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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.
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.
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.
How is it worse that the USA's mysterious "no-fly" lists or the TSA groping everybody who wants to travel somewhere in the USA?
No sig today...
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.
How is it worse that the USA's mysterious "no-fly" lists or the TSA groping everybody who wants to travel somewhere in the USA?
In its scope, if nothing else. Checkpoints every couple hundred yards, mass examination of cell phones, forbidden apps, entry/exit of the region strictly controlled and recorded, etc. TSA has nothing approaching this, and it's limited mostly to airports (although it's showing up increasingly at other transportation hubs). And this is only the beginning. China is working its way toward a system of scoring all of its citizens regarding their social value, kind of like a FICO score except encompassing one's entire life and social interactions. The score will in part determine your qualification for good jobs, housing, credit, etc. It's positively diabolical in that one's associations with others enters into the score, so there'll be a penalty if you hang around with folks who have low-scores, meaning society itself will be enlisted in assuring conformance to whatever code authorities want enforced.
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.
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.
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?
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.
The Muslims of Xinjiang are Chinese
So you know nothing about the region whatsoever; well done.