When this happens in a room in the west, it gets a Wikipedia page and people regularly post about it online and argue about whether the scope of the collection under law is appropriate.

When this happens in an authoritarian state, it is business as usual, the scope of collection is not considered, and dissenting opinions quickly disappear.

That’s the difference.

I think you'd be surprised at how effective Chinese people are at discussing the things they aren't allowed to without getting spotted by the censors.

Lots of slang terms get used, and the discussion continues.

I’m aware, but this delegitimizes the conversations and forces them out of mainstream discussion.

Mark Klein told the world about Room 641A on freekin PBS.

Im not sure I follow. I think this happens to every company in an authoritarian state currently, not having a room like this would be the oddity? They collect everything by default, like we do, we just try to keep it secret?

Western democracies discuss, legislate, and impose limitations on those collections powers in great detail.

I disagree with this in practice. Look at the data collection of the NSA, CIA, FBI, etc.... No one is willing to legislate or limit that.

That is simply not true, there are tens of thousands of pages of law and regulation governing how those agencies must collect data.

The most notable and relevant to this discussion is FISA which has been amended by Congress at least a dozen times. This is certainly not a topic that doesn’t come up in Congress.

I counter this with what Snowden leaked. And watching the head of the NSA lie to congress about data collection. [A] FISA is a rubber stamp, no one will give up this power (and I don't blame them). [1] [2]

[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/05/foriegn-intelligence-s...

[2] https://www.npr.org/2013/06/13/191226106/fisa-court-appears-...

[A] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2014/01/27...

It's VERY different - not only corporations know about it, but they fight with that form of a passive surveillance.

At any major tech company, not even internal networks are considered to be safe, and things are encrypted to sometimes paranoid levels, that's costing A LOT (not only in processing power, that's nowadays less of an concern, but with a much increased complexity of their infrastructure).

And before you ask - major threat model they target is governments sponsored hacking.

I think these companies speak out of both sides of their mouth on this topic. And varies greatly depending on the level you are speaking with. An example I would state is Eric Schmidt, I believe he had a very cooperative relationship with the US Government, but also spoke against mass surveillance. (I also think that is just the nature of the role when you are in his shoes.)

Do you think that the tech companies that give deep access to US intelligence services are going to advertise it?