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.
I'm in a relocation in China for the past 2.5 years, and it was obvious this is coming since they released end to end encryption back in 2016.
China is not a democracy, surveillance is one of the most important issues in China (see link), and allowing their citizen to talk outside of their reach of surveillance is unacceptable.
Wechat - the so-called Whatsapp + Facebook all-in-one app (Wechat can be the only app on your phone) is a 1) fantastic app and extremely innovative, Many things to learn from it in the west. 2) perfectly demonstrates how the Chinese government pushes for centralization, for the sake of government supervision.
(have all the users in just one place, talking to their friends, ordering food, flights, trains, paying for everything, ordering things online etc.
IMO Kik messenger is a classic case of a company that had 5 funding rounds, never really took off, and are now jumping on the blockchain bandwagon with a 'feasible' idea for a coin use case just to please their investors. I've been following them for a while. They claim to have a lot of users but not once they released DAU or MAU, only "Users" which they claimed to be 500mm (registration with no verification). + They've had a range of different scandals (child pornography, pedophila, just google it) which they are not planning to solve.
Living in China for the past two years -
Important thing to remember - in China and in most of South-East Asia the tech boom came at a later stage when smartphones were already prominent. Android + Chinese manufacturing made it possible to produce cheap smart phones. The result is that these countries have completely skipped the laptop phase and went straight to smartphones, most of the population doesn't even know what a laptop is.
What the west calls eCommerce (amazon, Ebay etc) is called mCommerce in Asia (Taobao app, JD.com App etc). Asian consumers find it easier and more natural to shop using smartphones rather than laptops like Western consumers.
Oh and yes, When I leave the house I don't even take my wallet, everything is paid using wechat.
I've been in China as a tourist for three weeks two years ago. I paid everything with cash. Easy.
What would I do now if I have to pay with WeChat and I obviously don't have a Chinese bank account? Tourists don't have time to waste in banks and unless bank accounts are created and activated on the fly it would be pointless to open one. Maybe open an account in advance from home? Is that possible? Or WeChat and Alipay start operating with accounts in multiple countries.
You don't actually need to have a bank account in order to use Wechat payment. Someone can just send you money over wechat and it would still work, just a 1000rmb/month limitation. If you're a tourist it should be fine.
