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China rates its own citizens – including online behaviour

volkskrant.nl

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Re: China rates its own citizens – including online behaviour

#131

Post by [deleted] »

ForHackernews wrote: post #123
HSO wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Recently I had to decide whether to buy books on politics for kindle. I didn't like the fact that it tracks everything I buy, what sentences I highlight, the notes I keep... I bet my libertarian books would make my score very low in future China. This is why I keep "pirating" and hoarding books. I know it's bad for the common good and bad for the authors but I feel paranoid about corporations and national security…

> It was completely unrealistic when 1984 was written, of course, but in 2013 (when I read it), this hit a little bit too close to home. Ironically enough, Amazon has already once erased 1984 from users' Kindle devices: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18ama...

[deleted]

Re: China rates its own citizens – including online behaviour

#132

Post by colordrops »

xnull6guest wrote: post #109
vinalia wrote: post #88

There was a good talk back in 2012 from ex NSA that laid out some of the details for how the US surveillance keeps track of online behavior too[1]. I think (as awful as it is) we can expect most governments major governments to do this if it's within their technical capacity. To get out from under this, I think we'll need 100% encryption of everything, open source devices, and ways for companies to make money without…

Have you been following the news with regard to the Defense Department and Silicon Valley? There is a concerted effort now, through government compulsion and money, to funnel venture capitol towards start-ups with cyber security (offensive and defensive) and away from those offering encryption and privacy services and communications solutions.

Could you elaborate or provide links?

Re: China rates its own citizens – including online behaviour

#133

Post by adam419 »

ginko wrote: post #90
bdamm wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, private companies in the United States already do this. The question is what will the data be used for?

This might show my European perspective, but I'd rather have my government collect such data than some unaccountable private entity. Even better if no one does it of course.

This perspective is in my opinion entirely misguided.

The incentive of a private organization is to find ways to profit off you. That desire leads to fairly predictable behavior.

On the other hand, a government owns you and has true power over you.

While the odds of a company abusing this information is much more likely, it's damage to you (abusing you with unwanted ads, etc) is far less bad than how a government would use such info to abuse you.

Another dimension to this is that if a private company establishes a monopoly on your information, it's position is all but permanent. It's possible for a whole slough of similar companies to acquire the same information, therefore nullifying each others monopoly and power over you. With a government this is not the case.

Re: China rates its own citizens – including online behaviour

#134

Post by fweespeech »

mike_hearn wrote: post #126
rapind wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it wrong that the first thought in my mind is how to influence their ratings at scale? "Diaper stuffing" while humourus is probably not far off the initial reputation optimization schemes that have probably already commenced. I'd say there's a good chance you'll be able to buy your way to a top score while the poor become the geocities of citizens.

* I'd say there's a good chance you'll be able to buy your way to a top score* This is a country that imposes the death penalty for corruption. Social hacking isn't something that is going to happen there.

If I bought large quantities of textbooks written by Party Authors and used them to support my tables and benches...would that lead to an execution for corruption or a higher CRO for ingenuity? ;)

Re: China rates its own citizens – including online behaviour

#135

Post by xnull6guest »

colordrops wrote: post #132
xnull6guest wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you been following the news with regard to the Defense Department and Silicon Valley? There is a concerted effort now, through government compulsion and money, to funnel venture capitol towards start-ups with cyber security (offensive and defensive) and away from those offering encryption and privacy services and communications solutions.

Could you elaborate or provide links?

The sum total of the following links: DoD will be investing, through parterships with executives of companies that acquire technology from startups, like Facebook, and with partnerships with Silicon Valley Venture Capital Firms to invest in companies that increase the national cybersecurity posture of the US (attack and defense) and to limit funding to technology that it thought to harm the national security of the US (E2E encryption solutions are specifically mentioned). The past few months have seen many defense officials making their way through silicon valley to meet with executives and VC firms, including the Admirial and soon-to-be-representative of the State Department.

http://www.engadget.com/2015/04/24/department-of-defense-cre...

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/27/us/white-house-takes-cyber...

http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_27974832/defense-secr...

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/27/science/pentagon-looking-f...

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/23/technology/the-pentagon-as...

http://www.hngn.com/articles/87223/20150424/secretary-defens...

https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/04/23/defense-department-sili...

http://cryptome.org/2015/04/dod-cyber-strategy-2015.pdf

Re: China rates its own citizens – including online behaviour

#136

Post by rapind »

Red_Tarsius wrote: post #105
rapind wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it wrong that the first thought in my mind is how to influence their ratings at scale? "Diaper stuffing" while humourus is probably not far off the initial reputation optimization schemes that have probably already commenced. I'd say there's a good chance you'll be able to buy your way to a top score while the poor become the geocities of citizens.

You raise a very interesting point. Maybe the ranking is also designed to stimulate the economy. > "Diaper stuffing" while humourus is probably not far off the initial reputation optimization schemes that have probably already commenced. The government would keep the algorithm a secret, so there would be a SEO for human beings: the CRO citizen ranking optimization . CRO would tell you what books to buy, the top 10 it…

It's possible they'll license http://www.google.ca/technology/pigeonrank.html

Re: China rates its own citizens – including online behaviour

#137

Post by [deleted] »

colordrops wrote: post #132
xnull6guest wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you been following the news with regard to the Defense Department and Silicon Valley? There is a concerted effort now, through government compulsion and money, to funnel venture capitol towards start-ups with cyber security (offensive and defensive) and away from those offering encryption and privacy services and communications solutions.

Could you elaborate or provide links?

[deleted]

Re: China rates its own citizens – including online behaviour

#138

Post by fineman »

olefoo wrote: post #113

My gut reaction ( being an anglo, American, redneck, privileged, don't tread on me kind of person ) is that this is horrible. But thinking deeper on it I wonder if this is what Chinese Democracy looks like. The goal being maximal harmony, rather than maximal personal freedom. The method being a constant polling of all participants by all participants rather than occasional polling of those who can be bothered to vote…

> [...] I wonder if this is what Chinese Democracy looks like.

No, tautologically because it's not a democracy.

Balance of power issues pretty much mean that a democracy can't stalk its citizens and still claim that they have an independent right to vote. And that's ignoring all the other stuff we know China does to maintain order like kidnap and murder dissident bloggers.

Also, this concept that maybe asian people are actually happier (presumably than other 'races') when tightly controlled is offensively racist. China has traditionally been a brutal authoritarian state but that doesn't mean the people are happier when dictated to any more than anyone's fingers naturally pluck cotton better despite centuries worth of evidence...

Re: China rates its own citizens – including online behaviour

#139

Post by xnull6guest »

[deleted] wrote: post #137
colordrops wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate or provide links?

[deleted]

There are a number of reasons that I can tell - but no one 'killer' reason. The first is that sequestration has been cutting the defense budget so that the normal methods of technology development and acquisition are more limited in what they can fund. The second is that the pace of investment in the public sector, while very good, isn't always able to complete with the private sector - especially when the size of the private sector is so much larger than public innovation. There's also that the direction of technological change right now in SV is toward personal consumer products. Another reason is that more broadly the internet and cybersecurity has been a much larger problem for the US than it had anticipated. While the US has state of the art surveillance capabilities, built with its Five Eyes allies, it does not have the best cyberattack and defense teams (Russia is a notable leader). Obama characterized cyberwarfare as being more like basketball - everyone is scoring all the time and the one who scores the most wins. This is exacerbated by asymmetries. The US has the most to lose from cyberwarfare in terms of IP, wealth, and political secrets.

There is a new term being traded for what warfare is like today. Modern warfare exists simultaneously on multiple fronts, including the cyber domain and propaganda and information warfare. This term is hybrid warfare.

Finally, DARPA has new programming models it would like the private industry to adopt but no way to compel them to do so (Probabalistic Programming). This is a nice way for them to encourage the private industry to adopt and play with some of these new publicly developed technologies.

The last link I posted elsewhere in this conversation tree is the overview for the 2015 DoD cyberdefense planning. They are making investments on ALL fronts. Cybermilitary training, international partnerships, technology acquisition and investment, cyberwarfare simulation and modeling, diplomatic approaches, information sharing, etc. In other words, this is just one way that the DoD is 'getting serious' about cyberwarfare.

Re: China rates its own citizens – including online behaviour

#140

Post by rapind »

mike_hearn wrote: post #126
rapind wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it wrong that the first thought in my mind is how to influence their ratings at scale? "Diaper stuffing" while humourus is probably not far off the initial reputation optimization schemes that have probably already commenced. I'd say there's a good chance you'll be able to buy your way to a top score while the poor become the geocities of citizens.

* I'd say there's a good chance you'll be able to buy your way to a top score* This is a country that imposes the death penalty for corruption. Social hacking isn't something that is going to happen there.

There's a lot of assumptions in your statement.

1. That death penalty is an effective deterrent.

2. That social hacking would be tried as corruption, or even at a level of corruption for the death penalty.

3. That China doesn't have a corruption problem already regardless of the potential penalty.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_China (not saying this is the truth, just that you're making an assumption that not everyone agrees with)

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