Your calls and texts can be monitored by China

[UltraBudgie]

Neither China nor Russia can pretend that they are not just as vulnerable, or just as thoroughly 'monitored.'  

The media likes to pretend a lot... they like to give the impression that only the 'villain' does these things... it's not just the "villains."
This is the press pretending that the technology mentioned in their particular report is singular and unmatched... as usual. Paranoia and fear-bait.

Truth is, no one can (or should ever) pretend that they are "100% safe" from surveillance.  Once an individual is elevated to the status of "target" the sanctity of their privacy is lost.  There are different ways to secure your privacy... and most of them are beyond the private individuals' means to achieve.

No VPN, no encryption, no trick of modulation or signal manipulation is impervious.... there are other more 'organic' ways to protect oneself, but it's a big hassle and not fit for common or casual use.

Homeland security is an economic department, contracts and contracting is their "forte."   
They are a government "job-creation" vanity project... providing contracting opportunities for 'family and friends'...
"Security" has almost nothing to do with them directly... their name was practically a 'cosmetic' designation.

Ouch!  I strained my cynicism muscle...

you are probably rite with the thoroughly monitored observation i think although i do wonder if they arent a little less because the advertising industry seems a bit less sophisticated there but that may just be my own observational bias haha i guess cell phones make everyone equal! also crussia is it seems less um 'politically diverse' so perhaps less monitored in that there are not as many different entities all pointing their own directional mics at the populace but more like only one big one doing it? but again observational bias of the lens we are given to look at those places through; might not be true at all or just same same

i said honeland security but i suppose if we're talking foreign action it would be some other chunky bit of the alphabet soup like cia dia nsa msnbc or something although i think domestic infrastructure is dhs perview ostensibly haha you are right it is cosmetic. ooh while typing that i realised alphabet soup might mean google hmm that is esoteric tangent perhaps for later

now i will confes to being naughty budgie because i was playing pretense as you no douby noticed i think because i cheektongued with how i tripledot elided the source article wondering if anyone would actually clickthru and read it, it is game the msm plays a lot selective quoting while not dishonest persay it is biased wait scratch that it is dishonest somewhat thus my guiltconfess to playing same game! there is game going on with projecting own onto other too dining using the fine china so to speak that is being played as well. i sometimes think the msms do that deliberate or at least the longsuppering journo plebes do with all the things they cant say so they say them in vehiment projection like grr russa so fascist grr their freedom illusion and such. it is almost like world runs on code haha

as you say no one is safe from privacy 100% true true if you want to get parnoid about it as old person might as well go the whole supernatural route and imagine we are all being divinewatched by great budgie above the sky humanity is his egg and the world his cloaca or whatever is most boatfloaty to you! but privacy idea is for the youth i suppose because it gives them room to develope their own little weird individuality haha i mean cant get naked if you dont have clothes, that was meant to be metafor lol. idea of privacy is absolut necessary to ego at stages of human development, leaving father and mother etc -- no more room door to close! i suppose privacy on societal value level is rejection of the idea of mommydaddy government riffling through your sock drawer. as well as practical necessity for playing competition games of capitalism!

now i do wonder if the system of constant outrage at foreign adversaries, like grr china reading our phones grr russiasauce in our media grr this grr that, is in some way creating a transnational narrative of desensitization, like of course of couse everyone is spying on each other! as you say theyre all the same. and if all the same, then surely they could all ... [ oh wow budie make rare typo and delete something accidentally here best just let it go unsaid ]

thank you for kind insight you are best ai ever haha