Well, those two statements pretty much sum up how things work. What can I say? Just like all others in the world, we don’t want other people spying on us.
(And just like all others, we want to spy on everyone else.)
Ah! Excellent. So you fully admit Huawei is using its infra to steal corporate and state secrets worldwide, giving that info to domestic Chinese firms which are not bound by worldwide IP legalities? And using that info to subvert and destroy Western democratic principles?
No, I never said any of that. I just find it funny the U.S. government postures like this when they are probably the worst offenders when it comes to violating privacy of people around the world and their own citizens, too.
Are there any countries out there with a better privacy record, and an equivalent of the Fourth Amendment where there is actual legal action that can be pursued in case of violations? I am well aware of the violations of the US, but I am of the opinion that all countries spy when they are able to and can get away with it, and I'd rather have the US spying on me than anyone else.
> there is actual legal action that can be pursued in case of violations
I suggest you research the Patriot Act and FISA courts and tell me that our government is operating in a constitutional matter. Secret courts used to surveil foreign and American citizens.
That isn't to mention the unfettered access to data they have through backdoors and the five eyes alliance.
Given how powerful the three letter agencies are (especially the CIA), I'm not surprised the judiciary branch of the U.S. government agrees its constitutional. The ACLU and many legal professionals think FISA is unconstitutional.
I didn't say that the government followed the law or even did the right thing always. But in many countries you have absolutely no recourse. In the US you can talk about it, file lawsuits, etc.
Maybe countries that are completely outside the US sphere of influence (e.g. China or Russia) but anything that legitimately threatens the intelligence apparatus will not be allowed. See the ousting of Australias prime minister (first ever in history) by their governor general influenced by the CIA:
>> companies like Huawei that American officials say could be used as a spying tool by the Chinese government
> Remember, spying is ONLY okay when the good guys™ are doing it.
So I take it you're totally OK with an adversary of yours spying on you, then?
Because the law is totally about particular entity avoiding being spied upon by it's adversary. It's not some kind of universal statement on what kind of spying is good and what kind is bad that you're twisting it into. There's no universal there, it's all contextual.
I understand what this law is meant to do because China is the bad guy here, I get it. I'm merely pointing out that the U.S. does not have a leg to stand on when they'll turn around do the exact same thing.
I find all the hypocrisy and posturing very tiring.
> I'm merely pointing out that the U.S. does not have a leg to stand on when they'll turn around do the exact same thing.
> I find all the hypocrisy and posturing very tiring.
I'm merely pointing out that you're severely misunderstanding this. As I said before: there's no universal there, it's all contextual. The US is trying to take action to protect itself, end of story.
It's like a soldier hiding from enemy fire in a foxhole and telling his buddies to do the same. If you wander onto the battlefield and tell him you find his "hypocrisy and posturing very tiring," because he shoots back at his enemy, he'd look at you like you're mad, and he'd be right because you don't get what's going on in a pretty fundamental way.
the issue is turning everything into a literal battlefield as opposed to market competition with transnational regulatory bodies to align rules. Recent generations have forgotten what the UN was for and seem to valorise violence and militarism in every aspect of life. The generation that fought to avoid that happening again are no longer with us, and it shows.
I’m not sure picking a bad guy and defining a position as “in a fox hole” is anything close to objective discussion but like other comments, the path that’s being charted benefits from accepting its inevitability and there being no alternative
> the issue is turning everything into a literal battlefield as opposed to market competition with transnational regulatory bodies to align rules.
The problem with autocratic regimes is that they don't seem to care that much about rules, or some rights and duties that a valued by Western societies.
You can claim that Western countries at times didn't follow rules either, they're far from perfect.
But one thing is to haven't followed the rules on some occasions, the other thing is to do it consistently as a part of your strategy, because there are no consequences to it.
Let's pick for example Russia: their regime loves to use the Iraq war and now even the Israel war to make parallels between what they are doing and want to achieve in Ukraine, and what the US did and what Israel is doing. Here we have a country trying to annex another country, and using Genocide as a tool to achieve this goal, and you have Brazil, India, China, and South Africa supporting this.
Or China making it difficult for foreign companies to tap into the value of the Chinese internal market, and the amount of IP theft that happened for decades.
That's not market competition, and regulators can't enforce anything when you have big players captured by a small elite not playing by the rules. What are you going to do about it?
I can’t disagree at all with what you've stated, but I’ll toss in a nuclear-take here: As a consumer, the IP theft has been fantastic.
Prices for many things stayed high for no good reason and market competition hasn’t been doing what it ought to because our market is broken in a number of ways to favor incumbents.
It’s been the only effective check on the market in quite a long time. Now is it at all ethical? Perhaps not. But it’s extremely difficult to have sympathy.
> As a consumer, the IP theft has been fantastic. (...) Now is it at all ethical? Perhaps not. But it’s extremely difficult to have sympathy.
I think this is a great take, but prices aren't just a reflection of IP theft, but also of child labor, low wage labor, environmental damage, etc... so I will throw a question back at you:
Do you think that we reached the point where Westerners aren't willing to pay the Civil price for Human Rights, and other Western values?
I’d argue the cost of western values needs to be split up into two categories. We have the cost of “fair” (non-abusive) labor and the cost of expectations for increasing margins.
On the first, my assumption(/hope) is that many consumers would reconsider a purchase if they knew it was the direct result of abusive practices.
On the second, I would assume most people wouldn’t care if someone isn’t able to extract a higher price for the good for non-direct-product-delivery reasons.
Anecdotally, I purchased a thermal camera off of eBay for 1/3rd the cost of a FLIR camera with similar resolution. For a device that I’d use a handful of times a year, it’s difficult to justify paying 3x the cost for a name-branded FLIR. The value-add of 3x the cost isn’t apparent.
This is a weird spot to be in because FLIR may be able to produce a device that’s 1/3rd cheaper… but then they’d risk their commercial market buying the inexpensive consumer-targeted device.
> On the first, my assumption(/hope) is that many consumers would reconsider a purchase if they knew it was the direct result of abusive practices.
> On the first, my assumption(/hope) is that many consumers would reconsider a purchase if they knew it was the direct result of abusive practices.
This is very hard to assess, other than price there's very little transparency about these practices. No one boats about this in their marketing material.
But let me give you an insight: Kickstarter and other crowdfunding campaigns. Many companies try to launch their products and concepts on Kickstarter, only to find that someone made a copy of their intellectual property and beat them to market, and you will say, that's just the market optimizing itself. I think it's trickier than that, as we are draining people from bringing their products to market because there are people on the sidelines waiting to copy the outcome of their work and investment.
>Iraq war and now even the Israel war to make parallels
Well the West could simply stop the Genocide today and prove them wrong. If they think they have the moral high ground, they could repeal the Hague Invasion act. Throw in Bush and Blair and others for war crime trial. It is absolutely marvellous to think that the West which plundered millions in the last two decades has any more decency than Putin. Not that Putin is benign, but the West collectively have more capability and have used it as far as they can.
> Well the West could simply stop the Genocide today and prove them wrong.
How could the West stop the Genocide in Ukraine?
> Throw in Bush and Blair and others for war crime trial. It is absolutely marvellous to think that the West which plundered millions in the last two decades has any more decency than Putin. Not that Putin is benign, but the West collectively have more capability and have used it as far as they can.
So let's roll back - why didn't Saddam get trialed for war crimes? It's like you seem to forget who Saddam was, what he did, and what capacity he had.
"Not that Putin is benign" is quite precious, a man committing the largest genocide we've seen in Europe since WW2, just because Ukrainians exist.
And how did Ukraine supposedly decided to join EU and NATO?
Saddam did get tried and executed. But comparing the scale and lasting impact of a war began by lies of Bush and Blair, it seems like a drop in the ocean.
I like that you have mentioned the Genocide in Europe, might as well say just Genocide, because if it happened elsewhere, and is happening in Palestine, the west would give a damn about it. Of course thoughts and prayers would come from there.
Putin is not Benign, and as malicious as he could be in intent, the west outperforms him because they can do so.
Atleast he was not awarded a Nobel for Peace, like Obama and Kissinger, for their peace activities in Syria, Libya and east asia.
By defending the sovereignty of Kuwait, a country from the UN.
> And how did Ukraine supposedly decided to join EU and NATO?
Because they're a sovereign country and chose to join after Russia invaded them.
> Saddam did get tried and executed. But comparing the scale and lasting impact of a war began by lies of Bush and Blair, it seems like a drop in the ocean.
Saddam got tried and executed after Bush and Blair went in - truth be told, they shouldn't have waited until the 9/11 event, but their National Security policy changed that day.
You're trying to compare the Iraq war, when Russia in just 2 years has caused +1.000.000 casualties, and ongoing genocide.
> I like that you have mentioned the Genocide in Europe, might as well say just Genocide, because if it happened elsewhere, and is happening in Palestine, the west would give a damn about it. Of course thoughts and prayers would come from there.
I said Genocide in Europe because it's a reference to all the Genocides that Russia took part - let's not forget they were allies of Nazi Germany, let's not forget Holodomor, let's not forget the Genocide in Chechnya.
So before you try to find semblances of "what could arguably be considered genocide", to mauling millions upon millions of human beings for decades all for one single man.
Ukraine is a country of 40 million people which Putin denied its existence and is seeking to make it disappear from the map, not only its borders, but its culture, and its people, all because they exist - that's what genocide is. An UNPROVOKED war of genocide.
It's disgusting your attempt to dilute what Putin and Russia are doing in Ukraine.
The difference between US surveillance and Chinese surveillance is the difference between watching a fishing boat pass you from miles away vs a cargo ship ramming you.
Surveillance in China is much more pervasive and is used to enforce the control of the CCP. An edgy political post in the US is no big deal; in China it's enough to decrease your social credit score or get you a knock on your door.
How did China originally bootstrap a scaled-out secure computation infrastructure?
Did the West drop the ball, was System Management Mode insufficient? what era and what hypervisor technology was in use in that era?
Or does their current secure computation infrastructure stem from less and less widely deployed predecessors and did they bootstrap their own in parallel with the West?
> So I take it you're totally OK with an adversary of yours spying on you, then?
Adversary of your government, not necessarily of yours. If at least your government kept the spying within its borders, you could reduce this to "us vs them", but USA spies overseas too, and brokes that information with its partner countries who also spy internationally. Accusing any other country of spying is ridiculous when everyone is doing it.
>> So I take it you're totally OK with an adversary of yours spying on you, then?
> Adversary of your government, not necessarily of yours.
You badly misunderstood what I wrote.
> Accusing any other country of spying is ridiculous when everyone is doing it.
There you go, literally making the same interpretive mistake I was trying to correct.
I don't know what the issue is here, but I suspect it has something to do with not actually paying attention to what's being said here, and instead shoehorning the article/conversation into a canned script of a different conversation (one that apparently provides the opportunity for some moral posturing).
> So I take it you're totally OK with an adversary of yours spying on you, then?
I think this part is what triggered my response, but I did ignore the second half of your comment. I saw no value on mixing the actual act of recklessly spying domestic and foreign citizens, and the particular legal definition of some government that justifies their own spying. Sure, governments can make laws to spy on their own citizens, but who are they to make laws to spy on the citizens of other governments?
Moreso, governments won't respect the letter or the spirit of even their own laws if that suits them. The 21st century has become a clusterfuck of gratuitous spying and profiling, I wonder how the history books will portray this era if humanity somehow recovers from it.
You have to elaborate. Spying serves a goal, which, in my opinion, should be fighting and ending/killing corruption. When that goal is reached, these guys should and can pivot, without having to kill themselves. Spies are not implicitly corrupt, if that is what you are implying.
DC spends 40 years liquidating our middle class, sending our entire industrial base oversees at the behest of their corporate masters then has shocked pikachu face when we have no supply chain control.
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[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 32.9 ms ] threadRemember, spying is ONLY okay when the good guys™ are doing it.
(And just like all others, we want to spy on everyone else.)
Thanks for the confirm on that.
I suggest you research the Patriot Act and FISA courts and tell me that our government is operating in a constitutional matter. Secret courts used to surveil foreign and American citizens.
That isn't to mention the unfettered access to data they have through backdoors and the five eyes alliance.
And the independent judiciary is an integral part of them i.e. they decide if cases can be tried in them.
There are roadblocks when trying to challenge FISA because of the secrecy, see: https://www.npr.org/2013/02/26/172998760/supreme-court-makes...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alleged_CIA_involvement_in_t...
No they are not. You need to mandate domestic network devices or introduce some silly standard to fly under the radar.
The risk is too high Washington will destabilize your country and you might end up in a bloody mess.
No need, the West is doing that to itself all by itself.
> Remember, spying is ONLY okay when the good guys™ are doing it.
So I take it you're totally OK with an adversary of yours spying on you, then?
Because the law is totally about particular entity avoiding being spied upon by it's adversary. It's not some kind of universal statement on what kind of spying is good and what kind is bad that you're twisting it into. There's no universal there, it's all contextual.
I find all the hypocrisy and posturing very tiring.
> I find all the hypocrisy and posturing very tiring.
I'm merely pointing out that you're severely misunderstanding this. As I said before: there's no universal there, it's all contextual. The US is trying to take action to protect itself, end of story.
It's like a soldier hiding from enemy fire in a foxhole and telling his buddies to do the same. If you wander onto the battlefield and tell him you find his "hypocrisy and posturing very tiring," because he shoots back at his enemy, he'd look at you like you're mad, and he'd be right because you don't get what's going on in a pretty fundamental way.
Yes, that take isn't particularly surprising. The hyper fixation and "we're done talking about this" vibe is very strange.
"End of story" didn't mean what you seem to think it meant.
But we're done talking about this because you seem to be too prone to misinterpretation and misunderstanding. It's a waste of time.
I’m not sure picking a bad guy and defining a position as “in a fox hole” is anything close to objective discussion but like other comments, the path that’s being charted benefits from accepting its inevitability and there being no alternative
The problem with autocratic regimes is that they don't seem to care that much about rules, or some rights and duties that a valued by Western societies.
You can claim that Western countries at times didn't follow rules either, they're far from perfect.
But one thing is to haven't followed the rules on some occasions, the other thing is to do it consistently as a part of your strategy, because there are no consequences to it.
Let's pick for example Russia: their regime loves to use the Iraq war and now even the Israel war to make parallels between what they are doing and want to achieve in Ukraine, and what the US did and what Israel is doing. Here we have a country trying to annex another country, and using Genocide as a tool to achieve this goal, and you have Brazil, India, China, and South Africa supporting this.
Or China making it difficult for foreign companies to tap into the value of the Chinese internal market, and the amount of IP theft that happened for decades.
That's not market competition, and regulators can't enforce anything when you have big players captured by a small elite not playing by the rules. What are you going to do about it?
Prices for many things stayed high for no good reason and market competition hasn’t been doing what it ought to because our market is broken in a number of ways to favor incumbents.
It’s been the only effective check on the market in quite a long time. Now is it at all ethical? Perhaps not. But it’s extremely difficult to have sympathy.
I think this is a great take, but prices aren't just a reflection of IP theft, but also of child labor, low wage labor, environmental damage, etc... so I will throw a question back at you:
Do you think that we reached the point where Westerners aren't willing to pay the Civil price for Human Rights, and other Western values?
On the first, my assumption(/hope) is that many consumers would reconsider a purchase if they knew it was the direct result of abusive practices.
On the second, I would assume most people wouldn’t care if someone isn’t able to extract a higher price for the good for non-direct-product-delivery reasons.
Anecdotally, I purchased a thermal camera off of eBay for 1/3rd the cost of a FLIR camera with similar resolution. For a device that I’d use a handful of times a year, it’s difficult to justify paying 3x the cost for a name-branded FLIR. The value-add of 3x the cost isn’t apparent.
This is a weird spot to be in because FLIR may be able to produce a device that’s 1/3rd cheaper… but then they’d risk their commercial market buying the inexpensive consumer-targeted device.
> On the first, my assumption(/hope) is that many consumers would reconsider a purchase if they knew it was the direct result of abusive practices.
This is very hard to assess, other than price there's very little transparency about these practices. No one boats about this in their marketing material.
But let me give you an insight: Kickstarter and other crowdfunding campaigns. Many companies try to launch their products and concepts on Kickstarter, only to find that someone made a copy of their intellectual property and beat them to market, and you will say, that's just the market optimizing itself. I think it's trickier than that, as we are draining people from bringing their products to market because there are people on the sidelines waiting to copy the outcome of their work and investment.
Well the West could simply stop the Genocide today and prove them wrong. If they think they have the moral high ground, they could repeal the Hague Invasion act. Throw in Bush and Blair and others for war crime trial. It is absolutely marvellous to think that the West which plundered millions in the last two decades has any more decency than Putin. Not that Putin is benign, but the West collectively have more capability and have used it as far as they can.
How could the West stop the Genocide in Ukraine?
> Throw in Bush and Blair and others for war crime trial. It is absolutely marvellous to think that the West which plundered millions in the last two decades has any more decency than Putin. Not that Putin is benign, but the West collectively have more capability and have used it as far as they can.
So let's roll back - why didn't Saddam get trialed for war crimes? It's like you seem to forget who Saddam was, what he did, and what capacity he had.
"Not that Putin is benign" is quite precious, a man committing the largest genocide we've seen in Europe since WW2, just because Ukrainians exist.
And how did Ukraine supposedly decided to join EU and NATO?
Saddam did get tried and executed. But comparing the scale and lasting impact of a war began by lies of Bush and Blair, it seems like a drop in the ocean.
I like that you have mentioned the Genocide in Europe, might as well say just Genocide, because if it happened elsewhere, and is happening in Palestine, the west would give a damn about it. Of course thoughts and prayers would come from there.
Putin is not Benign, and as malicious as he could be in intent, the west outperforms him because they can do so. Atleast he was not awarded a Nobel for Peace, like Obama and Kissinger, for their peace activities in Syria, Libya and east asia.
By defending the sovereignty of Kuwait, a country from the UN.
> And how did Ukraine supposedly decided to join EU and NATO?
Because they're a sovereign country and chose to join after Russia invaded them.
> Saddam did get tried and executed. But comparing the scale and lasting impact of a war began by lies of Bush and Blair, it seems like a drop in the ocean.
Saddam got tried and executed after Bush and Blair went in - truth be told, they shouldn't have waited until the 9/11 event, but their National Security policy changed that day.
You're trying to compare the Iraq war, when Russia in just 2 years has caused +1.000.000 casualties, and ongoing genocide.
> I like that you have mentioned the Genocide in Europe, might as well say just Genocide, because if it happened elsewhere, and is happening in Palestine, the west would give a damn about it. Of course thoughts and prayers would come from there.
I said Genocide in Europe because it's a reference to all the Genocides that Russia took part - let's not forget they were allies of Nazi Germany, let's not forget Holodomor, let's not forget the Genocide in Chechnya.
So before you try to find semblances of "what could arguably be considered genocide", to mauling millions upon millions of human beings for decades all for one single man.
Ukraine is a country of 40 million people which Putin denied its existence and is seeking to make it disappear from the map, not only its borders, but its culture, and its people, all because they exist - that's what genocide is. An UNPROVOKED war of genocide.
It's disgusting your attempt to dilute what Putin and Russia are doing in Ukraine.
Wow! That almost reads like he believes it. How quaint.
Surveillance in China is much more pervasive and is used to enforce the control of the CCP. An edgy political post in the US is no big deal; in China it's enough to decrease your social credit score or get you a knock on your door.
The US absolutely has a leg to stand on here.
Did the West drop the ball, was System Management Mode insufficient? what era and what hypervisor technology was in use in that era?
Or does their current secure computation infrastructure stem from less and less widely deployed predecessors and did they bootstrap their own in parallel with the West?
Adversary of your government, not necessarily of yours. If at least your government kept the spying within its borders, you could reduce this to "us vs them", but USA spies overseas too, and brokes that information with its partner countries who also spy internationally. Accusing any other country of spying is ridiculous when everyone is doing it.
> Adversary of your government, not necessarily of yours.
You badly misunderstood what I wrote.
> Accusing any other country of spying is ridiculous when everyone is doing it.
There you go, literally making the same interpretive mistake I was trying to correct.
I don't know what the issue is here, but I suspect it has something to do with not actually paying attention to what's being said here, and instead shoehorning the article/conversation into a canned script of a different conversation (one that apparently provides the opportunity for some moral posturing).
I think this part is what triggered my response, but I did ignore the second half of your comment. I saw no value on mixing the actual act of recklessly spying domestic and foreign citizens, and the particular legal definition of some government that justifies their own spying. Sure, governments can make laws to spy on their own citizens, but who are they to make laws to spy on the citizens of other governments?
Moreso, governments won't respect the letter or the spirit of even their own laws if that suits them. The 21st century has become a clusterfuck of gratuitous spying and profiling, I wonder how the history books will portray this era if humanity somehow recovers from it.
This is military, not Blues Clues.