It still astonishes me how people can be so naive and believe anything tech executives say without it being independently verified, even after Snowden and Twitter Files and all the revelations about the CCP.
It's all bits and since China has the executives of course they'll always retain a way to access the data as long as no independent entity is watching over them and all entities in China are under control of the CCP.
Since all companies are under the control of their respective government, I think the most prudent course of action on the individual level is to try to use services controlled by a government that has no practical control over your life
Instead of thinking of it as us vs. them, think of it as your own personal threat assessment. Google is all nice and friendly now. They serve all that JS and Fonts for free and give you free storage, calendars, teleconferencing etc... but how about in 10 years when they start loosing revenue to some AI startup that is better than search? Will they be so nice with your data then?
I use a Xiaomi phone , a Huawei laptop and an Aliyun email .. if they are exfiltrating my data and know which AI porn I look at.. It has zero impact on my life. They're not even able to target advertising to me because they don't control the relevant platforms (I guess they could sell my data to Google, but it seems unlikely). I hope the Chinese are doing similarly and using western platforms :)
This seems like a great way to hand China blackmail material that they can leverage against you.
Obviously, I don't like government surveillance, but at least in the west we are (1) generally protected from the worst excesses by legislation, and (2) generally aligned with our own government's priorities on a very high level view (eg: support for liberal democracy), if not the specifics. Those two do not hold for China, especially for data from a foreigner.
Even if you don't hold a security clearance, you can still be a target for hostile foreign actors, especially in the tech sector. What happens if a foreign actor with blackmail material on you threatens to destroy your life unless you cough up implementation details for a system you're working on, or open up a backdoor?
If you are concerned about surveillance, fine, but there are much better ways to avoid it by using privacy-respecting self hosted and commercial services. Replacing American big tech with Chinese big tech is just trading bad for worse.
Mass surveillance and the abuse of personal data either by the government or companies (for instance predatory advertisement or things like being denied loans) are things that can potentially negatively affect a large swath of the population in a future where the government and companies go rotten.
Yes, if you're in the 0.1% that is working on nuclear missiles or technological equivalents - and you are a direct target of espionage.. then my train of thought clearly wouldn't apply. The vast majority of the population is of no interest to foreign intelligence.. and never will be. Fantasizing that some day you will be is loosing sight of the big, and much more likely threat closer to home
> if you're in the 0.1% that is working on nuclear missiles or technological equivalents - and you are a direct target of espionage.. then my train of thought clearly wouldn't apply. The vast majority of the population is of no interest to foreign intelligence.. and never will be.
This isn't James Bond. The only way you could exhibit more ignorance about espionage would be by suggesting spies in balaclavas rappel through laser arrays to hack mainframes and steal blueprints.
Foreign intelligence services target people in far more banal positions, all the way down to lowly network engineers, with boring goals like compromising communications infrastructure so the country you're about to invade can't coordinate defense.
Doesn't even have to be an invasion. Industrial espionage, IP theft, cyberattacks against critical infrastructure... plenty of hostile acts that aren't all-out war which can be facilitated by having a compromised insider.
It has zero impact on your life now, but you should strongly prefer that they don't, so as to keep your options open in the future. An analogy might be making sure you don't leak a sextape of yourself when you're young and don't care about who sees it, in case you run for public office in your 50s.
I think the ideal is that nobody has your private data, but that seems impossible to accomplish without living in a cave. Big tech feels entitled to know everything about everyone.
> a government that has no practical control over your life
As long as you don't try to get hired by a company owned by or having a large presence in China. Though even otherwise, you may be underestimating their influence:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-makes-sure-everyone-write... - The CCP forced a Colorado highschool to edit their website to say Taiwan is a province of China. The school complied, so that the kids could attend United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.
I am in the videogame business. At this point we basically have zero access points into China that are legal. Either release illegally (and be copied anyway) or don't release in China.
Theoretically there are "channels" but they are in practice for a select few who partner with Chinese companies and give them a huge portion of any profits.
Meanwhile not only can any Chinese company release games in the USA they also can and have been buying huge amounts of our companies and IP.
In October 2019, American video game developer Blizzard Entertainment punished Ng Wai Chung (吳偉聰) (known as Blitzchung), a Hong Kong esports player of the online video game Hearthstone, for voicing his support of the 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests during an official streaming event. Blizzard also terminated their contract with the two livestream presenters who were interviewing Blitzchung. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blitzchung_controversy
shhhh. we don't talk about that. or how media and news are ultimately controlled by what advertisers want the reporters to say. or how now google dictates how long a video must be and what subjects are forbidden to even be hinted at on youtube, to please advertisers, of course.
I can't believe their source said "superuser", but the journalist literally put that in quotes and replaced it with "god credential", as if "god credential" has ever been a term.
What gets me is that people think that China's business-political environment is a carbon copy of the US.
People think that because they understand how things work in the US, they understand how things work in China. That because in the US businesses have functional constitutionally granted protections from government overreach, that China functional constitutionally granted protections from government overreach.
Which is completely not the case. China is essentially a dictatorship. With one leader of one party that dominates everything, kangaroo courts and disappearing family, the works.
Don’t forget that the people who’ve convinced themselves the US government is bad so they look at China doing something far worse or far more extreme and try to argue it’s the same - it’s because of predictable cognitive biases that more self awareness would easily alleviate.
I don't think they believe that, they are just gaslighting us.
Anyone that thinks so, can go to China and call our the leadership. Or go to Middle East and call out their leadership and see what happens.
They can easily do that in the US, you can get on social media, go on TV, write an article about why the president, the supreme court, senate are a bunch of idiots and keep living your life with your freedom. Try the equivalent else where if you believe it's the same. They don't and they won't because they know it's not.
> Or go to Middle East and call out their leadership and see what happen
The US and Europe have spent over a century backing despots in the Middle East and putting down or helping put down popular movements by force. The US doesn't even seem to mind if they dismember Washington Post reporters in their embassies. The US sends billions to Netanyahu every year to put down the Palestinian mass movement.
Funny how the US props up these despots, then points to them as a point of supposedly flattering comparison.
The scale is totally the same. I used to lie to my parents about eating candy that my grandmother gave me when I was 5. The Bush administration and media apparatus told lies to the American public as pretext for an invasion that displaced ~4.5 million people and killed another ~1 million. These things are equally bad and should be treated the same way.
>People think that because they understand how things work in the US, they understand how things work in China. That because in the US businesses have functional constitutionally granted protections from government overreach, that China functional constitutionally granted protections from government overreach. Which is completely not the case. China is essentially a dictatorship. With one leader of one party that dominates everything, kangaroo courts and disappearing family, the works.
Having worked with a Chinese University and had a Chinese business as a client, I can attest that this is indeed the case. It's not essentially a dictatorship, it IS a dictatorship. Except it's not by one person, it's by a political party that has ingrained itself at every level of one's life in that country.
In the US, there is the government, there are private companies who don't interact with the government at all, there are public companies who don't directly work with the state but still have influence on the state (think large scale food providers or airlines or car makers), and there are public companies that sometimes can blur the separation line due to how ingrained they are with the state's infrastructure (for example, Lockheed-Martin or Microsoft). Sometimes any of these different types of entities might be asked to do the state's bidding, but they can refuse (in some cases) or negotiate, or get things in return (tax breaks, etc).
In China, there is The Party. That's it. Everything is intentionally an arm of the state, directly or indirectly. The Party controls everything and every action any organization of any meaningful size whatsoever is directly done to aid The Party's goals. The Party has a representative at the highest level of every major company in China, and said representative isn't just there to be in meetings, they are there to control the company to make sure said company is doing what The Party wants them to do.
Keep in mind that China's goals != The Party's goals....despite what The Party wants you (and its citizens) to think.
Jack Ma fucked himself off the Ant Financial deal because The Party representatives at Ant were also the heads of the Chinese state bank. He talked shit to their faces, so The Party decided that he was too big, so they took him to task and made him "donate" a few billion to The Party.
Imagine if Zuck told the government regulators to pound sand on national TV, and the government basically responded with "ok, well, you can donate 25% of your net worth to our political party, or the world will never hear from you again". That's China.
You're right it's much worse in China, but if Zuck did in fact tell regulators to "pound sand" on national TV, I think it's pretty likely Meta would start to see some new interpretations of laws enforced against it...
There is no country in the world where you can insult powerful people for free
Jack Ma forking disappeared for three months [0]. Then lost a huge amount of money and influence over his empire, and he has been extremely quiet since then. It is not hard to see that had not complied, he would still be disappeared.
In contrast, look at the US. Disney publicly tells a state gov and POTUS candidate that his proposed law is bad. Gov, with his entire political party apparatus retaliates. Disney repeatedly counters every move and comes out on top, massively embarrassing the state governor.
China is a nation ruled by a dictatorship/authoritarian state. The US is, for the time being, ruled by law (there are those trying to change that).
In a democratic govt, all branches of govt (legislative, judicial, executive), and all areas of society (industry, press, academia, non-profits/NGOs, clubs, sports, etc.) are independent. In an authoritarian system, all of the branches of government and parts of society are bent to the will of the dictator/party.
They can reinterpret existing laws slightly more aggressively, and they can make new laws that Zuck would then have to continue breaking and go after Meta for that, but unlike China, they cannot arbitrarily put him in jail for something his business does, and they cannot change how Meta works without writing new legislation that would absolutely get thrown out by the Supreme court.
That's the entire point though. The relationship between Meta and the State is governed predominantly by letter of law and the system of the court. It's not perfect, but it absolutely puts limitations on government retribution towards a company that does something workers of the State do not like, but is legal.
In China, the relationship between a private company (in as much as that can exist in China) and the State is governed ENTIRELY by the whims of the party. There is no way to limit the party to things that are "legal", because laws do not constrain the party.
Except those regulators and those who interpret laws are essentially doing so at the public's behest, as they are elected officials, or at the very least, appointed by elected officials.
Those elected officials have 100 billion rea$on$ to not go after someone who insulted them. Zuck is bigger than all of those people combined. He's the powerful person, not some schmuck in congress who may or may not be in that same seat in a year or two. He could easily say "oh, you want to come after me because I talked back to you? OK, well, don't be surprised if your opponent in your reelection campaign just got a nice $100 million dollar boost" or "hey, yeah I said some mean things to you, but how about you come and work here at Meta once your term is over? I'll make it worth your while" and just like that all regulatory pressure is done away with.
In China, The Party can just say "we're bigger than you, so what we say goes", and that's it - no recourse, no independent watchdog, no independent judiciary, nothing. The Party owns your ass, and you'd best be thankful for that.
> There is no country in the world where you can insult powerful people for free
Zuck is above every "powerful person" he met at that hearing. Those people owe their position, careers and livelihoods to votes and ultimately public opinion.
Guess who nowadays controls a large chunk of humanity's social fabric? Piss him off and you may as well be dead as far as your voter base is concerned, since nobody on Facebook properties will ever hear anything about you (on the other hand they will hear plenty about your competitors).
PRISM was not a backdoor into company networks, it was a system by which the companies involved submitted data that was requested through the normal legal channels. You can dispute how valid those legal channels are, but the point is this is widely misunderstood.
Comparing it against the government having "god credentials" to the entire backend is disingenuous.
There are some logical weaknesses there. Do you think the CCP is acting against the wishes of the Chinese government? Obviously what is happening in China is being done through the normal legal channels. The government knows about this and isn't about to prosecute anyone.
The US government is spying on literally everyone. You can't name anyone who has a web presence and isn't caught in the dragnet.
The CCP is the Chinese government. They are one and the same. I don't think you seem to understand much at all about the sophistication of Chinese electronic surveillance.
>>> Do you think the CCP is acting against the wishes of the Chinese government? Obviously what is happening in China is being done through the normal legal channels.
CCP is the Chinese government. They are the law. when you say normal legal channels, it is not the same "normal" as in democratic countries.
Okay, look. Can we at least recognize that these are not the same? It’s like saying the US has done a bad thing and China has done a bad thing so the US and China have the same number, kind, and quality of oppressions of the public.
An important difference is that the US government doesn't have a "god credential", they have to request the data (and there is a process to request the data involving courts, etc.)
Meanwhile, govt officials in China appear to have unrestricted access
An opaque process of secret courts with secret decisions may be different legally, but in spirit it does not seem that significantly different to me in terms of preventing overreach and abuse.
Especially if you happen to not be a US citizen, in which case there are no actual safeguards anyhow.
IMHO this mirrors nicely the situation of a US citizen being concerned that the Chines govt won't protect their rights. This is how most of the world sees the US "checks" and "balances".
Even though I loathe spying, I must admit that the US (or any country for that matter) does not really have any natural or legal obligations to respect privacy of foreigners abroad.
It is their own business to protect it themselves.
Really, the primary difference is that the US has covert god credentials, as where China has overt god credentials. “Functional constitutionally granted protections from government overreach” don’t apply against agencies with qualified immunity. That applies to most every three-letter agency here in the US.
The business-political leadership in the United States shares the same goals as the Chinese leadership - maintaining tight control over their own power and wealth - but each uses quite different tactics to achieve that goal. Both are equally alarmed by political movements that seek to weaken their status, in particular. See:
The U.S. government is pretty steadily pushing towards adopting many elements of the Chinese model, such as censorship of social media (although more often by the tactic of amplifying some themes and suppressing others, shadow-banning and so on). Does anyone really doubt that the current political leadership would jump at the chance to assign everyone a 'social credit score', for example, that would influence their ability to travel, get a job, etc., based on criteria that they themselves determined (e.g. support for US foreign policy decisions, domestic economic programs, positive attitudes about a two-party political system largely controlled by a small number of wealthy donors, etc.)?
The U.S. is more in danger of becoming like China, than the other way around.
The difference is more like the US is held by corporate business interests while China is under firm control by the Party. They both however end up having opaque government apparatuses for surveillance and control (with differing characteristics of course).
If anyone wants to get more of a feel for this, listen to the Huawei episode of the Acquired podcast. They get a bit more into the weeds on the practical differences between companies in the US/Europe and in China, and what it means for how they're run, how they compete, etc.
I would consider the Opium wars very relevant today, as they were part of the Century of Humiliation, a thing that The Party is very much trying to get "revenge" for and China pretty openly allows a shitload of Fentanyl into the US through Mexican Cartels. China is a willing partner in the US Fentanyl problem.
That it's poetic is probably not lost on the people involved.
> The People's Republic of China has started a number of conflicts, trained revolutionaries, and contributed to other conflicts in Asia. It appears that the "no conflicts" claim was made by Xi Jinping in 2021.
> Sailing off the Chinese coast, USS Portsmouth and USS Levant had received news of the beginning of the Second Opium War. The two sloops-of-war were tasked with protecting American lives by landing a 150-man detachment of marines and sailors in Canton.
Aha, so during the Opium Wars, in this battle, the US invaded China, killing hundreds of Chinese soldiers and capturing four forts, but you have some definition in your mind where "the opium wars didn't involve the US". The Chinese have a different opinion.
Also, "the US invaded the country to protect Americans there" is one of the oldest excuses for an invasion in the book. Just thinking of the Caribbean in the span of a few years, it was the stated reason for the US invasion of the Dominican Republic in 1965, and then Grenada in 1983 (the latter following days after the US invasion of Lebanon).
Also this was just one battle in the Opium Wars. The US fought alongside the English in the Battle of Taku Forts, as well as other skirmishes.
> Aha, so during the Opium Wars, in this battle, the US invaded China, killing hundreds of Chinese soldiers and capturing four forts, but you have some definition in your mind where "the opium wars didn't involve the US".
So by this logic, during the ISIS's existence, PRC intruded into India. India is against ISIS. Therefore, China is on ISIS's side?
> The Chinese have a different opinion.
Opinions don't matter though.
So strange you are fixed on a war that long ago. The duration between the last US-UK war and Opium wars is much shorter than the Opium wars and the present. During this time, US helped China by opening up its market asymmetrically and being on its side during WW2 and even gave China aid.
> President Roosevelt approved $25 million in military aid to China on 19 December 1940, permitting the Chinese to purchase one hundred P 40 pursuit aircraft. By late spring 1941, the United States had also earmarked over $145 million in lend-lease funds for China to acquire both ground and air equipment.
> People think that because they understand how things work in the US, they understand how things work in China.
So to your own point - Why should we believe what you say about China? Are you even Chinese? Maybe you’re a Chinese expert?
Given how few Americans properly understand how the American government functions I’m skeptical Americans understand the Chinese government and its nuance.
It seems logical to me that we should believe the Chinese expats over others, since they are the ones who had first hand knowledge. Though it seems they don't necessarily thoroughly understand the exact details of the functioning or policies of the Chinese government, they do understand the effects of the decisions made and actions taken by the government. When the 'nuances' repeatedly involve torture and horrific authoritarianism atrocities we would do well to more than raise an eyebrow. There are many such accounts by numerous expats.
I wonder what kind of information they could reasonably extract from an average user's TikTok viewing habits?
Imagine a US congressman used TikTok for 90 minutes per week. They don't write any comments just scroll through videos and potentially like/share some videos.
Everyone talks about how scary good the TikTok algorithm is at determining your preferences and sending you laser focused content that you will find interesting and engaging. I am curious how much of that preference is extractable and how that might be valuable for purposes other than delivering viral short-form video.
> how scary good the TikTok algorithm is at determining your preference
I wonder how effective it would be at creating preferences. What happens if it drip feeds you small amounts of fetish material, carefully tracking what type and level appeals to you, slowly turning up the intensity until one day you have some kink for little kids in provocative cat costumes or something?
ChatGPT, write me a story about TikTok using subtle shifts in preference to slowly over time make the world socialist, but it ends up being democratic socialist, with everyone treating each other well & finding solidarity & figuring out how to get along. Add a surprise ending that is also happy.
If true, this iS why when asked if the CCP had ask to US data ByteDance replied that they had never received any such request. Well, the question and answer are curiously about two different things, and this the arrangement I suspected might exist. Give the CCP their own creds so they don't have to ask and you don't have to know.
Just a reality check: communications have been under government surveillance since the inception of government. We don't approve of Bytedance being in the pocket of the Chinese Communist party, but no one should delude himself about Google or Facebook.
Well according to some people on HN, it's all good and dandy. China is no worse than the US is the latest version of moral relativism we have to deal with. So if they have your data, it's all okay.
The way I see it as an European is that basically everything China does, the US does or has done, and to me they are both foreign powers. If I don't have qualms about using instagram why should I have qualms about using tiktok.
How is that more than a superficial label if western democracies behave like big hypocrites?
- Starting dubious wars against foreign nations? We've had Afghanistan and Iraq.
- Spying on and criminalizing citizens? We're having Five Eyes and possibly much more than we don't know about.
- Treating whistleblowers against our standards of human rights? We're having Manning, Snowden and Assange. And probably many more we haven't heard about.
I'm not repeating some whataboutisms trying to relativize, e.g., the horrible attack of Russia against Ukraine or the Chinese Social Scoring system. I'm just asking about the meaning of "democracy" in the Western world is, if our gov'ts are sh*tting on our values any time they need.
Can you explain how Snowden or Assange are mistreated against our standards of human rights? Snowden hasn't been in the US and is in Russia for years, and when he was in the US, he was never treated wrongly. And Assange hid out in an embassy to dodge charges. If you break the law, get people killed, push propaganda from Russia, you're going to have to face a Jury of your peers. Unlike China where you just get disappeared, we have a court system where you can get a trial by jury.
I share similar views, and certainly would be a lot more concerned if my government had access to all my personal data and communications, rather than the Chinese one, which very likely doesn't give a damn about who I am.
Yes, every country has its share of dirty history to be ashamed of, but the difference with places like China, Russia and others is that in our "western" countries we can (still) as citizens criticize the powers without expecting to be detained, have the house raided, lose our jobs and whatnot. Things may change in the future in my country, especially after the new wave of neofascist crooks that went in power lately, but we're not yet at that point.
Well for one thing the US has proven they are willing to come to your aid. You know, something called WW2 that you guys started. So maybe, I dunno, get a clue about history and who your allies are? It's kind of insulting to say that you see no difference to be honest. Next time maybe we won't show up when ya'll start shooting each other and doing genocide.
It's not about really about if they are worse. China having all my Tik Tok data is preferable then the US having any of my data. China isn't going to come disappear me in the US. The US might.
> China having all my Tik Tok data is preferable then the US having any of my data. China isn't going to come disappear me in the US. The US might.
No. It is worse in China. Especially with the 'police stations' and applying their national security law to activists overseas. Here one example example:
A TikTok user in Hong Kong protesting against the CCP has it worse than one protesting against the US government. The difference is obvious:
In the US you are free to peacefully protest against the US government which that is protected by the 1st amendment in the US constitution.
China on the other hand can use it's national security law (and in Hong Kong) to get activists overseas and disappear you. [0] Given that China has access to ByteDance's data, I don't think you would want to be the user who attempted to protest against the CCP in HK and currently be on the run.
It's not preferable. The problem in this line of argumentation is that it highlights the problems of an imperfect system (a big western democracy) and then extends that to qualify the whole.
The US has so many problems, I agree, but what big democracy doesn't? Does the UK have problems? Yes. Does France? Yes. Does India? Yes. Because the US is so powerful, and has used this power for questionable purposes (as well as good purposes), people create a caricature of the country and ignore that we have things like constitutional protections, freedom of speech, mechanisms to sue the government and prevail.
Just to detail one of my examples above, freedom of speech. Many people will go and give examples of why the US has no true freedom of speech. Most of these people have never lived in a place which actually has no freedom of speech! For instance, I've bought many highly critical books of the US government, talked about them in public, visited libraries to read these books. In a less free country, this can, and often does get you arrested or killed, assuming that you were able to find the books to begin with, more often you won't even have access to any real criticism of the government.
I don't want any country storing my personal data. But if I'd pick between the US or China, AT LEAST there is a minimum of transparency and rule of law (and it's actually a lot more than "minimum", the real protections are significant) regarding how this data is used in the US.
People should be more concerned about their own government spying on it's citizens that they should be about the CCP having that same data.
As a subject to your government's surveillance regime, you are at risk of losing more rights and freedoms than you are to foreign surveillance(unless that foreign surveillance is a proxy for your own goverment).
It's not that, and it's not okay. It's just less impactful if a foreign government has your data vs the one that can actually apply meaningful consequences if they don't like what they see.
OK, then post some articles about abuses by those other governments and I'll upvote those too. In the mean time though, what are you accomplishing by detracting from this? If you saw a post about GCHQ abuses for example would you be inclined to comment "but India etc. are just as bad!"?
If you do business is the US you most certainly do NOT have to give unfettered “god mode” access to all of your user’s data to the government with no oversight
If you're some tiny no one they don't bother you until they want something (and then you better comply). If you're tiktock, you give them access to the whole platform.
They also have access at the network/ISP and the data centre levels.
As bad as PRISM is/was there’s simply no comparison to giving god-mode credentials to actors in the CCP who can browse user data at will, and use it to suppress anything they see fit.
I would still make more sense to set an example and control the behavior of people you are indirectly accountable for in a democracy. No matter how much of a joke that sounds in context of any agency able to survey almost all your communications.
And it does sound like a joke already. Maybe having a strong democracy would actually be a good defense against autocracies that behave like China.
Maybe stop security agencies posing a security threat in the med to long term because nobody really believes in democracy anymore.
The only difference is whether it is "our" or "their" guy doing the dirty. But if they're doing us dirty, they're not "our" guy no matter what nationality they are...
Sorry, that's not correct. "U.S. government officials have disputed criticisms of PRISM in the Guardian and Washington Post articles and have defended the program, asserting that it cannot be used on domestic targets without a warrant."
Per the article, FISA grants infinite warrants without challenge, in secret.
Saying "but we got a warrant" is both meaningless and misleading. The CCP also have a secret court issue secret "warrants" to surveil the whole population without any oversight.
It's like that meme of Ron Swanson saying he has a permit...
And that is without getting into the fact the search happens before anyone considers the warrant.
First you state that PRISM isn't used domestically. Then you admit that it is used domestically. I have no idea why you're mentioning warrants from the 1800's. "The feds were getting warrants to open mail in the 1800's." Are you trying to suggest it is used only infrequently?
While the number of times PRISM is used domestically is unknown, the attempts to keep the number unknown is eyebrow raising.
"Wyden repeatedly asked the NSA to estimate the number of Americans whose communications had been incidentally collected, and the agency’s director, Lt. Gen. Keith B. Alexander, insisted there was no way to find out. Eventually Inspector General I. Charles McCullough III wrote Wyden a letter stating that it would violate the privacy of Americans in NSA data banks to try to estimate their number." https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/us-intelligenc...
You do not need a warrant for international communications performed by non-citizens (whether inside or outside the country)
You do need a warrant for communications done by citizens domestically. PRISM did not change that, it has been the same for centuries. So even if PRISM captures domestic communication, a warrant is still needed to view it. There has never been a time in US history when then feds didn't have access to warrants to tap communications.
PRISM is precisely a submission & storage system for data requested via warrants. People have the impression that it's a backdoor, but that's not what the Snowden docs actually described it as.
The "backdoor", if any, would only be the rubber stamp courts that allow pretty broad warrants for plenty of dumb things, but that could absolutely be fixed if half the country didn't totally buy into "I have nothing to hide" bullshit, and were as militant about defending the 4th amendment as they were the 2nd, but I guess the inalienable right to privacy just isn't as cool as putting a hole in a steel target 100 yards away with a machine.
Weird comment. What are you deflecting from? It’s a very clear article.
>In the documents submitted to the court he said ByteDance had a "superuser" credential — also known as a god credential — that enabled a special committee of Chinese Communist Party members stationed at the company to view all data collected by ByteDance including those of U.S. users.
>The credential acted as a "backdoor to any barrier ByteDance had supposedly installed to protect data from the C.C.P's surveillance," the filing says.
>Yu said he saw the god credential being used to keep tabs on Hong Kong protesters and civil rights activists by monitoring their locations and devices, their network information, SIM card identifications, IP addresses and communications.
Is always been like that under communists or socialist like regimes, privacy is not a right under those systems and government officials are omnipotent. Thinking otherwise is wishful thinking and ingenuity at best.
For example in Cuba everything is being monitored by the government: physical mail, internet, cellular data, neighbour watch organizations and so on. And is the same for tourists and foreigner businesses there.
It's all bits and since China has the executives of course they'll always retain a way to access the data as long as no independent entity is watching over them and all entities in China are under control of the CCP.