I’m making the bet that if the government changes, I will have time to adapt. (Yes, I could be wrong.)

The thing with data is that once it’s out, it’s out.

If tomorrow whatever you do today starts getting deemed a perversion or even a crime, the data related to you doing sent you today will at the very least put you at the front of the list of people to be investigated for it.

Best to have as little as possible about me and my activities (no matter how innocent) out there in an easy to access form, IMHO. If I have to trade a bit of convenience for it, so be it.

I’m an European (specifically from an EU country). I was born still in a Dictatorship, before the Revolution which brought Democracy, and I grew up hearing the stories of Censorship and the Political Police arresting people for criticizing the local Dictator.

I don’t know who your “we” is, but it sure as hell ain’t me or most of my countrymen.

A mandatory Government app on your phone is the kind of thing that rings alarm bells in people’s minds around here because it stinks of Dictatorship and is a wet dream come true for a Political Police.

I lived elsewhere in Europe, so I can understand that people in countries which have long been stable and Democratic (say, The Netherlands and all of Scandinavia), have no memory of Authoritarianism and think that the Authorities only ever act for the greater good (which is why, for example, Swedes have zero concerns about every single payment they do ending up in a database), but pretty much everbody from Southern and Eastern Europe have either direct memories or heard the stories of just how bad the Authorities can be and just how bad it is to let them know what you’re doing.

Clearly, if you’re really from Europe (and not just a paid propagandist or troll), you’re not from one of those countries which freed themselves from some dictatorship or other recently enough for most people in that country having themselves or their parents been alive during the dictatorship days.

One thing is some kind of passive ID, be it in a card or in digital format, another very different thing is software running on your devices which is capable of automatically reporting to the authorities everything you do.

As the US is showing right now, it doesn’t take much to go from absolutelly legit activity - say having an abortion - and innocent apps with some kind of “phone home” ability - say something to help women track their periods - doing no harm to anybody, to extreme prison sentences (for murder, even) and said apps being used to catch and prosecute women for it.

Anybody who has even just heard the stories from their parents and grandparents about whatever the version of the Stasi in their country used to do in the Dictatorship days would be profoundly against any “report to the authorities” software even if it’s sold by politicians as “think of the children”.

If this is not the most crooked EU Comission ever, it’s a pretty close second.

That would require for me to know which carrier would be doing the final leg of the delivery when the package is in my country, which often I don’t and over time there’s even new carriers popping up.

A much simpler solution is to have a second mobile number which I give out for these things which is actually quite easy since I can just use a Pay As You Go SIM.

Might be worth changing the number AliExpress has on archive for me, though by now if the sold or leaked that info, it can’t be undone.

It’s used by the delivery people to contact me if they can’t find the delivery place or I’m not there. Also some of the local delivery companies will, for more expensive things, send the recipient an SMS with a code that you then give to the delivery person so that they know for sure they’re delivering to the right person (or somebody authorized by them).

It’s actually a pretty good way to solve a lot of problems with delivery, but it does mean I need to have a mobile phone number which ends up in the hands of at least two entities.

The less info about you is out there, the less handles they have to pass themselves for those who can legitimatelly ask money from you or which control access to your money, be they family, friends, your bank, the government and so on.

They can’t spoof a family member’s voice if they don’t know who is your family or have access to samples of their voice - both things often obtainable via Facebook and would also be obtainable via a Chinese equivalent one might be tempted to use instead.

Anyways, my point is that Chinese companies are inherently no more trustworthy than American ones, they’re just not as bad yet because they don’t yet have the same access to masses and masses of personal information for people all over the World - once they do, they’ll be just as bad because regulations in China are also shit and they don’t give a damn about foreigners.

Joining in and doing what their enemy is already doing and which they’re been unable to stop, is literally the only way the US and the Trump Administration can claim they’re winning anything in this war.

It’s also pretty much how the Far-Right in at least America and Britain does politics: if civil society momentum builds up in a direction which isn’t at all something they started or even wanted, rush to the front of the crowd and shout “Follow me!”.

The thing is, it doesn’t quite work at swindling people into thinking you’re a great leader when you don’t have a thoroughly captured Press conveniently “forgetting” that they didn’t actually started it and spinning that as “leadership” of and the result as a “victory” for the Far-Right leader.

So at least outside the US and in the context of their war against Iran the whole thing looks incredibly stupid, maybe even derranged, even will the “geniouses” at the White House think this will make America and Trump look like winning.

PS: There is one take which makes them actually seem intelligent (in the kind of “intelligence” a low-level thief would display) - that the actual individuals in the Trump Administration, including Trump himself, are doing it purely to personally profit from front-running Trump’s announcements. This would work but the returns would keep on getting smaller and smaller as the Market stops believing Trump’s words and/or expecting that sufficient people believe them for his words to cause market movements.

Let me put things this way: after my last AliExpress purchase I was targetted for the first time in my life by a PayPal fishing phone call from India (starting with a pre-recorded message in my native language but then switching to some guy speaking English with an Indian accent).

Somebody I know has been targetted twice by “you package is awaiting at customs” phishing messages after making purchases at AliExpress.

Maybe coincidence, maybe AliExpress is having their trade payment processing ops outsourced to somebody that sells it to people that will use it to fraudulently pass themselves as a natural entity involved in the purchase process (like PayPal or the destination country’s Customs) or maybe AliExpress themselves sell that data. Judging by the amount of outright fraudulent sales claims there (the capacity of any power storage devices is at times hilarious, as is the output wattage of solar panels and storage capacity of external SSDs), my bet is the latter, though if it’s not that totally not giving a shit about the risk of the second possibility is almost a certainty.

That kind of “why should I care” bullshit you’re peddling is exactly the same kind of bullshit that was peddled a decade and a half ago about having one’s e-mail with Google, and look at were we are now.

Unless you’re stupidly isolated from it (not even giving them your e-mail), you’re going to leak stuff that can be used against you, even if only by criminals (and the authorities in China couldn’t give a rat’s arse about their people swindling or stealing from laowai).

Like in the US, it’s going to be “Free Enterprise” abusing data about even if the local authorities don’t really care about you.

For now.

The problem is that once it’s out there, you can’t take it back.

Alternativelly, they’ve just been competent in the execution of their less savory intelligence operations and thus not been caught doing something too outrageous.

It makes a lot more sense for China to arrange an “overdose” than shoot somebody in the middle of a busy street in broad daylight from a car with diplomatic plates and a Chinese flag.

Same for all other countries, by the way, though in Autocracies politicians have less to worry if the country ever gets caught murdering people in foreign soil than politicians in Democracies do (though, judging by a century of American murders, even those in supposed Democracies almost never have to worry about it)

What we’re talking about is “The Great Game”, not Tit-Tac-Toe.

Do you have a source for that or is it just a conclusion you reached?

The reason I ask is that I vaguelly remember of seeing somewhere that the way the front of modern ICE cars is designed makes the engine literally fall when a high-speed frontal collision happens exactly so that the front can act as a crumple zone rather than the engine being pushed inside the passenger compartment. That being so, things aren’t quite as simple as you say and I think we need actual real world test results showing that difference in safety rather than mere expectations extrapolated from superficial knowleged about cars.

Now is a very good time to exercise one’s Delayed Gratification ability.

Cogito, ergo sum

As a random person on the Internet I don’t actually have anything to add but felt it would be nice to jump in.

If there had been a “Buy 10, Get 1 free” they could’ve used 11 humans instead of 10 for the same $250.

There’s a reason present day “AI-in-everything” Microsoft bought a code hosting company.

“We’re not as bad as the worst of the worst” isn’t the gotcha you seem to think it is.

Yet.