Not that I'm advocating for any of this, but saying the PRC has less, or even substantially less surveilance than the US is a pretty laughable proposition.
Really? I assume domestically China engages in surveillance on a much higher scale than the US.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_East_Germ...
You either don't know much about China, or don't know much about the US.
Most of the information required to compare is not public, maybe China got a better equipment and funding than USA... but even if that's the case, it's not like China is the baseline and everything is great as long as we think we are better treated.
Still not relevant. Covert exploitation of cryptographic weaknesses that can be easily patched leading to a limited set of data whose use is constrained by well-defined legal processes (involving warrants and courts) is categorically different than "the state forces you to decrypt and hand them all of your data". They're not remotely comparable.
> it's not like China is the baseline and everything is great as long as we think we are better treated
Nobody is saying that.
I'm sure the CCP has their own potemkin legal system - the FISA courts are smoke and dressing just the same.
> limited set of data whose use is constrained by well-defined legal processes (involving warrants and courts) is categorically different than "the state forces you to decrypt and hand them all of your data".
This still describes the difference between PRISM and the CCP's system.
It doesn't matter if "the CCP has their own potemkin legal system" - the fact is that the NSA only (allegedly) takes a very small set of records and providers get to see every one of them, where's the CCP's system takes literally everything.
Plus, we can look at the massive differences between the CCP and the US in every other way - the Great Firewall's real-time monitoring and censorship of all communication in the country, for instance, as well as the total lack of constitutional rights to privacy that the Chinese people have - and pretty reasonably conclude that the FISA courts are going to be more rigorous than whatever China has.
If one of them was a superpower though, it would be a different story. They would have to engage in a lot of deception and with modern technology, people would find out that their leaders are full of it. Not that it is a problem, the peasants do eventually cope with reality... but it's just that it doesn't work very smoothly all the time.
Do you really believe in this or are you just saying this? Mass surveillance was a thing in the USSR decades 30-50 years earlier than in the US.
Also much more effective too... Say something inappropriate semi publicly and of you go to the gulag (they toned it down and switch to psich hospitial after the 60s).
> leadership because the state doesn't have to engage in lying too much
tanks go brr... amirite comrade ?
You're thinking Snowden and Assange. In the Soviet Union, they were sent to the gulags for spying for the enemy.
The only satisfied people would be the subsidized nomenklatura. Normal people do notice the aftereffects of de facto Kleptocracies aka the destruction of any organization, but who cares? so the common man developed apathy as a form of civil resistance (like laying flat in china today)
Initially, the serious (non Fox News) outlets were concerned about the overreach by the government and seemed supportive of the leaks. By afternoon, they were all attacking Greenwald, Poitras, and Snowden on national security grounds.
Unpopular opinion here: I think Snowden rightfully got people to pay more attention to cryptography, and that's good, but I always thought there was something about his story that didn't add up. Defecting to Moscow is shitty, too, especially considering what happened later.
A high profile political-ish person cannot live there without interference from government. You are naive on the subject or deliberately lying if you do not believe that is true. Information on this is easily accessible to you. Especially after Ukraine, when there's so many stories of prominent Russians being labelled "foreign agents" by their government for merely having opinions.
It is not an exaggeration to say it's like Nazi Germany there now. Even well before, they were doing political assassinations at home and abroad and false flags in Chechnya. Snowden and Greenwald both are clearly on the wrong side of that issue. It was clear even in 2013 if you were paying attention that Putin's Russia was less free than the United States. So it's a very, very strange thing to do to move there after being concerned about civil liberties.
It's not Snowden's fault he is in Russia, but it's important to not be blind to the reality of the situation. We should have protected him as a wistleblower but "even" obama seemed willing to throw him to the wolves. The fact we didn't burn down the capitol when they revoked his passport means we are all culpable in this. Nothing will get better unless we take responsibility for the government we have allowed to fester, and unless we band together and march together, this will continue.
Here's another possible interpretation of this. Why didn't the Obama Administration show him leniency? eg. They commuted Chelsea Manning's sentence and released her early. Why not similar for Snowden? Is it possible that they knew something about him that the rest of us do not?
My first hint was Snowden.