? Julian Assange? Chelsea Manning?

While I don’t agree with the prosecution of Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning was pardoned and censorship of Donald Trump was done by the businesses themselves due to cultural reasons. That had nothing to do with the US Government (of which Donald Trump was running the executive branch at the time). It’s also far different than having all dissent being censored, and as a business being liable for any and all dissent that is not censored on your platform.

> Do you really believe that Washington doesn't have this same power? That they will just go "oh well, guess we can't investigate this national security crisis because Google said so". That's clearly ridiculous. Washington has the power and resources to break into datacenters if compelled.

That’s pure conjecture. In your words, provide some evidence to dig deeper. Either way, Washington having to break into a domestic data center to get their information is different than the law explicitly stating that all domestic business are a part of the national security apparatus and requiring businesses hand anything over no questions asked — the latter of which is “vastly more controlling than the other”.

American tech companies can say no to data requests, they often do. Then they publish the details of those requests, publicly.

Chinese companies not only can't say when such requests were made, they cannot reject them either. Every Chinese firm must give all their data to the government, at all times, for any reason (which will remain secret of course).

The fact that you are trying to, as you say, "muddy the waters" (amazing the amount of projection you do) with conflating the two might work as an augmentation tactic (maybe fool a person or two), but logically it is unsound.

One of the parent comments in the chain that you wrote said "Do you honestly think Washington doesn't exercise similar influence over Google?"

Note the "similar".

You then amended your point to "virtually all large (tech) companies are influenced by governments", which is completely different than similar levels of influence.

Nobody cares that governments have some level of influence over companies - that's a feature, in fact, because some regulation is necessary for markets to work - the issue under hand is exclusively whether the level of control is excessive. (and, in this specific thread, whether "A Chinese company stealing IP" is comparable to "China stealing IP")

That's moving the goalposts.

(the answer to that last question is "yes" - the Chinese government does, in fact, use Chinese companies to steal IP from other countries (including, but not limited to, the US, Japan, and parts of the EU), while the US does not)

If only you (and others) would be as pedantic about verifying claims made by the Washington establishment/media about "the evil See See Pee" as you are about winning internet arguments.

It is impossible to have a practical discussion on these issues when one side unironically believes China is a Mordor-esque land ruled by comic book villains. Totally misinformed.

Anyways, the level of influence is similar. If the Washington wants my private data from Google, they will get it. No amount of wishful thinking and handwaving about "well Google could say no, but bytedance will definitely comply because reasons" will change that.

You completely ignored the points that I made, and instead chose to pontificate about things completely irrelevant as a distraction from the fact that you did, indeed, move your goalposts, and couldn't come up with any counter-arguments to the fact that:

The Chinese government does, in fact, use Chinese companies to steal IP from other countries, while the US does not and cannot.

Irrelevant chaff that you have attempted to throw up: "would be as pedantic about verifying claims" "winning internet arguments" "one side unironically believes China is a Mordor-esque land ruled by comic book villains" (yeah no) "If the Washington wants my private data from Google, they will get it" (also no)

> If the Washington wants my private data from Google, they will get it

> the level of influence is similar

As someone who works with the US government, I can verify that both of these statements are factually false. (and, again, still a diversion from the actual topic under discussion which is governments compelling companies to engage in IP theft)

It is non-trivial (in the legal sense) for the US government to get the data of a single US person, and it certainly cannot do it en-masse, nor force companies to hand over all of their data unencrypted, both of which are things that the CCP can (and does) do. Therefore, the levels of influence are not similar. End of argument.

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