I'm not saying the US is as bad as China, but I roll my eyes when people talk about China forcing its companies to serve the interests of the state. Our government does it all the time and it doesn't require a warrant.
I think that, to keep government accountable, these sealed writs should have a clear date when they will be unsealed, and although it seems this one was eventually unsealed I don't see such a date. But I don't find the specificity or nature of this particular court order problematic.
Certainly national security letters have been shown to have concerning issues both in specificity and in transparency, but again, none of the orders referenced in the article seem to be national security letters. (EFF has more details on their concerns with NSLs at [2].)
[1] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6989724-All-Writs-Ac...
[2] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/07/requiring-judicial-rev...
[1] https://www.aclu.org/other/testimony-aclu-client-and-nationa...
I don't think that main US adversaries ever shied away from much more direct means to infiltrate the US government.
Citation needed.
While I suspect you are right, I've never seen an example of one and we don't have any proof that this is how they are used in practice. The same could have been said about FISA warrants, but both civil libertarians and Trump allies have been critical in how FISA warrants have been used in practice despite the way they were described as few and targeted by those "watchers" who were "watching themselves".
Here's most of one, served to Microsoft in 2014 & released in 2017
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/CMSFiles/NationalSecurity--J...
The US has a court system that reviews National Security Letters, and can accept challenges to them, and while that court is secret, it's still bound by rules that are established by elected congressional officials. ...and perhaps most importantly, they are still somewhat rare.
Chinese companies on the other hand are required to cooperate on all requests, even international subsidiaries of any Chinese companies. No "letters" or court orders - you either do it or the CEO goes to jail, no trial, no judicial review.
It might seem like the results are similar, but having judicial and congressional oversight makes a world of difference in tempering how/when it can be used and, more importantly, rolling it back when it's no longer necessary.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter#Doe_v...
It's a night and day comparison.
most of these observations are very valid
just because you coincidentally respect the due process that reaches a result, doesn’t mean that it is a functionally different or better. its only indoctrination and pure happenstance to whatever you were exposed to first.
Is there a public count of how many challenges vs how many were rejected?
[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/07/requiring-judicial-rev...
I agree that it is a night and day comparison, the fact that the legality of this process is even argued in the courts is evidence of that, but national security letters are today still deeply problematic.
So stripping whataboutism, your argument is basically reducted to "the FBI accesses a source of info but that isn't bad because of oversight".