In a post snowden world, why would you trust a 5E product anymore?
Not saying that you should trust Chinese companies, but the notion that they're any worst by speculation in the face of evidence for the alternative's being complicate in spying on their users is rather absurd. People can't shake off the good-guy-bad-guy narrative, can they?
> In a post snowden world, why would you trust a 5E product anymore?
Because I’m one of the people the 5E apparatus is trying to protect, and if my local spy agency got in touch with me to ask me for my data, I’d give it to them without a second thought.
I’m glad you personally know all personnel involved in the US security apparatus so well that you can so happily vouch that none of them will use details of your private life in a way that you would disapprove of. Even that you can wholeheartedly vouch for the conscience of the US government as a whole is rather surprising, in light of past decades. I envy such a level of trust.
Conveniently you don't need to know everyone individually if you think there is sufficient oversight. I think there hasn't always been, but I am now reasonably convinced someone would get fired if they were poking around in my personal data just for fun, much as I don't worry about individual Google staff reading my email.
One of the biggest dangers is to forget that organizations, be they companies, governments, or whatever else are made up of people. So you're not voluntarily conceding your information to some organization beyond the base interests of people. As an example of this one of Snowden's revelations is that the NSA would regularly grab and share sexually explicit photos with their friends. [1] In another instance, NSA workers would spy on their 'love interests' frequently enough that they had a tongue in cheek label for it - LOVEINT. [2]
You might support actions such as the NSA spying on the porn habits of Islamic 'radicalizers' planning to release the information in efforts to discredit them. [3] But consider that who governments consider good and whom they consider bad is something very much subject to change. For instance are you aware of the now infamous letter the FBI sent to MLK in an effort to blackmail him and even drive him to suicide? [4]
These are the people that you'd so happily give your information to. The notions of a black and white, good and evil, world is something out of Hollywood. In reality there are good and 'evil' sides to every nation and organization. And when you submit yourself to any, you don't get to pick who your information is made available to or how it will be used.
Finally there is the matter of risk:reward. You stand an extremely low probability of being victimized at any given point in your life. And even if you are victimized it will be likely to be a petty local offense such as burglary, robbery, assault, etc. These are not the sort of actions that national intelligence agencies are tasked with preventing, which is more along the lines of terrorism and national security dangers. By being so happy to turn over all information about yourself you expose some risk that that information will end up being used against you. How does this increased risk compare against the decreased risk due to whatever value your personal information provides? This is not really possible to measure, so each individual must decide for himself. But I find it difficult to imagine that this is a beneficial exchange.
> As an example of this one of Snowden's revelations is that the NSA would regularly grab and share sexually explicit photos with their friends
I believe the best outcome, by far, of Snowden's revelations was to bring questions like this into the public sphere, and thus hopefully increase oversight. I think this is happening in all areas, private and public.
I would be pretty surprised (although not amazed) if a Facebook engineer could easily read my Messenger messages now and generally stalk me, although I suspect it was very very easy for them to do it a few years ago.
Not saying that you should trust Chinese companies, but the notion that they're any worst by speculation in the face of evidence for the alternative's being complicate in spying on their users is rather absurd. People can't shake off the good-guy-bad-guy narrative, can they?