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Comment by joe_the_user | Hacker News Reader

So, it is American intelligence officials who are concerned about this situation?

At some time in the past, the US, as a democratic society might have done something to separate offensive and defensive intelligence, used some method to give us something like an assurance that concern by American officials would mean that Kaspersky was doing something shady rather, say, that Kapersky was one tool they couldn't use to spy (not that I know anything about the situation at hand).

But as it is, the US (along with all the other states, of course) produced a situation where there's no real difference between the "state actors", where basically every software product from a given nation risks being requisitioned as well be spyware for that nation.

Perhaps it's just as well and anyone caring about privacy will move to all open source, defined builds and so-on.

Or perhaps just buy software from the smallest, least important nation.

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> there's no real difference between the "state actors"

This is a classically bogus argument [1]. A foreign adversary, constitutionally unbound, is more worrisome than a domestic actor who, while having a more-legitimate threat of violence, also faces realistic odds of retribution.

While throwing democracy under a bus seems to be in vogue nowadays, suggesting moral or democratic equivalence between the Russian and American states is absurd. Americans support the NSA, et cetera [2] despite lots of messaging to counter their agenda. A better argument would entail how the tech community could communicate its message to American voters.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

[2] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/05/29/what-america...

Its not a boggus argument at all. You can look at Whataboutism as a way of calling out hypocrisy. Which is a much bigger problem and is the main reason IMHO why the democracy is being thrown under the bus.

> This is a classically bogus argument [1]. A foreign adversary, constitutionally unbound, is more worrisome than a domestic actor who, while having a more-legitimate threat of violence, also faces realistic odds of retribution.

So, there is no difference between the two actors: I'm German, both are foreign countries that have threatened to nuke Europe. (Well, at least Trump has).

I don't see why I should trust the US more than Russia, both Trump and Putin don't give a fuck about any other country and just want to destroy my life.

> I don't see why I should trust the US more than Russia, both Trump and Putin don't give a fuck

Principally because Americans, as a people and a system of government, trust Trump less than Russia "trusts" Putin. The number of actions Trump can take unilaterally pales compared with Putin. That said, he fact that we have a world where offensive nuclear strikes can be legally called by a single person is showing its ridiculousness. In America we have a hope of modifying that chain of command. In Russia, who watches Vladimir Putin?

Same with me. I mistrust German intelligence agencies just the same, even though they are supposed to be organs of my government. My stance here is simple: if an institution has something to hide from me (barring personal information) then that institution cannot be working in my interest, so I can't trust them.

I'm no fan of "three letter agencies" but it seems the problem isn't you knowing certain information, it is identifying a set of "yous" who can know it without compromising the purpose the organization is pursuing.

Exactly. And data that isn’t stored can’t be abused, so we should focus on data minimalism.

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