https://www.blankenship.io/essays/2020-07-13/
Doesn’t justify what they were doing, or make it legal, but it’s an important distinction when trying to reason about government surveillance programs.
A revolting citizenry can be potentially dangerous than a citizenry that is endlessly bickering amongst each other about the 'law'.
Relations with China were pretty cosy till they did a 180 around the second Bush administration and started all that Wolf Warrior diplomacy, 9 dotted line stuff, Hongkong crackdowns.......
Regarding Russia, nobody really cared at all till it was absolutely impossible to ignore. Putin seems to think that he needs the west as an enemy to bolster his standing and power. Just remember after starting the full scale invasion he proudly declared "I hope I will now be heard" or something to that effect. In Russian mass media the imperial project has long been clear and accepted.
No, relations with China were warm right up through the end of the Obama administration and into Trump's first term. That's why the first approach China took to the Biden administration was to hope for straightforward normalization of relations.
China started issuing 10-year visas to Americans under Obama. The Wolf Warrior movies, after which the policy is named, started coming out in 2015.
The same is largely true of Russia as well. Far from wanting the US as an enemy, Putin even inquired about joining NATO in the Clinton era. I'm sure there were some snickers about 'he doesn't get it, does he'? In fact the CIA initially felt Putin would be a terrible leader since he'd be unable to reign in Russia which was spiraling into chaos and mass criminality in the 90s. Their foresight there was about as accurate as usual.
Regarding Russia, people have cared since the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. The fear of communism and concerns about Russia grew until the red scare in the 1920s, through the cold war, and continues to do this day. There has never been a single point in your life when "nobody really cared at all" about Russia.
America's concerns over Russia died down a lot from what it was after the collapse of the USSR but never really went away. That said, if Putin hadn't been doing his best to fan the flames America would probably still be focused on the middle east as their new favorite boogeyman.
Have you been living under a rock?
That was USA scorched Vietnam. That was USA killing civilians in Iraq and Afganistan. That was USA overthrowing foreign goverments, including Ukrainian... And then it preached to Russia on what to do with neighboring states...
Or is that claim based on the election results, in a state where opposition leaders, journalists, war critics, or even simple lesbians get jailed for said “crimes”?
Yeah. And who doesn't support - went straight to gulag for 8-20 years. Fortunately, almost everyone there supports it, amazing unity.
They literally do.
(russia and china would love to have access to that data. so would a lot of other governments)
Now they want their toys back. This is why the push is so hard and coming from everywhere at once.
In my mind, it’s pretty simple: if you want to surveil someone, get an individualized warrant to access their devices and data. If they refuse or wipe their data, treat it like destroying evidence in a case and throw the book at them. There’s zero excuse for what law enforcement and intelligence agencies have done to our privacy rights since 9/11.
So, I'm keeping my stance of "They want their tools back, because they had them before".
Option 1: they operate a separate shard in that country and that shared is only accessible by that country. Companies like Apple, AWS, Cloudflare etc. have been doing it this way in China for a while now. Result: they can spy on the stuff in their country, but the only stuff in their country is their own stuff.
Option 2: no longer operate in an official capacity in that country. Have no people and no assets. Mostly works when the country is not a significant market. This usually means some things are only available grey market, black market or not at all. This is why certain products have lists of "supported countries" - it's not just ITAR stuff but also "we don't want to deal with their regime" stuff. Result: country gets nothing, no matter how loud they ask. Side-effect: you can't really risk your employees visiting such a country as they will be "leveraged".
nothing
the first precedence of not-draft law here was Cloud Act I think
through I would be surprised if China doesn't "de-facto" requires Chineese companies operating outside of China (including Subsidiaries) to cooperate with their secret service in whatever way they want
and if we go back to the "crypto wars" of the ~2000th then there is a lot of precedence of similar law _ideas_ by the US which where turned down
similar we can't say for sure that there aren't secret US court orders which already did force apple to do "something like that" for the FBI or similar, SURE there is a lot of precedence of Apple pushing back against backdoor when it comes to police and offline device encryption, but one thing is in the public and the other fully in secret with gag orders and meant for usage in secret never seeing the light of courts so while it's somewhat unlikely it would be foolish to just assume it isn't the case, especially if we go forward one or two years with the current government...
Anyway UK might realize that now they have left the US they have very little power to force US tech giants to do anything _in the UK_ not even speaking about regulation which is a direct attack on the sovereignty of other states to own/control/decide about their population(s data).
IMHO ignoring the US for a moment because they are in chaos the EU, or at least some key EU states should make a statement that a UK backdoor allowing UK to access EU citizen data would be classified as espionage and isn't permittable if Apple wants to operate in the EU (but formulated to make it clear it's not to put pressure on Apple but on the UK). Sadly I don't see this happening as there are two many politcans which want laws like that, too. Often due to not understanding the implications undermining encryption has on national security, industry espionage and even protection of democracy as a whole... Sometimes also because they are greedy corrupt lobbyist from the industry which produces mass surveillance tools.
The wild thing is that foreign companies actually do it. To avoid annoying the US, a lot of other governments ensure that the data is reported.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Account_Tax_Compliance...
It is completely routine for countries to exchange data on financial accounts [1]. The only aspect that makes FATCA somewhat unusual is that the US taxes US persons even when they are residents of other countries.
[1] https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/international-excha...
That is why, as a side effect, some refuse service to US citizens.
Realistically: Apple is a US company (with lots of foreign entanglements) with US leaders, and the US and UK are close allies with extradition treaties and the like. I'd expect the US government to put lots of pressure on Apple to prevent it from acting on such requests from Russia or China, and I wouldn't be surprised if Apple execs would get slapped with espionage charges if they didn't head the warnings (especially if they "provide data on UK minister's phones").
I think Apple might just have some leverage here, if they choose to exert it. Starmer's government would, at minimum become a laughingstock.
Hell, do we know whether Chucky Three uses an Android? Or would the royals get a secret exemption?
Want to fund some expensive grand program? Find a reason to fine U.S. companies.
