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Comment by rainsford

13 days ago

Apple famously told the FBI to go pound sand when asked to help access an iPhone in an actual terrorism case (i.e. it wasn't about going after dissidents or journalists or anything), even though such help was definitely within Apple's technical power.

Now, while admitting that I am no way claiming the US is perfect, does anyone actually think something even remotely similar would ever happen between a Chinese company and the Chinese government?

12 comments

rainsford

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janalsncm  13 days ago

There is a good book on the American surveillance apparatus Means of Control by Byron Tau. People are a lot more watched than they think.

The Apple example is well-known because it is an exception. Much more common is not only compliance but making an entire business out of selling private data to the government.

https://theintercept.com/2022/04/22/anomaly-six-phone-tracki...

It really doesn’t matter that China is worse. It’s not a competition. The fact that people in other places have even less privacy doesn’t make me feel better.

  • redserk  13 days ago

    > It really doesn’t matter that China is worse. It’s not a competition. The fact that people in other places have even less privacy doesn’t make me feel better.

    This is exactly the sentiment I wanted to convey. I'd feel far more comfortable if we didn't settle for "at least we're not as bad as..." levels of rhetoric. Unsavory surveillance practices in one country shouldn't give us a justification to accept the declining status quo here.

    • rchaud  13 days ago

      Whataboutery has become increasingly common post-Patriot Act America, especially as surveillance technology improved in the smartphone, always-connected age.

      It was common to criticize the USSR/Iron Curtain countries for encouraging citizens to spy and report on each other. Today, in the world after the 2013 NSA revelations, Ring.com cameras, Alexa smart speakers, bossware apps and Palantir, surveillance is a "market opportunity".

      1 reply →

lmm  13 days ago

> Now, while admitting that I am no way claiming the US is perfect, does anyone actually think something even remotely similar would ever happen between a Chinese company and the Chinese government?

Yes. We've seen the back and forth with e.g. Jack Ma. It doesn't happen as publicly because it's not such good marketing in China, but of course it happens.

  • Sabinus  13 days ago

    Wasn't the result of this that Jack Ma disappeared for a while and when we reappeared he sang the praises of the government?

    • lmm  13 days ago

      One of the results, yes. That's good marketing in China. What kind of things you see in the papers tells you something about a country operates, but not a whole lot about how much access TPTB are actually being given to your messages, which is presumably the thing you care about.

taneq  13 days ago

They sure did! They also (was it around that time? I forget...) pushed pretty hard for everything to be stored in iCloud, where coincidentally it's not protected by any of the on-device security and can (as I understand it) be legally requisitioned by the authorities. Happy to be corrected (with sources) if I'm wrong here but otherwise this seems very much on par.