> this data collection done by a foreign government and exploited for surveillance or espionage is a national security risk.
How were Snowden revelations of USG<>Bigtech relationship materially different from what's happening here? Maybe it was less transparent?
Any "woke" person can see the cognitive dissonance here. It's all fine that you use the geopolitical rivalry argument but not if you try to paint one side of the argument as "free" and "liberal" and "subject to rule of law" when it's clearly not the case
It's only off-base for citizens of the US. For other countries, there is no material difference between what either is doing. Except that one of them has a track record of extralegal assassinations, of course.
Not only a democracy, but a constitutional republic with an independent court and military, both of which are sworn to uphold that constitution and all the human rights it enumerates.
We don't always succeed at that, but at least we have that as our society and government's guidestar, and legal and political processes for self-correcting.
The Communist Party has exactly zero of any of that, and an ideology entirely oriented around justifying getting and keeping power by any means necessary.
How do you mean exactly? I'm not sure how you can draw that conclusion from what I said. Politically I'm an independent, there's no real home for me any US political party.
You support the U.S government rather than specific policies. That makes you a party supporter on the international stage.
In this particular case you support U.S oversight over personal data rather than personal privacy(i.e banning data harvesting).
It's like saying it's fine for the Democrats to harvest personal data because they have a better track record than the republicans and after all "you" are democrat so being part of this select group makes you feel safe from a potential abuse. The sensible/right thing to do would be to ban the data harvesting.
Oh, to clarify, I don’t support the US government per se, but any constitutional democracy with limitations on power, checks and balances, etc. Also in the great hierarchy of things I absolutely support personal privacy over any government and/or corporate control of its citizens’ data. Banning of data harvesting, or at least the right to opt out, right to encryption, self-sovereign identity, etc. But I also believe it’s far more likely to actually achieve that in a democracy than under a totalitarian government.
>> But I also believe it’s far more likely to actually achieve that in a democracy than under a totalitarian government.
Yeah but instead to ask for a ban on data harvesting "you" complain only about China avoiding the elephant in the room. As it's said: Lead by example!
Let's ban this data harvesting and make this a discussion about individual rights not China social app rise or U.S domination(though the meta apps). That's why I said you are playing "party" politics. Yeah China is bad but why should I choose the lesser evil instead to do the right thing?
I really hoped that China being a rough actor could actually bring something good to the whole world as we have to reevaluate our trust model: Why should I trust a foreign company, a local company, my gov or a foreign gov to harvest all this personal data. Why do they need all this data and they use it?
I think the EU digital market act and GDPR is a step in the right direction not selectively banning certain apps that do not align with the interests of a small government or an over reaching gov such the U.S. We have to fight for our rights not the exclusive rights of super governments to invade our privacy.
But as it's well known the U.S didn't mind undermining other democracies(i.e Iran's 1953 coup) and supporting dictatorships. It's really more about "interests" and as it happens sometimes U.S interests and democratic rights align but sometimes the opposite is true. We shouldn't put our data in the hands of any government. I would say thay banning international data harversting is a good thing. Next: ban national data harvesting as well
'National security risk' is all the FCC is arguing; they're not arguing that these data collection practices are bad in themselves, only that they're bad if it happens in a way that strengthens a foreign government.
It doesn't have to be extremely easy, and it isn't extremely easy at every company. Twitter's security was bad, worse than it should have been for their size/ data footprint.
I do agree that data collection is at the core of the problem, but Twitter really should have done a better job.
No amount of "security" is enough for an actor who wants to do this and has privileged to the data. This is almost impossible to out-engineer, if you think a company like Twitter cannot solve "such an easy problem" you're being naive.
Not really sure what your point is. I did read the article. I didn't comment on TikTok, which would be legally required (and I am sure compliant, although they deny that in the article) to hand data over to the Chinese government. I commented on Twitter, which was hacked by amateurs, and absolutely could have been considerably harder as a target.
My point is, you only need a rogue CTO (most of which have no actual idea of how technology works, i.e. an amateur) and it's over; or you know, any of the 10,000s of engineers currently employed on your favorite FAANG company.
The "nationality" of a company is basically irrelevant here. Foreign governments could obtain this data from an "American" company in numerous different ways.m The most obvious vector would be a subpoena, but they could also negotiate payment for the data or infiltrate the company.
There's a shitload of data for sale from brokers. So foreign governments might not even need much from a company like FB. Perhaps just enough to confirm the validity of data purchase from other sources.
It's not irrelevant to the FCC, a United States federal organization. I don't think any brokers are selling "execute code on 10s of millions of US citizens' phones" to foreign entities, and if they were I suspect the FCC would have something to say about it.
Data brokers are absolutely, 100%, verifiably selling data collected by large american tech companies and selling them to foreign actors. See: Emerdata for one example. Yeah, the FTC makes attempts to take on these companies, but only if they find out about their activities, and even then, only years after the fact.
The difference is that when we hear about that being done extrajudicially, it's a scandal.
We have a system where due process is required. Sometimes authorities break those laws. But the system and culture is nonetheless there and for a reason.
The US isn't rounding thousands (millions actually?) of civil, political, religious, and other kinds of dissenters and imprisoning, reeducating, or killing them.
That's kind of a big difference here.
The CCP has mandatory seats on the bytedance board and wants a copy of all the data so they can target people.
Spying is bad, murder is next-level bad.
Stop it all, but start with the bigger issues first.
> The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.
~ John Erlichman, Nixon's Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs
And the US has no problem executing prisoners, and in fact unlike China has no problem executing someone for crimes committed while a minor (only the US, Iran, Pakistan, and Somalia do this).
And that's before even getting into the extrajudicial politically motivated killings like Fred Hampton's murder, the MOVE bombing, or the recent odd proclivity of Ferguson and BLM protest organizers to "kill themselves" by hanging in a public tree, or "shooting themselves" in the head and then torching the car that they were in.
Half the US seems to be dissidents depending on who you ask - but they aren't being rounded up and sent to reeducation camps or having their organs harvested.
What an odd reply, suddenly I'm the bad person and I 'hate' people because I want to save them?
Dissidents = "Disagreeing, as in opinion or belief"
The government in power decides who this is and then acts against them according. The CCP just happens to use lethal force on a massive scale in this regard.
Another really odd reply, after looking at your comment history I can see you're very pro-china and seem to be a troll in this one area based on others exchanges people have had with you.
Saying I should fear both is like saying I should fear dying in a car accident and being mauled by kangaroos.
The Chinese Government can't do anything to me unless I go there. Meanwhile my own government here presents an ever-present real life danger on multiple fronts. I still don't exactly fear it, but at least I know which is more likely to do me harm. Or for that matter, to do harm to others with my tax dollars.
The notion which myself and others have problem with is that the US Federal Govt and the CCP are entities which we should be treating with a similar level of trust and care. The CCP has proven time and time again, be it from their refusal to cooperate with studying the source of COVID, or their continued systematic genocide of the Uighur population, that they are not a political institution which can be trusted or respected on the world stage.
This isn't to say that the USG should be admired or emulated, far from it, but as someone who's neither Chinese nor American, I think it's an objective truth that most people in the world fared better under 20th century American-hegemony than the worldwide Sinicization which the CCP has made clear is its aim.
Americans pick and choose which media to listen to. And the media across the spectrum is aligned on one thing: China Bad, US Good. However, if you listen to NPR, it _does_ matter that we're locking up immigrants in the South. But did you hear that NPR story about Uyghur genocide? Then you look for other non-American affiliated publications on the matter and they are slim pickings. Why does the United States focus so much on China? And yeah, it's mostly to manufacture consent.
How were Snowden revelations of USG<>Bigtech relationship materially different from what's happening here? Maybe it was less transparent?
Any "woke" person can see the cognitive dissonance here. It's all fine that you use the geopolitical rivalry argument but not if you try to paint one side of the argument as "free" and "liberal" and "subject to rule of law" when it's clearly not the case