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Comment by r0h1n | Hacker News Reader

While it's great that countries around the world are belatedly waking up to the fact that the US wields a disproportionate amount of influence on the Internet, which it also uses to shore up its strategic military or commercial objectives, as users we ought to distrust any other country just as much as the US.

IMHO Catch-all Internet surveillance is a drug that no country's intelligence or law-enforcement apparatus can stay away from.

I'm based in India and am under no illusion that my government - given the chance or the technical capability - will attempt to secretly monitor its own citizens in a manner far worse than possibly the US.

So while I distrust the US, I also distrust India when it comes to any kind of "control" over the Internet. And so I hope, will Brazilians.

As users we ought to take our own independent and personal choices on how best to safeguard our online lives.

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Does India "render" people"?

The difference is the USA acts across the planet, insisting its laws apply to all the world, applying its mockery of a justice system to the majority who never voted for it.

What goes on in India is for Indians. As a Brit I have no fear of Indian justice. US "justice" and attitudes scare the crap out of me.

Yes, India does occasionally "render" alleged terrorists. But usually from bordering and smaller countries like Nepal.

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-08-30/india...

http://syednazakat.wordpress.com/2011/02/04/the-inside-story...

Of course it is nowhere near the reach of the US, so yes, your overall point is still valid.

But I fear we're conflating two different issues here - Internet surveillance and illegal rendering. Just because some countries may not be doing the latter doesn't mean we as users should be blase about the former.

Yes, let's look to the British to tell us how a country should keep to its borders, handle international relations, balance domestic surveillance/privacy concerns, run fair and impartial international trials, and teach us about India.

If you are from US, then you might as well because present UK at least seems less imperialistic. However, this could be simply because it wields less power than it did in past centuries.

Well, I guess power corrupts etc... etc...

Although, as far as the UK is concerned, I have noticed that once Brits leave the island, the preponderance of their liberalism and tolerance seems to evaporate, leaving only an unpleasant core of xenophobia and bigotry. Or perhaps that is just some sort of self-selection / sampling bias, driven by the sort of people who tend to head off into the wide open yonder?

British ex-pats are famous for it for some reason.

I don't think it's all of them (I'd say us but I returned to the motherland a while back), just the ones you notice.

Ooh - human cooking fat! Just wrote that down as a dystopian short story idea.

Yes, I eventually realized you were not talking about melting down muffin tops.

While it is true that all countries will salivate at the opportunity to setup a surveillance apparatus that is made efficient by technology, our only hope is to safeguard our online lives by demanding policy change. Any technical safeguards that we may enact are easily subverted by government agencies showing up at our door step and shipping us to limbo.

At least you wield more influence over your own countries policy than you would as a foreigner.

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