Everyone is spying on eachother and we are not safe from that, despite what is said. I’m more afraid of the NSA having far reaching powers to spy on their own citizens than I am of China hacking into the NSA
We can argue about which country has the worst spying record, but there's a fundamental difference between a country where you can be imprisoned for years for merely sharing a web post that is critical of the government and one where you can stand in front of the White House with signs calling the president an idiot racist and nothing bad happens. Genuine rule of law and a truly independent judiciary make all the difference. I say this as someone who is quite fond of China and travel there annually.
The US routinely makes a mockery of the rule of law, just look at all the people denied legal process, abducted and taken to black sites for torture during the 'War on Terror'.
The US is not some shining beacon of justice and fairness, it's just as corrupt and capricious as all the rest.
No it’s not just as corrupt as all the rest. I agree there is corruption, but to equate corruption in all countries is bogus. Nuance is important in this case.
To put some data to this discussion, in Transparency International’s 2018 rankings, the US comes in 22nd least corrupt, and China comes in at number 87: https://www.transparency.org/cpi2018
I see your point, I strayed into rhetoric there somewhat.
On the topic of US corruption, it will be interesting to see the outcome of the Mueller investigation. I suspect most of those at the top will get away with it with scant repercussion. At least, that's what usually happens.
> just look at all the people denied legal process
Relying on a few references - precisely because it's not common - in a country of 330 million, does not support your claim. The reason cases of denied legal process get so much attention in the US, is because they're rare. The reason a million detained Muslims in China isn't causing an uproar in the Muslim world, is because they know China has no protections for human rights and it does no good to protest. Contrast that with the protests regarding Abu Ghraib. Why was that an massive, international embarrassment for the US, if it's just the same as China?
> it's just as corrupt and capricious as all the rest
Saying it, does not make it so. The fact that that is incorrect, is precisely why so many people - of such diverse backgrounds - want to immigrate to the US and have for the past century. Much of Latin America would immediately immigrate if given the option, because of how corrupt the majority of Latin America is (see: how low Latin American nations rank [1]).
The US routinely ranks high among nations on the quality of its justice system, the independence of its judicial system and its protection of property rights. That has been true for a very long time.
Transparency International ranks China #88 on corruption and Russia #138, to name two prominent examples.
Denmark is ranked #1 for lowest corruption, New Zealand is #2. The US ranks comparable to France and Japan. So your premise is there's no difference between the US, Denmark, New Zealand, France, Japan, China and Russia - since everyone is just as corrupt and capcricious as all the rest.
Of course that's not true. The US is a liberal democracy with vast protections for human rights. China and Russia, as contrasts, are regressive dictatorships with few protections for human rights.
While rare in the number of people directly affected by the US abducting and torturing them, the fact that it was permitted and encouraged by the country's leadership says a lot about the attitude of the US to human rights and legal process.
Anyway, the US has more systemic problems in how it affords legal process to the accused. The widespread racism that still permeates the country's institutions. The misuse of plea bargaining, which seems almost designed to deny proper legal process to the accused, unless they're wealthy enough to challenge it. Even in sentencing, the US still uses the death penalty, something that most other countries, especially highly-developed countries, have abolished.
You are in extremely shaky grounds given you are comparing Chinese communist regime is US' in terms of human rights and legal processes. Who are you kidding here? You won't even know when people disappear in China and the legal process is there is completely driven by the govt vs. the country having an independent judiciary. Look at how Apple denied FBI to give it access to their device and took the case straight to SCOTUS. Are you really serious that such a thing can happen in China? And human rights - I feel the fact that I have to explain this tells me that I am talking to someone who is ignorant and will not agree to my point regardless of what I say.
If the NSA spies on your text messages as opposed to the CCP, you (and your family) are much less likely to be imprisoned, tortured, or killed on the basis of your religious or political beliefs.
(a) Social credit system which centres around facial recognition of the entire population ?
(b) Reeducation camps where tens of millions of Muslims, Uyghurs, dissidents, journalists etc are sent to based on surveillance of their online activity ?
(c) Free reign to do whatever they want unfettered by any judicial or political oversight mechanisms ?
(d) Companies and the government stealing intellectual property on an industrial scale ?
The answer to all of those is no. US is a democracy with checks and balances provided by Congress, Journalists and the Courts. China has none of these.
Pretty much answer to all of this is yes - terrorist blacklists powered by cameras and surveillance in public, Guantanamo Bay with prisoners without due process and oversight, police killing black people without punishment and military industrial complex lobbying established government all exist.
From the outside, USA with its more noticably overbearing propaganda or China with its disregard for US set morality don't seem that hugely different. These moral arguments from US side are laughable for anyone who was sitting on the other side of diplomatic table.
Lesson here is that we (as in europeans) need to get rid of dependency on both of those nations for core services.
The US isn't perfect, but the events you're talking about are in no way comparable to imprisoning a million Uighurs in camps. Or executing Falun Gong practitioners and harvesting their organs.
It's not, but putting up a moral argument based on "hey, we're SLIGHTLY less evil than China because the scale of same crimes are smaller!" is still a bit wierd.
You can argue many other avenues (like having better quality of life if we stay aligned with US vs. China), but doing moral handwringing about Huawei after Snowden's leaks and failings of current US government is a bit hypocritical.
As it stands right now I actually feel the US has a much stronger influence on Europe, which is what I'm concerned with. Not anything those two countries do at home. Considering how there's a backdoor revealed in Cisco products every other day I already know who I don't want to supply our 5G infrastructure.
> But if your choice is between being spied on by the US or by China, why would you prefer China?
My only argument here would be that choosing China means we're choosing equipment where everyone involved knows that due diligence must be made to keep spying out and communication channels secured. I feel like this is not done enough when using US equipment and has exposed us to too much risk, considering the increasing hostility of current US government and its also increasing push to leverage spying to attack our companies.
I wouldn't. I think they're both a bad choice. It's just that the media seems to exclusively focus on huawei. And I can somewhat understand the American media doing that, but it's no different here. We've had like what, three Cisco backdoors in the last couple weeks, but who besides tech gave a shit? Actually, there isn't anything published yet that would suggest huawei products contain any. Nothing besides "they're evil commies so it must be true"
And I mean, we even do have European businesses in that sector but it seems we're not even trying.. Unfortunately.
The big difference between U.S/Cisco and China/Huawei is that in the U.S., the government broke into Cisco's systems without their help or consent. In contrast, it is largely understood that Huawei freely assists and cooperates with the Chinese government. The combination of a major tech provider with a powerful government provides too much temptation for abuse.
> [...] is that in the U.S., the government broke into Cisco's systems without their help or consent.
That's what they claim and given the repercussions, both legally and commercially, for admitting to willingly giving the NSA all the access they want or deliberately planting backdoors, it's not all that hard to see why they'd be lying about this. Saying that it was without their help or consent is the only sensible choice they had / have.
> In contrast, it is largely understood that Huawei freely assists and cooperates with the Chinese government.
The only "proof" of that are statements from the US government. The very organization with a decades long track record of global mass surveillance, among other things.
Doesn't really take a leap of imagination that this is more about holding back a successful Chinese company in favor of something more "controllable" than it is about Huawei being an actual security risk. After all, we have a new Cisco backdoor like what, every other week? Whereas proof for those alleged Huawei backdoors has yet to materialize and that is with GCHQ having inspected Huawei's equipment and source code for more than 8 years now.
If you ask me, this just boils down to anti-China propaganda from the US. Which doesn't mean that we should simply trust Huawei, but in the absence of any compelling evidence we Europeans are better off policing them - the GSMA for example wants a Europe-wide equipment-testing organization for suppliers like Huawei - rather than banning them outright.
> > It's like saying a government backed army and a guy with a gun are the same because they can both shoot people.
> This however qualifies for that title, since you're probably underestimating China if you're comparing them with a single person with a gun.
You totally missed the analogy. Here, China/US are the armies, and Huawei/Cisco are just some folks with guns. When governments intervene, they bring an enormous amount of resources that even large companies cannot compete with.
You're pretty much now relativizing based on scale. When I get locked up and harassed without any kind of due process by an American customs official (because economic ties require me to travel to US), I really don't care what China does. And based on my few last trips, the Americans have been significantly more hostile to me on the border than the Chinese.
No, it's not just about who's spying on you - it's about who will have the ability to take down your infrastructure when push comes to shove. Chinese technology in our critical infrastructure or defense systems is obvious attack surface.
The difference is that the NSA doesn't have far reaching powers to spy on US citizens (or foreign citizens in the US), while China has repeatedly hacked the US.
Everyone is spying on eachother and we are not safe from that, despite what is said. I’m more afraid of the NSA having far reaching powers to spy on their own citizens than I am of China hacking into the NSA