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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

#21

Post by jpalomaki »

wizardforhire wrote: post #4

I’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.

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

#23

Post by cromwellian »

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…

Given the US has nuclear weapons, I doubt they’re afraid of invasion. There can’t really be a conventional war between nuclear powers. Any future conflicts will be proxy wars.

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

#24

Post by noir_lord »

cromwellian wrote: post #23
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…

Given the US has nuclear weapons, I doubt they’re afraid of invasion. There can’t really be a conventional war between nuclear powers. Any future conflicts will be proxy wars.

Agreed.

The point of course in having both conventional and nuclear weapons is so that your range of responses is wider than between nothing and a mushroom cloud.

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

#25

Post by chrischen »

sumo89 wrote: post #16

This is just part of the reason mass tracking is bad, you never know who is going to end up with the data.

What do you mean? Simply because they have it means it's bad, regardless of what they do with it? Seems you've already formulated an opinion.

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

#26

Post by bcOpus »

itissid wrote: post #19

My 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…

The formula of appealing to a small base which keeps you in power through cronyism is the formula for power. It’s true in every place you find political and financial power, from Beijing to small-town USA, to corporate boardrooms around the world, and tinpot dictators around the world.

You might enjoy reading The Dictator’s Handbook.

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

#28

Post by nabla9 »

lainga wrote: post #3

That'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.

Stasi files were actual files in an archive. You needed actual manpower to walk into archive, retrieve, analyze and act. Any new entry took time to enter into the system.

Chinese can have thousands of datapoints per day (with their mandatory phone apps, cameras, checkpoints). They can automatically analyze them in real time. They can get summaries and automatically classify people.

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

#29

Post by coldtea »

wizardforhire wrote: post #10
thaumasiotes wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Defense against other complex societies.

Quality of life

I'm not sure the tons of 18th-19th century working poor brought in from their rural towns and farms to industrial London (by laws that purposefully made their old trades deprecated), working and living under hellish dickensian conditions would agree...

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

#30

Post by goodwork »

itissid wrote: post #19

My 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…

How is that different from people working for FB Or Google?

It's same there, a few of them are financially rewarded for pushing privacy evanding tactics and others silently follow otherwise risk being reported.

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