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Comment by thisisnotauser | Hacker News Reader

I understand that people who don't work in intelligence can have a difficult time recognizing risk, and often don't really understand the war other countries don't work the way the US does with the rule of law, but these are very much not baseless allegations. These are not even historical misbehavior. These companies explicitly and intentionally support and perform intelligence actions on behalf of their countries' intelligence services. Facebook and Google absolutely do not.

Kaspersky has been very credibly linked to Russian intelligence:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaspersky_and_the_Russian_gove...

And Huawei has been very credibly linked to Chinese intelligence:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Huawei

There is often an attempt to equate these behaviors with compliance with court-order subpoenas, but they are not the same.

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American companies absolutely do aid in intelligence gathering. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A for an example

I swear, people would equivocate bicycle accidents to plane crashes if it suited their narrative.

In 2022:

1,105 deaths related to bicycles vs 357 airplane related deaths. Depending on the metric you choose you can argue that either one is more deadly.

So yes, people here would do that.

This is actually a really great example, I wish I had included it in my original post.

Here, in response to a very public failure of our security apparatus, the US Congress passed a draconian law allowing the US government to do the kinds of bad things that Russia and China do routinely. When the public realized this, they made it clear that there is a limit to the power of the government, and that behavior was very quickly stopped. Forever.

The idea that there is a limit to the power of the government, and that the general public can enforce that limit, is what makes America different than China and Russia. That difference is foundational to our Constitution, and I think it is a very good thing.

> When the public realized this, they made it clear that there is a limit to the power of the government, and that behavior was very quickly stopped. Forever.

My memory is hazy on the details and Wikipedia might be wrong, but (1) didn't the lawsuits against the perceived perpetrators (NSA, AT&T, etc) fail and (2) is it also not true, that not only was "Patriot Act" not quickly repealed, the sunset provisions were extended throughout the 2000s and 2010s?

But nothing was done to Room 641A? What imaginary limits are you talking about? All the lawsuits went nowhere.

I'm all for the TikTok ban but listening to your last argument a reasonable opponent might notice that:

1. You assume others play dirty by default, even though we never caught them red-handed. Not necessarily unreasonable, but see 2.

2. You assume we play fair even when we are caught red-handed. You rationalize it with "it only goes to show this was the exception and look what happened after". Spoiler alert, nothing happened after, neither the courts nor public opinion shit it down.

You have to admit these two are a little inconsistent to say the least.

Last I checked NSLs didn't require a court order, not even one from a secret one with zero effective accountability.

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