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Congress Mulls China's Networked Authoritarianism
eldavojohn writes "Rebecca MacKinnon tipped her hand about her congressional statements on China and how much Americans are invested in China's censorship, delivered today at a hearing on 'China's Information Control Practices and the Implications for the United States.' In an attempt to describe what China is pioneering, she coins the term 'networked authoritarianism.' Of most concern was Baidu, which has two Americans on its board of directors (out of five) as well as a lot of funding from American investors and mutual funds. From her testimony (PDF): 'As I have described in my testimony, the Chinese government has transferred much of the cost of censorship to the private sector. The American investment community has so far been willing to fund Chinese innovation in censorship technologies and systems without complaint or objection. Under such circumstances, Chinese industry leaders have little incentive and less encouragement to resist government demands that often contradict even China's own laws and constitution.' Is Congress genuinely concerned or are they just curious how they can make 'networked authoritarianism' work for them?"
Oh man, I can't wait until we get networked authoritarianism too! That internet killswitch idea was a step in the right direction but this is so much better!
"Going to war without the French is like going deer hunting without your accordion." ~General Norman Schwarzkopf
Is Congress genuinely concerned or are they just curious how they can make "networked authoritarianism" work for them?"
I thought it was pretty clear at this point, our elected officials are two-faced pricks, whining about freedom everywhere else while doing everything they can to ruin it at home to "protect children" or "stop tourists".
will be a bunch of whines about their government selling out its principles to corporate influence, and how nothing can stop chinese policy, and this is our future, and we live in a corporatocracy...
and every single person making that comment, modding that comment up, or reading and nodding their heads ARE PART OF THE FUCKING PROBLEM
believe the world can be better. believe it. but if you only have that same tired easy typical empty cynicism that things are only getting worse, or that none of this situation can be changed YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM
yes, corporations and authoritarianism threaten your freedoms. the only question is: what the fuck are YOU going to do about it? if it is nothing but whine and ACCEPT THE STATUS QUO, then you are part of the fucking problem with what is wrong with this world. YOU ARE
there will always be threats to liberty and freedom. always, forever more. the existence of your liberties is a constant maintenance problem, forever. it is never, and never was, a concept that is fought for once, and then never worried about again. so now it falls on your shoulders form previous generations who actually fought for the legal status quo you enjoy. what are you fucking going to do about it?
the only question as to how far threats to your freedom goes is how far those who wish to defend the notion of liberty will push back. but if you don't push back, you just fucking whine and complain and accept with the typical lazy easy pessism and cynicism, and you want to know where your freedom went,
look in the fucking mirror
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
For the ethical investor, there are two possible responses to this problem. One is divestment from all ethically challenging situations.
OK, I'll have to pull my money out of all investments because I can find an ethical problem with everything. That doesn't server me. Selfish? Tell me that when I'm older and on government aid - your tax money - because I don't have a pot to piss in.
The other is engagement and advocacy, using financial leverage to work for positive change in industry practices and even government regulation.
Nobody will listen to a nobody with only a few thousand dollars in their mutual funds. They won't even listen to someone with a few million invested. Giant multi-billion dollar multi-national corporations really don't have to listen to anyone.
How much business is Google really losing? China is a Third World country. Most of their population is a bunch of farmers living in poverty. Advertising to most of them is pointless. And the Chinese in the big cities? How much is that business worth.
And in the process of this "protest" they're getting quite a bit of good PR.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
The US Government must win. Lives are on the line. If the US Government loses than many people protected by the US Government could be killed. The US Government therefore cares only about winning wars and battles. The easiest way to win is to maximize control over land, sea, air, information, human resources, etc.
I don't particularly like this fact but it's just how it is. Winning the war is all they care about and in some cases they don't even care about that. Winning is defined as winning militarily which means having the most power. This is not the same thing as having the most liberty or protecting the Constitution. Politics are about power distribution, war is about power distribution, money is about power distribution, and to win you must have might.
I've been saying this same essential thing for years, though instead of calling it "networked authoritarianism" what I've called it is "cyberpunk corporate feudalism".
The corporations control everything in today's world. Sure, the governments still have their military, but corporations operate within the nation states largely autonomously and often in partially parasitic relationships: if the corporation doesn't like the environment, it leaves.
Corporate relationships change much in the same way as nation-states and fiefdoms did during the Middle Ages: smaller gets absorbed by larger, larger breaks into smaller, and the larger ones fight against each other - but for everyone looking on, nothing substantial really tends to change.
States, and the people living within them, don't really have much (if any) sway over these corporations. They operate under their own rules (only in so much as they don't get caught). In essence, they're operating as the countries of the later Middle Ages did towards the Holy See - except the State is God. They'll do whatever they can get away with, and if the state finds out or protests, they'll just leave - or take over.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
The government is full of competitors, people who fight for their "right" to rule. The next logical step is to force your views on the playing field and try to protect the integrity of your memes.
Other politicians are risk enough, but it's the vast number of citizens who can cause real change if they wanted. That's why politicians want the people who take orders from them to be the only ones with guns. Now that the internet is a serious threat because of the power it gives to people that shadows the threat of guns.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
Governments have military objectives. These objectives could be to secure the middle east. To win the war in Afganastan, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan etc. To protect Isreal. To isolate and defeat North Korea. To beat the Soviets.
It has nothing to do with principles. Principles are useful to help you win. Principles are a tactic, a means to an end rather than an end in itself. The only principle is to win. Winning means to protection national security. To maintain super power status. To protect the national interest. This usually means to control global resources, to control information, to control land, sea, air, and to maintain control over all assets.
It's fine if the government thinks this way but it's not right for the government to lie to it's own people, even it's own soldiers about why they fight. It's only the exceptionally smart or exceptionally experienced who figure out how it really works. It's not about principles and all about power. Nationalist vs Nationalist is what it's about. The US Nation against the Russian or Iran or North Korea or China or whomever challenges US global dominance. It's that simple.
Western companies making a buck off evil? Nothing new.
Infamous Auschwitz Tattoo Began as an IBM Number
Auschwitz Phone Book Shows IBM Hollerith Buro Phone # 4496
In August 1943, a timber merchant from Bendzin, Poland, arrived at Auschwitz. He was among a group of 400 inmates, mostly Jews. First, a doctor examined him briefly to determine his fitness for work. His physical information was noted on a medical record. Second, his full prisoner registration was completed with all personal details. Third, his name was checked against the indices of the Political Section to see if he would be subjected to special punishment. Finally, he was registered in the Labor Assignment Office and assigned a characteristic five-digit IBM Hollerith number, 44673.
The five-digit Hollerith number was part of a custom punch card system devised by IBM to track prisoners in Nazi concentration camps, including the slave labor at Auschwitz.
The Polish timber merchant's punch card number would follow him from labor assignment to labor assignment as Hollerith systems tracked him and his availability for work, and reported the data to the central inmate file eventually kept at Department DII. Department DII of the SS Economics Administration in Oranienburg oversaw all camp slave labor assignments, utilizing elaborate IBM systems.
Later in the summer of 1943, the Polish timber merchant's same five-digit Hollerith number, 44673, was tattooed on his forearm. Eventually, during the summer of 1943, all non-Germans at Auschwitz were similarly tattooed.
http://www.thecuttingedgenews.com/index.php?article=663
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
and cynicism is a fine philosophy until you figure out that principles actually do exist, because some people actually believe in them, and these people are the only ones who ever make a difference or matter
everyone else is as you describe: parasites playing the system, the status quo, stasis. but if the world is nothing but parasites, and no host, then the parasites die: nothing gets better, natural decay leads us to worse, and the parasites certainly won't labor to make our situation any better
so understand your place in the world because of the words you have written: a parasite, and understand why your life has no meaning or dignity
or understand there is no pride or happiness or anything of value in what you believe, and stop being such a fucking parasite
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
There is no real good and evil dollar. There is just dollars. In the end the team which has the most of them decides what is good and what is evil for the people who have the least of them.
so many people who believe "this is the way life is" actually believe "this is the way MY life is"
the boundaries and limitations they perceive on themselves, they think apply to other people. they don't
what principles you believe in matters. for example: ghosts don't exist. but if you believe in ghosts, it alters your behavior, and therefore, your belief in ghosts matters. if enough people believe in ghosts, human society (not the natural world, but we're not talking about that: define your terms) is altered to match this
human society is self-emergent phenomenon. it is bound only by what people believe, not just natural laws. this makes it very powerful. if i believe in clothing, cities, electrical wires, court systems... then this is what i will live in, instead of a cave. this applies to technology... and principles of society
if you believe in something like, say, human dignity, that matters. you can say human dignity doesn't exist, and that's true, according to mother nature. she'll kill you in the most brutal sudden insulting ways, and carry on in a blink, your entire existence a forgotten joke. but in the realm of human society, belief in human dignity alters behavior such that human dignity becomes a REAL (in the bounds of human society) concept. people grieve. they write songs about your passing, they build pyramids: human dignity is a principle, and its effects are palpable, and so it matters
there also exists cynics, like yourself. they don't alter society, as a consequence of their own beliefs in not mattering. they live in the shadows, feeding off the positive efforts of others. they won't contribute: they don't believe in contributing to causes, but they're happy for the clothing, the cities, the electrical wires, the sense of justice, the notion of freedom, the human conscience, that others full of belief labored to build into edifices of human society. they're dead weight, they're parasites. they'll say your life has no meaning, but they won't apply that principle to themselves. they still love to live, a life that supposedly has no meaning, according to their words: hypocrites
those laboring under beliefs and principles are defining human society are actually making substantial differences. while those who simply sit there and deny that the effort matters in the end, only define the terms under which they themselves don't matter in the end
what you believe in comes to define your reality. so if you believe in nothing, you define your existence as nothing (but not my existence). your lack of faith and belief does not limit me, only you. meaning is a proof positive venture. so if you put nothing positive forth, your meaning is emptiness. that you have chosen, not me. but if i state my meaning as something that other people can understand and grasp and coordinate with me, then our meaning in life becomes the fruit of efforts laboring under a system of belief that we define. and that becomes real. the pyramids: someone built them, because someone believed in them. this boundary of belief, or lack thereof, is the only real limitation we labor in our entire lives. that you choose to believe in nothing, and do nothing, means you leave behind nothing... but the pyramids still exist. because someone believed in them. and your lack of belief did not negate them. you've only negated anything you could have done yourself
that's your place in this world: please understand that the callous limitations you have defined in human society are only limitations on your life. but not on mine. you've described the terms in which your life is empty and without meaning, but you haven't defined the terms under which my life does have meaning. and in the end, i'm the only one who matters, because i leave something positive that others can carry on and invest in further, and so, many generations down the road, you have tremendous societal constructs that millions live under in belief in, whether they be notions of liberty, generosity, freedom, fair play, or any other positive be
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
We already settled this. The Western board members aren't real; they're rented.