Slashdot Mirror
China To Photograph All Internet Cafe Customers
Gwaihir the Windlord writes "Not only is the Great Firewall of China back up and running, but now if you visit an Internet cafe, your photo will be taken and your identity card scanned. And the friendly officers of the Cultural Law Enforcement Taskforce make those details, entered into a city-wide database, available at any other cafe. So much for the new levels of openness and transparency that the Olympics were supposed to usher in."
And you have nothing important to say/think either. So you're good.
your view is as racist as the parent post. It's just got that rosy positive spin...
"Second, privacy for citizens, openness for the state. Those two go hand in hand, really."
No, it's hypocritical. You are demanding something you do not wish to abide to. It does not matter if they are chosen and whatnot, if you are trying to demand something but think it is a bad thing for you, you have captured the essence of the problem.
Governments do not want to be open, just like you. Demanding it is naive and shows lack of belief in your own words.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
Americans are so propagandized that people who protest US government violence (like against Rodney King or Cambodia) are rioters who deserved to be killed (like in Kent State or in LA), while people protesting against countries in competition with the US (China) are all docile, non-violent people who want democracy, that exposition beyond a point is futile. From experience, I know it is mostly futile in trying to explain to a working class American religious fundamentalist, of which there are many, that people die when they get old, and don't fly away to some paradise in the clouds; that some Jewish carpenter 2000 years ago did not walk on water, raise people from the dead, magically create loaves and fish, turn water into wine and the like; that there is not some bearded man in the clouds watching everything they do and so forth. Likewise, more white collar Americans who are more socially liberal generally have a very warped view of the world outside the United States, which they tend to know very little of.