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Comment by vintermann | Hacker News Reader

Maybe marginally, but I'm still not visiting any county where I would be in trouble if the government/police knew my opinions of them. That's not just the obvious ones like US, Russia and China, but also countries like Thailand, Egypt, UAE, Israel to name a few. I like seeing the world, but not that much.

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In China I would expect to be kicked out for having the wrong opinion as long as I didn't cause a big fuss. In the US I'd worry about being imprisoned.

China is known to hold Canadians on the excuse of being spies… spying for them is oftentimes filming without prior approval in non coastal but still civilian regions.

But weren't they... spies?

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

> According to a report by The Globe and Mail in November 2023, Spavor sought a multimillion-dollar settlement against the federal government for involving him in espionage activities without his knowledge. Spavor alleged that he provided Michael Kovrig with intelligence on North Korea, which Kovrig then secretly gave to the Canadian government and its Five Eyes allies without Spavor's permission, leading to their arrest and detention

The article clearly indicates the gray area. Your comment oversimplifies that dramatically.

Americans, too. My understanding is that there are a couple of hundred Americans being detained in China now. Some of these people are expatriates who gave up their PRC citizenship for American but China still claims to have dominion over (for what that's worth), but at least some have no colorable argument at all.

I'm surprised that we don't hear more about this from the American government and media.

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