[myopenid]

> It leaks like a sieve. I've seen it first hand (in semiconductor industry).

There is this thing called knowledge transfer, and you do this when you change jobs. Are you suggesting that the employee work in the same company indefinitely?

> well...then the US should block all Chinese services from exploiting users[1] and their data

Which is exactly what China is doing to you.

[jjeaff]

The US requires due process where companies like Apple can (and do) fight the government in court where a judge must decide whether the request is lawful/constitutional. Can the same be said for the CCP? And even if such a court exists in the CCP, if a company did fight a data request from the CCP, would the executives then "disappear" never to be seen again or perhaps disappear and then show up months later apologizing profusely for being so wrong in not following the wishes of the CCP?

[DiogenesKynikos]

That's the ideal, but the reality is that the NSA was collecting large amounts of information on nearly all Americans for years, and the public was completely oblivious to it.

A secret court issued nearly 100% of requested warrants. Some of the warrants that have come to light were blatantly unconstitutional, but because the entire system was hidden from the public, nobody could complain. Even now, legally challenging this surveillance is almost impossible, because nobody can prove standing - the list of surveillance targets is secret after all.

The very existence of this system was secret. It wasn't democratically legitimized. Nobody voted for the system, and the voters were kept in the dark about the system's existence.

This isn't to say that China and the US are identical. They're bad in different ways. You'll be spied on in both countries, but you have legal avenues to protect yourself from imprisonment/etc. in the US. Then again, China doesn't drone strike its own citizens abroad, as far as we know.