Privacy, Predictability and Internet Surveillance in the U.S. and China: Better the Devil You Know?

Abstract

The People’s Republic of China has received considerable criticism from the United States for the human rights issues raised by its Internet surveillance program. For example, according to a 2012 CRS Report for Congress, Freedom House ranked the People’s Republic of China as “one of the five countries with the lowest levels of Internet and ‘new media’ freedom.” Some Western commentators echo this same type of criticism of the PRC’s Internet surveillance program. At first glance, such criticism seems overwhelmingly justified, if not for any other reason that approximately seventy PRC citizens have been incarcerated for writing about politically sensitive topics online in the past few years, which has raised serious concerns over the freedom of speech there. It is difficult to assess the validity of this criticism of the PRC’s Internet surveillance laws and policies without clearly designating a referent. Using US Internet surveillance laws and policies as the referent, PRC Internet surveillance laws and policies arguably can be seen as more in line with international human rights norms, especially with regard to predictability, although that might be changing on account of the recent Snowden revelations. While the Snowden revelations undoubtedly have had catastrophic effects on national security, they potentially have helped improve the human rights situation in the United States by disabusing US citizens of the notion that the US Constitution actually protects them from unreasonable Internet searches and seizures by the government.