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Bud

Let's not fool ourselves. US companies have been doing the same thing, and they will continue to.

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At least we can punish American companies if they do something shady.

I think Ed Snowden proved to us this is not true. Room 614a

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A

That was revealed several years before Snowden's defection.

And yet nothing was done about it.

Nor since.

ProAm clarified that these were intended as two separate examples, so fair enough. It just rubs me the wrong way when people seem to give credit to Snowden for revealing things which were already known.

I meant that as two different things, both were largely disregarded as punishable.

Can we? That seems to very much depend on who is in power and who has benefitted from the shadiness in question.

Sure, but since we explicitly won't, I feel that a lot of this outrage is just BS. As a US citizen, I'm far more concerned with the US government knowing where I am at all times than China. We could pass a law that forbids the US government to consume any personally identifiable data from social media platforms without a warrant, but we won't.

Which US companies are tracking journalist locations for the Chinese government? Tesla?

The claim wasn't that they did so for the Chinese government. But Facebook, for example, did so, for its own purposes. This is just as bad. We can't really have journalism being threatened, regardless of whether it's threatened by China, or supposedly-loyal US companies.

> Facebook, for example, did so, for its own purposes. This is just as bad

It’s in a totally different league. Domestic corporation spying for commercial purposes versus a militaristic dictatorship with a track record of extrajudicial harassment.

Large US corporations and their owners also have a track record of extrajudicial harassment.

Facebook perhaps, but it's hard to see the differences between China and the US in terms of spying/wiretapping/harassment.

If we really wanted to avoid China spying on our citizens, we'd implement broad and strong encryption across our network - but we fight that (as a country) because it would weaken our own surveillance.

We could absolutely choose to deescalate in this field, we just don't.

A book i can highly recommend is "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism" by Professor Shoshana Zuboff from the Harvard Business School. TLDR "commercial purposes" include selling data in bulk to government agencies, which could not seize such data without a warrant and judicial oversight, thus allowing them to circumvent the very protection mechanisms that are in place to prevent extrajudical harassment in favor of creating a state of mass surveillance.

> book i can highly recommend is "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism" by Professor Shoshana Zuboff from the Harvard Business School

Great book. The 4th Amendment workarounds she describes should absolutely be outlawed. But I want to cite this very civil discourse we're having about this problem, and the paths to remedy it, in contrast to anything in China.

Surveillance Capitalism is not only about the 4th Amendment, (even if i did focus that aspect in my comment) shifting power centers may make corporations a bigger threat for civil rights than government agencies, as behavioral futures markets and mass manipulation undermine the very ideals of a liberal democratic republic and the core concept of how our society is governed. I can't compress Zuboffs book into a few sentences. Glad you know about it.

I like to joke that in the EU personal data belongs to the person it is about, in china all data belongs to the government, and in the USA data belongs to the corporations that gather it. If i could choose the global system for human society, i would not choose surveillance communism, but i would also not choose surveillance capitalism. I want no state of mass surveillance, no matter if it is operated by the government or by corporations, it is a terrible idea either way.

We disagree on whether surveillance by american corporations is "a different league" or "just as bad" as surveillance by chinese corporations. Let's first agree the societal systems are obviously different and that free speech and the ability to reform are parts where these systems differ. But I do not consider surveillance capitalism less worse due to the ability of democracy to reform democratically, because surveillance capitalism undermines that very ability. I do however agree that it is good we can have this discourse without worrying about our social score. Please like and subscribe ;-)

Also correct me if I'm wrong. The claim isn't that ByteDance did it for the Chinese government, but that they did it to try to find internal leakers

Sorry, I was unclear. What I meant was, I was not claiming that Facebook acted on behalf of the Chinese government. So I was conceding that part of the point.

Is the threat of a foreign adversary spying on US citizens the same as the US Government spying on its citizens? I'm in the camp that a foreign adversary is a more dangerous situation.

US has laws, independent courts and elections.

You might want to debate it’s level of efficiency and fairness, but on the other side you have a dictatorship.

> US has laws, independent courts and elections.

Most of which the NSA is exempted from. China has laws and courts too.

Most discussion here on HN has descended into very obvious logical fallacy.

This one is called False Equivalence.

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