The United States has emerged as the largest investor in commercial spyware—a global industry that has enabled the covert surveillance of journalists, human rights defenders, politicians, diplomats, and others, posing grave threats to human rights and national security.
The irony is I remember growing up with numerous stories about how expression is locked down in China and everything there is surveilled and if you speak poorly against the government you’ll get arrested etc. And thank goodness we are free in America to express ourselves even if it’s against the government because, my gosh, I might not like what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it!
And as if with no sense of irony and not even a remote bit of critique, all those stories about surveillance in China (true or not, I don’t know) were actually true, are currently true, or are becoming true here in the USA. And in many cases they’re just sold as commodities back to us e.g. ring doorbell cameras.
And a final thought: the USA used to be able to justify many of its foreign interferences on a sort of moral high ground, including freedom of expression and all that. That mask was slipping but now with Trump2 seems to have just fallen off. The pretense has given away to crass might makes right international relations. I consider the USA becoming a hyper surveilled state to be part of this story.
That mask was slipping but now with Trump2 seems to have just fallen off. The pretense has given away to crass might makes right international relations. I consider the USA becoming a hyper surveilled state to be part of this story.
the USA has always been like this and the only reason why they don’t like him is that he never bothered with the mask.
Yeah, because being crass is the ONLY reason to not like trump. 🙄
Cheaper than to rely on the NSA because people have terrible privacy practices anyway?
I just want to ask on behalf of people who don’t care about this, “why should I care about this”?
Because every time I bring up how much we’re being spied one by the government or Amazon or Google, et al, people just shrug it off. At best, they’ll admit it’s a problem - for people who should be worried about it. Meaning, “I’ve got nothing to hide”. If nothing else, Americans lack (or chose to reject) the basic concept of a shared society. If there’s a threat that the government is spying on people, we believe it’s the “other” people, not “us”.
Threats to our privacy is largely hypothetical for the majority of people. I’d even argue that the whole premise of privacy is no longer what it was just 15-20 years ago. I’ve even had people argue with me that they ‘want’ to be tracked so the ads they see are relevant to them.
So, I could see some Americans read this story and be in full support of this. They believe in a spy state as a means of protection. Ironically, these are also often the same people flying “Don’t Tread On Me” flags.
That’s why I am moving away from all US services, selfhosting and well vetted European services are the only viable way forward.
well vetted European services are the only viable way forward
Well vetted in that context might mean audited by 3rd parties that can show that even the services themselves do not have access to the data thanks to E2EE, HE, etc.
