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."

Comments

Seems to me

[Bai jie]

Seems to me that the Chinese Government is being very open about the amount of surveillance they are using on their citizens.

Hardly a Chinese issue

[Anonymous Coward]

If you walk into an internet cafe in the UK you've likely been recorded by 10 different cameras on the street on the way in, and the goverment is now promising to log all your online activity in a central database.

This loss of privacy certainly sucks, but we can no longer smugly denounce the Chinese for it as if we in the west are any more respectful of privacy or any less big-brother-like. "China's internet privacy protection falls to UK level" would be just as apt a headline.

Even China's Tianamen Square atrocity has a western parallel with the USA's killing of Vietnam war protesters at Kent State University in 1970.

It would be nice if we were in a position to righteously denounce the Chinese for human rights violations, but sadly we're really not.

Re:Hardly a Chinese issue

[Trailer Trash]

Try googling "Kent State" from your computer here in the US. Now, try googling "Tianamen Square" from China.

Any differences?

How many people

[bugeaterr]

How many people casually compare the Patriot Act to Nazi-facism on their way to buy a cart full of Chinese products at Target?

Re:Nothing wrong with that

[ShadowRangerRIT]

Actually, racist would be if you used race as a proxy for judgment on characteristics unrelated to their race. If he finds the actual physical characteristics common to Chinese women more appealing (e.g. skin tone, hair color and character, cheekbones, etc.), it's not racist.

Now if he made comments about liking ethnically Chinese women for their advanced math skills, that would be racial prejudice with a rosy positive spin, but you needn't jump to racism simply because he *mentioned* race. Sheesh.