Domestically the U.S. is still better, abet getting more repressive by the day.
Internationally however, and since I don't live in China more relevant to me, it's not so clear cut.
I'm not saying China is more moral than the U.S., I am simply saying that when it comes to international behavior the case for the U.S. being clearly more moral isn't as clear.
Personally, I'd prefer the EU to assert itself more independently from the U.S. so there's some counterbalance to it from democratic countries as well.
As for specifically Huawei, I don't want the NSA to have my data, but I know they already do, per Snowden. The case for Huawei having them is a lot less clear.
I know for some people it's 'obvious' that they do, but I'd like to work with cold, hard evidence.
Now, the U.S. is known for its outrageous overreach far, far outside its borders, just look at the Kim Dotcom raid, so the NSA having all the data has been demonstrated to have extremely negative implications.
The case against Huawei has not been made so convincingly and no, I do not trust the NSA/FBI to make the case.
I think the US is much better at collecting data. The US has been proven to collect data and plant backdoors, China has not, despite how much the US states that eg. Huawei has backdoors in their 4G/5G equipment. So either China is much better when it comes to privacy online, or just way more competent as they manage to avoid getting caught.
So which one you'd rather have spying you, China or US? While it's easy to mock US for doing bad things, at least as European they share a common cultural heritage. And yes, while they spy on their allies they are still allies with many European nations and their military support serves as a core pillar for many European nations' foreign policies.
China on the other hand, isn't allied with any European nations and seems to actively undermine freedom of speech and to suppress its citizens. Social credit score sounds good to you? So in the context of all things, yes US does still have a moral high ground. But I admit they surely could do a better job.
Which isn't that easy, since the world isn't black and white. And do I even care about morals, or mostly just about my personal data?
As an American it's probably easy to make a choice here, but as a 3rd party I'm not so sure. The US has definitely wreaked more havoc across the globe during the past century, from overthrowing democratic governments to bombing the shit out of countries. The Chinese are reckless whenever they see someone threatening their authority, but egoistically speaking, that 99% applies to Chinese nationals or people living in China. Not my problem.
If my country would go with US equipment, I already know they will get all my data because of things like the patriot act and all the niceties Snowden revealed the NSA et al have.
The Chinese probably have the same, but we don't know anything definitive, which makes it more scary, also they are evil commies. But then again, having access to telco infra only means they get meta data, since traffic is all encrypted nowadays, while the US still gets all my content thanks to Facebook/WhatsApp, Google/Gmail, Amazon, ..., no matter what the 5G equipment is. So is it safer to then say you better buy the 5G stuff from the US so only one party can steal all your data?
You can spew all the whataboutism rhertoric you want, but the fact that Huawei can go through the motions to sue the US government shows why the US has the moral standing in this privacy argument. I wouldn't be surprised if the US government can get my data in one form or another but I expect it to be done in due process either in the form of subpoena or some sort (which is why the Snowden leak was so important). You cannot say the same in China. Just look at the two Canadians arrested compared to Meng Wan Zhou. The family of the two Canadians couldn't even talk to them when they were first arrested while Meng Wan Zhou's husband and lawyer was in immediate contact. The difference is in the Justice system.
As an American, I'd rather be spied on by the Chinese than by my own government. The Chinese government has fewer ways they can use my data against me. Add in the fact that Huawei products are cheaper, and I'll be buying Huawei products for the forseeable future.
Privacy IS something I'd be willing to pay for, but that's not an option. If the US government and corporations wanted me to trust them, they shouldn't have spied on our communications at every turn and then attempted to silence every whistleblower. The US calling out Huawei on security concerns is obviously the pot calling the kettle black, and I don't think many people internationally will be persuaded.
Any government could make a serious play for privacy by making some privacy laws with civil and criminal penalties for violation, and protections and rewards for whistleblowers. But as things are currently, lack of privacy comes standard with communication devices from any country, and Americans calling Huawei out for it is just inane posturing.
Similarly, I don't think we can really hold the US up as some sort of bastion of moral excellence. As a non US citizen you have very little right to privacy and the US government will use this against you (see: forcibly having to unlock your devices so border agents can search them).
On balance I think the US is a lot better than China, but there's a lot of room for improvement.
I think the issue is that the United States – for all its faults and Snowden leaks and whatnot – can still be trusted, somewhat, to do the right thing. There clearly are trust issues (for good reasons) but I would sure trust the US gov't more to not install backdoors in equipment private companies deliver to befriended foreign nations.
China, on the other hand, has no clear separation between the state and large private companies, and has a state which does not acknowledge basic human rights in a myriad of ways. Again, the US is not perfect here either, but it sure is better.
Personally, I wish Europeans would use more, well, European equipment for this kind of stuff. This isn't out of some nationalistic sentiment (I have no problems using foreign equipment as such), but given the state of the world's affairs and the direction I fear it might be heading, a strong and independent Europe will probably be more important than ever in the coming decades.
For me, as an ex-Australian who has lived in America and Europe, I don't trust either China or America with regards to their spying. Both countries have a long line of human rights violations in their history, and neither has shown a particular improvement in the last few decades.
The USA has committed untold strife in the world. It has toppled democratically elected governments and installed dictators, it has declared war on innocent nations and racked up hundreds of thousands of innocent victims in its rush to war glory. It has spent more on war in the last decade than any other nation, by far, while its people suffer under one of the most tyrannical, terrible health systems the modern world has constructed.
China has concentration camps. America has a thousand top-secret military prisons scattered around the globe.
The idea that one can be trusted over the other is utterly naive, and in light of the real evidence on the ground, a terribly ignorant point of view. I mean, we may be able to say, in all fairness, that there is a great chance that Huawei MAY spy for the Chinese government - but we can say for certainty that every single ISP in the USA HAS spied for the US Government, and we have no way to be sure it isn't still happening given the immense resources poured into making us look the other way as a civil society.
You've completely proved my point, which is that in every argument people make bad comparison between the US and China. In every single item here, you greatly stretch either what the US has done to clearly over-exaggerate it, stretch what the CCP has done to under-exaggerate it, or sometimes out-right make a completely false comparison - it's really clear you're not doing it in good faith. Examples:
(1) > If you don think that the NSA is spying on half the western world
If you'd read the Snowden papers, you'd see that the NSA collects metadata on US persons, and can only collect specific (non-meta-)data on those that they submit a warrant for. Completely invalid comparison, not remotely comparable to the CCP requiring all companies to hand over all data of all persons in China non-encrypted.
Bonus points for the "If you don't think" emotional manipulation.
(1b) > the CIA on the other half
Baseless speculation that conveniently fits the position you hold and nothing else.
(2) > When every country develops, they "borrow" from the previously developed countries.
Classic whataboutism. What America did centuries ago has no bearing on what China does now - it's actually far worse now, because we generally have better-developed senses of morals and that stealing is bad. Also, while US citizens might have taken technology from other countries, the CCP government is doing the theft here - and it's outright breaking and entering to do so, too.
(3) > Target and extradite people for "corruption" (real or not), US targets and attempts to extradite people for leaking evidence of war crimes and spying.
Nope, false comparison. In Operation Fox Hunt, the CCP (a) targeted people for merely speaking out about government (b) targeting their families and (c) didn't charge many of the targets with any crime whatsoever. None of those things apply to the US. Thinking that this is even remotely similar to charging someone for espionage and attempting to extradite them using the legal system is actually completely insane; there's no similarities whatsoever to the CCP trying to covertly and illegally coerce citizens to return home for crimes for which they have never been charged by threatening their families.
You just literally didn't make any point at all here. So, to recap for viewers at home: there's no US equivalent to the CCP massacring students with tanks at Tienanmen Square.
(5) > Surprise surprise but the US has its own 50 cent army.
Fine, as a US citizen, I condemn any forms of propaganda taken by my government on my behalf. You're defending yours. Also, uh, any evidence that the US has also hired two million propaganda creators to create several hundred million posts? Barely comparable, but this is the only solid point you've made so far.
(6a) > Yes let us go liberate the enslaved children
You engage in sarcasm because it's clear that you don't have a point. Let me be clear what this point is: the CCP is tyrannical in a way that other governments are not.
(6b) > and sometimes mandatory
Mandatory abortion is more tyranny, not less.
(7) > The unlucky and unarmed populations of Iraq and Afghanistan who are continued to be massacred via drone strike.
Completely insane comparison. You do know that the point of Tienanmen Square was that the people getting massacred were (a) intentionally killed (b) unarmed (c) students (d) peacefully protesting (e) Chinese citizens and (f) the government has enforced a media blackout on it? That's literally the opposite of Iraq/Afghanistan in every single way. Meanwhile, the closest comparison you can make is (a) accidentally killed collateral damage (which is terrible, but not that it's not intentional) from the US hunting people who flew airplanes into the Twin Towers on 9/11, and the targeted people are (b) armed (c) terrorists (d) trying to kill us who are (e) not US Citizens and (f) the US government doesn't enforce a media blackout when they mess up, and calling a few dozen deaths (which are tragic, but all accidental - the result of the military being careless, not the PLA tank operators intentionally running over students) "massacre" is also crazy.
(8) > Assange and Snowden
Insane comparison. Snowden and Assange both leaked classified information that cost the US billions (tens of billions? hundreds?) of dollars of taxpayer money to develop and resulted in lives lost, and whose significance was military and intelligence capabilities (yeah, Snowden wasn't about telling the people about a spying program - if it was, he would have only leaked docs about the NSA spying on American citizens in particular, but you know what? 99% of the material leaked had nothing to do with spying on American citizens at all, and was just straight-up sending classified military+defense information to other countries). Not even remotely comparable to the CCP suppressing information on the military massacring peacefully protesting civilians with no defense or strategic value.
(9a) > What is Guantanamo Bay?
A place that (a) many Americans actively protest (unlike Xinjiang, which it seems like is constantly defended by Chinese nationals) (b) holding a few thousand people (instead of a few million) that (c) are suspected of committing terrorism (not "innocents").
(9b) How many millions of blacks are locked up in American prison for no reason other than their skin color and a sham charge of jaywalking or dug possession.
Also a completely insane comparison. Bringing up skin color is crazy - US judges do not, as a rule, discriminate based on skin color. Prisons in the US aren't even remotely comparable to the labor camps in Xinjiang, and even though the American justice system has problems (that are being protested by its citizens, as opposed to being defended, like Chinese nationals defend Xinjiang), every person taken in has a public trial with a charge that's on the books - as opposed to the CCP disappearing citizens with no trial, and no charge other than just being Uyghur, and denying that the places they're being held exist in the first place.
(10a) > The US literarily strong arming its states for trying to boycott Israel.
This is one of the only even partially-valid points you have made here. "Partially" because while it's very bad for the federal government to pass laws on the states about this matter, it's also categorically different for the federal government to restrict what state governments can do for geopolitical reasons, than it is for the CCP to financially blackmail foreign companies for expressing a very sane and reasonable position: that Taiwan is a separate country from China.
(10b) > The US enacting regime change when the wrong person was democratically elected...
This isn't even relevant to anything here. You're just throwing it out to try to add chaff to your arguments.
(11) > ???????
This is the only fully-valid point/comparison you've made in this entire post. I misspoke - I meant to say "CCP planning to invade Taiwan..." and it was because I perceived that the old leadership of China (before the cultural revolution) had fled there - but I can't find any evidence of that, so I'm withdrawing this claim.
> To find this level of ignorance here is semi-astounding.
Pure emotional manipulation.
> Propaganda works, and that post is proof of it.
What are some of the characteristics of propaganda? Assertions of vague or unknown truths (1b, 5, 10b), exaggerate the facts (1, 2, 3, 7, 9b), misdirection of attention (6, 10b), emotional manipulation (6a, 9a, 9b, last sentence), wild comparisons that aren't valid (1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10a). I made the points that I had in good faith, using sound logic, and withdrew the one that I realized was wrong (11).
Both the American and Chinese governments have bad track records when it comes to abusing civil liberties, privacy intrusion. I would say that the Chinese government is worse, but that doesn't really matter from my perspective for this particular thing.
As an American, I expect that the US government, if it wants it enough, can obtain access to my communications (at least while using US infrastructure), assuming they're not e2e encrypted. Hopefully such access would be gated by a warrant, and I expect in most cases that's how it works, though I do expect there are abuses here and there.
The Chinese government, however, should not have any kind of access to any of my communications (unless I am visiting China, using their infrastructure; or perhaps am communicating with someone in China from abroad). In addition, if the relationship between the US and China ever sours to the point of war, presumably the Chinese would have no problem using any possible backdoors to disrupt US telecom networks.
Given this, I would much rather the US use US-built telecom infrastructure than Chinese-built infra. I think an argument over which government is more moral or trustworthy is just not useful here.
At a basic level, I agree there’s not a fundamental difference. But I think it’s reasonable to look at practical differences between China and the US and consider which one you’d prefer to be secretly recording your personal data. The US has cultural and constitutional support of free speech, due process, and independent judiciary. On the flip-side, the US has PRISM, theocrats, an insane president, and a history of covert violent foreign intervention. China has little support for freedom of speech, separation of powers, etc.. And is frequently accused of extrajudicially disappearing people for their speech/beliefs.
I think at present I’d still significantly prefer the US over China to secretly collect my personal data (even if I wasn’t a US citizen). It’s certainly possible that difference will further erode over time.
I don’t necessarily mean to endorse banning Chinese apps, as that seems very problematic and arguably cuts against our own value system. It’s always seemed very protectionist when China did that to us, and it seems the same when we do it to them, and comes with the same surface area for corporate corruption of our government.
Summed up my feelings better than I have. I don't think China is 'better' than the U.S. I just think that automatically assuming all Chinese tech is automatically bugged, while the U.S. can be trusted is a naive view to hold, especially since we outright know the NSA intercepted Cisco HW and modified it, with Huawei, there's been a lot of accusations made by U.S. officials with vested interests, less actual evidence.
You may feel that from a human rights perspective China is morally inferior to the US. This has no bearing on whether you're better off being spied on by one or the other. If you're located in the US, the US government has an extreme amount of power over you and China has almost none; it's obviously better to be spied on by China. If you're in China, the logic reverses.
I don't trust even my own government. I'm not *more* worried about China messing with me. The NSA has more info on me that could potentially be used against me than Huawei. And I've never once seen a situation where the NSA digs data out of their vault to help exonerate an American on trial.
This article has made me decide to never mistake Huawei's ties to Chinese government surveillance for US political nonsense ever again.
I may not like our current US president, but it doesn't mean he can't use truths as political instruments.
Due to China's and Russia's human rights abuses, they are who I dislike the most. It might be by a small margin, but I would feel more comfortable having the CIA and NSA spy on me any day, than China or Russia.
What's wild is that I know many in China would feel the same way - but in the reverse.
Underlying your point there is an assumption that Chinese government = American government in it's misuse of data etc.
I don't think this is true. And I've run a privacy advocate organisation and I'm a complete Snowden fanboy. But if I had to choose between giving my data to the CCP or the American government, the choice is easy.
Even though a lot of data collection was done without warrants in the USA, there's been a lot of blowback, and there is still changing presidents/executive, changing representatives, and rule of law (not perfect, but still there).
On the other side you have a CCP rolling out social scoring, running concentration camps, etc etc.
It's just not the same. Let's not pretend it is somehow equivalent.
Internationally however, and since I don't live in China more relevant to me, it's not so clear cut.
I'm not saying China is more moral than the U.S., I am simply saying that when it comes to international behavior the case for the U.S. being clearly more moral isn't as clear.
Personally, I'd prefer the EU to assert itself more independently from the U.S. so there's some counterbalance to it from democratic countries as well.
As for specifically Huawei, I don't want the NSA to have my data, but I know they already do, per Snowden. The case for Huawei having them is a lot less clear.
I know for some people it's 'obvious' that they do, but I'd like to work with cold, hard evidence.
Now, the U.S. is known for its outrageous overreach far, far outside its borders, just look at the Kim Dotcom raid, so the NSA having all the data has been demonstrated to have extremely negative implications.
The case against Huawei has not been made so convincingly and no, I do not trust the NSA/FBI to make the case.
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