[skippyboxedhero]

Compel? I am confused, all data in China is held in datacentres which the state has full access to, that is the terms of their operation and why some big tech US companies didn't want to operate in China. They don't need to "compel" anyone, the CCP has people at every large company supervising employees, and they already have full access to your data.

I am always completely baffled by these comments that not only get basic facts wrong but appear unable to conceive of a situation where the everything is subordinate to the state.

There is no negotiation, there is no due process, you give access to everything before you start or you can't operate.

[reverius42]

Isn't this essentially true in the US too though? The feds can show up at your data center with a National Security Letter and demand access at gunpoint. And you have to give it to them, because guns, and you can't ever tell anyone about it because that's what it says in the National Security Letter and also because guns.

[handle584]

Your reply already shows the difference. In US you have the default expectation of privacy, until the feds get their eyes on you. Meanwhile in China the default expectation is no privacy, exactly as OP argued.

This system in action is best demonstrated during the lock-down period of COVID, when any random dude who contracted the virus would immediately have their personal life for the previous week/month published nationwide to the hour, and those who have overlap will immediately get a 14 day lock-down at home.

I have not seen surveillance done with such ease and breath elsewhere. And local PD already have access to such info, and there are scandals where police sell such info for profit.

[svachalek]

Is it so different in the US? These are just the surveillance we know about, and they're not openly telling us about these, they're actively fighting public knowledge of such programs:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surveillance

[Giefo6ah]

What would be the practical difference between an order from a party cadre in a private firm and a national security letter?

[WarmWash]

A legitimate legal system with judges who have no obligation to anyone or anything besides the constitution first, and laws second.

[edelhans]

And what makes you think that the US still has such a system?

[myko]

True that it is collapsing which is sad but it does, in part, still function. We are the proverbial frog in the pot.

[inigyou]

Neither of them has that

[reverius42]

Post-Snowden, thinking that the US national security apparatus is subordinate to judges and the Constitution is naive and uninformed.