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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
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 ...
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.
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.
Only because the Democrat's Jim Crow laws failed to do so.
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.
"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.
This is what happens when you go too far left.
You wont be able to convince people that going this far left turns you into nazi's.. because the left has been telling everyone that the nazi's were right wing for over 60 years now. It doesnt matter how obviously wrong the left is on the matter of the nazis... even if yet another leftist nation is calling itself the fatherland.
"His name was James Damore."
But it's cool if the government monitored my political enemies yes?
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.
And who who do you think develops the weapons that are killing so many people in Venezuela?
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."
"It doesnt matter how obviously wrong the left is on the matter of the nazis... "
This is not a matter of the Left being 'wrong'. This is another deliberate misuse of words, and plain lying, to avoid responsibility for past crimes, cast the unfavorable light of their own actions on their opposition, and redefine the Left as good. All lies, all false, all the time.
It is a common political tactic to preemptively accuse your opposition of that bad act which you, yourself, have done, is doing, and will do in the future.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
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.
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))
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.
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.
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
Longer, FDR compared Calvin Coolidge to a Fascist, and exactly 80 years ago Thomas Dewey (!) was compared to Hilter in the presidential election where he was trying to defeat Truman, and infamously did in those newspapers that went to press too early in the morning.
You would think by now people would have woken up to this blatant lie, but it's probably more powerful than ever.
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.
'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'
'THIS time it's true!' is part of the derp.
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.
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?
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.
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.