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 out 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.

The problem with Economics is that most Economists are first and foremost Propagandists, the most “important” the positions they hold, the most likely that’s the case: nobody gets made head of a Central Bank, a permanent commentator in the Press or gets a gold plated job at a Think Tank, for defending scientific theories which go against the interests of the power elites of a country.

So whilst there’s quite a lot of Science in Economics (especially Behavioural Economics), the most visible, highly paid, loudly praised in the Press, award-winning (most notably with the “Swedish Central Bank Prize for Economics in honor of Alfred Nobel”, commonly portrayed as a “Nobel Prize” for Economics) “Economists” are so distant from any Scientific Principles that they’re pretty much anti-Science.

Unsurprisingly, with the prestigious, most well paid and most visibly positions in it being dominated by greedy charlatans working as paid minions of the powerful, the discipline has a very bad name.

True.

It’s only JUST for the actual victims and their direct descendants to punish and get compensation from the aggressors and those supported them, nobody else.

That’s it.

That’s how far the Principle Of Justice sides with them.

For even those who were once victims, to hurt and take things from people whole unrelated to that past aggression is NOT JUST. In fact the Principle Of Justice now sides with those they hurt and harmed - in this situation it is they who are the agressors and the others who are the victims so it is they who should be punished and compensate their victims.

For people who bare no relation even to said past victims other than being born into the same ethnicity to hurt and take things from others is way, way worse. These people are pure aggressors in every sense of the word, the worst of the worst and per the Principle Of Justice deserving of the harshest kind of punishment. That they’re leveraging Racism to try and get cover from the past victimization of other people who share nothing with them other than ethnicity for their own victimization of others is just them adding a cherry of hypocrisy on the top of the shit cake of their evil-doing.

Well, that’s the thing, it’s not “their own”, it’s just people who happen to share the same religion as these shit-stains.

Jews in Israel aren’t even mostly descendants from people who were impacted by the Holocaust - most Jews who moved to Israel came from Russia and the Middle East, not Western Europe.

More broadly “All Jews are the same” is always Racism, not just when used to claim there’s some kind of problem with all Jews but also when used to claim there’s some kind of quality of all Jews or that somehow the victimization of some Jews magically made victims of other Jewish people who were not the victims, are not family of the victims and didn’t even know the victims.

It’s not about America.

It never was.

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.

Britain + Some early 20s girl shouts “I want you daddy!” to some late 20s guy = Jail!

That would legally be “supporting terrorism” and socially be “anti-semitism”.

From my own experience living in the UK (as somebody from somewhere else in Europe who also lived in a couple more European countries), Britain is hugelly Moralistic, sorta like Southern Europe 50 years ago before Universal Education when those countries were very religious.

The thing is, Southern Europe has actually moved onwards from that decades ago, as religion’s power weakened thanks to high levels of Education amongst the young, whilst in Britain there were a few decades with a bit more moral liberalism which was just about enough to make homophobia socially frowned upon and to make homosexual marriage legal, but no further, and it all seemed to be anchored on who it is or not socially acceptable to shun for their sexuality, so nowadays you get self-proclaimed Feminists in The Guardian (so, supposedly the most liberal people in the most liberal newspaper) with opinion pieces outraged about for the (I! Kid! You! Not!) use of sex dolls by men, with not even the tinyest bit of self-awareness about how that’s exactly the same kind of article written about homosexuality a mere 40 years ago only about some other sexual practice that hurts nobody.

Unsurprisingly, that country has even slid down to transphobia in recent years.

So in present day Britain things having slid down so far that there’s a moral outrage for some kind of sexual roleplaying or other and a weak and desperate hard-right “center”-“left” government enacting legislation with actual prison time for it, isn’t too surprising.

In the XXI century, Britain is quickly passing the most backwards countries in Europe, accelerating towards its “golden age”: the Victorian Era.

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.

That’s not actually what is written there.

Surelly if the author had mean to write “Don’t vote Kamala, she supports Israel” the author would have written that instead of “Vote Trump, she supports Israel”.

Unless the author was purposefully trying to be obtuse and deceitful and explicitly make far greater accusations on others than they can actually support in any way form or shape but having an out of claiming “what I really meant was <something else>”, kinda like some people go around insulting others and when called out will say “just joking”.

It’s almost as if the people throwing this shit around aren’t exactly honest.

I have never heard or read of anybody saying that people should “Vote Trump because Kamala supports Israel” until this moment.

Palantir is more likely to be used to try and hide this shit than it this to try and bring it out to light.