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Chinese Telecoms Giant ZTE is Helping Venezuela Build a System That Monitors Citizen Behavior Through a New Identification Card (reuters.com)
The "fatherland card," already used by the government to track voting, worries many in Venezuela and beyond. From a report: In April 2008, former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez dispatched Justice Ministry officials to visit counterparts in the Chinese technology hub of Shenzhen. Their mission, according to a member of the Venezuela delegation, was to learn the workings of China's national identity card program. Chavez, a decade into his self-styled socialist revolution, wanted help to provide ID credentials to the millions of Venezuelans who still lacked basic documentation needed for tasks like voting or opening a bank account. Once in Shenzhen, though, the Venezuelans realized a card could do far more than just identify the recipient.
There, at the headquarters of Chinese telecom giant ZTE Corp, they learned how China, using smart cards, was developing a system that would help Beijing track social, political and economic behavior. Using vast databases to store information gathered with the card's use, a government could monitor everything from a citizen's personal finances to medical history and voting activity. "What we saw in China changed everything," said the member of the Venezuelan delegation, technical advisor Anthony Daquin. His initial amazement, he said, gradually turned to fear that such a system could lead to abuses of privacy by Venezuela's government. "They were looking to have citizen control."
The following year, when he raised concerns with Venezuelan officials, Daquin told Reuters, he was detained, beaten and extorted by intelligence agents. They knocked several teeth out with a handgun and accused him of treasonous behavior, Daquin said, prompting him to flee the country. Government spokespeople had no comment on Daquin's account. The project languished. But 10 years after the Shenzhen trip, Venezuela is rolling out a new, smart-card ID known as the "carnet de la patria," or "fatherland card." The ID transmits data about cardholders to computer servers. The card is increasingly linked by the government to subsidized food, health and other social programs most Venezuelans rely on to survive.
There, at the headquarters of Chinese telecom giant ZTE Corp, they learned how China, using smart cards, was developing a system that would help Beijing track social, political and economic behavior. Using vast databases to store information gathered with the card's use, a government could monitor everything from a citizen's personal finances to medical history and voting activity. "What we saw in China changed everything," said the member of the Venezuelan delegation, technical advisor Anthony Daquin. His initial amazement, he said, gradually turned to fear that such a system could lead to abuses of privacy by Venezuela's government. "They were looking to have citizen control."
The following year, when he raised concerns with Venezuelan officials, Daquin told Reuters, he was detained, beaten and extorted by intelligence agents. They knocked several teeth out with a handgun and accused him of treasonous behavior, Daquin said, prompting him to flee the country. Government spokespeople had no comment on Daquin's account. The project languished. But 10 years after the Shenzhen trip, Venezuela is rolling out a new, smart-card ID known as the "carnet de la patria," or "fatherland card." The ID transmits data about cardholders to computer servers. The card is increasingly linked by the government to subsidized food, health and other social programs most Venezuelans rely on to survive.
Where are Sean Penn and Danny Glover now? Sigh ...
"Man is nothing without the works of man" -- Helvetius
As government agent, we appreciate your support. The check is in the mail :-)
Easy to make the Chinese tech companies look bad. But who do you think develops the weapons that are killing so many people in Yemen?
Chavez, a decade into his self-styled socialist revolution,
What, was it not certified by the socialist revolution certification board or something?
It's so funny watching you all try to disassociate yourselves from Venezuela ...
Now that a ballot measure in Florida has granted ex-felons the right to vote, we shouldn't have any more close presidential elections for a long, long time. Inmates, where people of color are over represented, turn into ex-felons, who will now be able to vote (1.4 million of them in Florida). Basically we've dumped 1.4 million new voters who skew heavily African-American, who skew heavily Democratic. Game over Conservidudes. Game over.
If it was real socialism everyone would be holding hands and singing and unicorns would be dancing.
This must be some sort of fake socialism! Shame on you slashdot! You must be racist and homophobic!
Let's keep this story on the down-low. Agent Orange might hear about it, and want to implement in the US.
china can do it to 1.4 billion people.. tracking a measly 32 million is a cruise through Tiananmen Square in armored tanks.
Completely backwards. It’s citizens who should be able to monitor their governments. A private citizen might be able to do a fair bit of evil (see the Oklahoma City bombing) but nowhere near what a government is capable of doing (see the Soviet gulags) even when it thinks it has good intentions (just about anything Mao did) and the support of the people.
They shouldn't attempt to control them, but monitoring is necessary for good and efficient governing. Chill. Nobody's coming for your guns anytime soon.
You are downright fucking scary.
Seriously.
People like you are what make actual revolutions against totalitarian governments both necessary and bloody.
Nazi germany 2.0 trump needs to cut them off
You mean the same Republican party that freed the black slaves and lead charge for the Civil Rights Act? Go home and come back when you learn your history.
Then give up on importing illegals. We know you needed to hold their kids hostage for votes, but now that you've got a criminal army, let's stop importing another.
Only because the Democrat's Jim Crow laws failed to do so.
They're not doing anything Democrats wouldn't do next time they gain power.
Monitoring can provide very efficient government. Whether it is good government is another question. An efficient tyranny would not be good. If we have learned nothing else from our experience with the adoption of the internet, we have shown just how a technical capability enables both positive and negative behavior. Removing âoenaturalâ limitations on systems can result in significant increases in undesirable behavior. Adapting the new system by introducing artificial limitations that recreate the beneficial effects of the lost natural limitations takes insight, planning, time, and will. Genies are hard to partially bottle back up. Color me skeptical.
And the left speaks.
You have no privacy. We want to know everything. Don't worry, we won't abuse it.
This is what happens when you go too far left.
I hope one day people realize that going too far left or too far right for that matter is no good.
"fatherland card... fatherland card...." where have we seen that before? oh yes!
apartheid in south africa: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
hitler's nazi germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
yeah i'll stop there.
Yes, the 666 revelation dragon woman will monitor its citizens! You can't buy or sell, you can't get a job, unless you comply with the ruling party! Evil is good, good is bad! Come and get your mark everyone! May God have mercy on your ignorant souls! Do you no realize that you are blind and naked?
Wanna bet. Government is a system of control by definition.
So why exactly do you want to destroy America so badly?
Nah. Conservatives are the ones who crave fascism. The police state is their comfort zone. They advocate never questioning authority, support the state crushing any form of protest, violently if necessary. No issues with militarizing the police, in fact in favor of deploying troops stateside. All good in GOP land.
But it's cool if the government monitored my political enemies yes?
They shouldn't attempt to control them, but monitoring is necessary for good and efficient governing. Chill. Nobody's coming for your guns anytime soon.
Should or not is irrelevant... THE US DOES THE SAME DAMN THING. Except in the US the government has largely outsourced this to the private sector which in the name of "marketing" and "advertising" or credit checks have accumulated specific profile information on each and every person in the US.
The data clearing houses of course have government contracts which allows the government access to this information. And the political parties can pay to access this information.
And don't tell me that the profiles are "anonymized" because replacing a persons name with a uniquely identifying key is easy enough to reverse when you know the person's address, the person's employment, the persons credit history, their location history, their affiliations, their shoe size, their clothing preferences, their paid subscriptions, what their interests are.
Make no mistake that this data is used to manipulate people. It isn't generally used to target individuals until they come to the attention of law enforcement and then it is used to target individuals. But it can be used by the parties to target groups of people or even target individuals.
Wait till they learn they can just infect a tracking chip directly in to the body.
what's that? the big GESTAPO helping the little komrad /tavarisi Gestapo ? who would have thought ?
In Venezuela, the third box of liberty was misused. Now all that is left is the fifth box.
That's how fast it happens. One minute you're complaining about something, anything, everything. Before you know it, complaining is a crime.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
And, lest we overlook this, the words 'monitoring', 'efficient', 'good', 'positive', 'negative', 'natural', 'undesirable', and 'beneficial' mean different things to different people.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
But democrats want to use ID to prevent black people from buying a gun, opening a bank account, boarding an airplane, getting a library card, or getting a fishing license.
All of those are uses of ID that are not considered racist. But requiring it to vote? Yup, racist. Explain the difference.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
In Venezuela, the third box of liberty was misused. Now all that is left is the fifth box.
That's how fast it happens. One minute you're complaining about something, anything, everything. Before you know it, complaining is a crime.
Welcome to late-stage socialism, when they've run out of other people's money.
What had to start with at least the threat of violence (you can't take the "means of production" from the original owners without it) is bound to end with even worse violence.
Someone tell all those sheltered, starry-eyed, brain-dead, entitled, snow-flake suburban U.S. twits enamored with socialism.
Nah. Conservatives are the ones who crave fascism. The police state is their comfort zone. They advocate never questioning authority, support the state crushing any form of protest, violently if necessary.
Citation needed. In general, it is absolutely clear that conservatives favor less powerful central government and support the rights of individuals to protect themselves from overbearing government.
Then why, at least in the US, does the government grow under conservative leadership? .... Said the swamp monster.
Similarly the 'fiscal conservatives' would be the opposite...
Or for the newest one: 'drain the swamp'
Ask Snowden just how the US responded to him revealing such.
But lest we forget:
* Government we do not like -> evil oppressive socialist nazis
* Our government -> protecting our freedoms
After it fails, if you are lucky, your country's soft Socialism is rejected — as happened in Scandinavia, even if Sanders' fans don't know it.
If you aren't lucky, it is replaced by the hard Communism...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
You mean the same Republican party that freed the black slaves and lead charge for the Civil Rights Act? Go home and come back when you learn your history.
It certainly was not the same party that freed the slaves. No-one involved in freeing the slaves is still alive.
As for the Civil Rights Act, support for that was very strong among both major parties except for in the South. It's pretty misleading to give Republicans the primary credit, although if you're willing to pick your facts carefully I guess you can justify it. But even so, that was more than fifty years ago, and again the party has changed a lot since then.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Governing is a appplication of control over people. You have contradicted yourself. I thought we tried to avoid doublethink on slashdot
It's like saying you are a Liberal but voting Democrat. Being liberal does not make you a democrat. Being conservative does not make you a Republican.
Sure, many liberals will vote Democrat and many conservatives will vote Republican, but those terms aren't interchangeable.
Many old school blue dog Democrats are nothing like their socialist/communist nuts. Just like the nazi element is nothing like the fiscal conservative, small government type libertarian.
If we didn't have a first past the post voting system and winner take all, I'm sure we would see less broadly defined parties. This is especially true for the middle of the road people that still join a D or R for primary purposes but really only agree with half or less of what the party stands for.
It's why Bernie Sanders and Ron Paul both had to join "mainstream" parties to get a real chance, otherwise they would just split the ticket. Ross Perot did this in the 90s when he ran against Clinton and Dole. Clinton won what a typical democrat candidate would win but all the rest of the votes nearly divided equally between Perot and Dole.
" Chill. Nobody's coming for your guns anytime soon." -- Funny? Or Serious? Nice for someone to acknowledge that Government intrusion IS a problem.
Fascism and Socialism have the same goal -- total control of the population. This is Totalitarianism, plain and simple. (IMHO) once a Right-wing movement (so-called Fascism) begins to take control of the populace and production, they have shifted to (or towards) Totalitarianism. Totalitarianism, whether beginning with a Right-wing or Left-wing movement is Always a Leftist movement politically. The politically Right moves toward less and less Government and governing while the Left moves toward more and more Government. If a Rightist flips, they become Left. Conservatives do not crave Fascism -- Faux Conservatives do. Regardless of how scary it may be to any particular Conservative, the basic premise of Conservatism is an increasing amount of freedom. In the USA, we banter terms around quite liberally -- nothing means what it started out meaning and, in this case, many people are trying to equate "Conservative" with completely Totalitarian ideas, principles and practice. (That's what this particular AC did; is he a puppet of Russia?(/sarc))
You DO know that the China is a Far Left Communist Authoritarian government, right?
Holy fuck you God Damned fucking Butthurt assholes are pathetic.
If Obama had proposed this, you'd be right there singing his praises.
Many historians give the Republicans credit for passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964. If it had been a partisan bill and only the Democrats voted for it, the Civil Rights Bill would have never become an Act. There just weren't enough Democrat votes, even with a Democrat majority in the House of Representative & Senate to pass the bill into law. Remember POTUS LBJ was a Southern Democrat -- his support of the Civil Rights Bill was to gain political advantage among black voters to ensure his party's success at the polls.
Uhm.. republicans could always vote...
The Russians! They invented the AK family of weapons that Venezuela use. And the Chinese who are the largest producers of AK weapons! Please get your facts straight. Amazingly, you forget that the Spanish and the South American Indians were quite brutal without USA help -- long before the USA existed! They passed their wisdom and knowledge of torture, maiming, killing and warring down to their descendants, the Venezuelans.
Nah. Conservatives are the ones who crave fascism. The police state is their comfort zone. They advocate never questioning authority, support the state crushing any form of protest, violently if necessary. No issues with militarizing the police, in fact in favor of deploying troops stateside. All good in GOP land.
You must be one true idiot through-and-through if you believe that bullshit.
It's the LEFT that has literally institutionalized the silencing of opposing viewpoints.
And who is dressing up all in black threatening violence for merely disagreeing with them politically? I give you the LEFT: laughably call yourself "anti-fascist" while dressing up and literally acting just like one.
Gawd, you must have been dropped at birth.
On your head.
Six or seven times.
extremists are the ones monitoring. For example, it was first reagan/GOP, and later W/GOP, that pushed all of the NSA's spying on Americans.
Likewise, the far right wing NAZI party of Germany, along with Russian far right winger Putin, was/is huge on monitoring.
Then we have the far left wingers of USSR, China, and North Korea that pushed massive monitoring.
As to the claim that conservative favor less powerfull central gov, that is like claiming that conservatives love balanced budgets. Conservatives are happy to run deficits, as long as it is 100% of what they want.
This is what Progressives are wanting. They will help you make the RIGHT choices.
If the government tells you what to choose, is it really a choice?
Conservatives are also supposed to believe in not spending more than you take in, but that went the way of the dodo bird decades ago. It would be interesting for you to point out a US national politician that best reflects true conservatism.
My facts? The weapon being used in Venezuela to kill so many is Socialism. Guns are a tool to the Socialist, for their exclusive use, because everything else is illegitimate to the Socialist.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
That's about as backwards as it can get. Private property is the foundation of individual liberty, for if there is no such thing as private property, you can't even stand up in safety and be left alone.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
The concept of private property was created and maintained by countless acts of violence and bloodshed, and maintain Ed by threat of violence and Targeted terroristic acts by the government against those who would dare to disassociate with the concept. Private property is not to be confused with the concept of personal property. Private property breaks the world. Because it is a privatizing of the means to production the creates the horrific amount of influence and control over other human beings by those who hold private property.
Are you really deluded enough to think that private property's effects don't include advances in science and medicine that among many other things include eradication of entire deadly diseases like smallpox? Improvements in agriculture that allow Earth to support 7+ billion people?
Because guess where just about every major breakthrough that made those advances possible came from?
Yeah, Western Europe or it's cultural descendants.
CAPITALIST Western Europe.
CHRISTIAN, CAPITALIST Western Europe.
The ONLY civilization in the history of the world to voluntarily give up its slaves. Christian, capitalist Europe then IMPOSED that abolition on the rest of the world - because the power of Western Europe's capitalist-fueled industrial economy gave them the power to do so.
It's the non-private property collectivists that have resulted in the deaths of one hundred million or so.
Khmer Rough Killing Fields - 3-4 million dead out of a country of 7 million - collectivist LEFTISTS.
Great Chinese Famine - 40 million dead - collectivist LEFTISTS
Soviet Famine - 10-20 million dead collectivist LEFTISTS
And I think it's fucking hilarious how you think statist collectivism is better - of all the millions and millions killed by your favorite form of government, many of them starved to death.
Your fucking leftists can't even grow food properly, yet you tout their advantage over private property?
YOU ARE A FOOL
So what your saying the original Republican party disappeared sometime between 1860 and 1960? Then some other republican party took its place rather recently in history? Do tell what history book you learned this from?
No, citation is definitely needed, it's the conservatives who (mostly) approve of the people being well armed, while gun control has now become the absolute dogma of the Democratic party at the national level.
Nah. Conservatives are the ones who crave fascism. The police state is their comfort zone. They advocate never questioning authority, support the state crushing any form of protest, violently if necessary.
Citation needed. In general, it is absolutely clear that conservatives favor less powerful central government* and support the rights of individuals** to protect themselves from overbearing government.
* Excluding law enforcement
** Excluding immigrants, no amount of red tape is too much red tape
Ask a few conservative voters what our immigration GOALS are sometime, what are the odds that conversation goes darkly xenophobic... we both know the answer.
At the state level and lower the dynamics are all different. Your local HOA-nazi complaining about your garage door color and grass height is as likely to be a staunch conservative as anything else, but thatâ(TM)s not central, itâ(TM)s just shit governance.
'3 eyes' started under FDR, formalized under Truman.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
By all standard definitions I should call myself a conservative, but cannot because there is no political party/person that reflects even a shade of true conservatism. In the past people calling themselves 'conservatives' inserted themselves and their government into citizens personal affairs (gay marriage, religion, etc) which is the opposite of what it should be. They continue to run up huge debts to pay for huge government (yes, Defense Dept counts as government) , which should also not be considered conservative. Trample on states rights when deemed political convenient, massive surveillance on citizens in violation of multiple amendments, and so on.
You mean Jeff Bezos.
> What, was it not certified by the socialist revolution certification board or something?
Don't even get them started on how the National Socialists weren't. Apparently the history of Socialists betraying and murdering other Socialists in the pursuit of power only proves that there are no true Socialists. Somehow violent revolution never leads to the magical state of equality they promised.
It's almost like history is telling us that tearing down the state with a violent revolution doesn't lead to utopia. Weird, right? Who knew?
Yes it is generally true that conservatives want the least amount of government regulation of capitalism. We would compete with Chinese laborers making $0.12/day if they had their way.
Don't confuse them with facts when all they have is emotion.
How many times do we have to go through this before people finally learn? How many more millions have to die before we put a stop to it?
Nah. Authoritarians are the ones....
It's called a smartphone.
.. and other oxymoronic word pairings. Seriously, China has morals completely in line with those of Venezuela, at least under Maduro.
Organization? You must be joking..
If you have to monitor people so much. What you think your system is not up to par.
[($)]
Are we finally admiting that we are doing this globally and that every person born in the Internet enabled world has no privacy? I mean everybody already knows this but are countries owning up to how screwed every person is going forward because our lives can be played with like Sims characters? China was never pretending, they said smoking cigarettes in prohibited areas gives you -100 points and helping an old lady cross the street is +100 points. U.S. chased Snowden off to Russia and just sort of beat everyone talking about him to shut the fuck up. But is this it? Now that we realize policy is the only solution, we are going to stop playing with everyone unable to purchase their privacy? Boy that would be wonderful news. Evil loses in global politics where money is everything.
Nazis Christian capitalists
Conquistas christian capitalists
North Americans responsible for the death of millions of native americans christian capitalists
Hey this game is fun...
But sadly what you seem unable to comprehend that, like in Nazi Germany, the whole Socialist thing was simply a carrot to get people to elect a dictatorship.
They only want less government oversite so they rape the county.
Citations:
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=conservatism+and+authoritarianism&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart
Modded down by the snowflakes afraid to hear the truth. America is so ass backwards.
Nice right wing revisionism! Too bad slavery still exists in the US, and is even chartered into the constitution as punishment for a crime. So there went your entire point.
If you don't like socialism, you should definitely stay away from computers. They can only possibly exist with open source software, aka socialist software. And the internet is a complete no-go. So I trust you'll destroy your computers and never get online ever again in order to avoid being a hypocrite?
Did you know you are espousing literal Nazi propaganda? History soundly disagrees with you. Luckily the youth nowadays recognize that, as the right wing is shrinking massively as they get more extreme and fascistic.
At this point, totalitarianism is the ideology of conservatives in the United States. There is a huge amount of dog-whistling about 'being a conservative', but this translates directly to 'being a Republican', and in turn, being a racist and without doubt an extreme-right-wing person. The Republican Party has cornered itself into an unenviably tight spot.
In most places, political parties are either progressive or regressive. The Democratic Party is progressive, but it may run the danger of becoming regressive, if they allow too many self-styled socialists to gain power over the party. Many self-styled socialists do not even know what socialism means. Worse is, if they do, and have an agenda (don't forget, though, that Republicans and the extreme-right-wing have an agenda, too), and go on in the farther future to implement the destructive policies of Venezuela, though they're currently far too restricted in enacting those. It would take a while from progressive social democrat values and measures to something that's in Maduro's Venezuela.
All the technology in the world's useless if it's inaccessible. I have decent health insurance and I still have to fight an uphill battle to get my doctors to obey. And because I'm not a doctor I can't order stuff directly and Bill to insurance. So you spend 6 months leveraging your doctor into finally ordering the test you want, you can confirm and finally get treatment for what's been hurting you, that's if you're lucky.
and perhaps you're right maybe it was worth it to put up with the all the shitty tradeoffs of capitalism in order to develop the technology level that we have now but now that we have already developed that technology, its job is done. Because at this point capitalism and private property is maintaining suffering proactively in order to stabilize marketspace. The capitalists have finish their job and much like a war hero becomes a demon if he keeps killing people when the war is over so has capitalism overstayed.