The difference is that there is a non-zero amount of friction in the US.

We also know that many companies in the US say “no” and have the legal ability to do it. For example, when the FBI asked Apple to unlock a phone for them, they said no, and they never did.

In China, your company doesn’t say “no” because the CCP members forcibly installed on your company’s board always vote “yes”.

And in fact, the CCP holds the iCloud keys for all Chinese iCloud users. (As well as the entire data center)

Companies don't deploy warrant canaries[0] just for fun. Lavabit[1] was also US based and shut down without the ability to defend itself thanks to a gag order. It might not be just as bad as China, but secret data extraction is definitely not exclusive to them.

And, since you mentioned

> And in fact, the CCP holds the iCloud keys for all Chinese iCloud users.

Quoting from [1]:

> The court records show that the FBI sought Lavabit's Transport Layer Security (TLS/SSL) private key. Levison objected, saying that the key would allow the government to access communications by all 400,000 customers of Lavabit. He also offered to add code to his servers that would provide the information required just for the target of the order. The court rejected this offer

(I'm well aware that Levinson wasn't a halo figure, either. But that's beside the point)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavabit#Suspension_and_gag_ord...

Lavabit would have never voluntarily shut down if it were operated in China, because the CCP members on the board would have voted to hand over the keys.

Of course, governments in every country collect data in at least some circumstances, and the details of those circumstances are a topic of great public debate in western democracies. This friction is how democracies continually improve. It isn't an indication of disaster, it's an indication of progress being made. Disaster is when you don't hear about it at all, because it happens unilaterally and without contest.

> The difference is that there is a non-zero amount of friction in the US.

This kind of statement should always end with "for now". Data lives forever, laws change. Just take a look at Roe v. Wade and how formerly benign data now has potential legal implications for users.

Thankfully we have a statute of limitations for many legal matters

Which, funnily enough, is a law.

The few legislative protections apply mainly to U.S citizens. I guess the europeans and the rest of the world is doomed. Of course CCP is not same as the U.S government but we know that when money/interests of U.S corporations or U.S government is at stake bad things happen(i.e data is/could be weaponized).

What I’m mostly referring to are the laws that enable autonomy of business decisions, and those implications apply regardless of citizenship.

>> What I’m mostly referring to are the laws that enable autonomy of business

In practice big corporations bow to gov demands (i.e apple, microsoft etc via PRISM) as they value their relationship with the government. The small companies don't have the resources to fight the gov (i.e NSA). You may see some smokescreen(i.e that Apple iphone vs FBI) but it's not the first time we see that ki d of stuff/PR. The only thi g you may trust is e2e encryption and open source