I get your point. The NSA has anchor points very deep in the system.
The overt, pervasive mandatoriness of the Chinese system is another ballgame entirely.
If the Chinese gov't shows up and asks for basically anything, of course you give it. There is no questions, no lawyers. It is how things are done.
US tech companies do have lawyers and fight back at some stuff. Think about all those defamation cases where people try to sue Twitter to get the identities of people criticizing them.
How do you think that works in the Chinese social environment?
Well if there's lawyers getting involved, or the threat of such, that's what the five eyes (and the other "n eyes") are for. And then you can just call it a "minimization error during routine data sharing with foreign intelligence partners" that happened to sweep up tons of domestic US data.
Right, you end up with this sharing to get around legal issues.
Technical issues are a bit different though. Australian intelligence does not have rooms in any AT&T building I think. Though perhaps they perform some legal tricks to give them access and then roundtrip the info.
The overt, pervasive mandatoriness of the Chinese system is another ballgame entirely.
If the Chinese gov't shows up and asks for basically anything, of course you give it. There is no questions, no lawyers. It is how things are done.
US tech companies do have lawyers and fight back at some stuff. Think about all those defamation cases where people try to sue Twitter to get the identities of people criticizing them.
How do you think that works in the Chinese social environment?