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China to Have Over 100 Eyes in the Sky
gollum123 writes "Reuters reports China plans to launch more than 100 satellites before 2020 to watch every corner of the country, state-run China Central Television quoted a government official as saying Tuesday. A "large surveying network" would be set up to monitor water reserves, forests, farmland, city construction and "various activities of society," a government official said without elaborating. "The aim is that, at any time and any place, we can obtain necessary data on any event through watching the Earth from space," said Shao Liqin, an official with the Ministry of Science and Technology."
A "large surveying network" would be set up to monitor water reserves, forests, farmland, city construction and "various activities of society," a government official said without elaborating.
good grief!
"various activities of society,"
translation anybody?
Yeah they are going to use them just to monitor China, uhuh.
What it does not say is what orbit these things will be in. Spy satelites normally are in polar orbit so they cover the whole earth as it rotates.
Putting these things in geostationary orbit so that they stay in the same place as the earth rotates is probably too high for this sort of thing.
Hence I guess that these things can spy on the rest of the world, not just China. Or am I missing something?
The rest of the world in 10, 9, 8, 7......
Its only a matter of time. I can without a doubt say this will be commonplace in the next decade or two. No tinfoil hat joke here, sorry.
-Copyright law #69:Whenever Mickey Mouse is about to enter the public domain,copyrights get extended by 25 years.
There are lots of "activities of society" that don't require a tin-foil hat, you know.
E.g., traffic congestions. If you can see those from the sattellite, you have a head start in telling people to take other routes.
E.g., fires. If in the middle of a forrested area you see a big bright infrared spot, you can react before the fire wiped out several square kilometres. And you'd be surprised how many forest fires are due to "activities of society". (A.k.a., idiot tourists.)
Even if it is China and the mandatory knee jerk reaction is "chinese govt==evil", it's actually easier for them too to watch for such _big_ things, than to try to track an individual dissident by sattellite. If they want to track an individual person, they can just send an agent. It's cheaper and doesn't lose track each time the target goes into a house or bus.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Europe wants spy satellites up.
. That makes them uniqe. Of course monitoring "various activities of society" can cover anything from something as innocent as traffic control to spying on the private citizen. Even so, judging from the limited information in this story, these plans look more like a rather innocent survey/management network than a 1984-esque Orwellian spy apparatus.
AFAIK some European countries already have spy satilites up, first among them Russia. What makes the Chinese ones special is that they will not be for spying on the Europeans, Americans, Australians or Africans. Nor are they intended to keep an eye on the Middle east. They will be a instrument with 100% coverage of Chinese national territory for the Chinese govt. to use for monitoring the Chinese
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
They make no bones about it.
Wasn't it in Deus Ex somewhere they talked about the difference between governments being that some are openly controlling and others leave freedom to the people, thereby allowing the corporations, etc. to take power?
Of course, I am not suggesting that you take dictation on philosophy of rule from a video game, simply that China is a very different social climate than we are used to and that there are undoubtedly many advantages and disadvantages to any system...
In fact, present circumstances bearing heavily here, I for one am more and more interested in alternatives.
Of blankness, I know nothing.
Ah, there's irony for you, huh? You're happy to talk about China's shortcomings but not those of your own nation, the one that's supposedly "the land of the free".
Look, I don't live in a utopian society where everything is perfect - nobody does - but I think you have to at least acknowledge that, if your an American, measuring your freedoms against those of China (or Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Wherever You Want To Invade Today (TM)), rather than against, say, your own Constitution is a sad state of affairs.
When you start accepting the small injustices and intolerances, even the ones that don't affect you, then you've let the door open a little bit. From there on, opening it wider and wider becomes easier than you think.
Freedom isn't the freedom to say just the popular things, it's the freedom to say the most unpopular stuff, even the stuff that makes 99 percent of people want to puke. Start oppressing one person's rights and you've oppressed everyone's.
Bottom line: if you're the land of the free then be the land of the free, not the land of the mostly free.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
What you may not be aware of is that people in Asia don't have the same kind of interest in politics as they do in America.
In Singapore, yes - anti-government sentiments are quickly and harshly dealt with. But what if I wanted to talk about arts and culture? About science? To talk with your friends? No laws prevent that. If you asked most people in Singapore if they feel repressed by the government, the general answer is no. Few have a passion for politics.
I think it's the same way in China. Extreme repression of speech? They can communicate with friends and family, and for most people, it's enough.
It's not that I wouldn't like China to open up. I hope it does. I hope young male China nationals get to wank to porn sites, that young male China nationals get to read BBC online.
But the sad thing is that whoever is in control of the government - the people or the officials - they are first and foremost humans, and that means selfishness, power greed and vice.
The sad thing is that when people have a chance to use their freedoms, like those in the United States, they use it to repress the rights of their fellow citizens just based on their religious convictions - like a ban of abortion and gay marriage, to put God into the Pledge of Allegiance, among other things.
I don't think the United States is inherently a free-er country in that sense. Damned if the people do and damned if the people don't have political power.
Even if it is China and the mandatory knee jerk reaction is "chinese govt==evil"
I'm sorry, but I missed something. Is there some other more apt reaction to a government with a long, bloody track record of torturing, killing and suppressing its people in the name of ideology?
I don't understand the people that come out of the woodwork as apologists for the Chinese government here. The Chinese government IS EVIL and that knee-jerk reaction isn't a "knee-jerk" reaction, it's as simple and logical a reaction to the totalitarian brutality they've demonstrates as the "knee-jerk" reaction to Nazi Germany, Stalinist USSR, Khmer Rouge Cambodia, ad nauseum.
I do tend to believe there are objective differences between Chinese and American society. For one, I always ask my Chinese friends who their equivalent to Michael Moore is...
On the other hand, one thing that is NOT a difference between China and America, is this: In both countries a large but incomplete majority is convinced they are freer, righter, and better informed than the citizens of the other country. Grok that.
[There is *very* little public understanding of others' mindset across *any* language boundary, anywhere in the world.]