That used to be the case. The surveillance model has evolved over the last couple of decades. The governments don't have to do anything silently. Private corps do it themselves or amonst each other for profit. Then the gov't buys access. E.g. Palantir, Clearview, etc.

Then recently we even had cases where the owners of copos got into gov't and scooped up whatever data they wanted without any regard of any red tape.

Besides, if the gov't is small and business dominates people's lives, what private corporations do is often much more impactful.

[–] nik282000@lemmy.ca -1 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

China is different from the western world.

Western corps have money in mind when they collect data, whether legally or illegally, and use it to increase sales or fuck over competitors. They don't work together in a coordinated way to help a particular government work an agenda.

All Chinese corps that work internationally are compelled to work for the party. If that means allowing access to customer data or actively collecting certain types of data then they do it. This means it's possible to correlate massive amounts of data from many sources in a way that is not feasible for western governments.

Consider, what if China wanted to know where the PM was at any point in time, anywhere in the world? They have access to data collected by every Chinese phone app and every Chinese EV. They could start by identifying the devices owned by the PM's staff or friends via TikTok, WeChat, Aliexpress, Temu, or a car's user profile. A lot of users just click "allow all" which gives the app access to contacts, browsing data, etc.

From there they could identify the PM's devices, even if they have no Chinese software on them, by correlating the mac addresses of devices and their location. If he makes a public appearance and several identified people are seen with him then it gets even easier. Once the PM's devices' mac addresses are identified they can be tracked anytime they, or his staff, get within 100 feet of a BYD car or phone running a Chinese app (where the user enabled all privileges).

[–] humanspiral@lemmy.ca 2 points 12 hours ago

CIA champions of US help out the CIA back. Same with its allies industrial giants. Nothing stops, and noone goes to jail when Snowden tells you what they're doing. All of the AI companies tell us that US must race to Skynet... or China wins. The extreme corruption and oppression that is US led is galaxies wider than anything you can accuse China of. US needs to steal all of our money to benefit Israel and Oligarchy. Pure evil corruption needs extreme evil control and oppression. China is just making better stuff, and improving people's lives as best it can.

[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 3 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

I agree that China is different in this regard. The gov't has superiority over the private sector. That has pros and cons.

Western corps have money in mind when they collect data, whether legally or illegally, and use it to increase sales or fuck over competitors. They don’t work together in a coordinated way to help a particular government work an agenda.

I just can't agree with that based on my observations. Private firms working with the government on profit-driven agendas has been happening for a long time. The gov't very often hires private firm insiders at decisionmaking positions. And then when the gov't has a non-profit agenda, private corporations still cooperate because it means better chance to cooperate on a for-profit agenda in the future. This is the economic basis of fascism. All of that is occurring south of the border as we speak.

I understand what you're saying even if I don't agree and I don't expect you to agree with what I'm saying on this one.

E: I find it's a lot more useful to think that private firms drive gov't agendas in our systems, not the other way around.