From laboratory in far west, China’s surveillance state spreads quietly(reuters.com)
reuters.com
From laboratory in far west, China’s surveillance state spreads quietly
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-monitoring-insight/from-laboratory-in-far-west-chinas-surveillance-state-spreads-quietly-idUSKBN1KZ0R3
54 comments
"Moving towards dictatorship" is an understatement imho. They're already there.
Interpreted charitably, they may have been referencing the idea that growth would gradually move China in the direction of democracy. Instead, they're going in the reverse direction on the scale.
Eh. I dunno. There should be a word for it that isn't dictatorship. There is an order-ness and a certain degree of pragmatism and restraint that the Chinese state has that most dictatorships do not. They sort of bend with the wind at times and it vents the outrage. They allow the intelligent to get access to the real internet without letting the bulk of their population talk unhindered. The way they do the Communist party is really smart too. They take the top high school students and successful academics / business people. So it naturally turns into the area that smart people solve problems, instead of turning them against the state.
I agree that AI-powered surveillance is worrying, but it's not going to look like Stalin. It's going to look like something completely different.
I agree that AI-powered surveillance is worrying, but it's not going to look like Stalin. It's going to look like something completely different.
> I agree that AI-powered surveillance is worrying, but it's not going to look like Stalin. It's going to look like something completely different.
China is in the hands of Xi now. So that entirely depends on what he's willing to do to try to retain power, and what he regards as necessary to pursue his vision. Dictators get increasingly paranoid and erratic with time, with few exceptions in the last several hundred years. Erdogan is the latest example of a dictator losing his mind and running a country into the ground to preserve his power and pursue his vision. That's in part because the people get tired of a leader over time, even in the best of circumstances. The only choice to maintain the position Xi has is to crack down more and more on the population, restrict them further and further. Eventually every squeak is perceived as a threat.
The real question is whether Xi leads them back to more Mao-like hyper authoritarian policies, to ensure his dictatorship and his vision for China. I'm skeptical it can end any other way, the path seems to have already been decided. The people that say China is different, are ignoring that this is no longer Deng's China, there has been a fundamental recent change in where they're going. China had to either continue liberalizing, or had to turn back, you can only float inbetween for so long. They chose (both Xi and the party that has handed him the reins).
China is in the hands of Xi now. So that entirely depends on what he's willing to do to try to retain power, and what he regards as necessary to pursue his vision. Dictators get increasingly paranoid and erratic with time, with few exceptions in the last several hundred years. Erdogan is the latest example of a dictator losing his mind and running a country into the ground to preserve his power and pursue his vision. That's in part because the people get tired of a leader over time, even in the best of circumstances. The only choice to maintain the position Xi has is to crack down more and more on the population, restrict them further and further. Eventually every squeak is perceived as a threat.
The real question is whether Xi leads them back to more Mao-like hyper authoritarian policies, to ensure his dictatorship and his vision for China. I'm skeptical it can end any other way, the path seems to have already been decided. The people that say China is different, are ignoring that this is no longer Deng's China, there has been a fundamental recent change in where they're going. China had to either continue liberalizing, or had to turn back, you can only float inbetween for so long. They chose (both Xi and the party that has handed him the reins).
It's difficult to tell, given that China is a dictatorship, but there are some in the party and state that are perhaps opposed to Xi seizing so much power.
Good article on this: https://www.economist.com/china/2018/08/11/how-to-read-summe...
Good article on this: https://www.economist.com/china/2018/08/11/how-to-read-summe...
China is more of an authoritarian aristocracy at this point ruled by a few really powerful red families. Xi’s is only one such family, the others have power and will often duke it out in various factions.
I still don’t think Xi is as powerful as even Jiang Zemin was, he definitely isn’t at Deng’s level yet.
I still don’t think Xi is as powerful as even Jiang Zemin was, he definitely isn’t at Deng’s level yet.
If Xi is not very powerful, then how was he able to do away with the two-term limit?
They were never moving towards democracy they were always moving towards "democracy with Chinese characteristics".
All they ever wanted was to get all the benefits of democracy while staying a communist dictatorship which given the results so far they have succeeded in brilliantly.
In many ways they are now out competing other countries because they have way more power and leverage on where Chinese companies move or what they do based on they outcome of their political negotiations with other countries.
Not to mention they will never allow foreign companies to make money in China and instead they will favour the local "home grown" alternative or if there isn't one they will just steal it. There is a reason every foreign company is required to have local to be a part of the operations for them to be able to operate in China.
Some of the time the corporate investment doesn't even need to be profitable financially for the company just as long as it is profitable politically for China.
It's amazing how well China plays the game and frankly other Countries just can't compare at the moment. As an evil super villain I have to give kudos to how well they strip every freedom of their citizens even though I don't like any of it.
How do you even go about defending yourself from such mass surveillance beside giving up technology and when necessary encrypting and deleting everything you do while wearing a mask every time you leave the house?
All they ever wanted was to get all the benefits of democracy while staying a communist dictatorship which given the results so far they have succeeded in brilliantly.
In many ways they are now out competing other countries because they have way more power and leverage on where Chinese companies move or what they do based on they outcome of their political negotiations with other countries.
Not to mention they will never allow foreign companies to make money in China and instead they will favour the local "home grown" alternative or if there isn't one they will just steal it. There is a reason every foreign company is required to have local to be a part of the operations for them to be able to operate in China.
Some of the time the corporate investment doesn't even need to be profitable financially for the company just as long as it is profitable politically for China.
It's amazing how well China plays the game and frankly other Countries just can't compare at the moment. As an evil super villain I have to give kudos to how well they strip every freedom of their citizens even though I don't like any of it.
How do you even go about defending yourself from such mass surveillance beside giving up technology and when necessary encrypting and deleting everything you do while wearing a mask every time you leave the house?
Wearing a mask isn't enough because they're also working on gait recognition, you'd have to change up how you walk every time you leave too.
Pebbles in one or both shoes, plus a thick insole, and some sort of tourniquet on a leg just loose to allow blood to flow will be sufficient to trick these for sometime so long as one can carefully conceal any other uniquely identifying factors.
I can only imagine getting caught trying to defeat these systems will have horrifying ramifications.
The system needs to be right one time only. You cannot afford to make a mistake and odds are stacked against you. You cannot do that unless you are wanted for xx years of jail, otherwise it's too big of a burden...day after day.
Plus, they'll know by your smartphone (pay, map++ apps) where you are. Merge the data and there you go.
Plus, they'll know by your smartphone (pay, map++ apps) where you are. Merge the data and there you go.
gait
[deleted]
Was that in Urumqi or somewhere out near the border in 北疆? I went in 2006, so it wasn’t that bad yet.
Urumqi was the absolute worst as far as overt surveillance and military intimidation.
Kashgar was surprisingly not as bad. Smaller cities around Kashgar such as Yarkant or Karglik were also not bad.
I think China is approaching Xinjiang as a slow but persistent conquerer would: get a foothold in a major city, transform it in your image (Han), then move out to surrounding communities until all are pacified.
Kashgar was surprisingly not as bad. Smaller cities around Kashgar such as Yarkant or Karglik were also not bad.
I think China is approaching Xinjiang as a slow but persistent conquerer would: get a foothold in a major city, transform it in your image (Han), then move out to surrounding communities until all are pacified.
North Xinjiang is much more Han than south Xinjiang, which is much more Uighur. The cities are obviously more Ham, especially around Urumqi, but even the countryside is more diverse in north Xinjiang with kazaks and Tajiks.
I’m surprised the PLA isn’t being harsher near kashgar, they have more problems there than in Urumqi.
I’m surprised the PLA isn’t being harsher near kashgar, they have more problems there than in Urumqi.
I think that since the South and West are so much more Uyghur, if the PLA stressed the population too much they'd have a full blown revolt on their hands. What's happening in Tibet is also a good indication of what the PLA intends to do with ethnic dilution.
....which is a bit ironic since the Qing brought the Uighurs into north xinjiang in the first place because the Dhunzgars killed off most of the Han living there (well, after they then used the Uighurs to kill the Dhunzgar...).
This tech will be sold to every country in the world, completed with language files. Plug and play. That's the even sadder part.
I have a friend that worked developing Internet in Equatorial Guinea around 2014. He told me that in a couple of occasions, Chinese teams came there to install surveillance systems.
So this is already happening.
So this is already happening.
Countries that started from zero have an advantage over western countries: no legacy systems to interact with. Just brand new apps
Will AWS have it? Will they call this service the AWS HomeWatch? Can we use it to spy on our pizza and see why delivery is taking so long?
Curious if the phone scanning devices require the user to provide their pin or if they have the ability to bypass phone access security (I suspect not).
I'm really tired of people fawning over China. This is a country with a horrible human rights record, over a million people presently in camps based on racial profiling, and an active program to build the most comprehensive surveillance state in the world.
It's doubly hypocritical when the people doing the fawning are American liberals that would go completely bonkers if anything like that were happening here. (The same logic applies to Saudi Arabia, our other even more brutal "ally.") Money talks I guess. China's GDP growth has been phenomenal and that's all that matters.
Getting tough on trade with China is one of the very few things I agree with Trump about. The Chinese don't play fair in the trade realm either. They vertically integrate their industries with the government, subsidize them to dump, manipulate their currency, ignore the environment and pollute to a degree unprecedented in human history, and deploy "soft" plausibly-deniable mechanisms for trade protectionism so they can pretend to open their markets without actually doing so. The most significant part of the latter is the "great firewall," which is as much about keeping foreign Internet companies out of China as it is about censorship or surveillance. Another mechanism is a maze of regulations around currency, banking, incorporation, and payment systems that makes actually taking payments from Chinese customers painful. It's very easy to send money into China but hard to take any money out.
It's doubly hypocritical when the people doing the fawning are American liberals that would go completely bonkers if anything like that were happening here. (The same logic applies to Saudi Arabia, our other even more brutal "ally.") Money talks I guess. China's GDP growth has been phenomenal and that's all that matters.
Getting tough on trade with China is one of the very few things I agree with Trump about. The Chinese don't play fair in the trade realm either. They vertically integrate their industries with the government, subsidize them to dump, manipulate their currency, ignore the environment and pollute to a degree unprecedented in human history, and deploy "soft" plausibly-deniable mechanisms for trade protectionism so they can pretend to open their markets without actually doing so. The most significant part of the latter is the "great firewall," which is as much about keeping foreign Internet companies out of China as it is about censorship or surveillance. Another mechanism is a maze of regulations around currency, banking, incorporation, and payment systems that makes actually taking payments from Chinese customers painful. It's very easy to send money into China but hard to take any money out.
> I'm really tired of people fawning over China.
Where are you seeing this? Any thread even remotely involving China is 95% filled with anti-Chinese posts, such as your own. There were a few this week. Heck, look in this very same comment thread -where are the 'fawners' you speak of?
Where are you seeing this? Any thread even remotely involving China is 95% filled with anti-Chinese posts, such as your own. There were a few this week. Heck, look in this very same comment thread -where are the 'fawners' you speak of?
It's strange, isn't it?
It's a ritual at this point: an anti-China post is submitted by adventured, rapidly voted up, and then filled with comments that are a competition to see who can denounce China the most.
What do you suppose the point is?
Is it a Trump thing?
It certainly wasn't always the case. There was a time when I happily shared HN with Chinese colleagues. Was that point, I wonder.
It's a ritual at this point: an anti-China post is submitted by adventured, rapidly voted up, and then filled with comments that are a competition to see who can denounce China the most.
What do you suppose the point is?
Is it a Trump thing?
It certainly wasn't always the case. There was a time when I happily shared HN with Chinese colleagues. Was that point, I wonder.
The only demographic I can think of that would dedicate so much time denigrating a country with such force and vitriol are the ex-pats. SV types, though very left leaning, are far too busy.
A common pattern to look for is large blocks of hand-wavy, conjecture-fuelled text with little in the way of facts and substance.
A common pattern to look for is large blocks of hand-wavy, conjecture-fuelled text with little in the way of facts and substance.
Do you mean ex-pats from China living in other countries, or ex-pats from other countries now living in China?
I think they means the latter. We (well, I used to be one) have a reputation for being salty, though we are just very critical having lived the life and seen things for real.
So you're saying things in China are actually pretty good? How about some specifics.
Not sure about fawning, but every time there is a negative post about China, there is always a big thread of “we are just as bad”.
It seems like any thread about China or Microsoft or xxxxx devolves into a pissing match between A is better than B types.
The good thing? about these posts being so common is it's a HUGE sign that I'm done with the thread and time to go somewhere new.
The bad thing is that sometimes those comment threads do have good information. Such is life I think.
The good thing? about these posts being so common is it's a HUGE sign that I'm done with the thread and time to go somewhere new.
The bad thing is that sometimes those comment threads do have good information. Such is life I think.
Those are just normal what aboutisms. Either side will feel like they are the underdog anyways, critical-China will complain about too many pro-China posts, pro-China will complain a bit too many anti-china posts. There is still enough of the latter because HN has plenty of Chinese readers and hasn’t been blocked in China (yet).
My sense is that it isn't Chinese HN readers defending China, it is self hating westerners.
Who knows. I’m sure there is a bit of both.
ataturk(1)
notbeevil1(1)
They're just copying what the CIA/NSA has been doing for decades.
There's not an equivalency, though. In the US, at least in theory, we have a system that is founded on the idea that a human being has inalienable rights that come from their creator, and therefore are not arbitrary concessions of the state. China has no such concept.
China views a human being as merely material, and human rights as essentially arbitrary. This is not just a theoretical difference. It's as practical as it gets.
If the US does keep going down the road towards tyranny, it is in spite of it's foundation, not because of it, and its actions will be inconsistent with its own guiding principle. This foundational guiding principle of the US gives me some hope that we are not on in the middle of an inevitable collapse into tyranny.
China views a human being as merely material, and human rights as essentially arbitrary. This is not just a theoretical difference. It's as practical as it gets.
If the US does keep going down the road towards tyranny, it is in spite of it's foundation, not because of it, and its actions will be inconsistent with its own guiding principle. This foundational guiding principle of the US gives me some hope that we are not on in the middle of an inevitable collapse into tyranny.
> the US, at least in theory, we have a system that is founded on the idea that a human being has inalienable rights
As long as you're a US citizen.
As long as you're a US citizen.
You might be thinking of the border. Within the US, the constitution applies generally to foreigners, IIRC
Yep. This is right, and many of our actions at the border are in direct violation of human rights as recognized by the "unalienable rights" clause.
To some extent yes, but it's a false equivalence to compare the USA and China. They're pushing surveillance further than our own intelligence agencies, and more importantly they have no bill of rights.
I dare someone to try a Sasha Cohen act in China mocking the present leadership. You'd end up in a prison camp within a week. In America you can openly call the President and the ruling party hideous names, troll them, mock them in public, and criticize them all day and the very worst that will happen is getting kicked off private media platforms and forums.
I dare someone to try a Sasha Cohen act in China mocking the present leadership. You'd end up in a prison camp within a week. In America you can openly call the President and the ruling party hideous names, troll them, mock them in public, and criticize them all day and the very worst that will happen is getting kicked off private media platforms and forums.
The main difference is legal/constitutional. Yet they use almost the same tools.
The main difference is cultural in fact. The legal / constitutional aspect entirely derives from cultural underpinnings. If you remove the cultural, you remove all support for the existing constitutional protections and the politicians in DC will promptly begin revoking rights at will. The reason China can't support a rights based Constitution as in eg the US or parts of Europe, is due to the lack of a culture that overwhelmingly believes in the premise. There are pockets of resistance in China, that push back against the tyranny, the problem is that they're modest and fairly easy to contain. If Trump passed an executive order to revoke freedom of speech tomorrow, he'd be impeached by his own party, and there'd be tens of millions of people protesting in the streets across the country. Trump would be lucky if his own military didn't coup him at that point, their first oath is to the Constitution, not the Presidency or a party. That's an intense cultural underpinning, which China is lacking.
To overly simplify it: if you have cultural protections, then the people revolt and get very pissed off, when politicians try to take away rights. The culture is the real shield for a constitution, without which it's just worthless paper that can be shredded. The people have a viseral reaction, it's instantaneous, because the culture is in their blood so to speak. Politicians in the US constantly test that live wire to see what they can get away with. They typically have to be extremely sneaky about what they do, or use emotional events as cover, if they want to take some ground on rights (eg the Patriot Act et al.).
To overly simplify it: if you have cultural protections, then the people revolt and get very pissed off, when politicians try to take away rights. The culture is the real shield for a constitution, without which it's just worthless paper that can be shredded. The people have a viseral reaction, it's instantaneous, because the culture is in their blood so to speak. Politicians in the US constantly test that live wire to see what they can get away with. They typically have to be extremely sneaky about what they do, or use emotional events as cover, if they want to take some ground on rights (eg the Patriot Act et al.).
Legal/constitutional is the only difference that really matters. The tech is globally available to anyone. The law determines how it may be used.
Overall I think mass surveillance and other cyber-intrusions into civil liberties can only be realistically solved by legislation. It's far too easy to spy on a people who insist on carrying around little location-aware transponders and posting all their activities to the Internet. It's legislation that limits this, and much more importantly limits what it's legal for the government or private actors to do with this information.
Overall I think mass surveillance and other cyber-intrusions into civil liberties can only be realistically solved by legislation. It's far too easy to spy on a people who insist on carrying around little location-aware transponders and posting all their activities to the Internet. It's legislation that limits this, and much more importantly limits what it's legal for the government or private actors to do with this information.
"... police are generally able to get users to hand over their passwords, experts say."
The NSA and CIA may have the tools but that little statement speaks the gap between what our agencies can do and what theirs can do legally.
The NSA and CIA may have the tools but that little statement speaks the gap between what our agencies can do and what theirs can do legally.
No.
1) nearly hourly MMS messages to my flip phone from unknown numbers with an unknown attachment. Since my phone was bought outside China, the MMS attachment didn't automatically open the likely spyware.
2) Being followed and monitored by plainclothes policemen
3) Having my hotel room searched while I was away. Having police come to my hotel room to interrogate me but lacking access because I had the only key to the room (very very cheap hotel).
4) Armed convoys of Chinese army soldiers constantly going up and down major streets.
The originally intention ten years ago was massive surveillance and intelligence gathering. AI and facial recognition are just making this easier and far less costly for their government.
It's clear now that China is moving towards dictatorship, not democracy.