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Is US Surveillance Technology Propping Up Authoritarian Regimes? (washingtonpost.com)
A senior policy analyst from a non-partisan national security think tank -- and one of their cybersecurity policy fellows -- sound a dire warning in an op-ed shared by Slashdot reader schwit1:
From facial recognition software to GPS trackers to computer hacking tools to systems that monitor and redirect flows of Internet traffic, contemporary surveillance technologies enable "high levels of social control at a reasonable cost," as Nicholas Wright puts it in Foreign Affairs. But these technologies don't just aid and enable what Wright and other policy analysts have called "digital authoritarianism." They also promote a sovereign and controlled model of the Internet, one characterized by frequent censorship, pervasive surveillance and tight control by the state. The United States could be a world leader in preventing the spread of this Internet model, but to do so, we must reevaluate the role U.S. companies play in contributing to it....
On one hand, the United States cares deeply about protecting a global and open Internet... On the other hand, American companies are selling surveillance technology that undermines this mission -- contributing to the broader spread of digital authoritarianism that the United States claims to fight. (This also implicates allies such as Britain, whose companies have also sold surveillance technology to oppressive regimes.) We won't be able to allay this situation until the United States updates its approach to exporting surveillance technology. Of course, this must be done carefully. But digital authoritarianism is spreading, and U.S. companies need to stop helping it.-
On one hand, the United States cares deeply about protecting a global and open Internet... On the other hand, American companies are selling surveillance technology that undermines this mission -- contributing to the broader spread of digital authoritarianism that the United States claims to fight. (This also implicates allies such as Britain, whose companies have also sold surveillance technology to oppressive regimes.) We won't be able to allay this situation until the United States updates its approach to exporting surveillance technology. Of course, this must be done carefully. But digital authoritarianism is spreading, and U.S. companies need to stop helping it.-
US foreign policy is what's happening in Yemen. So, uh, obviously?
The trick for many of these societies will be to depose their authoritarian oppressors before they get strong AI assistance. It will be a survival-level trait for those that evolve it. Bombmakers have poor sales during peacetime, so this trick is to not focus on the bombmakers but those who can declare war, on outsiders or their own citizens.
http://hawaii.edu/powerkills
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
and our Military. And our CIA. And our ruling class. This has been going on that I know of since the early 1900s with a big push in the 80s under Reagan. Even Obama looked the other way while we did it terrible thing around the globe to secure cheap oil and general corporate interests. Meanwhile we all look the other way.
What pisses me off the most is we go down south, destabilize the region, a bunch of actual refugees fleeing violence come up here not "seeking a better life" but seeking to escape the violence we caused and then they're used as a political prop by the same folks who caused the violence in the first place.
This shouldn't work. It shouldn't be this easy to cow an entire population. We should be pissed at what our ruling class is doing and we should be at the polls stopping them. But in all my life we haven't done jack shit.
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Is this a trick question? USA has been helping dictators for decades
As long as its universities are obsessed with innovation and disruption, the authoritarianism of the States is just going to get worse.
No, of course not. Just like the US didn't provide arms and aid to the Shah of Iran or help create SAVAK. Or that time the US didn't provide arms and assistance to a young, up and coming ruler in a neighboring country after all that stuff the US didn't do in Iran went a little pear-shaped. Or like that time the US didn't help a plucky band of freedom fighters in Afghanistan stop their country from pursuing terrible evils (like female education and suffrage). Nope, there definitely never was a time during the latter half of the twentieth century that the United States ever aided and abetted some of the worst, most monstrous assholes and governments across the globe. And I'm definitely sure that since these new technologies are being offered by military defense contractors (or their owned subsidiaries) that there will be no similar patterns of sales and transfers that we definitely did not see in the twentieth century. The United States is nothing but Freedom, Apple Pie, and valiant protection of Human Rights both at home and abroad. The only things we export are Truth, Justice, the American Way, and Coca-Cola.
Is there some reason this needs to be asked?
the USA is the biggest arms dealers and warmongers in the world, been that way for a long time
https://i.imgur.com/o4dydAI.pn...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
The bases get planned.
The police and security services get to go to the USA to get extra education.
US experts arrive to support police and the military with US methods.
The nation has to buy into US tech.
The amount of authoritarianism stays the same, the ability to buy into US tech and use US police/mil methods is all that matters.
All the USA wants is the hearts and minds of that nations mil, security services and police.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Of course the USA supports an internet that allows them to spy on other nations easily... DUH
And if you buy enough weapons from the USA, it will support that regime , money beats morals.
It can't be! Arthurtanism is auntie-freedum, and freedum is good. Cawmnizzem is bad!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
that's where the real power is. What the politicians and when they get scared. There's only one thing that frightens them: being primaried. AOC shows us it can work, but you've got to be there.
Also, and I keep saying this when voting comes up (or I'm just pissed at politics): vote for candidates who refuse corporate PAC money. Right now that means Democrats, because these guys are the only ones I know of who make it a point to refuse corporate PAC money. I don't know any equivalent on the GOP side.
Finally, I think we're pretty much stuck with left wing politics if we want to solve these problems. At a minimum Universal Healthcare and Universal College. We need a healthy, well educated population, and to be blunt right now the right wing (whether they call themselves Dems or GOPpers) opposes those things.
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It's nothing new, just business as usual since the end of WW2, it was so common during the Cold War that it was pretty much ignored.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Saudi Arabia is already surrounded by a hostile nation: itself.
It's nothing new, just business as usual since the end of WW2, it was so common during the Cold War that it was pretty much ignored.
Yes, it's only brought up here to score partisan political debate points when it's totally bi-partisan, having gone on for decades.
It's just another sign of the corruption that accompanies nations and empires into decadence and decline before their collapse. If one looks back through history, the pattern is quite clear and has a period of about 250 years.
An excellent (and short) read on the subject is a book named "The Fate Of Empires" by John Glubb
The US and most of the rest of the West is already well down the path to decadence, corruption, and eventual collapse complete with bread & circuses, just in different forms.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
What goes around, comes around. These tools that America uses to control the world (with the help of their corrupt dictator friends) also work against America, and that is what Russia has (recently) shown. Also: 1-Massive American food subsidies are a way the ruling elite takes money from the masses. This leads to surplus food that must be dumped on the third world, destroying their economy. 2-America opposes renewable energy because the oil industry is run by the ruling elite, so switching takes money from them. 3-America has offshored the production of screwdrivers a long time ago. The profit margins for the ruling elite is higher that way. Of course they sell screwdrivers to the dictators, how else can they subjugate their people for the benefit of the ruling elite?
Oppenheimer wishes he didnâ(TM)t help make the automic bomb, and many in the intelligence gathering community have come out against the technologies they developed under the strictest NDA youâ(TM)ve ever seen.
Engineers need to think about how the tools they are making are going to be used. And realize that they are morally culpable in being a part of that system
That's too funny for words. Are you on crack or acid ? Let me know where you got it from, it's obviously primo stuff.
Either you support the neostalinist surveillance state - or you're an anarchist!!!!1!!11!!!