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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

#51

Post by jdjdhdhhhdshhs »

evrydayhustling wrote: post #34
jpalomaki wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Agree that we've never seen anything like current surveillance capabilities, but there have been big jumps before. For example, IBM famously supplied equipment that made it possible for WW2 Germany (did I dodge Godwin's law?) to collate evidence of ethnicity at a scale not known before, with disastrous results [1]. I think that to some, surveillance often looks like a way to get the efficiency of distributed decision…

Too bad about that New York Tims link, though.

Re: Data leak reveals China is tracking almost 2.6m people in Xinjiang

#53

Post by [deleted] »

baybal2 wrote: post #20

Americans are afraid of being invaded by Chinese army , while completely omitting the fact that both Chinese police and 3 letter services have few times bigger budgets (literally, MPS has around 3 times bigger budget than regular land forces,) more men, better training (armed police officers don't spend 50% of their time reading Marx, unlike army officers,) and, in some times, better equipment including heavy weaponr…

[deleted]

Re: Data leak reveals China is tracking almost 2.6m people in Xinjiang

#55

Post by bigmonads »

ngcc_hk wrote: post #36
coldtea wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And doesn't NSA and co track 100% of the population?

Even if so, you agree? Acceptable? Silly statement.

I think the point of coldtea's comment is that:

- We're being inconsistent with our criticism, unwilling to apply it as a universal standard

- We're talking about others (Chinese) needing to rebel, blaming this on brainwashing, without adknowledging our own inability and unwillingness to act, without being willing to label this brainwashing

- We're building over the course of increasingly ignorant veiled-criticism posts of foreign cultures a dog-whistle for Chinese racism within our tech culture

- We're narrowly conceptualizing the issues fundamental to these technologies, spending our energy on exasperation that contributes to nationalistic sentiment, rather than addressing the global systemic abuse

- Our "blindspot" of admitting our own state the abuse of information fundamentally carves out, via the course of international law and sovereignty, the justification for other countries to do the exact same

In essence: fixing this kind of thing starts at home in the United States. Sunday morning HN comment anguish over the Uighurs of China is navel gazing.

Re: Data leak reveals China is tracking almost 2.6m people in Xinjiang

#56

Post by bigmonads »

nabla9 wrote: post #49
bigmonads wrote: post #45

Earlier 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.

This is a good illustration of American brainwashing.

In the Chinese system, everyone is informed - but is not allowed to question the systems' structure. In the United States, pressure is applied to the adknowlegement of the structure - because the legitimacy of the system is built on the idea that the security enforcement isn't present or necessary.

Reinforcement of the lie plays into American psychological cognitive dissonance because American cultural identity requires feeling "uniquely free" and moral.

Pointing out the facts often converts a person into a willing disbeliever, even a violently impassioned one.

Re: Data leak reveals China is tracking almost 2.6m people in Xinjiang

#58

Post by bigmonads »

westiseast wrote: post #57
bigmonads wrote: post #40

I don't get if this is supposed to be a scandal? This sounds like a mild version of what we've built in the United States.

Why have you made ~5-6 comments in this thread, and all about some version of whataboutism?

I reject the accusation of "whataboutism". Let's take those in order.

"Why have I made 5~6 comments in the thread?" It's an interesting topic that I've spent over 5 years researching.

"Why are you talking about the United States in a China thread?" I think this comment captures it well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19185364

Re: Data leak reveals China is tracking almost 2.6m people in Xinjiang

#59

Post by coldtea »

ngcc_hk wrote: post #36
coldtea wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And doesn't NSA and co track 100% of the population?

Even if so, you agree? Acceptable? Silly statement.

If I disagree, shouldn't I be consistent in my disagreement? Silly (or hypocritical/self-serving, ie. "patriotic") inconsistency.

Re: Data leak reveals China is tracking almost 2.6m people in Xinjiang

#60

Post by coldtea »

bigmonads wrote: post #55
ngcc_hk wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if so, you agree? Acceptable? Silly statement.

I think the point of coldtea's comment is that: - We're being inconsistent with our criticism, unwilling to apply it as a universal standard - We're talking about others (Chinese) needing to rebel, blaming this on brainwashing, without adknowledging our own inability and unwillingness to act, without being willing to label this brainwashing - We're building over the course of increasingly ignorant veiled-criticism po…

That.

To add:

1) The complaints are often either hypocritical or naive, mirroring whatever target the official US policy (and thus media) have at that year. People oblivious to 99% of the goings-on around the world merely parrot opinions they read in the media about 1-2 select places, in tandem with official national "interests" against those places. At the same time when you see tons of blog posts, and media stories and so on (and movies and TV series) against country/situation X, you don't see any about country Y which is similarly or much worse, but an ally (or indifferent). E.g. complaining about the treatment of gay/women in place X but always forgetting Saudi Arabia unless it happens to coincide with some beef their country has with it.

2) Opinions used to sell state action and interventions, with blatant disregard for nuance and for the people in the area they're supposed to help. E.g. whenever there was an intervention to "bring democracy" etc, it created worse power vacuums and civil war hellholes in the places it touched (e.g. Iraq, Libya, Syria, jut in the last 15 years) -- but of course it also sold trillions of war merchandise.

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