If your company is in Russia, China or the US, and the government in that country has any interest in the data you collect, you will have to give it away. In Russia and China they just do it, in the US it's a matter of "National Security". I'm not sure why this would surprise anyone - maybe because most of us are on the side of the latter.
Russian and China coercion are on a completely different scale, and we all know it. Especially after the Snowden backlash.
Imagine any major Chinese IT company pushing back against government requests like Dreamhost did. Even the biggest ones can't/won't. It helps that the government is a huge investor in most of them, of course.
"Chinese IT company rebuffs government demand for user information on its website". This headline does not exist.
In this article and the nyt one they are actually saying US is doing it and it's not even a secret. Here is a quote:
"The N.S.A. bans its analysts from using Kaspersky antivirus at the agency, in large part because the agency has exploited antivirus software for its own foreign hacking operations and knows the same technique is used by its adversaries."
That is not the same thing. The fact that they've exploited AV does not mean that they coerced an AV company into installing 0day for them. Those are very very different things.
The difference is that in theory, you can make secure software in the US that hides information from the gov't. For example the secure enclave on newer iPhones. Of course, if you don't make secure software, they will get exploited by security services.
In China it is not even theoretically possible because the gov't mandates backdoors and can easily shut down your company if you don't comply. You have way less recourse on rule of law.
You are absolutely right that we don't know any of these things for sure. My point is not that we know them for sure. Simply that, as written, the article does not claim the US to have done something morally equivalent to Russia. And to my knowledge, there is no evidence that the US has done something like that, either.
Even if US government doesn't have such power as chinese (though I doubt they don't have) there still can be a motivation for US companies to cooperate because it can be mutually beneficial (for example, a company in exchange can get some contracts or some changes in legislation).
A lot of that is because Russia and China don't feel very secure compared to the US for various historical/geopolitical reasons. The US govt is known to act ruthlessly when it feels there's an existential threat.
Feel like this is moving goalposts, especially given the context of this discussion (IT corps protecting their users from the government).
Think about the fact that the FBI had to actually get a warrant to even begin talking to Lavabit. They had to actually go through bureaucracy. It was not instantly handed over to them on request.
You've been breaking the HN guidelines by repeatedly posting uncivil and/or unsubstantive comments, and also by using HN for flamewars and ideological battle.
Yes. I find it annoying in these threads how people refuse to acknowledge that we have much stronger rule of law in the west. Even though it's flawed and abused, every rational actor prefers our system.
Domestically perhaps, but not when it comes to international law (eg. sanctioning torture, extrajudicial killings, drone strikes, illegal invasion etc.)
> Domestically perhaps, but not when it comes to international law
One of these is a thing with courts, enforcement mechanisms, et cetera. The other is really only relevant for preventing war between global powers, i.e. the Security Council.
>I find it annoying in these threads how people refuse to acknowledge that we have much stronger rule of law in the west.
No we don't. We have a stronger belief in the rule of law, but not an actual practice of rule of law. It's been getting worse and worse over the past two decades and at this point I see little difference between any particular western government and Russia's.
If you haven't noticed it, you've been willfully ignorant.
How is the Lavabit case an instance of the government misusing its power? The government got a court order to monitor the metadata of an account of a user that they had probable cause to link to a crime. (The alleged criminal had already admitted to the crime.)
When Lavabit delayed implementing the monitoring they had agreed to, losing forever the ability to collect data generated during that time, only then did the government effectively put them out of business.
Well, fair point. My bias may come from the fact that I see NSA domestic surveillance as grossly unconstitutional as well as an undemocratically implemented abuse of state power. I suppose it's useful to ask at what point can the State grant an order that is illegitimate, if this isn't one of those cases? If Putin has a court order drafted to do his dirty work does that make it any more legitimate?
Maybe Snowden broke laws, but every single person breaks some frivolous laws every year of their life that they can be prosecuted for, see The Intercept source I posted on this.
1-https://theintercept.com/2017/10/10/recordings-capture-bruta... 2-https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/aug/08/lavabit-e... 3-https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Heemeyer