Right, I meant is it allowed by Chinese law to NOT spy for the government. As I understand it, to be allowed to operate in China as a Chinese company, you are under the obligation to provide any information you collect to the gov't upon request. Is that not the case?
You guys are familiar with the Snowden disclosures and how all telecom companies and very likely all major tech companies are spying for the US government right?
At this point, this is table stakes for big tech and it's completely anti-democratic. China may have a very good domestic dragnet but clearly it's playing catch up compared to the foreign intelligence assets the USG (and five eyes) has.
If you're going to cite Snowden, please be accurate.
Remember that one of the leaks was that the NSA tapped unencrypted Google backhaul in transit without Google's knowledge.
There's a difference between panopticon fearmongering and citing specific information we should be wary of. The former leads to apathy. The latter leads to action.
That was ATT. It (and all the other exposed operations) hardly support the statement that "all telecom companies and very likely all major tech companies are spying for the US government".
The US defense and intelligence apparatuses have been deeply intertwined with private enterprise for many decades. This is a matter of historical fact. But I totally understand if it's more comfortable for you to believe that now things are different despite the fact that no one was ever held to account for what happened in the past.
Right, that's why I said "very likely" instead of "proven". However, at the point it's pretty clear the tech companies are all competing for pentagon contracts (e.g. Project Maven, JEDI, etc) so the 2013 information has significant potential to be dated.
Thinking America's largest monopolies and America's government and foreign policy are at odds over more than superficial things is probably not an accurate view of the world. America uses our corporations to advance nebulously defined "national security interests" and corporations use the government to get rich(er).
Google publishes a transparency report with aggregate information on government requests for user data, and regularly challenges requests to reduce their scope. To pretend that this is the same as China is a joke.
Splitting hairs here, but the wording of your question gives the impression that one could choose not to collect any data and then be free of said obligations, but I don't think that's the case. Does anyone know?
There is a difference between being required to collect data that they wouldn't otherwise need for a legitimate business purpose, and being required to provide access to data they've already collected to their government. I'm no expert but it seems like a Chinese company could design products that don't collect a bunch of extraneous information, without violating Chinese law.
if you mean this in the sense that "all chinese companies are automatically spy agencies", then no, that's certainly not true. But would they have to comply with a government request - yeah, probably, just like any other company.
That feels like a distinction without a difference. The gov't has access to all the the data of all Chinese companies, and those companies are not required to divulge that to their consumers.
Is that even allowed by Chinese law?