Is Hong Kong under US surveillance?

[mehāniskākaravīrs935 24]

Quick question, i know there are several country's in Europe that are safer from US surveillance, but considering how Hong Kong is in proximity to China (US enemy) and Edward Snowden considered it safe enough to retreat to, is Hong Kong safer for internet privacy compared to some of its counterparts? If not what are the best country's AirVPN offers to use to get as far away from US monitoring as possible? 

 

Note: I know its practically impossible to evade US monitoring, but surely there is one country safer than another.

[ɹoɹɹǝ 26]

I wouldn't think that Hong Kong would be much safer than China. Their internet privacy laws aren't horrible, they have very limited censorship laws. I don't think Hong Kong has close relations to the US (or anyone from the UKUSA agreement). It's hard to say which country would be the safest... However, If I had to pick just one... Ukraine. There is no signs of monitoring/spying government programs. Other good options would be Switzerland and Sweden.

[mehāniskākaravīrs935 24]

I wouldn't think that Hong Kong would be much safer than China. Their internet privacy laws aren't horrible, they have very limited censorship laws. I don't think Hong Kong has close relations to the US (or anyone from the UKUSA agreement). It's hard to say which country would be the safest... However, If I had to pick just one... Ukraine. There is no signs of monitoring/spying government programs. Other good options would be Switzerland and Sweden.

 

Yeah, i always personally thought Ukraine would be the best. I only stopped using it recently because my speeds went from 30 mb to about 5 or 6. Servers like Romania and Sweden can still get those kind of speeds, the only exception being Switzerland with about 18-22 mbits. I know its extremely selfish, but i do tend to blacklist servers that i cannot get 4k streaming speeds with; really i just don't want to lose the ability to stream UHD content and have fast downloads in general. Personally i would like to see AirVPN add more servers in Switzerland (Arneb is still way too slow), if Virginis wasnt marked everywhere as a proxy server that would most likely be my go to server since it can sustain the speeds i am looking for. 

 

From a contest of:

 

Romania

Czech Republic

Sweden

Latvia 

Lithuania 

Singapore

Hong Kong

 

Which do you think is the best bet? 

[serenacat 83]

HK seems quite conflicted between pro and anti Peoples Republic influences, so maybe quite a bit of "espionage" in a general sense, including commercial opportunism etc. As the Russia - US election issues show, domestic political activists and organisations may be of interest. USA often complains about China after commercial/military intellectual property. If I was an American, I would be wary of the government being extra pissed off and paying attention if more exposed to China than say Switzerland.

As well as the official government legal etc position in various server hosting nations, there is also the problem of "everyone has their price" amongst individuals in government, corporate management, software developer cubicles and system admin cool rooms and backup cabinets. Corruption is worse in some places than others, Ukraine, Panama, etc come to mind.

So it probably depends what you want to keep secure as to who is after it. If you are Joe Nobody emailing a porn star in America, everyone from the FBI to recruitment agencies to Google ad placement would like to know, but the players in HK would not care.

[zdxk 0]

I think that Hong Kong is pretty safe. One of the largest warez site is running from a Hong Kong server for more than a year.

[Just a Fred 7]

I recommend reading:Global surveillance disclosures (2013–present)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surveillance_disclosures_(2013%E2%80%93present)

 

Countries to blacklist include:

NETHERLANDS: an NSA partner

SWEDEN: an NSA partner

SINGAPORE: A total surveillance state. Described by a Japanese friend as "North Korea with lights"

[go558a83nk 362]

Everybody surveils.  But people only complain about the USA.  I guess they expect such from Russia and China? 

 

By the way, if you believe some people, Ukraine is likely under heavy USA surveillance as a sort of cold war with Russia.

[mehāniskākaravīrs935 24]

Everybody surveils.  But people only complain about the USA.  I guess they expect such from Russia and China? 

 

By the way, if you believe some people, Ukraine is likely under heavy USA surveillance as a sort of cold war with Russia.

 

 

So the whole earth is already a giant surveillance state? bummer. But i will reiterate my previous question, out of the country's we have available which do you believe is the safest?

[zhang888 1066]

Safest is a very vague term depending on the individual and the type of activities.

In your case, without any pre-judgement or other assumptions, solely judging by the

question itself, any country will be as safe as others.

[mehāniskākaravīrs935 24]

Safest is a very vague term depending on the individual and the type of activities.

In your case, without any pre-judgement or other assumptions, solely judging by the

question itself, any country will be as safe as others.

 

Yeah, i get that it is quite vague. I suppose a more specific question would be which country is under the least influence and interaction with intelligence agencies. Some of the countries AirVPN offers have specific agreements to send encrypted data to the NSA or organizations it cooperates with, such as Sweden and Switzerland as was mentioned by a previous user. Also, i personally do not feel that judging a country's security by a specific activity is a wise approach to overall security (remember the NSA wants any and all data you have). So what is the ideal country to use no matter what you decide to do? Or does it simply not work that way? 

[ɹoɹɹǝ 26]

 

I wouldn't think that Hong Kong would be much safer than China. Their internet privacy laws aren't horrible, they have very limited censorship laws. I don't think Hong Kong has close relations to the US (or anyone from the UKUSA agreement). It's hard to say which country would be the safest... However, If I had to pick just one... Ukraine. There is no signs of monitoring/spying government programs. Other good options would be Switzerland and Sweden.

 

Yeah, i always personally thought Ukraine would be the best. I only stopped using it recently because my speeds went from 30 mb to about 5 or 6. Servers like Romania and Sweden can still get those kind of speeds, the only exception being Switzerland with about 18-22 mbits. I know its extremely selfish, but i do tend to blacklist servers that i cannot get 4k streaming speeds with; really i just don't want to lose the ability to stream UHD content and have fast downloads in general. Personally i would like to see AirVPN add more servers in Switzerland (Arneb is still way too slow), if Virginis wasnt marked everywhere as a proxy server that would most likely be my go to server since it can sustain the speeds i am looking for. 

 

From a contest of:

 

Romania

Czech Republic

Sweden

Latvia 

Lithuania 

Singapore

Hong Kong

 

Which do you think is the best bet? 

 

Out of that list, if I had to pick just one... Romania.

[pr1v 36]

We are all under govermentS surveillance, if they want to spy on you they will, no doubt.

[ɹoɹɹǝ 26]

We are all under govermentS surveillance, if they want to spy on you they will, no doubt.

 

True, but the amount of government surveillance is the variable. Some countries are very respectful to their internet users, while some aren't.

[pr1v 36]

 

We are all under govermentS surveillance, if they want to spy on you they will, no doubt.

True, but the amount of government surveillance is the variable. Some countries are very respectful to their internet users, while some aren't.

All countries collaborate with many others in this surveillance world.

[serenacat 83]

I cannot give a ref but remember disclosure of a US gov attack which reprogrammed the rom memory of disk controllers prior to export to various countries.

Somehow could be activated and communicated, but would be invisible checking running processes, ram memory or disk file contents. May have required a mod to the disk driver software running in kernel space, maybe because it partially loaded code from the controller, for all I know.