[Hizonner]

Up until recently, I would have reminded you that the US government (admittedly unlike the Chinese government) has no legal authority to order anybody to do anything like that. Not only that, but if it asked, it'd be well advised to ask nicely, because it also has no legal authority to demand that anybody keep such a request secret. And no, evil as it is, the "National Security Letter" power doesn't in fact cover anything like that.

Now I'm not sure legality is on-topic any more.

[whatthesimp]

> Up until recently, I would have reminded you that the US government (admittedly unlike the Chinese government) has no legal authority to order anybody to do anything like that.

I'm not sure how closely you've been following, but the US government has a long history of doing things they don't have legal authority to do.

[Ekaros]

Why would you need legal authority when you have whole host of legal tools you can use. Making life a difficult for anyone or any company is simple enough. Just by state finally doing their job properly for example.

[grafmax]

It really does seem like we’re simply supposed to root for one authoritarian government over another.

[nylonstrung]

My surveillance state is better than your surveillance state!

[nathan_douglas]

Oceania, Eastasia, or Eurasia. Pick one :)

[hobs]

It doesn't really matter when you have stuff like Quantum Intercept(iirc) where you can just respond faster to a browser request than the originator - inject the code yourself because its just an api request these days.