In that context, in a post-Snowden world, it's kinda grating to still have people talk about all the evil things that supposedly happen in "non free countries", while mostly being completely unaware about what their own, supposedly "free", countries are doing, often on a global scale because they are supposedly way more likely to "hear" about it, while still not being able to change anything about it.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawful_interception
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine
[2] https://opendatacity.github.io/stasi-vs-nsa/english.html
It's fairly obvious that more free countries allow for a greater chance in changes of law than non free countries.
The Snowden of China would not get his day in court....
Because the Snowden of the US did?
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/jun/01/julian-assange...
Not sure he'd get the same type of trail in China, Russia, or if it would go that far.
If I were him, I, uh, would not try my hand in a court of law.
I don't think the Snowden of China gets such an option.
If they caught him, he would not have been able to properly defend himself because US law would prohibit him from making his case [2].
Heck, if they would have caught him before his Hong Kong meeting, they could simply have "vanished" him and nobody would have been any the wiser, as Greenwald, Poitras, and MacAskill would have had a very difficult time proving the legitimacy of the leaked documents.
So no, neither the Snowden of the US, nor of China gets any of these options, that's why this whole false dichotomy of "free countries vs nonfree countries" is just another facette of the constantly going on propaganda war.
The best chance whistleblowers like that have is trying to escape the sphere of influence of whoever they blew the whistle on. For Chinese, Russian, Iranian, and others that's large parts of the world they will be welcomed in, for US whistleblowers it's pretty much only a handful of countries out of whom only a very few are actually able to keep them save/not straight up hand them over.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incident
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/05/edward-snowd...
[2] https://whistleblower.org/in-the-news/wsj-op-ed-why-edward-s...
There's a whole world of talk of Snowden and others supposedly going to be vanished and it for whatever reason the fact that it hasn't happened seems entirely lost on folks who talk about it.
> "free countries vs nonfree countries" is just another facette of the constantly going on propaganda war.
I don't know what you're trying to say about that. I think there are real differences between freedoms allowed in different nations and they have real impacts.
I wonder if the money Crypto AG made will have been worth any future reputation cost for Zug's economy.
https://www.luzernerzeitung.ch/wirtschaft/bund-stoppt-nachfo... "... verkaufte die Crypto AG im Auftrag des US-Geheimdienstes CIA und des deutschen Bundesnachrichtendienstes Jahrzehnte lang manipulierte Chiffriergeräte an diverse Staaten."
I don't believe any country means all countries are equivalent as far as the risks go.
The amount of news / data about it will of course be higher in more free nations.
Why? Bureaucracy, Intelligence Services and state-level paranoia transcends political ideologies and systems.
> The amount of news / data about it will of course be higher in more free nations.
On the other hand, we'd hear a lot more about anything from Moscow in our media, so I doubt there's a lot to be talked about as of now. It's only one big leak away, of course, but so far, I don't see a lot of support for your theory.
If China comes to you and tells you to hand over the keys, you don't go to court or the news media ... in the west you can actually refuse and we see that happen and play out in the courts and etc.
Not in less free countries.
It seems like you're holding all nations to be equal if there isn't perfection. I think that's a poor way to measure anything involving people.
The Snowden of China doesn't get his day in court, maybe never talked if his family back home was at risk.
Russia literally had court proceedings about Telegram, which this post is about. Is Russia not a "less free country"? Or are those not "real court cases" while "ours" are totally real (but you can't talk about them and must play charades, and the opposing side has super powers written into the law)? If you need help carrying those goal posts, let me know.
> The Snowden of China doesn't get his day in court, maybe never talked if his family back home was at risk.
Neither does the Snowden of the US of A, you know, that one guy... right, Snowden, who has to hide in Russia of all places to not get shipped off to Gitmo. And even if he took that route, I'm sure the apologists would say "well, this is one of those small imperfections but he's fortunate that he's not in Russia".
His choice to not do so is understandable, but it's an option.
I'm a little lost on what you're saying at this point. I can't imagine you or I want to get into the judicial differences between the US and Russia.
Sadly I feel like that is a very real possibility for any software / hardware produced in any significantly non free country.
It can happen in other countries, but the likelihood of you hearing about it seems much much higher.
It's a sad situation as I don't like the idea of being suspicious by default of other developers / products simply because their country of origin, but I have trouble avoiding the obvious fact that even a well meaning developer / company based in those countries would / could easily be pressured into introducing some sort of access (doesn't matter how) and it's simply unlikely we'd know.