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Comment by dachworker | Hacker News Reader

Feels like both in the US and Europe, these "moderate" "liberal" "democrats" have lost all respect for our supposed freedoms. Makes me wonder whether all that posturing about the supposed moral superiority of the western world had any solid foundations or not.

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Does China have the freedom to operate spyware and propaganda outlets worldwide? Is that articulated in some statement of universal human rights I missed?

I think Israel does.

Jewish conspiracy theories? Nice!

it seems that bringing up Israel in unrelated threads is some new Godwin’s law corollary.

American users do have the right to receive Chinese Communist propaganda. See Lamont vs. Postmaster General [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamont_v._Postmaster_General#:...

Not exactly the same. Lamont would be more like banning propaganda on all social media. Which would obviously not fly. Requiring certain ownership of media is actually already the law for radio and TV so it seems to be permissible.

But radio and TV are not the Internet. We don't and should never require local ownership of all important Internet platforms. That would crush the very globalism the Internet has been built up for so many years to sustain

This doesn’t really seem germane to what is going on here though. An individual subscribing to mail is quite a bit different to Chinese spyware tracking and propagandizing citizens (without their knowledge or consent).

Well, let's just put the tiger on the table and yell at it. TikTok is used as a surveillance tool, and both Europe and the US would rather continue to monopolize that power through FIVE-EYES. It's less about "moral superiority" (a far-foregone possibility, if you've been paying attention) and more about attritional warfare on privacy.

The real irony here perhaps is that the only thing your government has to do to impair your "freedom" is write a strongly-worded letter to your OEM: https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/19/tech/china-apple-whatspp-thre...

> Well, let's just put the tiger on the table and yell at it

Gladly. I feel like my basic human rights as a citizen of a first world county are being impinged by Israel and their far-right regime. And this is just one other example of that. At this point my real fear of Israel far surpasses any fear I have of any other geopolitical adversary nation. I have nothing to do with Israel or the middle east and yet this country has this insane influence in my country as it does in every other western country. How did this happen and how can we win our democracy back? Since when does Israel get to have a say in the public and private goings of other countries?

While I don't think you're neccesarily wrong to fear NSO Group's capabilities, you are absolutely missing the forest for the trees if you think the United States does not have surveillance far in excess of what Israel could hope to achieve. Israel has to break into your iPhone, whereas MI6 and the CIA own it before you walk out the Verizon store.

How naive are you? Our enemy has deployed a potential weapon in our country and over 100 million people in the US are being influenced by it. Do you not grasp the potential consequences of this? Does your thinking only go as deep as “but muh freedoms”?

Allowing the government to control which software you can run is a dangerous step.

I think TikTok is crap, I don't have it installed, and I don't even disagree with your concern.

But is that concern enough to overcome the concern about the government controlling the software you can install?

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