"Made in USA" post in news

Hardware Librem (Other)
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regarding https://puri.sm/posts/made-in-usa-librem-key/

Boys and girls, congratulations! It’s great to see you moving forward and just trying to grab an idea of how much energy you must be investing to do so. Really great to see.

Just as a little sidenote: At the same time i’m very sorry that “Made in USA” in lot of parts of the world doesn’t count a penny any more especially come to privacy matters (there’s no one less trusted anymore actually) mainly due to the acting of some high positioned individuals/representatives and their tribes. Hope, that will change again so the rest of the world will honestly be able to acknowledge one being proud about that country again.

(Not wanting to offend anybody. Just worried, that’s reality by now.)

Really great work! Keep the good stuff coming. Best of luck to all you Purism’s!

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I think that “Made in USA” label matters to american people.

I mean, why Made in China would be bad, and Made in USA would be good. If a company wants to put binaries into chips, its all over, no matter where it is made.

I think that this label has more importance at the national level to say that we employ local people, that we promote the national economy. Apart from that, this label proves absolutely nothing to me, with all the respect I have for this idea, what I mean is that I have no problem with a product being made up of elements from different countries, as long as it is documented and ethical.

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What an utterly backhanded compliment.

Pick one.

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Not backhanded at all. Two different stories connected to each other.

Travelling the world a lot one realizes quickly, that people all over the planet are very much the same. The “small” people all over the planet - no matter where you look at (be it the Americas, Russia, Africa, Asia, Arabian countries, Down Under, Europe, …) are usually very nice, warm, welcoming. The authorities quite often act the opposite.

As for freedom, privacy and harmony in the whole world (edit - more precise: mass-surveillance, (secret) military operations, regime change, wars and the like don’t count as harmony), unfortunately during the last decades there was no country stirring up as much as one special. Unfortunately that (edit: longterm) draws a wrong picture about the overall people which generally - as mentioned - are very nice. It’s mostly the authorities and a bunch behind that’s causing trouble.

As for privacy and so trust there was more than enough evidence that the US-authorities act in a pattern lot of people in other countries don’t show much sympathy for to say at least. Regarding that connected to a privacy-topic the “Made in USA” (edit: together with other topics mentioned further up) unfortunately doesn’t activate the most positive associations in many people in other countries.

Stories like Ciscos tampered hardware (edit: hardware-wise, willingly & proven!) or modified letters, post-packages and the like it could mean only a question of time until an official makes a stupid decision. It doesn’t have to be. But as the old saying (don’t know the english equivalent): One that already lied, won’t be trusted in the future.

I’m really happy that a company like Purism exists and that they put such a lot of effort and good will into their work and products. I wish them all the bloody very best for the future.

Btw - OT: The most friendly, hospitable and overall best-educated as also reflected people i met on all of my journeys - and i met amazing people all over the planet - were the Iranians in Iran (the ones i least anticipated).

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Even ignoring how incredibly incorrect this statement is with regard to everything from countries sponsoring terrorism to countries enforcing extreme censorship on their citizens, this claim is pretty ignorant. You may be surprised to find out, for example, that Huawei was caught putting backdoors in its own routers (a far cry from Cisco’s packages being intercepted mid-transit), or that Kaspersky was caught scanning computers for classified documents.

If you want to convey that you’re concerned about US government invasion of privacy, that’s fine, and there are valid points to be made there. But don’t pretend like the US is even close to the worst offender in this area.

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Just in case you haven’t heard about this man:

and if you truly reject that the big IT companies (which are US companies) - let it be FAANG or GAFAM I don’t know what you are doing here in this forum :smiley:

I think ajlok described it very good. It’s not about the US people or Chinese people. It’s about their governments and about global companies. Governments and companies work hand in hand to abuse and violate our rights. That’s where Purism comes in.

The post is about putting a label “Made in USA” on a product, while this is (at least for me) not seen as something which is pro-privacy - all the contrary. That’s why I also think there are two stories mixed. For me it would have been sufficient that they say that they control more part of the chain (where the country shouldn’t matter so much). So my personal speculation is that this is to promote purism more to the US market. Which is fine for me.

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My two cents worth on my worldly travels: I saw many nice to very bitter and hateful people during my travels. One thing stood out “above all their qualities”, and that was… just how much they “ALL” tried to be like Americans, even those who hate us!

After watching the debate stage for the last couple of nights(very, very frightening), I am having second thoughts about being able to having a secure phone or PC! Should any one of those gain power that I heard and saw on those debate stages, we will be more like China using a China made phone and PC, whether we want them or not, if we are allow to have such items!

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Personally, I find it absolutely comical how Europeans in particular have such a beef with US privacy, and yet have literally NO idea how most of their tech companies are modeled directly after US ones, and almost all of that tech is coming out of China.

It is the ultimate case of the kettle calling the pot black.

On top of all of this, I do believe that in the US, should a company want to be ultra concerned about privacy to include the complete supply line, fabrication, and manufacturing, that they’d have a much easier time, and less red tape to cut through in doing it.

Made in the US, is still better to me (understanding the way these things work) then pretty much anywhere else.

My 2 cents.

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I am so glade that the Allies during WWII did not listen to the many voices sounding like that of ajlok and maximilian, or we in the rest of the world would have been speaking German for sometime now. It was the German people who loved the taste of war and wanted to conqueror the world, Hitler was the instrument by which the people chose to get that job done!

Carpet bombing and dividing up the country of Germany was meant to impress on the German people not to ever try war again or there won’t be any Germany left next time. The bottom line is that it is the people who allow these things to happen… and they setup their government to get their job done!

When the label says “MADE IN AMERICA” or “MADE IN THE USA”, that’s what it should be, and not a collection of parts from countries around the world! I’m making allowances with the Librem5 strictly because it will be open source parts and coding, otherwise you would not be reading any post here from me!

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China is the global slave country (lowest labor price) that is also heavy industrialized/controlled.

the big question - if free-software is here to support freedom doesn’t that mean it can also support EVIL ? remember EVIL has freedom too - but limited by a higher power (“lucky” us)

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