The Free West vs. China as a Surveillance State?

That’s the oft-repeated image… but in contrast, there’s news from the zoo of Western predators:

• An email about Google’s terms of service reveals that CEO Sundar Pichai now reads all your text messages, and Mark Zuckerberg reads your WhatsApp messages — well, they can if they find time.

• And then, on the same day, something from the press kit about the Digital Markets Act (DMA):

The policy update: Effective in 45 days, all data included in your Android device backups will begin counting towards your Google Account storage limit. Photos and videos in Google Photos and MMS data already count towards your Google Account storage today. With this change, all other backed-up data such as SMS messages, call history, device settings, and app settings will also count towards your Google Account storage.

Now to the DMA: The EU is forcing Google to make the data available to others—Google was sued to make such step —isn’t it great that a monopoly is being broken?! Is it any consolation that Sundar Pichai isn’t the only one allowed to read along?

• Not just “anybody else.” In recent days, the amendment to the BND’s powers was announced: it now allows them to operate domestically and even “precautionarily,” meaning without urgent suspicion of criminal misconduct. — It’s naive to think this has anything to do with the already prohibited data retention.