This is so sad: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/muslims-...
Reminds me of the United State's lockdown of Middle Easterners, and the surveillance police state that got legally empowered by post-9/11 doctrine.
Data leak reveals China is tracking almost 2.6m people in Xinjiang
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Re: Data leak reveals China is tracking almost 2.6m people in Xinjiang
#42I’m sure China thinks this is a really great idea, but seriously, what a waste of resources. This goes against the very existential reason for organizing into complex societies in the first place, and second if the powers at be were students of philosophy and especially history they would know that this kind of behavior never ends well for the ruling class.
I'd genuinely love to hear your analysis of the American surveillance state.
Re: Data leak reveals China is tracking almost 2.6m people in Xinjiang
#43That's roughly 10% of the population (23M). At its peak, the Stasi in the DDR had files on about 30% of the East German population.
China's population was 1.386 billion in 2017.
Do you mean 10% of the subpopulation pertinent to the region?
Re: Data leak reveals China is tracking almost 2.6m people in Xinjiang
#44That's roughly 10% of the population (23M). At its peak, the Stasi in the DDR had files on about 30% of the East German population.
China's population was 1.386 billion in 2017. Do you mean 10% of the subpopulation pertinent to the region?
I believe they were referring to Xinjiang's population (~21.8 million)
Re: Data leak reveals China is tracking almost 2.6m people in Xinjiang
#45My friend from China explained to me that the surveillance of people is as much top down as much as its bottom up. - At every village level they have "informants" for the communist party who inform their higher ups regularly about village level activity. They are financially supported with healthcare and education subsidies and so it makes sense for everyone to join in and inform, especially the poor. - At the city l…
China also tolerates civil unrest and civil disobedience as long as it's not directly challenging the authority of central government. Official name for it is "mass incidents" or "mass frustration". There are almost 200,000 of these incidents every year. Several of them grow into large demonstrations with barricades, sit-ins, and rioting. They are usually reactions against come companies, local government, land seizu…
China could probably go much further. In America, you're shut down and surveilled for demanding systemic changes to the system (just try to build a movement in the United States for a change of government; see where that gets you). Much of that surveillance is automatic, and fed into police threat scores and FBI databases based off of online conversations (like this one) and other information (including financials, purchase history, social circle, etc).
Now, in the United States, if you want to disrupt some other kind of corruption (say, farming industry practices around the treatment of animals) - this will get you on terrorist watchlists, and the FBI will infiltrate and seek the arrests of that behavior as well, enforcing the strict relationship that wealthy families have in the enforcement of American societal structure.
Re: Data leak reveals China is tracking almost 2.6m people in Xinjiang
#46Re: Data leak reveals China is tracking almost 2.6m people in Xinjiang
#47That's roughly 10% of the population (23M). At its peak, the Stasi in the DDR had files on about 30% of the East German population.
The population of East Germany was 18 million in 1950 and 16 million in 1990. On the same order of magnitude. But I think it would be much easier for China to keep tabs on millions nowadays than the Stasi back then.
Re: Data leak reveals China is tracking almost 2.6m people in Xinjiang
#48I’m sure China thinks this is a really great idea, but seriously, what a waste of resources. This goes against the very existential reason for organizing into complex societies in the first place, and second if the powers at be were students of philosophy and especially history they would know that this kind of behavior never ends well for the ruling class.
I don’t think we have seen anything like this in history. In past it was different, because your possibilities for collecting and processing information were much more limited. Also the security apparatus had to employ huge number of people, making it harder to control and less reliable.
Definitely. Remember when the Snowden documents disclosed the Utah facilities keeping ~5 years of every communication record of every person, processed into the most actionable metadata, and the related capabilities to search and correlate the content, interrelationships, and signals implicit across those communications?
This is something that could only be targeted decades ago. Now its cost-admissible to run at scale - and to do so adaptively to improve the methods.
Re: Data leak reveals China is tracking almost 2.6m people in Xinjiang
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
China also tolerates civil unrest and civil disobedience as long as it's not directly challenging the authority of central government. Official name for it is "mass incidents" or "mass frustration". There are almost 200,000 of these incidents every year. Several of them grow into large demonstrations with barricades, sit-ins, and rioting. They are usually reactions against come companies, local government, land seizu…
China could probably go much further. In America, you're shut down and surveilled for demanding systemic changes to the system (just try to build a movement in the United States for a change of government; see where that gets you). Much of that surveillance is automatic, and fed into police threat scores and FBI databases based off of online conversations (like this one) and other information (including financials, p…
This is a false equivalence. Your second paragraph is just conspiracy theory. "It's all same" is cynical and unintelligent attitude.
Re: Data leak reveals China is tracking almost 2.6m people in Xinjiang
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
China could probably go much further. In America, you're shut down and surveilled for demanding systemic changes to the system (just try to build a movement in the United States for a change of government; see where that gets you). Much of that surveillance is automatic, and fed into police threat scores and FBI databases based off of online conversations (like this one) and other information (including financials, p…
This is a false equivalence. Your second paragraph is just conspiracy theory. "It's all same" is cynical and unintelligent attitude.
False equivalence AND conspiracy theory? Lol.
In order...
"False equivalence": Nope, not saying they are equivalent.
"Conspiracy theory": Nope, read the reporting on the Snowden documents, fusion centers, legal cases involving use of surveillance, statements by the American Civil Liberties Union.
"It's all the same": I think what America is doing is both worse and of a different kind.