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12 Days In Xinjiang - China's Surveillance State (business-standard.com)
Long-time Slashdot reader b0s0z0ku writes: China has turned Xinjiang, the Northwestern part of the country surrounding Urumqi, into one of the most advanced surveillance states in the world. Officially, the purpose is to prevent terrorism and control resistance to the government in one of the few parts of China where ethnic Chinese are a minority.
From routine use of facial recognition cameras, to police checkpoints where people's cell phones randomly are checked for unauthorized software, to needing to swipe an ID card and be photographed to buy gasoline and other necessities, the level of technology — and control — is frightening and awe-inspiring.
From routine use of facial recognition cameras, to police checkpoints where people's cell phones randomly are checked for unauthorized software, to needing to swipe an ID card and be photographed to buy gasoline and other necessities, the level of technology — and control — is frightening and awe-inspiring.
Then you are safe.
If it's frightening and you still find that awe-inspiring, there's something wrong in your fucking brain.
Low trust, high tech society => surveillance society.
This is the future you choose.
The greatest thing to happen to those in power. The perfect blank check to get the public to agree to slavery.
"if the government is in the interests of the people, why would anyone resist it?"
In a people internally divided they can't serve all of their interests. Religion obviously being the main sticking point, highly dogmatic religions obviously being the most difficult to accommodate, orthodox Sunni Islam obviously being the major creator of problems.
think we are immune to this, but's it's being rolled out in the form of collusion between corporations and government. Almost every adult in the West carries a mobile phone--a veritable electronic leash. We "allow" ourselves to be tracked constantly, manipulated by ads, all in the name of "free" services and conveniences. How long before the aforementioned collusion turns ugly? How long before we have a National ID card in the US? There are already random stops along certain highways in the US. Whatever happened to free, unmolested travel? How long before we hear "Papers, please."
Google and other tech companies are literally sucking the privacy out of the air. Wait... that's already happened. How long before ordering a pizza really is a matter of convincing the pizza company you really want pepperoni and sausage, but because they are "jacked in" to the system, they advise you your cholesterol is too high and add a surcharge and then report you to your insurance company.
The only way to win is to not play the game.
My own employer has started the nonsense of requiring annual physicals and nicotine tests. Failure to comply results in two monthly penalties of $50 for each. I refused and will happily pay the penalty. My employer has no right to know about my cholesterol levels, my blood sugar, etc. The draconian system is coming, but we're the frogs in a slowly heating pot of water. Most of us are too stupid to realize it's coming.
All reactionaries are paper tigers.
In Myanmar, you're not allowed to travel from one province to another without written permission and a reason, even within just Myanmar free travel is restricted. The army is quite small, the people quite large in number, by dividing them geographically, it lets the military keep hold/track of a large populace with a small force.
The divide and conquer strategy, divide people with divisive policies, set them fighting against each other at every opportunity, then take advantage of the division. Here it's geographic, checkpoints, communications controls etc. In Myanmar its also geographic but low-tech, in USA it's tweets of fake propaganda designed to set Americans against each other / (even Republicans against each other, there's no division too small to attempt it seems).
In Russia, it's fake politicians representing jailed opposition leaders, the fake ones are there to divide the opposition vote so Putin's victory doesn't look so fraudulent. A few of the fakes will then endorse Putin so nobody is really sure who to vote and Putin never has to try to hide an opposition sweeping victory from the majority of Russians.
Well put.
China realizes they need to keep radical Islam in check. Make it so inconvenient that they move back to their own shitty countries. After fleeing said shitty countries the first thing they do is make the new country more like the one they just left.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
To steal an infamous line from Chateau Heartiste/Roissy: "diversity + proximity = war."
Identity politics is just the first stage as every non-white minority trends toward cohesive identity groups if they aren't already.
The old order was based on a simple formula:
1. At least 80% white majority.
2. 20% or so minorities and tolerance for diversity because it was really just "cultural flavor."
3. Minorities can be separate ethnoi when they want to be, but whites cannot.
Now that the white majority is demographically plummeting (the Baby Boomers and Gen X aborted and contracepted away a ton of Millennial and Gen Z replacements) you no longer have "tolerable hypocrisy," you have a rapidly shrinking group that is increasingly being told it cannot play by the same rules that increasingly radical "minorities" are.
The surveillance step is the bandage over a sucking chest wound. The next phase is the collapse of the social order as the different ethnoi demand their own pieces.
China has turned Xinjiang, the Northwestern part of the country surrounding Urumqi, into one of the most advanced surveillance states in the world.
Cue obligatory Slashdotters with standard response...
...in 3, 2, 1...
"Yeah, well the USA is twenty-five times worse!!"
> How is it worse that the USA's mysterious "no-fly" lists
There are two lists called "no-fly" lists. One is an actual list of people not allowed to fly on US airlines. It includes a couple hundred people who have been actively involved in plotting hijackings and that sort of thing.
The other list, thousands of people (out of 300 million) are people whom the FBI wants to talk to before they leave the country, or enter the country. It applies to international flights.
There are a bunch of listed people the FBI wants to talk to if they try to come into the US. How is that different from everyone having to show ID and be tracked by the government every time they buy gas, you ask.
There are, of course, legitimate concerns about these lists. The FBI should probably be more transparent about them. By pretending it's the same thing as the government tracking everything all citizens do, one sounds quite silly and tends to encourage readers to see criticism of the FBI lists as silly in general. It's like comparing red-light cameras to Nazi concentration camps - the comparison is so ridiculous that it undermines the argument against red-light cameras.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ...
"The Transparent Society (1998) is a non-fiction book by the science-fiction author David Brin in which he forecasts social transparency and some degree of erosion of privacy, as it is overtaken by low-cost surveillance, communication and database technology, and proposes new institutions and practices that he believes would provide benefits that would more than compensate for lost privacy. The work first appeared as a magazine article by Brin in Wired in late 1996.[1] In 2008, security expert Bruce Schneier called the transparent society concept a "myth"[2] (a characterization Brin later rejected),[3] claiming it ignores wide differences in the relative power of those who access information.[2]
Brin argues that a core level of privacy--protecting our most intimate interactions--may be preserved, despite the rapid proliferation of cameras that become ever-smaller, cheaper and more numerous faster than Moore's law. He feels that this core privacy can be saved simply because that is what humans deeply need and want. Hence, Brin explains that "...the key question is whether citizens will be potent, sovereign and knowing enough to enforce this deeply human want."
This means they must not only have rights, but also the power to use them and the ability to detect when they are being abused. Ironically, that will only happen in a world that is mostly open, in which most citizens know most of what is going on, most of the time. It is the only condition under which citizens may have some chance of catching the violators of their freedom and privacy. Privacy is only possible if freedom (including the freedom to know) is protected first.
Brin thus maintains that privacy is a "contingent right," one that grows out of the more primary rights, e.g. to know and to speak. He admits that such a mostly-open world will seem more irksome and demanding; people will be expected to keep negotiating the tradeoffs between knowing and privacy. It will be tempting to pass laws that restrict the power of surveillance to authorities, entrusting them to protect our privacy -- or a comforting illusion of privacy. By contrast, a transparent society destroys that illusion by offering everyone access to the vast majority of information out there.
Brin argues that it will be good for society if the powers of surveillance are shared with the citizenry, allowing "sousveillance" or "viewing from below," enabling the public to watch the watchers. According to Brin, this only continues the same trend promoted by Adam Smith, John Locke, the US Constitutionalists and the western enlightenment, who held that any elite (whether commercial, governmental, or aristocratic) should experience constraints upon its power. And there is no power-equalizer greater than knowledge.[4]""
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
More on what is going on in China: https://www.wired.com/story/ag...
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
No -- you don't have to carry a mobile phone all of the time. There are no checkpoints where EVERY phone is searched at random. Also, gas station feeds are fragmented, they all go to their own DVRs and aren't checked by the government except as part of an investigation.
That approach doesn't work as an individual because the people you email with will use gmail, you will be on endless surveillance cameras as you move walk around or drive, and your family and friends will post pictures including you to anti-social media. We essentially either move forward as a community or we all sink together.
Alternatively, you can live as a self-sufficient hermit or in a small group like in "Captain Fantastic" but even that can break down as social reality intrudes through family relationships and medical needs, as in the film.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Also, more (by me) on why encryption is mostly useless for social change agents:
http://pdfernhout.net/why-encr...
Again, as with my sig, the central irony here is we are using the technologies of abundance and joy that could free us to enslave ourselves out of fear.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
It sounds like 'the government has met the enemy, and it is us'.
You live and learn, or you don't learn much.
Why are the Chinese there in the first place? To control the Uighurs? Why don't the Chinese get the fuck out where they are not wanted?
(posting as AC because what I'm going to say is going to hurt some feelings...)
I live in a part of Asia and we get regular news about this. The Uighur are straight up terrorists - they're basically the Palestinians of the far east. Their leader is completely dedicated to keep her tribe as violent as possible until China just lets them have autonomy on the territory, at which point they would basically live as uncivilized dirt farmers. The fact that they're still around and haven't just been erased shows the Chinese government is a little different now than it was 20~30 years ago.
Why is being an "uncivilized dirt farmer" a bad thing, as opposed to being an urbanite living in a 20 square meter box, subject to constant surveillance?
When I was in China the Uighurs sold us hash in baseball-sized chunks. They owned restaurants where they served Uighur noodles and bread like pizza but fluffier. They were cool and did not look Chinese. Apparently they smoke hash all the time.
"When one looks inside of the home of people without their permisssion, it becomes permissible for them to gouge out his eye."
(Muslim)
"Were a man to look into your home/private property wihtout your permission, and were you to pelt him with pebbles and knock out his eye, there would be no sin upon you."
(Bukhari & Muslim)
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Not control, replacement.
A clash of civilizations is is taking place in Xinjiang, between a pseudo-Islam increasing being dragged to Sunni fundamentalism by Middle East money (just like all the other pseudo Islamic religions in Asia and the Balkans) and China's pseudo-communism. The latter was winning through demography for a while, but the low birthrates of Han Chinese present a problem.
Melania says Donald got a big hadron when he read this, so, thanks a lot.
The Uighur are an ethnic group they have their own Turkic language and have had a unique written language for over 1000 years with a great history of poetry and literature, yet the Chinese government won't let them teach their children in their language. What's going ahead in Xinjiang (Uighurstan) is an concerted program of cultural extinction. If this was happening to your ethnic group in your area you'd feel threatened, be insecure, get angry and some of your more excitable and braver friends would resort to various levels of violence.
It's a tragedy and crime that's occurring there and no-one (even Turkey) make more than a whimper of protest.
It is terribly sad.
It's really worth a trip to go there. Not the "capital" Urumqi which is now a Han city, but Kashkar and other towns. A remarkable, diverse land. Incredible range of cuisines.
Go now before it disappears and its history is erased.
Plus all Chinese look the same.
It’s not a problem; it’s the Uyghur they are monitoring.
I live in a part of Asia and we get regular news about this. The Uighur are straight up terrorists
And of course your "news" is unbiased and objective. Hint: you're either a brainwashed moron or (more likely) a Chinese govt shill. Either way, fuckoff and die.
The same reason they didn't "get the fuck out" of Tibet: nobody fucking made 'em.