On: China Telecom diverted internet traffic in U.S. and Canada, report finds

[pluma]

So is this anything the US hasn't already done to others or is this actually a scandal?

[presscast → pluma]

Even if the US already did it, it's still scandalous.

[kevin_b_er → pluma]

This is whataboutism in an attempt to distract from moral turpitude of Chinese actions with "what about the US?"

It is bad either way.

[pluma → kevin_b_er]

Yes, it's bad. But I'm trying to figure out if this is "business as usual" or crossing a line.

I'm not a US citizen so the US spying on me is already scandalous but if the US is doing it, I expect countries that aren't our allies to do the same.

[prions → kevin_b_er]

This is the same tired argument that's dragged out anytime people raise concerns about using Chinese hardware.

>I don't care if the Chinese government has my data, I'm not a Chinese citizen

>The US spies as well

>The US did something wrong in the last 100 years, therefore you shouldn't complain that China did it last week

[pluma → prions]

No, the question is this:

The US is doing certain things that seem outrageous.

The US is supposedly an ally of my country.

China is not explicitly an ally (just a trade partner).

So if the US spies on us, that's scandalous but it significantly lowers the bar for what I expect our non-allies to do to us.

It's not whataboutism, it's a precedent by which all future actions are measured. I'm not discounting the news story, I'm asking whether this is just a news story that will be forgotten about in a few weeks or so, or whether this is a total shift in expectations like when we found out what the US was doing to its own allies.