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The article overplayed the contrast and underplayed the comparison. China has civil rights organizations parallel to the ACLU, and in America civil rights activ

The article overplayed the contrast and underplayed the comparison. China has civil rights organizations parallel to the ACLU, and in America civil rights activists and journalists are routinely finding themselves charged with crimes, in prison or harassed. I myself have been harassed (followed, gaslit, personally surveilled, and threatened) by state police in America, for sharing Snowden documents and their contents. My mail between my relatives and I were opened. All subtle hints and threats: stop being outspoken. Following the state of the law with regard to providers and services in the United States, I think you've overemphasized the capability for companies to fight back, as the pressure from the state is incredible and at every front. Primarily, PR is used to emphasize that businesses are really on consumers' sides: that they'd like to not provide data and access. But in actuality, being a successful company at the scale you need to survive means working hand in hand with the US government. We saw how large ("trusted") brands worked hand-in-hand with government by the Snowden documents and we've watched it slip further since. > I hope Americans don't get cynical enough to discredit that we have more rights and they are worth fighting for, because it could always get far worse. We have the same rights worth fighting for that the Chinese have. Government does not give us rights. The rights are independent of government. Americans and Chinese have the same rights. Both governments are impeding on them. Washington DOES NOT give Americans more rights than the Chinese. Rights have never been something Washington can give. What you are seeing is Washington taking rights, and pointing fingers at the Chinese, telling you that they're taking more. You want to fight for rights? You can't fight the Chinese for your rights. You have to fight Washington for your rights.

adamsea 10y ago
> China has civil rights organizations parallel to the ACLU No, it doesn't, because the ACLU has a degree of power and legitimacy in the US which the Chinese government would not allow to any equivalent organization. The ACLU has actually won cases in court which effected a change in law and/or behavior. > I myself have been harassed (followed, gaslit, personally surveilled, and threatened) by state police in America, for sharing Snowden documents and their contents. My mail between my relatives and I were opened. All subtle hints and threats: stop being outspoken. Without minimizing the wrongness, illegality, or harm those things have done to you, I have to imagine that in China, a) Snowden documents would never have seen the light of day, and, b) If you had attempted to share something like that you would have been imprisoned without trial. As the parent poster said, the difference between some and none is significant. I do agree with the ultimate statement of you post, about fighting for rights.
- xnull2guest 10y ago
  > No, it doesn't, because the ACLU has a degree of power and legitimacy in the US which the Chinese government would not allow to any equivalent organization. The ACLU has actually won cases in court which effected a change in law and/or behavior. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weiquan_lawyers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weiquan_lawyers > I have to imagine that in China... a) Had Washington had its way the documents never would have seen the light of day. They broke international law to ground planes in search of Snowden. They blocked as much of the documents as they could from being shared. They spread rumors about malware on Wikileaks. They worked with the media industry to not cover the contents and to work on the messaging to the American people: "This is bulk collection, not mass surveillance." Their official and public statements on the contents and scope of the programs were repeatedly shown to be false. They passed a law legalizing and expanding authorities and passed this off to the public as their stopping the programs, while the media ran 24/7 news about Caitlyn Jenning. The UK infiltrated the Guardian at gunpoint and destroyed the documents. b) The laws are in place for exactly this. Snowden, had he been caught, would have been in military prison. His lawyers are arguing today the terms of a trial for him to come home, with senior members of our government calling for his execution. The US government under the Obama Justice Department has compromised on a secret jury-less trial in the Virginia legal subsystem (notable for prosecuting National Security cases, and siding with National Security over individual rights). Remember Chelsea Manning's court case? I don't.
  - pavlov 10y ago
    The very link you posted refers to the problems that human rights lawyers face in China. They are estimated to number only a few dozen, in a country of 1.3 billion citizens. (This info is right there in your link!) It's absurd to compare this environment to the ACLU. In 1986, Gorbachev released Andrei Sakharov from internal exile. I guess you would have been saying: "That's it, the West can stop harping about human rights in the Soviet Union, it's all equal now"...?
    - zhemao 10y ago
      And besides their small number, they are also often jailed and abused for taking on cases (mentioned in the article itself). There was a high profile case involving Chen Guancheng, who escaped house arrest and sought refuge in the US embassy. He was granted asylum and now lives in the US. To my knowledge, there has not been a case of an ACLU lawyer being jailed or harassed simply for taking on a case.
mattnewton 10y ago
I think we are in violent agreement. I think that both countries are on equally slippery slopes. I want to appeal to an American sense that this is something in our fiber, and civil liberties are as important to being American as baseball and apple pie.
- zhemao 10y ago
  They are on equally slippery slopes, but China is farther down the slope. The US has far more legal protections and better rule of law than China has ever had. And, crucially, America is a democracy with constitutionally protected free speech. American citizens have much greater ability to challenge the actions of their government than Chinese citizens do. I think it does a disservice to those defending civil liberties in the US to not recognize that the two countries' situations are vastly different.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
westiseast 10y ago
Right. You've been harassed by police, but here you are, still commenting on the open internet about what happened to you, and not locked in your house with your internet severed and having not seen a lawyer or your family members for 9 months. Thats the difference.

adamsea 10y ago

> China has civil rights organizations parallel to the ACLU No, it doesn't, because the ACLU has a degree of power and legitimacy in the US which the Chinese government would not allow to any equivalent organization. The ACLU has actually won cases in court which effected a change in law and/or behavior. > I myself have been harassed (followed, gaslit, personally surveilled, and threatened) by state police in America, for sharing Snowden documents and their contents. My mail between my relatives and I were opened. All subtle hints and threats: stop being outspoken. Without minimizing the wrongness, illegality, or harm those things have done to you, I have to imagine that in China, a) Snowden documents would never have seen the light of day, and, b) If you had attempted to share something like that you would have been imprisoned without trial. As the parent poster said, the difference between some and none is significant. I do agree with the ultimate statement of you post, about fighting for rights.

xnull2guest 10y ago
> No, it doesn't, because the ACLU has a degree of power and legitimacy in the US which the Chinese government would not allow to any equivalent organization. The ACLU has actually won cases in court which effected a change in law and/or behavior. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weiquan_lawyers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weiquan_lawyers > I have to imagine that in China... a) Had Washington had its way the documents never would have seen the light of day. They broke international law to ground planes in search of Snowden. They blocked as much of the documents as they could from being shared. They spread rumors about malware on Wikileaks. They worked with the media industry to not cover the contents and to work on the messaging to the American people: "This is bulk collection, not mass surveillance." Their official and public statements on the contents and scope of the programs were repeatedly shown to be false. They passed a law legalizing and expanding authorities and passed this off to the public as their stopping the programs, while the media ran 24/7 news about Caitlyn Jenning. The UK infiltrated the Guardian at gunpoint and destroyed the documents. b) The laws are in place for exactly this. Snowden, had he been caught, would have been in military prison. His lawyers are arguing today the terms of a trial for him to come home, with senior members of our government calling for his execution. The US government under the Obama Justice Department has compromised on a secret jury-less trial in the Virginia legal subsystem (notable for prosecuting National Security cases, and siding with National Security over individual rights). Remember Chelsea Manning's court case? I don't.
- pavlov 10y ago
  The very link you posted refers to the problems that human rights lawyers face in China. They are estimated to number only a few dozen, in a country of 1.3 billion citizens. (This info is right there in your link!) It's absurd to compare this environment to the ACLU. In 1986, Gorbachev released Andrei Sakharov from internal exile. I guess you would have been saying: "That's it, the West can stop harping about human rights in the Soviet Union, it's all equal now"...?
  - zhemao 10y ago
    And besides their small number, they are also often jailed and abused for taking on cases (mentioned in the article itself). There was a high profile case involving Chen Guancheng, who escaped house arrest and sought refuge in the US embassy. He was granted asylum and now lives in the US. To my knowledge, there has not been a case of an ACLU lawyer being jailed or harassed simply for taking on a case.

mattnewton 10y ago

I think we are in violent agreement. I think that both countries are on equally slippery slopes. I want to appeal to an American sense that this is something in our fiber, and civil liberties are as important to being American as baseball and apple pie.

zhemao 10y ago
They are on equally slippery slopes, but China is farther down the slope. The US has far more legal protections and better rule of law than China has ever had. And, crucially, America is a democracy with constitutionally protected free speech. American citizens have much greater ability to challenge the actions of their government than Chinese citizens do. I think it does a disservice to those defending civil liberties in the US to not recognize that the two countries' situations are vastly different.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

westiseast 10y ago

Right. You've been harassed by police, but here you are, still commenting on the open internet about what happened to you, and not locked in your house with your internet severed and having not seen a lawyer or your family members for 9 months. Thats the difference.