I mean.... the govt can check whatever they want on the WeChat logs. And the populace is pretty accepting of this for security reasons (if you aren’t going off the “government can be corrupt and abuse it’s powers” principle its actually kinda hard to make the privacy argument!)
The thing is, this is not some hypothetically argument, but governments ARE corrupt and abuse their powers.
Even in our awesome democratic western systems. In china much more.
And that the general chinese population is used to it and therefore does not mind so much, is just that they are used to it.
It is different because in China I doubt there would have been any investigative reporting about the government and AT&T.
And while AT&T doesn’t seem to have done this, other companies such as Apple have enacted privacy measures which directly contravene the stated wishes of the government - but which are legal.
In China, I believe the way it works is, whatever the government wants becomes legal. The US is far from perfect but the rule of law exists here to some degree.
One of the biggest and more interesting difference is that the US government wants to keep these things secret and investigative reporting finds them.
In China, they want this information public because they want people to know that they know and self regulate - Panopticon.
The cynic in me looks at the US as a country controlled by companies while China is a country that controls companies. I don't know if it makes that much of a difference any more now that companies are almost the same size as countries.
The only optimal solution for the little guy is complete privacy, or complete transparency, where everyone has equal access to all information. Complete privacy is evidently not achievable, therefore the only option left is complete transparency.
Either way, the current reality of some lucky individuals having all the access to everyone’s information, whether it’s Chinese government or companies or US government or companies is the worst situation to be in if you have little power, i.e. 99.9999999% of people who aren’t billionaires/nation state level diplomats.
First hand living experience in a communist, and then authoritarian post-communist, country.
And before you say not all communist are alike and you can't generalize… yeah no, they are quite alike and you can generalize. Anyone who lived in any of them knows exactly what guanxi and other social concepts mean, the cultures are remarkably cookie-cutter.
Americans, and people living in American colonies, also have first-hand experience with American imperialism. I'm not sure why you think your experience trounces theirs?
Because "communism" is both an economic and a political ideology, while "capitalism" is only an economic one.
And before the nitpicking starts, I'm well aware that monied interests can influence democratic politics. That does not make an economic system a political system. It would be like calling democracy an economic system.
Except there is very much a difference. Being vulnerable to government pressure and being outright owned by a government are completely different things. Conflating these two is disingenuous and ignoring reality.
I've come to believe that most governments are inept when it comes to the management, security and general quality of their software.
With the government holding so much critical information, it seems a very obvious and valuable target for hackers.