Comment by janalsncm
15 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.
> 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.
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".
Yes, and I think people take exactly the wrong lesson from pointing to worse places. Seeing pervasive surveillance should be taken as a warning about where we don’t want to go, not as a new limit. Having secret, private versions of everything the Chinese government is openly doing isn’t better, but that seems to be the trend.
This thread is about China?