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governments monitor all major companies... including the US government (PRISM is pretty old now, so we can assume that they monitor others by now: https://en.wi

governments monitor all major companies... including the US government (PRISM is pretty old now, so we can assume that they monitor others by now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program) ). So if the traffic is not end-to-end encrypted, assume that they can view your traffic. Sometime they play on words and say that end-to-end means from customer to cloud... but the cloud should not have the key.

ethanbond 6y ago
Not all governments are equal. Cut out this whaddaboutism. Edit: When I replied, OP was simply “governments monitor all major companies... including the US government”
- frabbit 6y ago
  S/he is not saying all governments are equal in all respects. As far as we know only the Chinese, Russians and the 5-Eyes have the technical capacity to monitor us all and have been caught out doing it. So yes, you are correct: not all governments are equal, but the US and Chinese are similar in their practical totalitarian capacities.
  - IAmWorried 6y ago
    In the US system you are free to criticize the government. In the Chinese and Russian systems you are not. That alone tells me all I need to know about who I want scooping up my data.
    - frabbit 6y ago
      Freedom from surveillance facilitates criticism of the government. Do away with that and you end up with something like Russia or China.
    - YarickR2 6y ago
      Have you tried to criticize government in Russia ? Have you tried to criticize it in the US ? If not , then how could you compare these cases ?
    - coronadisaster 6y ago
      but being in the US, I don't really care if a foreign government looks at my social media (what are they going to do?)
  - eeZah7Ux 6y ago
    No, saying "governments monitor all major companies" can be an easy dismissal of any privacy concern. Governments are just human organizations. They have different levels of rapaciousness, resources, skills, corruption... Even if they were all the same, it does not makes it acceptable. Equally, software and services can have excellent security or be terrible.
- laumars 6y ago
  Whataboutism is usually done to defend something by making it look better in comparison but what the OP was arguing is that we should be pursuing end to end encrypted solutions exclusively because it’s not just the Chinese government who are doing the snooping. ie he’s not defending Zoom nor the Chinese government but suggesting the complaint against Zoom/China doesn’t go far enough
  - seppin 6y ago
    If the company itself is compromised, e-2-e doesn't matter.
  - frabbit 6y ago
    Exactly. Assume that governments and large companies can and will spy on you and act accordingly. Do not get suckered into some simplistic nationalistic narrative in which "our" side is good.
    - Veen 6y ago
      There's two problems with that line of thought. First, "our side" is not good but it is better. Notwithstanding the current unpleasantness, the US government isn't locking up and "reeducating" hundreds of thousands of its own citizens. Second, good or bad, it is our side and the CCP is the other side: only an ethically and intellectually challenged person offers tacit support for the "other side" because their own side fails some specious purity test.
      - frabbit 6y ago
        the US government isn't locking up and "reeducating" hundreds of thousands of its own citizens. Discuss.
        Veen 6y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_re-education_camps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_re-education_camps > As of 2018, it was estimated that the Chinese authorities may have detained hundreds of thousands, perhaps a million, Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and other ethnic Turkic Muslims, Christians as well as some foreign citizens such as Kazakhstanis, who are being held in these secretive internment camps which are located throughout the region. In May 2018, Randall Schriver of the United States Department of Defense repeated claims that "at least a million but likely closer to three million citizens" were imprisoned in detention centers in a strong condemnation of the "concentration camps"
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- dang 6y ago
  Please don't post this sort of unsubstantive and generic comment. It makes discussion more predictable and much less interesting. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20generic%20discussion&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... Also, the whataboutism trope is an example of canned arguments that don't belong in HN threads. One should respond either to the specifics of an argument, or downvote/flag a comment as appropriate, or just not respond. I wrote more on this elsewhere in the thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23481335 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23481335.
  - ethanbond 6y ago
    The original comment was essentially, “the US does this too.” That is the comment attempting to constrain the conversation by generalizing it beyond meaning.
dang 6y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23481161 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23481161.

ethanbond 6y ago

Not all governments are equal. Cut out this whaddaboutism. Edit: When I replied, OP was simply “governments monitor all major companies... including the US government”

frabbit 6y ago
S/he is not saying all governments are equal in all respects. As far as we know only the Chinese, Russians and the 5-Eyes have the technical capacity to monitor us all and have been caught out doing it. So yes, you are correct: not all governments are equal, but the US and Chinese are similar in their practical totalitarian capacities.
- IAmWorried 6y ago
  In the US system you are free to criticize the government. In the Chinese and Russian systems you are not. That alone tells me all I need to know about who I want scooping up my data.
  - frabbit 6y ago
    Freedom from surveillance facilitates criticism of the government. Do away with that and you end up with something like Russia or China.
  - YarickR2 6y ago
    Have you tried to criticize government in Russia ? Have you tried to criticize it in the US ? If not , then how could you compare these cases ?
  - coronadisaster 6y ago
    but being in the US, I don't really care if a foreign government looks at my social media (what are they going to do?)
- eeZah7Ux 6y ago
  No, saying "governments monitor all major companies" can be an easy dismissal of any privacy concern. Governments are just human organizations. They have different levels of rapaciousness, resources, skills, corruption... Even if they were all the same, it does not makes it acceptable. Equally, software and services can have excellent security or be terrible.
laumars 6y ago
Whataboutism is usually done to defend something by making it look better in comparison but what the OP was arguing is that we should be pursuing end to end encrypted solutions exclusively because it’s not just the Chinese government who are doing the snooping. ie he’s not defending Zoom nor the Chinese government but suggesting the complaint against Zoom/China doesn’t go far enough
- seppin 6y ago
  If the company itself is compromised, e-2-e doesn't matter.
- frabbit 6y ago
  Exactly. Assume that governments and large companies can and will spy on you and act accordingly. Do not get suckered into some simplistic nationalistic narrative in which "our" side is good.
  - Veen 6y ago
    There's two problems with that line of thought. First, "our side" is not good but it is better. Notwithstanding the current unpleasantness, the US government isn't locking up and "reeducating" hundreds of thousands of its own citizens. Second, good or bad, it is our side and the CCP is the other side: only an ethically and intellectually challenged person offers tacit support for the "other side" because their own side fails some specious purity test.
    - frabbit 6y ago
      the US government isn't locking up and "reeducating" hundreds of thousands of its own citizens. Discuss.
      - Veen 6y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_re-education_camps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_re-education_camps > As of 2018, it was estimated that the Chinese authorities may have detained hundreds of thousands, perhaps a million, Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and other ethnic Turkic Muslims, Christians as well as some foreign citizens such as Kazakhstanis, who are being held in these secretive internment camps which are located throughout the region. In May 2018, Randall Schriver of the United States Department of Defense repeated claims that "at least a million but likely closer to three million citizens" were imprisoned in detention centers in a strong condemnation of the "concentration camps"
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
dang 6y ago
Please don't post this sort of unsubstantive and generic comment. It makes discussion more predictable and much less interesting. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20generic%20discussion&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... Also, the whataboutism trope is an example of canned arguments that don't belong in HN threads. One should respond either to the specifics of an argument, or downvote/flag a comment as appropriate, or just not respond. I wrote more on this elsewhere in the thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23481335 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23481335.
- ethanbond 6y ago
  The original comment was essentially, “the US does this too.” That is the comment attempting to constrain the conversation by generalizing it beyond meaning.

dang 6y ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23481161 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23481161.