WeChat and the Surveillance State • Hacker News Board

Re: WeChat and the Surveillance State

#11

Post by eof » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 2:12 PM UTC

dpflan wrote: post #8

xyzal wrote: post #3

This maybe implies a use case where deepfakes could actually used be to the benefit of society.

Would you mind elaborating this thought?

Presumably by creating ai generated personas dissidents could get some manner of protection from this type of surveillance.

Re: WeChat and the Surveillance State

#12

Post by NotPaidToPost » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 2:15 PM UTC

xyzal wrote: post #3

This maybe implies a use case where deepfakes could actually used be to the benefit of society.

There are many Chinese news reports or other videos on YouTube and most of them are narrated by artificial voices.

We can imagine the reasons for that.

Re: WeChat and the Surveillance State

#13

Post by pixelmonkey » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 2:35 PM UTC

Very good article, and the video on that page is a must-watch to understand the perils of a state/tech/media alliance that runs too deep.

Re: WeChat and the Surveillance State

#14

Post by vajaya » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 2:44 PM UTC

basically Chinese government doesn't want its citizens to talk anything cultural, political, spiritual, religious, etc. If you wanna talk fashion, food, travel, music, and the likes, that's absolutely fine. and it seems Chinese people are perfectly content with it. I heard that wechat is transparent to Chinese authority. Last year, a dozens of college students who are Marxist activists and advocate for workers' right in Shenzhen(yes, that techy wonderland so much applauded on HN) were arrested and disappeared since. Some say the authority can watch their every move via wechat.

Re: WeChat and the Surveillance State

#15

Post by quotz » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 2:48 PM UTC

The West has to be wary of becoming a surveillance state. More often than not tech companies in the West are using China tech as an example of how they should operate. We have to protect our civil liberties. I grew up in a post-communist country in Europe, riddled with corruption and dictatorial tendencies, and it is really not a nice place. It's strange that as technology becomes a bigger part of our society, the more it is used against us.

Re: WeChat and the Surveillance State

#16

Post by AFascistWorld » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 2:49 PM UTC

https://advox.globalvoices.org/2017/12/27/dont-call-xi-the-b...

Re: WeChat and the Surveillance State

#17

Post by aloer » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 2:51 PM UTC

NotPaidToPost wrote: post #7

Whatever WeChat's links with policing in China, I believe that they have an equivalent of Face ID to authenticate users. Keeping in mind that WeChat is used as an electronic wallet and almost bank account in China. It would have been better journalism to mention this instead of only going for the angle of state policing. It's likely that WeChat already had the person's biometrics details because of the above. Of cour…

Apple does not have my faceID biometric details and does not need them outside of my own device. Wouldn’t that make your assumption just as bad?

Re: WeChat and the Surveillance State

#18

Post by ConfusedDog » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 2:54 PM UTC

This is indeed very scary especially now it requires facial recognition part... to sign up for WeChat, you need to have a valid phone number; to use WeChat pay, you got to provide real-name and official ID, bank account, etc. From the WeChat social network, relationships are easily identified.

The mere existence of such tool is destine to be misused, regardless who made it. This is what real power looks like.

Re: WeChat and the Surveillance State

#19

Post by educationdata » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 3:03 PM UTC

What is more scary is that there are many Chinese Americans using WeChat to connect with family members. There is no doubt some of them work in the U.S. government or other sensitive companies or agencies. By tracking their location alone, the Chinese government can obtain huge amount of data.

Re: WeChat and the Surveillance State

#20

Post by throwawe32 » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 3:05 PM UTC

ConfusedDog wrote: post #18

This is indeed very scary especially now it requires facial recognition part... to sign up for WeChat, you need to have a valid phone number; to use WeChat pay, you got to provide real-name and official ID, bank account, etc. From the WeChat social network, relationships are easily identified. The mere existence of such tool is destine to be misused, regardless who made it. This is what real power looks like.

This data literally sells for "dime a dozen" from multiple data vendors; I'm guessing the article is mere reactions from the Americans because their our platforms have missed out on the data cow that is China. They have India by the balls though, so that's something.