casraso

This is why I am puzzled when people say 'you should fight your battles in the courts, not through protests'. It has always been about who can afford better lawyers, who can win the war of attrition, and a whole lot of luck along the way. Quite a few articles have showed up on HN the past week that reinforce this.

What does any of that have to do with surveillance?

I disagree with your premise entirely. I'm not sure a single 'check and balance' exists that can keep surveillance under control. It has an inherent propensity for abuse. There is no amount of bureaucracy or red tape that will make mass surveillance a benevolent force.

What is a specific example of such a process, check, and/or balance that the united states has that china does not?

Americans like to think they are immune to propaganda, or that for some reason other countries produce more of it than they do. What I have observed as someone not living in china or america is that they are roughly on equal footing and produce about as much deceptive trash as any other country, my own included. This means you will have a lot of americans answering your question by saying that america does less surveillance, not understanding after all the years of pledging allegiance to the flag and having armed police in their schools, that they are very very similar to china and it would be naive to assume they are not being watched as much.

It is also unlikely they even know what happens in china to a good extent because china itself is not very communicative; they still report the same covid stats since march, for example, and their government websites are full of broken links. It is hard for me to get accurate info on china even from news sites, I wouldn't trust what most people say.

All that said I think China is worse, but Americans would have you believe the difference is gigantic.