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Vice President Mike Pence Says Google Should Halt Dragonfly App Development (reuters.com)
On Thursday, the U.S. Vice President Mike Pence weighed in on Dragonfly, a project run by Google to build a censored search engine app for China. He said Dragonfly app would make it easier to track someone's internet searches. From a report: Pence said in a speech that business leaders are now thinking twice before entering the Chinese market "if it means turning over their intellectual property or abetting Beijing's oppression." He added, "More must follow suit. For example, Google should immediately end development of the 'Dragonfly' app that will strengthen Communist Party censorship and compromise the privacy of Chinese customers."
As long as that involves a direct order banning illegal bulk collection of data and weakening of any encryption.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
and apple should give info to the FBI like they do in China
rather than any principled stance. I base that on what little I can find on his voting record.
Still, the GOP has been pretty pro-surveillance (not that the Dems have been helping in that regard, even Bernie's voted on the wrong side at times). Still, he's back in line. Maybe Pence is. Does anyone have any recent discussion on Pence's stance on stuff like warrantless wiretapping?
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Uh huh, sure ... all while being required to help with US domestic spying.
This isn't a stand of principle, this is saying it's OK to be evil for us, but not for someone else.
And think they can use it to track his Handmaid's Tale fanfic pr0n searches.
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
Come on, let's get serious.
The USA has some problems, sure, as do every country. But China is its own level of insane. Censoring half the Web, locking away anyone who believe anything beside communist propaganda, no access to foreign media, blocking vpn websites, torturing falun gong and other religious group, it's absolute bullshit. Also messing with the stability of the region with the south China Sea claims and fucking up Hong Kong and Taiwan to try and turn them into commie States. And that's not even Co sideline the trade war and the new Chinese spy chips discovered in foreign servers.
Fuck China. I love Chinese culture but there is no culture left in China, now only brainwashing and lies.
I wonder how Pence feels about technology that would allow a political leader to push instant messages onto every single cellular device, allowing citizens no ability to opt out.
But since he supported giving electro-shock to homosexuals to "cure" them, I think we have a pretty good idea.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Seriously, they just don't.
They'll happily fork all their email over to Google, let Facebook mine the everloving shit out of their lives, run everybody's tracking scripts all around the web, put an Amazon Alexa in their bedroom, and install spyware on their phones in exchange for a $0.50 discount on coffee.
Snowden came along and showed them how much was being collected of their communications, but what did they do? They went right along supporting the companies cooperating with the NSA. They went right along putting Facebook on their phones. They went right along sending unencrypted email.
And you expect them to care about Google collecting personal data about people in China's searches? They don't even care about Google strip-mining THEIR OWN searches.
Look I hate it but this horse left the barn a long time ago. People don't give a shit about privacy. Not theirs, and not some poor guy's in China.
Ignoring the politics, do you approve of google working on dragonfly?
Saudi Arabia scores considerably lower when it comes to freedom than China (by aggregate score):
https://freedomhouse.org/repor...
I mean, women were just allowed to drive in 2018:
https://www.npr.org/2018/06/24...
But they are a favored trade partner focusing on two way oil for weapons deals.
So we arm nations that oppress their citizens more than China. In 2017, Trump signed a $110 billion military sale agreement with Saudi Arabia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
What's this about internet censorship? Oh, Saudi Arabia used Secure Computing, a US corporation, to manage country wide internet monitoring and filtering, not just search.
But oil (and our incessant fear of Iran)...
BlameBillCosby.com
If Google doesn't build their Censor-A-Matic, some other non-US company will likely fill that niche. How is that better? The Chinese gov't will get their desired censorship engines one way or another because they want it and they control China.
Table-ized A.I.
... and compromise the privacy of Chinese customers."
WHAT ABOUT AMERICA FIRST?
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
they still have Most Favored Nation Status from the US...
I don't think it's that the US is any better than China, it's just that we're wealthier and so our ruling class doesn't have to bother with that sort of thing to keep the working class in line. Go back 50 years and read up on what we did to Unions though. It's the same stuff China's doing. We didn't stop doing that stuff because we became better people, we shipped the factories where that stuff happens overseas.... That didn't really solve the problem of oppression, it just moved it out of sight, out of mind.
At the end of the day we're all just people, and we're all a week's worth of food away from savagery. The best solution is always to make it so that nobody's getting to that point.
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You're going to a lot of effort to avoid admitting pence did a good thing.
It's okay. You can say it.
The world won't end.
I highly recommend Kishore Mahbubani's Long Now Foundation Talk on China. I am not the expert of eastern geo-politics that he is, so I have no idea if his thinking is correct or not, but it's very interesting.
He states that China's move to democracy is almost inevitable, but it will take a long time. He said that Chinese officials saw what happened with the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union, going briefly into democracy before Russia emerged with totalitarianism and Putin. They don't want to go down that road. But it's clear that there are many democratic reforms happening in China right now. It's not the China I grew up learning about in the 70's and 80's, and the people of that country are benefiting from those reforms.
All of that said, they are still a very long way away from what most of us would deem as acceptable when it comes to human rights. I think in 50 years though, China will look very different from both inside and outside their borders.
I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
You forgot Tibet, and the ongoing destruction of Tibetan Buddhism.
Fuck China. I love Chinese culture but there is no culture left in China, now only brainwashing and lies.
That was Mao's direct intention: destroy all traditional Chinese culture, along with the traditions. Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state. He created China's "Lost Generation", by encouraging students to kill all their teachers, then shipping all the educated youth off to farms, breaking all methods by which culture is transmitted across civilizations.
Turns out "no culture" is a bad thing, as anything beyond sociopathy must be learned, and China got a generation of short-sighted greed, pettiness, and poor impulse control (the Baby Boomers have nothing on those guys). Pretty much the opposite of how communes are supposed to work, ironically enough.
Meanwhile, all over the Chinese countryside you'll find crumbling buildings that were once wonderful temples and the like, but no one cares to maintain since Mao (or at least no one with the resources).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Normally this is true, However this administration seems to have lacked Adult complex thinking.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
He belongs to a party that prioritizes the protection of basic human rights
They say that "on the internet, nobody knows you're a dog." But your words show that you're a white straight male, probably christian.
Is marrying the person you love a basic right? Is being able to work, have a house, and buy things a basic right? Cause if you're not heterosexual, that party is pretty sure they're not.
Your right not to be oppressed by your own government is more important than eliminating government regulation.
We agree, which is why I don't want the government saying who I can marry.
Political pressure on companies to preserve basic decency and human rights is okay.
I'm glad you agree with the MeToo movement. Too bad most in your party don't.
DragonflyBSD is cool. I hate how Google likes to take names from other projects without even looking. Then they do some kind of shitty manuever like this and folks think "That sucks!" Well, DragonflyBSD doesn't suck. It's HAMMER file system is very functional and has cutting edge features.
it's got to do with external factors. We're all one race: human. Human beings are the same all over. What's not the same is our neighbors, food supply and natural resources. The US has two weak neighbors resulting in little risk of invasion. Is it any wonder we're more individualistic? We can afford to be since we're not under constant threat of invasion. Meanwhile China spent centuries fighting off Mongol hoards (often losing). They needed a more top/down authoritarian system with stronger connections to band together for survival.
People are people. There's nothing special about one group of them. American Exceptionalism is a myth. We're just the ones that survived WWII intact and got nukes first. If Einstein's dad got that deal in Munich to go through we might all be speaking German right now.
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The party thinks, basically, that Washington politicians too often force people do things, or make things illegal. Republicans generally would oppose a federal law making it a federal crime to hit your thumb with a hammer.
Most Republicans would suggest that hitting your thumb is a bad idea, and would say you shouldn't do that. I think you should avoid doing that != we should make it a federal crime.
I think this is a good idea != the federal government should force everybody to do this.
Pence said Google shouldn't help with human rights abuseses in China. He did not propose a federal law making it illegal to provide services in China.
This is as opposed to Democrats, who don't so much make that distinction. Democrats are more keen on the government forcing you to do whatever Nancy Pelosi wants you to do.
As little as 100 years ago we had all the problems China had except mass surveillance, and the only reason we didn't have that is that telecom didn't really exist 100 years ago. Workers were barely paid and worked 60+ hours a week and if you complained you were murdered. This is all pretty well documented. What changed was after WWII American workers had solidarity. Just about everyone fought or lost someone in the war. Plus losing several million working age men helped thin the herd.
But what did _not_ change is human nature. We're no more or less human than the Chinese. That goes for all the flaws everybody has. We're not better than than Chinese, and if we're not careful then as soon as money gets a bit tighter the ruling elite will come down on the working class. The real one, e.g. the billionaire class, not the "elites" Fox News talks about in the form of scientists, teachers and professors...
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