Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

China using big data to detain people before crime is committed

theglobeandmail.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 185 posts

Re: China using big data to detain people before crime is committed

#91

Post by forapurpose »

drb91 wrote: post #65
davesque wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would have agreed with you before November 2016. Now, I'm being completely honest in saying I'm not so sure.

Oh come on, neoliberals aren’t much better. They’re two feet to the left of the right wingers when it comes to surveillance, policing, funding the military & pro-military nationalistic rhetoric, with industry hands in their pocket, and their own hands in the media. The seeds for fascism, authoritarianism, and cults of personality are well rooted in the senior offices of congress on both sides. It has been ripe for ab…

Tangentially: Is there a way to draw a line between this kind of comment and (IMHO) productive ones, in order to make enforceable, effective rules?

The comment adds no knowledge to the discussion - I'm no wiser after reading it - and is inflammatory, risking further derailment of the discussion. Mostly it communicates the emotional state of the commenter, in regard to this issue, when the comment was written.

There are times and places to do that, but they are very common and we also need the other kind of interaction: A very important problem is how to have substantive, valuable discussion of public affairs, and I'm searching for a solution.

Re: China using big data to detain people before crime is committed

#92

Post by NutriSugar »

Dangeranger wrote: post #7
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #6

Does it actually work? Or are the "criminals" just social activists?

They are not "criminals" if they never committed a crime, they are people being detained based on probabilities.

There is also the issue that often times preparing to commit one crime involves committing other crimes. It's something of a scale.

Consider the following cases:

Arresting the guy who kidnapped someone.

Arresting the guy in the act of trying to kidnap someone.

Arresting the guy who set out to kidnap someone.

Arresting the guy who is preparing his home to hold a kidnapped victim and is identifying a target.

Arresting the guy who researched how to kidnap someone.

Arresting the guy who has expressed strong interest in kidnapping someone.

Which of these is wrong? I think we would generally agree the last two are, but which of the middle ones do we draw a line at?

Re: China using big data to detain people before crime is committed

#93

Post by forapurpose »

drb91 wrote: post #90
sjg007 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the issue is that Trump and the State department are not going to do anything about a strongman in China. Trump likes strongmen and hasn't doing anything to curb Duerte, Putin and now Xi in China.

Well, that may be true. I'm not sure what another state department might have done in this position against Xi, though; this is a continuation of politics that hardly offered Obama straightforward leverage either.

> I'm not sure what another state department might have done

The US State Department, and the entire US government, has for generations made human rights central to US foreign policy. It's believed that people with freedom and opportunity become vibrant trade partners and allies, not enemies in war. Democracies don't start wars against other democracies, as an historical rule.

That historic policy is widely believed to have given the US enormous influence, as people generally feel favorably towards others whose central goal is freedom and opportunity for all.

The current State Dept (including the Secretary of State) and other leading government officials have openly forewarn support for human rights. The Secretary of State said making money is more important (which fits the approach of many in the oil industry, and he was CEO of Exxon). Others deemphasize it for no given reason, and advocate even eliminating the State Dept in favor of military power.

> a continuation of politics that hardly offered Obama straightforward leverage

A lack of straightforward leverage is pretty normal for international relations; it's the sea in which diplomats swim. Almost every great thing that has been accomplished in that field was done in that environment.

Re: China using big data to detain people before crime is committed

#94

Post by nashashmi »

NutriSugar wrote: post #92
Dangeranger wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not "criminals" if they never committed a crime, they are people being detained based on probabilities.

There is also the issue that often times preparing to commit one crime involves committing other crimes. It's something of a scale. Consider the following cases: Arresting the guy who kidnapped someone. Arresting the guy in the act of trying to kidnap someone. Arresting the guy who set out to kidnap someone. Arresting the guy who is preparing his home to hold a kidnapped victim and is identifying a target. Arresting…

When is he a kidnapper?

When he is A kidnapper who has yet to kidnap?

Re: China using big data to detain people before crime is committed

#95

Post by dekhn »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #83
dekhn wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's completely wrong. The Palantiri were created by the Noldor (one of the powerful old races of elves) and used without corruption, and then given to the Numenoreans as a gift; they were used for a long time without corruption. They were so powerful that even Sauron could not make arbitrary images appear. But the weak-minded were easily influenced by him through it; not through the nature of the stones. The ring…

The exception being Tom Bombadil, but he is a strange creature.

oh, yeah, sorry, I left that out, but that's a subtle issue, because it's not clear whether he is actually a creature, or an embodiment of nature.

Re: China using big data to detain people before crime is committed

#96

Post by adventured »

refurb wrote: post #64
davesque wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would have agreed with you before November 2016. Now, I'm being completely honest in saying I'm not so sure.

Really? If I recall, HN was blowing up at all the surveillance and privacy concerns under Obama. Is it really worse under Trump?

No. Nothing has fundamentally changed. That's merely partisan wishful dreaming, it makes people feel better to think their side isn't nearly so bad on eg privacy.

The machine that has been consistently moving these things along for 40-50 years now, transcends the parties. The parties have their marching orders, they largely obey. Politicians come and go. Feinstein for one example, if she gets replaced (which she will eventually, she's 84 years old), the anti-privacy pushers will find a replacement vessel.

Re: China using big data to detain people before crime is committed

#97

Post by Slansitartop »

ardit33 wrote: post #87
ejlangev wrote: post #57

It's a shame we moved a lot of the US industrial base to an authoritarian and potentially hostile country like China. A bit scary to think of the generation or two of people who won't have the knowledge to manufacture things should they ever need to because of conflict in some form. Seems like it reduces any leverage the US has for holding China accountable for much that it does.

I disagree.... the US was shit at producing weapons before WW2 (apart from Carriers), yet within two years was to able to be the number one mass producer in quantity, and eventually on quality. When there is both political and economical will, the country will be able to mass-produce again. Right now there is no economic incentive to do so.

Didn't a lot of that military production capacity come from repurposing civilian infrastructure, like auto plants and the like?

Also, it would probably be harder to bootstrap 2020s-era manufacturing infrastructure than it would be to bootstrap 1940s-era infrastructure.

Re: China using big data to detain people before crime is committed

#98

Post by Noos »

anonytrary wrote: post #31

For those of you who find this interesting and also enjoy anime, Psycho-Pass explores this premise. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psycho-Pass TLDR: > The story takes place in an authoritarian future dystopia, where omnipresent public sensors continuously scan the mental states of every passing citizen. Collected data on both present mentality and aggregated personality data is used to gauge the probability of that ci…

Psycho-Pass is excellent. They also released a visual novel in the states, Psycho-Pass: Mandatory Happiness. I also found when watching it it felt like it was decently inspired from the older anime Cyber City Oedo 808, which had the plot of the criminal enforcers hunting others.

Re: China using big data to detain people before crime is committed

#99

Post by forapurpose »

ardit33 wrote: post #87
ejlangev wrote: post #57

It's a shame we moved a lot of the US industrial base to an authoritarian and potentially hostile country like China. A bit scary to think of the generation or two of people who won't have the knowledge to manufacture things should they ever need to because of conflict in some form. Seems like it reduces any leverage the US has for holding China accountable for much that it does.

I disagree.... the US was shit at producing weapons before WW2 (apart from Carriers), yet within two years was to able to be the number one mass producer in quantity, and eventually on quality. When there is both political and economical will, the country will be able to mass-produce again. Right now there is no economic incentive to do so.

That raises a few questions:

I wonder if that's still possible. The US was an industrial country at the time; they had to convert existing factories to other forms of production (e.g., from cars to bombers). Now, manufacturing is much less prevalent; the US would have to create capacity from scratch.

Also, manufacturing is much less productive than other economic activities - that's why it's done in poorer countries that don't have better options while the US does higher value things (ignoring for this purpose the very important issues of the distribution of those higher returns). I wonder what the blow to the economy would be if the US suddenly had to switch large amounts of resources to manufacturing.

Finally, given that manufacturing is no longer the cutting edge of business, I wonder if it might be easier to build capacity than we think. As an example, t-shirts are mostly made outside the US; I would guess that if there was suddenly a critical need for them, the US could ramp up capacity quickly.

Re: China using big data to detain people before crime is committed

#100

Post by dragonwriter »

forapurpose wrote: post #93
drb91 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that may be true. I'm not sure what another state department might have done in this position against Xi, though; this is a continuation of politics that hardly offered Obama straightforward leverage either.

> I'm not sure what another state department might have done The US State Department, and the entire US government, has for generations made human rights central to US foreign policy. It's believed that people with freedom and opportunity become vibrant trade partners and allies, not enemies in war. Democracies don't start wars against other democracies, as an historical rule. That historic policy is widely believed…

> The US State Department, and the entire US government, has for generations made human rights central to US foreign policy.

Rhetorically; the substance is less consistent.

> Democracies don't start wars against other democracies, as an historical rule.

There is basically no empirical evidence for this popular claim (the relative rarity of democracy-on-democracy war does not require any more than the small proportion of potential historical pairs of nations that consist of two democratic nations to explain it.)

Post reply on HN