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Comment by geomark | Hacker News Reader

As someone who lives in one of those places somewhere overseas, I am kind of amazed at how rapidly the US is approaching the same sort of regime I live under. Over here, if you criticize the government (currently a military junta) they send soldiers to your house who take you to an "education center" for a week or so of attitude adjustment. Many hundreds have been through it already, including prominent academics, students, and even a few former politicians. Maybe the US will use something a little more subtle than they use here, but seems to me it is not long in coming.

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I know exactly what country based on that description.

Apparently before the "education center", you're brought in before military officials "just to talk" about your statements. They publicly phrase it as just wanting to understand your criticisms of the government, but they really just grill you to see who else you've been talking to, what websites you frequent, etc.

> but they really just grill you to see who else you've been talking to, what websites you frequent, etc.

This is where the US is ahead of the game.

Your situation sounds quite concerning, I hope you're doing alright and can deal with the authorities as they are. I sincerely hope current western governments don't go that far, but I too can see the day coming in the not too distant future.

I'm a foreigner here and don't have any say in politics anyway so there's little point in drawing attention to myself by criticizing the government. Just noticing some unfortunate parallels between what they do here and what they are doing in the US. BTW, they love surveillance here - they have nailed a number of people by spying on their messaging (Naver LINE).

I thought LINE had end-to-end encryption these days?

I'm not sure what the truth is. Some people in Thailand got arrested for saying something the government didn't like on LINE. The Thai gov said they had intercepted the offending message with LINE's help. LINE denied helping and said their messaging is secure "because encryption". When I looked at their webpage that's supposed to tell why they are secure it was basically we are secure "because encryption" and stated that "In this function, a robust secure algorithm, recommended by the highest encryption authority (NIST: National Security Agency, U.S.) has been adopted." with a link to a page that is just a list of various encryption standards. It looked basically like a poor joke. I don't know how strong LINE's security is these days but based on what I've read I don't trust them.

>> the highest encryption authority (NIST: National Security Agency, U.S.)

Just wanted to highlight this. I hadn't heard of LINE before but they sound dangerous.

Let me guess. You're located in USA ;)

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