as someone living outside the US I can tell you that to us you're all the same.

Ironically, there's laws restricting US Gov access to data in the US, but no such restrictions on hacking foreign networks.

That's your personal opinion. You don't speak for the ~7.7B people not in the US.

As is your opinion that it isn't

I didn't claim to speak for billions of people.

"You don't speak for the ~7.7B people not in the US."

vs

"You don't speak for me"

One of those comments is speaking for a lot more people

Where did you get "you don't speak for me"?

It's "I can tell you that to us you're all the same" vs "You don't speak for the ~7.7B people not in the US."

One person is trying to speak for 7.7B and the other is advising against that.

>Where did you get "you don't speak for me"?

It was an example of how to state unambiguously who was/was not being spoken for to contrast with the other statement. Maybe because I put it in quotes led you to think I was quoting someone, but it looked odd without to me.

No it isn't, both are correct statements of fact.

you are making the same implicit claim and arguing insignificant semantics.

you're entitled to your opinion, but for those of us living inside the US, they are not at all the same

When the police start knocking on my door inviting me to have tea because of something I posted on twitter I'll take your comment seriously(https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2021/10/translation-spilling-t...).

Our free speech and privacy protections are not only stronger than China's, they're arguably stronger than Europe's too. There are some trade offs of course since Europe has GDPR and the right to be forgotten.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/23/technology/germany-intern...

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/police-arresting-nine-peo...

The reason China's situation is worse is because Europeans and Americans can and do protest this. It is not normalized and accepted. If you feel that America goes too far in how it exports its perceived brand of authoritarian, you should know that China is just getting started: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/oct/3/report-detai...

But they took part in illegal surveillance programmes in the past.

>illegal

Exactly. What's illegal here is perfectly fine in China. Let's not equate the two.

US government may get data from US companies but at least it takes a warrant. Chinese government straight up owns the servers.

8 years old, referencing the same unlawful behavior mentioned earlier.

Did anyone have any consequences for the illegal behavior, including perjuring themselves before Congress regarding the matter?

Then why would they stop after it was declared illegal?

Yeah the Church Committee in the 70s really reformed the "intelligence community." They learned their lesson and never violated peoples civil rights ever again. And there's so much oversight now!

> US government may get data from US companies but at least it takes a warrant.

On December 16, 2005, The New York Times reported that the Bush administration had been conducting surveillance against U.S. citizens without specific approval from the FISA court for each case since 2002.

In 2011, the Obama administration secretly won permission from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to reverse restrictions on the National Security Agency's use of intercepted phone calls and e-mails, permitting the agency to search deliberately for Americans' communications in its massive databases.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intellig...