>These Chinese surveillance state stories are all really tame compared to the abuses of the American program

You are wrong.

https://www.economist.com/briefing/2018/05/31/china-has-turn...

No he's definitely right. The US drone program has a social credit kill list [1]:

> In 2014, former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden said in a public debate, “We kill people based on metadata.”

> According to multiple reports and leaks, death-by-metadata could be triggered, without even knowing the target’s name, if too many derogatory checks appear on their profile. “Armed military aged males” exhibiting suspicious behavior in the wrong place can become targets, as can someone “seen to be giving out orders.” Such mathematics-based assassinations have come to be known as “signature strikes.”

> “When I learned about signature strikes, that was incredible,” Faisal says. “If the criteria is being armed or having a beard – that is everyone in Yemen.”

1. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/how-...

To argue that US is worse than China, you should first compare US to China, not just list what US does.

Chinese concentration camps and black jails are at the level of WWII era horrors. They disappear people around the world just by sending made up arrest request and taking them to China.

US:

Drone assassination program, kills based off metadata score.

Global rendition and torture program. Largest prison population on the planet, exhibiting UN criticized torture, forced sterilization.

China:

Has no drone assassination program. Does not kill based off metadata score.

National rendition program.

> Does not kill based off metadata score.

Tortures, disappears, organ harvest, forced rendition from foreign countries based on mass and metadata in thousands or tens of thousands peer year (ethnicity, gender, number of foreign phone calls, or family members outside country). People in concentration camps are executed "on demand" in order to provide organs to recipients.

China does not do that. You've abused terminology in order to try to make the argument fit, post factum.

But at least your argument has a strong thesis.

The American surveillance state feeds a global assassination and propaganda program, and seeks total information domination.

The Chinese program is about homeland security and domestic stability.

I am completely and entirely correct.

Hardly. Homeland security and domestic stability requires a level of international influence. China sees the same value in information as the USA and aren't going to pass on opportunities to collect (or implant). To expect otherwise is incredibly naive.

I prefer not to confuse "a level of international influence" with global information domination.

You will never see Western journalists go after their own surveillance state even though it is far more extensive and aggressive than China. What's really strange is they accuse China of doing things like exporting compromised telcom equipment -- things that we now know that the NSA actually does. (See eg NSA interception of outbound Cisco routers.) Given this very particular blindspot you really do have to wonder who they think they're fooling.

>> You will never see Western journalists go after their own surveillance state

The Guardian and The Intercept both did exactly that (which is why you know about the Cisco/NSA thing by the way). I believe French and German newspapers also did something similar.

No we only know about it because Snowden blew up his life to reveal it. That should give you a hint about how this works. China is remarkably transparent about their efforts. The government literally holds classes to explain the social credit system. In the US these efforts are buried for years until somebody risks everything to expose them.

> You will never see Western journalists go after their own surveillance state...

False. You see it all the time.

> ... even though it is far more extensive and aggressive than China.

Not sure I buy that, either. The US may be more aggressive in terms of information collected, and in terms of global scope. It's less aggressive than China in terms of being used to control the lives of the entire population of the country, though.

Nobody outside of the American fantasy believes this even for a second. In the US you have local law enforcement running around with cell trackers, public and private organizations deploying widespread facial tracking, and let's not even get to the absolute zero data protections Americans enjoy so literally all their data, from location history to purchase history, is available to the highest bidder. But hey, it's not the government doing the tracking so it doesn't matter! Anybody with even half a brain understands that Americans are the most surveiled people on the planet. (Though the Brits are a close second and it's not for lack of trying they're just less competent.)

But really keep focusing on China. Have a feeling this strategy will work great for you.

> It's less aggressive than China in terms of being used to control the lives of the entire population of the country, though.

I'm not sure that's true.

NSA and other US domestic surveillance capabilities feed the information it gathers passively (they call it "strategic listening") for DoD to understand how to influence entire countries, continents, world opinion.

For example, DARPA has a current program called SMISC: "Social Media in Strategic Communication" - where they are studying next generation technologies for determining how information and opinions spread by social media for US intelligence and military botnets and troll armies to influence opinions at scale. This is just a small evolution over the information domination US intelligence and security has applied domestically and globally for decades.

You do see Western journalists go after it, but only from fringe pinko rags, like The Guardian, or The Intercept.

You'll never see Fox News or MSNBC take it seriously (Except when it touches identity politics, like gun registries. Then, all of a sudden, it's a huge issue! Imagine, the government having a record of all gun owners!)

https://www.cloudwards.net/prism-snowden-and-government-surv... The Snowden revelations about Prism seem almost quaint these days...

The revelations about PRISM are quaint, because PRISM was a web form that let NSA employees send requests for user data to the major tech firms.

Of all the NSA revelations, it was the least controversial one. It was a glorified fax machine.

That really isn’t true at all. It’s just when the USA or whatever country is gone after, it doesn’t make sense bringing up China as a what aboutism.