[ztratar]

> "I don’t really see how the firewall relates to surveillance in this way."

Really? One of the Great Firewall's primary use cases is to prevent data that could be used for surveillance to leave the nation.

China prohibits all sorts of data from leaving through the Great Firewall, such as telemetry.

> "The US is the global leader in surveillance as far as I’m aware."

We are definitely the leader when it comes to foreign surveillance. When it comes to domestic, however, China is easily winning. They don't even hide it -- they require practically all interesting data to be available for their use by law.

[TaylorAlexander]

Doesn’t the US literally require huge amounts of data to be kept by corporations while also ensuring that through National Security Letters they can get what they need any time? Hillary Clinton actually campaigned on expanding “public private partnerships” for “data security”. She wanted to make it easier for corporations to share bulk data with the government without reprocussions.