America won't arrest you on your vacation here just because you criticized the country on social media. I'd take American hegemony over Chinese hegemony any day of the week.
You can say, as a US citizen, that all this stuff doesn't affect you much. But I can tell you, from considerable first hand experience, that the average Chinese citizen says the same about China.
I can say that the surveillance doesn't affect me because it's almost unheard of for Americans to get arrested with evidence that the NSA collected. The NSA is not a law enforcement agency. In China arresting people based on data from surveillance is the norm.
Edit: I am mostly addressing the organize against it part. USA has far better free speech protections than China
Do you ? As an outsider it doesn't really look that way. After watching events and protest around BLM, suddenly all those rights have gotchas in them.
Watching USA protesters and Honkong protesters, and goverment respones to them, there were far more similarities than differences. (Well china was still worse, but not by as much as most USA people seem to think).
The biggest difference in USA and china at the moments is that in USA some Politicians still listen to people (if only mostly out of self interest)
Ask those who wanted to protest against recent disproportionate police actions and those who did and became targets.
"All the stuff" that was either started or expanded while he was VP. Yeah, sure he wants to tear it down.
Biden is not going to change anything NSA-related, do not delude yourself and do not mistake electioneering frenzy for policy.
He seems consistent on this issue. Prior to his stint as VP, he complained about metadata collection by the GWB administration. https://youtu.be/h2qgU8kJt-0
So the question is not whether Joe Biden ever grandstanded on the topic - I'm sure he did, as every politician would. The question is what he had done about it when he was Senator and VP - specific actions attributable to him? Because if he has been consistent to paying lip service to the issue while not doing anything in practice - it is prudent to expect the same consistency to extend into the future.
I told you in the GP post. The email metadata program was shut down, and the phone metadata collection was reduced.
> PRISM still exists,
PRISM does not collect Americans' data.
> The question is what he had done about it when he was Senator and VP - specific actions attributable to him?
Again, I told that to you.
You haven't told me anything in fact except that some things supposedly happened while Biden was a VP.
There was only one in the leaks. That one.
> how do you know there's no other programs
If there were any, Snowden would have leaked those instead of a program that had already been shut down.
> how do we know it actually was reduced and not just changed codename?
Because laws were changed, and oversight was added that showed how many metadata records the NSA requested from the telcos.
> how you know Biden personally had anything to do with shutting it down
Does it matter if he was personally in charge or if he delegated? Collection of Americans'metadata shrunk while he was VP.
Living in Europe I have the pleasure of hearing these kinds of naive comparisons on a regular basis. Somehow it's always "the US is basically China and/or Saudi Arabia".
It's exhausting having to explain to people who are seemingly only capable of operating with a binary black and white worldview that there is a massive difference between certain shades of grey.
Can you say for sure, that the phone will not be seized, imaged and/or bugged at the airport/border?
Anyways you are talking about differences in what they do with the data or the person to whom that data belongs and not contending the fact that tech companies from both the countries spy internationally.
See, that's what I'm trying to tell, What about 'Not in America'?
Before I proceed further, I want to categorically state that I don't intend to come off as supporting privacy violations by one country vs another; My argument over this entire thread has been that it sucks for someone not in any of these countries as they all spy on us and it's taken for granted in this kind of discussions.
That said,
>use a VPN. The NSA can't stop you if you really want privacy.
Because they have 'No logs' policy? Come on, don't be naive. Even the trillion dollar fruit company has been part of the program according to documents which hasn't been disputed.
>This is illegal in China, where every VPN must be state sponsored and monitored.
So you do agree that the Amercian VPN companies or any American company have double standards when it comes to China? Btw, almost every outsider in China installs a VPN to access content outside Great Firewall once they arrive, several U.S. services work without a VPN e.g. iMessage, Skype etc. I have heard of targeted deportation/arrests at airport, but never heard of random phone seizures at Airports.
Same advice, buy a VPN if you want the services that it provides.
>Because they have 'No logs' policy? Come on, don't be naive.
Contract with a VPN that is audited and resides in a legally favorable country. I hesitate to endorse any particular company, but they're out there. Maybe privacy just isn't convenient enough for you.
>So you do agree that the Amercian VPN companies or any American company have double standards when it comes to China?
What are you talking about?
>very outsider in China installs a VPN to access content outside Great Firewall once they arrive
You are allowed to do this at their law enforcement's mercy.
> several U.S. services work without a VPN
Surveillance wouldn't work very well if it made people quit using the services and network.
> I have heard of targeted deportation/arrests at airport, but never heard of random phone seizures at Airports.
I wonder why they don't feel the need to seize phones at airports. As an aside, I recall reading that the PRC forces Uighurs to install spying apps directly to their phones. That is, all the Uighurs who aren't in "Vocational Educational Camps" and have yet to flee to America, where the supposedly oppressive American surveillance state is a breath of fresh air.
This - >
>Same advice, buy a VPN if you want the services that it provides.
>You are allowed to do this at their law enforcement's mercy.
Do you consider secret courts to be in scope of this discussion.
Then there is this That and this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposition_Matrix
Yes. Secret courts are reasonable due process. Do you have an alternative method that wouldn't release damaging information?
Are you interested in talking about surveillance specifically or every talking point of the usual anti-American tirades?
You said
> If they wanted to intentionally examine your network traffic, that would require a court order.
I just gave you an example when that did not matter.
> Are you interested in talking about surveillance specifically or every talking point of the usual anti-American tirades?
Whenever you are willing to have an honest discussion rather than a blinkered and intentionally misleading cheerleading
Prove it.
Yes, independent review by a board or committee separate from the defense intelligence complex who will help determine if the information is actually damaging or if it's just some bullshit a midlevel staffer at the Pentagon determined is 'damaging.'
As an American, I am deeply disturbed by the complete absence of transparency of these programs to Congress and the American people. And honestly I'm not convinced that the people running these programs have any ability to see the forest for the trees, or if they're not just some D.C. automaton skilled enough at groupthink and not asking questions to get the tippity-top security clearance.
Is it a drooling idiot running the program? Dunno. Classified.
Their spying on Americans is reviewed by judges and courts. They get warrants for every american they spy on.
The senate intelligence committee may (behind closed doors and under the oath of secrecy) inquire about just about anything the intelligence community does.
The president may at his or her sole discretion declassify any information.
Haven't you heard, the first rule of conflict is "all warfare is deception"? Try running a state with zero secrets and see how far you get.
Those judges, and the members of the senate intelligence committee are most definitely not an independent committee. That's like calling the police commission an independent committee. Even if they were, how would we even know if they're not just rubberstamping stuff?
Congress is in the dark. Remember Niger?
"We don't know exactly where we're at in the world, militarily, and what we're doing. So John McCain is going to try to create a new system to make sure that we can answer the question (about) why we were there," he said. "We'll know how many soldiers are there, and if somebody gets killed there, that we won't find out about it in the paper." When Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer was asked later on "Meet the Press" about knowing whether there were troops in Niger, he responded, "No, I did not."
https://www.cnn.com/2017/10/23/politics/niger-troops-lawmake...
If they don't even know where we have troops doing mildly classified stuff, how much do you think they know about black programs that are totally off the books?
The president has thus far decided things like, 'huh, the Coronavirus is a lot worse than everyone thinks...in February...better not tell anyone about it and we should do absolutely nothing to prepare' classified. Great guy to have in charge of that.
Think about the people we're actually fighting wars against? Do you think elaborate deception has made a sliver of difference in any conflict fought by the United States in the past 60 years?
We need transparency and civilian oversight. I'm not afraid of an Afghan Taliban fighter knowing our super secret plan to spy on the planet. I am afraid of a defense intelligence complex that has shown zero hesitancy in the past to spy on Americans and is increasingly operating in the shadows with little oversight outside of the White House.
This whole system is not engineered for the benefit of the American people. It's a juggernaut of bureaucracy and secrecy that serves a defense and intelligence community that is pursuing god knows what.
Source on this?
>Those judges, and the members of the senate intelligence committee are most definitely not an independent committee.
What does independent committee mean to you? They are from entirely different branches of government. That's as independent as it gets.
The post you linked is from the Senate Armed Services committee which is not the legislative oversight for the NSA. Different people, different processes. Geriatric senators probably forgot we had troops in Nigeria because America has troops in untold dozens of countries. No one remembers the whole list.
If you think the Taliban is our biggest threat you should leave national security to the people who do it for a living.
I can say that there are only 11 judges listed as being on the FISA court, and I don't believe that 11 people can personally oversee every instance of the NSA conducting surveillance on all potential Americans of interest around the planet. Maybe they can. Who knows, it's classified.
Congress is a different branch than the presidency, doesn't mean Mitch McConnell is an independent check-and-balance on the authority of the president.
It's literally their job to be aware of that. They have a staff whose entire job it is to keep them aware of that. If they can't keep track, what's the difference between them and the congressional committee that's supposed to be keeping tabs on the NSA?
The people who do national security for a living are in a bubble that facilitates the construction of boogeymen. And if they can't give me any credible evidence as to the existence of said boogeymen without saying 'sorry, that's all classified,' then why should I believe otherwise?
Right now I'm supposed to be scared of China, but I personally see no evidence that I should be more worried about them than my own president who covered-up the threat from Coronavirus in February, and then tried to blame it all on the Chinese as a diversion. Looks to me like the Chinese were actually trying to warn us in February, while the President was trying to cover it up:
Clinical features of patients infected with 2019 novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China - January 24, 2020 https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
Clinical course and outcomes of critically ill patients with SARS-CoV-2 pneumonia in Wuhan, China: a single-centered, retrospective, observational study - February 24, 2020 https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2...
If the Taliban aren't a threat to U.S. national security, then why was the longest war in American history fought on Afghan soil? Isn't that where all those 9/11 hijackers were from, and the country that bankrolled them? If they weren't from Afghanistan why didn't we sanction or invade the country they were actually from, and that gladly bankrolled the operation? Is that classified too?
https://www.npr.org/2020/05/13/855611173/fbi-accidentally-re...
Oops... I guess it isn't anymore.
Regardless of legality.
> I'm very sure that you're wrong. Do you have any evidence that the NSA kidnaps and tortures people?
that NSA can get people tortured or killed without much difficulty.
You started with the claim that unlike China an US citizen is unlikely to get his/her privacy encroached on quoting all sorts of processes. I just gave examples where these processes didnt do much in preventing breaches of such encroachments. Add to that what we know is just a clouded view into the tip of the iceberg because of provisions of secrecy. If the clouded tip of the iceberg looks the way it does, it is not hard for someone not so deluded, or not so deprived of a full deck, to fill in what the rest of the iceberg could look like.
If you disagree show me the proof of
> Americans who are overseas plotting imminent terrorist attacks
Show me the oversight over Anwar Awlaki's assasination that went ahead despite the fact that he had never been charged with (let alone convicted of) any crime. Proof of oversight, if you please over the killing of his 16 year old son.
I can play the same game that you have been playing in asking nothing less than irrefutable proof that will stand in a public court. Hope you believe in upholding the same standards over yourself that seek in others.
If you cannot, then how is it different from other places where such proofs are not forthcoming after killings or incarcerations ?
It also links to another similar account a few days before that. And why would Egyptian activists make that up?
Plus, even if the NSA isn't regularly doing the kidnapping, torture, and killing themselves, they certainly help our other organizations do these things. Things like the disposition matrix, black sites, and locally with parallel construction all rely on their surveillance.
Too many unanswered questions. It's more likely she made it up because it gets people angry and that's what activists need to do.
If you have problems with other parts of our government, by all means criticize them and be an activist. Speak your mind and vote. Making up stuff about the NSA is intellectually lazy.
Personally, I agree with the other poster and view the NSA's collaboration as enough evidence, but had remembered seeing the Egypt thing last year.
One popular quote by Upton Sinclair comes to me mind.
America won't even let you enter the country if you, or somebody on your feeds, criticized it on social media [0]
People who are too vocal in their opposition to the US government, or just been in the wrong places at the wrong times, have been plenty known to be abducted into torture black sites [1], if not straight up killed by a drone strike because literal SKYNET [2] interpreted their meta-data [3] as that of a terrorist.
And none of that is even accounting for the reality that the US has the highest incarceration rate on the planet, so if there's a place you will most likely be arrested during your vacation, then that's gonna be the US.
But I guess it's easy to forget about these parts of US hegemony while pointing at China over "social credit scores" putting people on no-fly lists.
[0] https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/27/border-deny-entry-united-s...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_rendition
[2] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/02/the-n...
[3] https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2014/05/10/we-kill-people-base...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki
The difference between 'recruiter' and a guy who sent some emails to some people is unfortunately a distinction that is up to some dweeb with more top-secret security clearances than medals on a North Korean general.
I assume it's the same thing in China, they just have more dweebs that can disappear people.
>"According to U.S. government officials, as well as being a senior recruiter and motivator, he was centrally involved in planning terrorist operations for the Islamist militant group al-Qaeda"
We are better off with him dead. He was American, but his allegiance was to al Qaeda and he was planning to murder civilians.
Does your sense of morality and ethics end at the border, shouldn't these types of values be a bit more universal?
You and I have no evidence that he was anything other than a loudmouth who bagged on the U.S. on the web and responded to emails from anyone who sent them.
Remember when Saddam had those tractor-trailer biological weapons factories driving around Iraq ready to release clouds of Anthrax on American civilians? That was also based on classified information from a US government official.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2003-05-29/cia-confident-iraq-tr...
Completely fabricated.
"not enough evidence for me to believe it" said someone on HN with your handle.
Show us the evidence (a demand you seem to be fond of) and prove that in a public court, that's called due process. I will believe it then.