[renewiltord]

I wondered that too and I concluded that it's because the threat model is different.

* China spying will steal your data and identity so the safety of your money and assets will be at risk. Your photos may be sold, your credit cards may be stolen, etc.

* Five Eyes spying will hurt you if you're non-normative. Say you're a casual drug user or perform low scale criminality. Or say you're doing a thing that's legal now but illegal later.

Presumably there's the idea that China could blackmail you but I have a hard time believing anyone would go for that over just letting their naked pics on the Internet.

So the Five Eyes spying is probably harmless to someone totally normative. The China spying is probably harmful to them.

For the non-normative, dark-web peer to peer Bitcoin user who is buying LSD, the China spying is probably better.

[Daho0n]

You must be in the second category if you think Huawei will steal credit cards and rob you.

[renewiltord]

Yeah, I was eliding all the pieces as to how to get there. I think they're more likely to have unpunished rogue employees, I think they're more likely to have poor security practices, and so on and so forth.

A friend of mine was on the team that investigated the Twitter 'breach' that got those Saudi activists disappeared. Through personal experience I find it easy to believe that technique would have been more effective on a Chinese company but since I cannot communicate that experience and since you don't share it, I can accept that our views must diverge.

And yes, I'm also a drug-using dark-web crypto user. Had to keep that one quiet from the investigator friend, eh?

[neolog]

Illegal behavior is hardly the only reason the FBI targets people.

[renewiltord]

I picked "non-normative" intentionally.