China's All-Seeing Eye

Greg Walton brings us a lengthy story from Rolling Stone which describes China's comprehensive surveillance project, dubbed Golden Shield. The 'Great Firewall of China,' which we've discussed in the past, is but one aspect of Golden Shield. It also includes national ID cards, CCTV networks, and face-recognition software. This investigation showcases just how massive an undertaking it truly is. When finished, it will dwarf London's surveillance system. Quoting: "Over the past two years, some 200,000 surveillance cameras have been installed throughout the city. Many are in public spaces, disguised as lampposts. The closed-circuit TV cameras will soon be connected to a single, nationwide network, an all-seeing system that will be capable of tracking and identifying anyone who comes within its range -- a project driven in part by U.S. technology and investment. Over the next three years, Chinese security executives predict they will install as many as 2 million CCTVs in Shenzhen, which would make it the most watched city in the world. (Security-crazy London boasts only half a million surveillance cameras.) ... This is the most important element of all: linking all these tools together in a massive, searchable database of names, photos, residency information, work history and biometric data. When Golden Shield is finished, there will be a photo in those databases for every person in China: 1.3 billion faces."

Comments

I think that it's great

[Anonymous Coward]

The sooner that totalitarianism is unmasked in all its horrible glory, the better. One of two things will result.

Either the anarchist kids who do their best to undermine society will wake up to the threat... ...or they will continue as before, the totalitarians march in, and they will learn the true meaning of dictatorship.

Lenin used the term "useful idiots" to describe the nattering spoiled brat self-proclaimed "intellectual elite" of Russia that cried for anarchism. Anarchists were quite successful in destroying Russian civil society, first attacking the wealthy capitalists, then the bourgeoisie, then the petty-bourgeoisie, and finally turning on the well-meaning social democrats.

With all opposition swept aside, Lenin took over. His first act was to line all the useful idiots against the wall.

Economics of Crime Prevention

[NetSettler]

In other words, we can find every political activist, dissident and extremist in China, using only five percent of our security/monitoring capacity.

Governments, including ours, "sell" these societal strategies to their citizens as crime-fighting tools. The citizens like low-cost tools because they have fantasies about their taxes going down, etc. But also, J.Q.Public probably often assumes crimes are things like stolen purses or muggers. But such uses are very "small fry" and no serious government is going to build a whole societal surveillance system for so limited a purpose.

Long ago, I had my car broken into in a major US city. When the police arrived, I asked them if they were going to fingerprint it, etc. It seemed plausible they would get some good prints. They just laughed. Only for capital crimes, they explained. It just isn't worth the time and trouble otherwise.

And probably it's only used for capital crimes because they get public exposure. That probably accounts for why there are racial disparities in which capital crimes get followed up. Even there, it is (sadly) probably not really about the severity of the crime, it is more likely about its political impact.

The real crimes, the ones that motivate a government, are those of disagreeing with who's in power in that government or what that power is being used for.

Re:goose, gander, etc.

[cduffy]

The idea that anyone given a taste of freedom will want to preserve it is false. Look at Russia -- they're moving back towards a police state at an alarming rate, but the populace largely supports it. Given the choice between wealth (or at least comfort) and tight control vs. hardship and freedom, a great many individuals do in practice choose the former. Who are you or I to say that they are wrong?

Re:openness is privacy

[davester666]

They always give these projects double-speak names such as "Golden Shield", "Happy Fun Safety Blanket" or "Patriot Act" instead of something like "Citizen Surveillance System".

Not all-seeing eye to eye

[NetSettler]

Brin doesn't advocate a surveillance state. In Brin's vision, information is available about everyone to everyone, including government officials.

Oh, I absolutely understand that. I saw him at a Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference a few years back and chatted with him a little about this in the after-talk mingle, so I don't think I'm too confused about what his position is. At least I had a chance, while standing there incredulous, to ask him if he really believed that. (Those are great conferences, by the way, and there's one coming up in New Haven next week. I don't have any clue if Brin will go, and don't much care, but there's always something good on the agenda in my experience, and I wanted to slip in a plug.)

But my point is that it has to be at least a presupposition of his (or anyone's) if you're going to entertain this as other than a philosophical exercise to say that you have to "get there from here". So they've done part of Brin's vision--my point is: How do we get them to do the rest? Because I think the problem with Brin's vision is that you can't ever under any forseeable circumstances get everyone to do the rest. The world is always going to be full of power imbalances, and there will always be someone wanting to keep it that way. So it's just a fantasy to say it could be done. That's why I pointed to this article in my prior post.

If Brin believes it's possible to motivate people to all at the same time do something in the public interest that way, first of all, his energy is better spent on getting people to all believe in Global Climate Change, because that's a much more pressing problem and affects us all and yet we can't get people to agree on that either. But either way, it's time for him to put his money where his mouth is, so to speak, and say what the next step is toward Utopia because I'm as tired of his proposed non-solution as I am of some of hearing of some of the non-solutions being pursued for Climate Change.

Re:Not all-seeing eye to eye

[nguy]

Oh, I absolutely understand that.

Well, if you "absolutely understand that", then statements like "David Brin should be thrilled [about China's surveillance society]" are either deliberate misrepresentation or unacceptable carelessness.

If Brin believes it's possible to motivate people to all at the same time do something in the public interest that way

What makes you think Brin believes that? Maybe he merely believes that it is already useful to point out that there is a possibility for a solution that people hadn't considered before.

his energy is better spent on getting people to all believe in Global Climate Change, because that's a much more pressing problem and affects us all and yet we can't get people to agree on that either

Perhaps if you stuck to one big topic at a time and organized your thoughts and arguments around that, you, too, could make a contribution to the debate that is as valuable as Brin's. For even if Brin's solution turns out not to work or to be unattainable, it at least got people thinking about the subject in new ways. I don't see any contribution in your writings so far.

Re:Not all-seeing eye to eye

[NetSettler]

Well, if you "absolutely understand that", then statements like "David Brin should be thrilled [about China's surveillance society]" are either deliberate misrepresentation or unacceptable carelessness.

You leave out literary devices like sarcasm, hyperbole, and irony which require neither of those.

I didn't misrepresent what Brin says, I didn't say that much about it, other than that I don't think it's a practical situation one can get to. And if he thinks otherwise, I was suggesting the burden is on him to show why.

Maybe he merely believes that it is already useful to point out that there is a possibility for a solution that people hadn't considered before.

Well, of course, the question of whether others had considered and merely discarded it is hard to measure. But more than that, he seems to be advocating at level that says more than "this is an idea" but more at the level of "this is a good idea". I happen to have an aversion to ideas that are potentially good if implemented completely and almost certainly bad right up until the moment of total completion...especially if failing to finish completely is what I percieve as the most likely outcome.

I think this is what's behind people's clinging to the US Second Amendment, by the way. Giving away your gun if you knew for sure everyone else was going to might almost make sense, but if you thought anyone would be left who didn't, it explains why you'd be nervous. But cameras and guns are a lot similar in this regard.

To some degree, the US Second Amendment protects the right of the people to maintain enough power that if a government ran out of control, the people could fix it. But no one talks about that any more because that would mean admitting private citizens have a constitutional right to own nuclear weapons, for parity. So now citizens can own deer hunting rifles and the government can own nukes. That doesn't achieve parity. Likewise with cameras, we're all allowed a pocket camera and the government is allowed a ubiquitous network of surveillance cameras. That's not the vision Brin is offering, but it is the more likely practical effect if you roll this out. Even if the government promised to allow parity, it wouldn't happen. Exceptions would be made and anyone who tried to find those exceptions would be rounded up more quickly than they could rouse rabble.

Just saying it should happen right on its own and it's people's own fault if they don't just all decide to do it is vacuous. Like saying that the problem with crime prevention is that people don't all decide one day to be on the same side of the law.

The beauty of language, and the joy of books of fantasy, is that it's possible to construct descriptions of things that cannot be. The burden of the citizenry in a democracy is to somehow discern plans for what can be from those that cannot. I'm not criticizing Brin's ability to spin a good yarn, I'm suggesting he isn't the right person to lead the real world to Utopia.

Re:more anti-Chinese hysteria

[p0tat03]

The Chinese government has become very adept at raising generations of citizens who are in complete support of the tyrannical regime.

Way to show your biases, and the fact that you seemingly have never spoken to a real Chinese person.

People do not support the communist regime, and certainly do not support the tyrannical aspects of it. They do not support shooting Tibetan monks, nor do they support jailing political prisoners. People don't cheer when another freedom-fighting troublemaker is arrested, they simply accept it as a fact of life, and move on. In your twisted reality you might call that supporting the tyranny by refusing to fight back, but that's far from the truth.

Similarly, people do not generally see the Communist regime as tyrannical. After all, this is the regime that has turned China from backwater agrarian wasteland into THE industrial power of the world. It has lifted tens of millions of people out of poverty, and modernized a country that was ridiculously behind, even just two decades ago. The people have seen explosive economic growth, and the indescribable improvement in their quality of life. This is hardly tyrannical. Most everyone I know accepts that some collateral damage must be done (e.g. political prisoners, putting down unrest in brutal ways) in order for the whole to benefit.

Unfortunately most Chinese citizens welcome the filtered news and internet brought to them by their government and certainly support any efforts of that government to quell further uprisings by such violent 'terrorists' (as the government lovingly refers to them) as Buddhist monks...

Do you assume the Chinese are stupid, you racist fuck? My God, if we all thought like you we'd still think Blacks can't vote, and are subhuman, or some other nonsense like that. The Chinese know full well that their government lies to them every single day. They know that the state media twists everything, and most don't believe in it more than they do fairy tales. I have no doubt *some* of the state media's lies sneak through as truth, but seriously, the state media is NOT a trusted news source in China.

Your attitude sickens me. This whole "America is so superior, we can see right through obvious propaganda, but surely the simple-minded, backwards, uneducated masses in China cannot!" It reeks of the superiority complex that Western media has constantly demonstrated towards Asia.

You want to have a positive influence on Chinese people? Stop publishing ludicrously biased news. I've had the unique opportunity to look at news of the Tibetan uprising from both sides of the media, and I have to say that both sides are *equally* guilty of publishing pure bullshit. China claims that the Dalai Lama is a terrorist inciting war inside Tibet's borders, a ludicrous claim. American papers on the other hand, published a picture of "Chinese" military police brutally suppressing monks in Tibet, when it turns out that the "police" were actually Nepalese, the picture was taken in Nepal, and the Chinese had nothing to do with it. Media bias much?

Give it up, your news media is every bit as "fair and balanced" as the state news in China, and we all manufacture the same propaganda bullshit. Get off your high horse and stop assuming that your media is the paragon of unbiased truth.

Re:goose, gander, etc.

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Who are you or I to say that they are wrong? I think we are right to say they are wrong because a lack of freedom eventually leads to reductions in comfort and increases in hardship. For example, see Amartya Sen's Nobel-winning research into the cause of famine -- he found that almost universally famine has been caused by leaders who were not accountable to the population (in a nut-shell, the leaders never want for food so without accountability they have little motive to fix the problems that lead to food shortages for the regular people). I feel confident in saying that a country can not have accountable leaders unless the population is free.