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Alibaba Founder To Chinese Government: Use Big Data To Stop Criminals (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Chinese billionaire Jack Ma proposed that the nation's top security bureau use big data to prevent crime, endorsing the country's nascent effort to build unparalleled online surveillance of its billion-plus people. China's data capabilities are virtually unrivaled among its global peers, and policing cannot happen without the ability to analyze information on its citizens, the co-founder of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. said in a speech published Saturday by the agency that polices crime and runs the courts. Ma's stance resonates with that of China's ruling body, which is establishing a system to collect and parse information on citizens in a country where minimal safeguards exist for privacy. "Bad guys in a movie are identifiable at first glance, but how can the ones in real life be found?" Ma said in his speech, which was posted on the official WeChat account of the Commission for Political and Legal Affairs. "In the age of big data, we need to remember that our legal and security system with millions of members will also face change." In his speech, Ma stuck mainly to the issue of crime prevention. In Alibaba's hometown of Hangzhou alone, the number of surveillance cameras may already surpass that of New York's, Ma said. Humans can't handle the sheer amount of data amassed, which is where artificial intelligence comes in, he added. "The future legal and security system cannot be separated from the internet and big data," Ma said. Ma's speech also highlights the delicate relationship between Chinese web companies and the government. The ruling party has designated internet industry leaders as key targets for outreach, with President Xi Jinping saying in May last year that technology leaders should "demonstrate positive energy in purifying cyberspace."
"demonstrate positive energy in purifying cyberspace."
Speaking as one who has been on the net since the early 80's, before China was, and most likely before Jack Ma had ever heard of it, this is how I think you purify cyberspace.
You bring freedom back. You stop turning it into an Orwellian mechanism for social control and surveillance. This message could stand to by heard by China, by the US, by Asia, by Europe, by the Middle East, and everywhere really. It COULD have been an unprecedented tool to enable human freedom. Instead, it has been co-opted by authoritarians everywhere and is moving more and more away from that, towards a means of "soft oppression". Sometimes hard oppression too, but mostly soft oppression. And techies everywhere are sitting on our asses and watching it happen.
Either people all across the world rise up and take back the internet, or I'm not sure the cat is ever getting back into the bag again. Too many now no longer remember the internet as it was before the authoritarians got to it.
The window is closing. The good guys do not appear to be winning.